Browsing by Author "Shearing, Clifford"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    City of Cape Town Solar Water Heater By-law: Barriers to Implementation
    (Earthscan, London, 2012) Froestad, Jan; Shearing, Clifford; Herbstein, Tom; Grimwood, Sakina
    The study of implementation has had tremendous importance for the study of policy. It opened up the black box of ‘after-a-formal-decision’ politics and demonstrated, among other things, that the political process continues all the way through to the final output of the policy process (Bardach 1977). It addressed the complexity of achieving policy goals, offered new insights into the importance of lower-level actors in policy, and attended to the effects that clients and extra-government groups had on the policy result (Schofield 2001). It became one of the most important sources for the development of new perspectives that tried to capture how policy processes cross the public-private divide, as evidenced by the new focus on governance (Rhodes 1997) or networks (Marin and Mayntz 1991). Implementation research has been particularly valuable in two somewhat contradictory ways.
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    Insurers could help address climate risks
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2011) Nel, Deon; Shearing, Clifford; Reyers, Belinda
    Working with South Africa's largest short-term insurer, Santam, we investigated how communities should manage the increased risks associated with climate change. The global insurance industry has focused on refining the quantification, differentiation and pricing of the risk exposure of insured assets. Our findings call into question a sole reliance on this strategy (J. Nel et al. CSIR/NRE/ECOS/2011/0063/B; CSIR, 2011).
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    The many faces of nodal policing: Team play and improvisation in Dutch community safety
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Van Steden, Ronald; Wood, Jennifer; Shearing, Clifford; Boutellier, Hans
    In this paper we reflect on how one police organization, the Dutch police, have acted to embrace nodal assemblages and nodal governance while they have pioneered a form of ‘conduit policing’ (Shearing, 1999). This strategy, conceived as policing with a ‘nodal orientation’, combines policing attention on flows of people, information and things through infrastructural nodes with the policing of local communities (Project Group Vision on Policing, 2006). We examine four initiatives of the Dutch police that illustrate different aspects of policing assemblages in Amsterdam. The analysis considers how these nodes have worked to integrate different, but compatible, conceptions of nodal policing.
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    Meditative Reflections on Nils Christie’s "Words on Words" - through an African lens
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Froestad, Jan; Shearing, Clifford
    Like so much else that comes from the pen of Nils Christie, his "Words on Words" that have inspired this special issue, and with which it begins, have, as they so often do, inspired us to engage in a meditative reflection on his words and their implications for our thinking and practice. We have sought, through these reflections on the wisdom of Christie’s words, to better understand the security governance practices we have been studying, developing and, sometimes, promoting.
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    Municipalities, politics, and climate change: an example of the process of institutionalizing an environmental agenda within local government
    (SAGE, 2014) Pasquini, Lorena; Shearing, Clifford
    Political issues can influence the delivery of services and other goals, such as environmental sustainability, within municipalities. However, the influence of political factors on the institutionalization of environmental issues within municipalities has not been examined. We investigate these issues using a case study of a South African municipality that has made considerable progress in institutionalizing environmental issues (particularly climate change related) in the last decade, despite a change in political leadership. The presence of the following factors promoted the institutionalization of environmental governance: (i) political champions; (ii) networks between the municipality and other organizations, and dense networks within the municipality; (iii) benefits for the municipality from environmental actions. Political issues can enable the process of institutionalization (e.g. by stimulating innovation through political party competition) and also hinder it through political instability (which for e.g. disrupts patterns in champions and networks) and clientelism (which can cause environmental projects to be discontinued).
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    Polycentric security governance : legitimacy, accountability, and the public interest
    (2015) Berg, Julie; Shearing, Clifford
    This thesis examines how power is constituted in hybrid polycentric systems of security governance. In particular, the thesis explores how legitimacy - as one form of power - is configured in Improvement Districts in South Africa, with a specific focus on three ways by which it is gained: through promoting public participation in decision-making; through transparent and accountable policing nodes; and through the delivery of effective security for the public good. Polycentric systems of security governance are usually composed of a number of policing or security nodes that are independent of each other, but take account of each other in relationships of co-operation or conflict and where no single node dominates all the rest. In other words, some or all of these nodes, may co-ordinate around specific security problems or events in a sustained manner. The functioning of polycentric security governance was explored in Improvement Districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg, as they are an exemplar of polycentricity in the way that they operate. Qualitative field research was employed using a nodal analytical framework and a collective case study approach. In-depth interviewing, participant and direct observation as well as documentary analysis were the primary research methods employed. The findings of the research reveal that polycentricity impacts on legitimacy in a number of ways. Legitimacy may originate from multiple sources and state and non-state policing nodes within polycentric security governance systems may undermine, enhance and/or co-produce democratic participation, accountability and security for the public interest. There are a number of factors or conditions that shape whether polycentric systems of governance are legitimate and how they derive this legitimacy. The main finding of the thesis is that for a polycentric system to be aligned to the public interest, it needs to be motivated by public, peer and political expectations, amongst other things. The findings of the thesis both challenge the normative tendency to associate democratic legitimacy with the state and contribute to the pressing question of how to theoretically account for the empirical reality of polycentric security governance systems.
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    The honest thief: a qualitative study exploring the ethics of clandestine intelligence