Humanitarian security regimes

This article introduces a novel concept, humanitarian security regimes, and enquires under what conditions they arise and what is distinctive about them. Humanitarian security regimes are driven by altruistic imperatives aiming to prohibit and restrict behaviour, impede lethal technology or ban categories of weapons through disarmament treaties; they embrace humanitarian perspectives that seek to prevent civilian casualties, precluding harmful behavior, protecting and ensuring the rights of victims and survivors of armed violence. The article explores how these regimes appear in the security area, usually in opposition to the aspirations of the most powerful states. The existing regimes literature has mostly taken a functional approach to analyzing cooperation, lacks a humanitarian hypothesis and does not explore the emergence of new regimes in the core area of security. The author argues that in the processes of humanitarian security regime‐making, it is the national interest that is restructured to incorporate new normative understandings that then become part of the new national security aspirations. This article intends to fill this gap and its importance rests on three reasons. First, security areas that were previously considered to be the exclusive domain of states have now been the focus of change by actors beyond the state. Second, states have embraced changes to domains close to their national security (e.g. arms) mostly cognizant of humanitarian concerns. Third, states are compelled to re‐evaluate their national interests motivated by a clear humanitarian impetus. Three conditions for the emergence of humanitarian security regimes are explained: marginalization and delegitimization; multilevel agency, and reputational concerns.     

Konrad Bloch and Heinz Maier-Leibnitz

Abstract

Secrecy is the greatest enemy of democracy and science: the key to their advance lies in the wider spread of knowledge, the only natural resource which is constantly increasing. The arguments for and against secrecy, external or internal security, are analysed and illustrated with British and American examples. Commercial and individual secrecy are reviewed, and the techniques of how secrecy is upheld and how it is broken are given in some detail. Five reforms are urged to make private knowledge public, thus to safeguard democracy and the scientific tradition of freedom which depends on it.     

公安部队组建初期组织体系和领导体制的历史考察(1949—1952年)

公安部队是武警部队的前身,是中国人民解放军的一个组成部分。中华人民共和国成立后,为了在全国范围内迅速建立革命秩序,巩固新生政权,在中央军委和公安部的领导下,逐步把地域性的公安武装和中国人民解放军担负公安任务的部队正式改编成“中国人民公安部队”。在军委公安司令部成立后,公安部队又进行了整编,组建了“中国人民解放军公安部队”和地方公安部队,逐渐接替全国内卫任务。随着边防公安组织和边防武装的建立,全国公安部队初步形成了正规公安部队、地方公安部队和边防公安武装的体制。为统一对国家内卫、边防斗争的领导,加强公安部队的建设,1952年,中共中央、中央军委决定将内卫、边防和地方公安武装统一整编为“中国人民解放军公安部队”,全部纳入中国人民解放军的建制序列。内卫、边防工作和公安部队的建设进入了一个新的阶段。     

Human security in Australia: public interest and political consequences

The new human security paradigm has reconceptualised security beyond traditional physical threats to encompass ‘lifestyle’ concerns, such as health and environmental security. This article uses national survey data collected in Australia in 2007 to examine how public opinion views this new paradigm and to evaluate its political consequences. The results show that the public makes a clear distinction between all four types of human security—health, the environment, national security and the economy. Longitudinal analysis shows that health and the environment have gained greater prominence with the public since 1990. Each dimension of human security has only limited roots in the social structure. However, each has important consequences for the ideological orientation of the public, and for party support. The authors conclude that as ‘lifestyle’ concerns become more prominent for the public, parties of the right will have to adapt to the new paradigm in order to ensure that they are not electorally disadvantaged.     

Struggles for the Folk. Politics of Culture in Czechoslovak Ethnography, 1940s–1950s

Focusing on politics of culture in early socialist era, this article explores struggles for imposing particular visions of “folk” during the revolutionary zeal characterizing the post-1948 period's development in the discipline of Czechoslovak ethnography. It examines the self-proclaimed turn from previous ethnographic traditions, accused of bourgeois nationalism, to socialist orientation towards studying “true folk”. By tracing struggles around the re-conceptualization of constitutive criteria and boundaries defining the essential object of ethnographic inquiry, the socialist ethnographers readjusted to the changes by focusing on more “progressive” traditions and shifted towards the “working-class” seen as possessing revolutionary spirit and the true authentic essence of the nation. The article argues that the new ethnographic wave ultimately re-inscribed the essentialist categories they virtually combatted by embedding them within the same structural framework rooted in the national order of things.     

Public religion and urban space in Europe

Conflicts related to demographic and cultural change in Europe regularly find their expression in struggles over the presence and visibility of religious buildings and groups. As this editorial argues, these conflicts can best be understood from a postsecular perspective that takes into account overlapping and diverging histories of state-formation and secularization. The papers collected for this special issue on public religion and urban space demonstrate that many of the difficulties that European societies face in accommodating religious diversity stem from historically formed relationships between national political identities and religious identities. In many European cases, secularization did not entail a fundamental separation between religion and politics but the formal establishment of one single national church or two competing ones, but territorially based national churches. One of the consequences of these types of establishments is that certain religious traditions are generally described and experienced as fitting with the nation and others are not. The contributors to this special issue show in detail that the struggles of contemporary religious movements in Europe to become present in the public domain are related to commonly accepted understandings of where and how religion should manifest itself in the urban environment, based on the public life of religious traditions that are considered part of the nation.     

Cutting the cake: the Congress of Vienna in British,French and German political caricature

Although the Congress of Vienna was not a main topic for political caricature, it was anything but ignored. During the first five months of 1815, while monarchs and diplomats were deliberating on Europe’s future, caricaturists in Great Britain, France and the German-speaking states depicted the Congress as a major or minor subject in 20 satirical prints. Together these caricatures provide a multi-perspectival view of the way contemporaries assessed the diplomatic deliberations taking place in Vienna. To obtain an insight into this important part of contemporary public opinion on the Congress, the corpus of graphic satire was submitted to close scrutiny in two ways. Firstly, a context analysis ascertained the artists who produced them; how the prints were published and brought to public attention; and for what audiences they were intended. Secondly, a content analysis explored the political messages that the caricatures on the Vienna Congress tried to convey and the persuasive techniques that were applied to visualise these points of view. Notwithstanding different national origins and opposite political views, the message is a negative one: the satires denounce the territorial greed of the Great Powers and their disregard for the demands and aspirations of the peoples they seek to incorporate.     

Public–private partnerships in national cyber‐security strategies

Despite its centrality in the national cyber security strategies of the US and the UK, the public–private partnership is a nebulous arrangement, which is especially problematic in the context of critical infrastructure protection. Privately owned and operated critical infrastructure that is regarded as a potential national security vulnerability raises questions about the allocation of responsibility and accountability in terms of cyber security. As with many aspects of cyber security, this issue is often discussed with little reference to previous scholarship that could provide conceptual scaffolding. This article draws on the extensive literature on public–private partnerships in order to assess the tensions and challenges of this arrangement in national cyber‐security strategies. It finds that there is a serious disjuncture in expectations from both ‘partners’. The government regards privately owned and operated critical infrastructure as a key element of national security but is reluctant to claim a mandate to oversee network security. At the same time, the private sector is not inclined to accept responsibility or liability for national cyber security. This challenge for governments to manage national cyber security raises questions about how well equipped these states are to promote their own security in the information age. Acknowledging the flaws in the ‘partnership’ is an essential step towards addressing them.     

Eurasian Natural Gas: Significance and Recent Developments

A noted American specialist on the economies of Russia and major republics of the former Soviet Union explores and discusses the natural gas resources of Central Eurasia and the political and economic issues raised by their general inaccessibility. Central to these issues are the international pipelines required to bring this increasingly important energy source to meet growing world demand, and their intimate connection to the security of all the nations involved. The author explains why they are complicated by the growing, yet still largely potential, competition from a world LNG market driven by new technologies, and hence natural gas sources, outside of Central Eurasia. Each of the major actors in this arena—from the producer states and their national energy companies to the high-income consuming states with an increasing demand for natural gas—are pursuing frequently conflicting strategies to ensure their energy supplies and income security. Addressing the major developments thoroughly, the paper focuses in particular on the strategies of Russia/Gazprom, the Central Asian producers, and the transit states, as well as on the pipelines, both actual and potential, that intertwine them.     

NARRATORS OF THE ARCTIC: IMAGES AND MOVEMENTS IN NORTHLAND NARRATIVES

While the use of public policy to construct a Canadian identity has been established in the literature, what is less well understood is whether national identity, once established, might shape Canadians' feelings about these same public policies. This article examines the extent to which citizens' national identities influence their pride in Canada's social security system, and how this relationship may be changing over time. Using data from the International Social Science Programme's 1995 and 2003 National Identity Modules, the article argues that citizens' national identities help explain the contours of social security attitudes in Canada, and that this relationship persists despite significant policy change in the field. Additionally, the paper suggests that political actors may successfully increase public support for their social security policies by “framing” them in ways that appeal to citizens' definitions of Canada.     

‘Rushworth Shall Not Take Any Notes Here’: Journals,Debates and the Public, 1640–60

This article focuses on, and rethinks, the issue of parliamentary ‘secrecy’ during the mid 17th century, by comparing the official journals of the house of commons with the kinds of information that emerged in the public domain in the 1640s and 1650s, not least in printed newsbooks. It suggests that scholars have too readily assumed that MPs sought rigorously to uphold the principle that parliamentary proceedings were not fit matters for public consumption, and the idea that their activities at Westminster should be protected from the public gaze. It argues that this has involved paying excessive attention to occasional comments and orders which suggest that MPs resented public scrutiny of their activity, as well as a failure to distinguish between different motives for achieving ‘secrecy’, between attitudes to the availability of different kinds of information, and between principles and political practice. The aim of the article, in short, is to offer a more nuanced appreciation of the ways in which MPs sought to professionalise and formalise public access, even to the extent of rethinking ideas about political accountability.     

The use of regulation and governance theories in research on post-socialism: the adaptation of enterprises in Vyborg1

This article deals with developments since the collapse of socialism in Vyborg, the former Finnish city transferred to the Soviet Union's north–west frontier in 1944. It assesses how enterprises founded during the socialist era, their heirs, and new Russian and foreign firms, have coped with economic change and adjusted to the new economic system. It also explains the evolution of hybrid forms of activity on the enterprise level and their impact on the development of Vyborg as a local economy. This paper shows that the traditions of socialism embodied in many enterprises' adaptation strategies have helped the public sector in financial crisis because enterprises have continued the socialist traditions to take care of fractions of public infrastructure.     

On the True Nature of the Contorniate Medals

The Archaeological Institute came into being in 1845 as a rival to the British Archaeological Association, itself founded 1843–44. Departing significantly from the contemporary traditions of established antiquarian societies, both held annual summer meetings thereafter. These introduced authoritative speakers, new discoveries and historical interpretations to a wider public, conference proceedings being published for a while in bespoke volumes. High-status congresses became but one element of an ongoing bitter competitive rivalry dividing the two bodies during their formative years. Preliminary examination of conference reports 1845–1850 offers some explanation as to why the societies were not easily to be reconciled. Both usefully lobbied for greater government responsibility in conservation, and for a better public understanding of the national past. Though neither readily accepted a Three Age System for pre-Roman Britain, both promoted scholarly standards for archaeology and architectural history. The 1850 Oxford meeting was the first purely archaeological congress held at an English University. Its success helped mark the Institute as the premier archaeological society of the day.     

Shattered Dreams: The Longing for “Post Independent India”

For Dalits in rural India, Nehru's vision of an Indian nation-state devoid of caste prejudice stimulated dreams and hopes of a better future. As a people who regularly experienced social and economic marginalisation by the upper castes over the centuries, they saw independent India as a transformed space, one that would accommodate the needs and aspirations of all its citizens, especially the oppressed and downtrodden. By the end of the 1950s, however, such dreams had been shattered, as Dalits increasingly came to realise that they had been mostly excluded from development programs launched by the postcolonial state. Dalit exclusion from the process of nation-state building constitutes an injustice that ignores their contribution to the national project. In this paper I examine some of the narratives that were told to me by second- and third-generation Dalits. Their oral histories celebrate the Dalits' vital role in India's freedom movement and the period that followed. Pride in their contribution formed the basis of the new Dalit politics that developed in the 1980s through the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which has become an extremely powerful political force at the national level.     

Ideology,Semiotics, and Clifford Geertz: Some Russian Reflections

This article, written by a Russian cultural historian, analyzes the concept of “ideology” in the work of Clifford Geertz and his role in understanding the figurative nature of ideology as a cultural system. The author compares Geertz's semiotic approach to culture with the semiotics of culture developed by Russian theorists, particularly Yuri Lotman, showing the convergence and divergence of the two different national traditions. This understanding of the nature and functions of ideology opens new possibilities for discussing the tortured relations of ideology and literature, showing the way fiction can affect the formation of ideological systems and influence practical politics. The analysis is illustrated by examples from Russian political life of the 1990s,when revolutionary changes demanded new sets of ideological metaphors that in their turn shaped the direction of events.     

‘Tracking,tracking and more tracking was their motto’: bush tracking and warfare in late twentieth-century Southern Africa

Tracking, the skill of following a subject by signs left behind in the environment, dominated the experience of state forces and insurgents during Southern Africa’s late twentieth-century guerilla conflicts; particularly in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from 1965 to 1980 and South African occupied South-West Africa (now Namibia) from 1966 to 1989. Rhodesian and South African forces emphasised tracking to locate and eliminate their elusive enemies, and learned that the only way to do this was by using horses, motor vehicles or helicopters to gain ground. Both security forces established tracking training institutions and specialist tracker units. However, only the South Africans were able to create large and highly effective tracking units in the context of a specific environment and the mobilisation of indigenous communities. In response, insurgents in both conflicts shifted their activities to areas less conducive to tracking and developed anti-tracking techniques. Despite the failure of these counter-insurgency campaigns to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the civilian African majority, their attempts to use tracking to engage insurgents can provide useful lessons.     

Protecting vulnerable cities: the UK's resilience response to defending everyday urban infrastructure

The events of September 11 2001 in New York and Washington, and of July 7 2005 in London, have ushered in a new era in protective counterterrorist planning within UK urban areas. With the mode of terrorist attack now encompassing the possibility of no‐warning suicide attacks, and target selection now often being seen as related to crowd density, a variety of public places such as sports stadiums, shopping centres, light rail systems, and nightclubs now have to consider ‘designed‐in’ counterterrorism measures. As such the UK has developed a national counterterrorist strategy (CONTEST) which is constantly revised, and one strand of which focuses on protective security measures. In the context of this ‘Protect’ strand of policy, and the increased targeting of crowded places by international terrorist groups, this article outlines the recent attempts to design‐in counterterrorism features to the urban landscape while paying attention not just to their effectiveness and robustness, but also to their acceptability to the general public and impact upon the everyday experience of the city. The article also addresses how the need to consider counterterrorism has affected the practices of built‐environment professionals such as spatial planners. Reflections upon how this aspect of counterterrorism policy might develop in the future are also offered.     

针对突发灾害:大城市的人居安全及其政策

非典事件折射出了大城市在应对突发灾害时抗灾能力低下的脆弱性以及严重的人居安全问题。大城市的人居安全问题与其规模、密度和形态的不协调有关。基于人居安全的城市政策应该是规模、密度、形态三位一体的城市政策。规模过大会引起安全问题,技术进步使人们解决城市问题的能力不断增强,因而城市规模的极限也不断被突破。但是,连续的、密集分布的城区终究不应该是无限放大的,从这点上看,城市形态的不佳将加重规模和密度过大所导致的问题。现阶段我国的城市政策几乎是不存在的,城市安全意识尚未发展成为全局性的"城市安全观",目前大城市的规模、形态、密度的失控是缺乏有效制约的市场力量作用的结果,规划失效的原因之一是没有清晰的城市政策,因而市政当局过分迁就开发商。新的城市政策对于大城市尤其要严格控制其密度,对城市提出明确的形态要求,制止城市蔓延,推进有组织的"都市区化"。     

Building the nation of the future,one waiting room at a time: hospital murals in the making of modern Mexico

Abstract

Mid-twentieth century Mexican hospitals – the buildings themselves and their interior and exterior walls – became stages that depicted national hopes and aspirations. Hospitals and clinics became ideal spaces that married science and medicine with the state’s version of a triumphant social revolution. Visitors and patients to hospital waiting rooms, lobbies and auditoriums would see, indeed be surrounded by, depictions of the complicated hopes placed on science and medicine as interpreted by politicians, architects, and artists. Hospital walls became contested spaces where art depicted Mexico’s embrace of modern technology and medical practices while also showcasing, in vivid color, citizens challenging the government’s broken revolutionary promises, especially the right of all to health and social security.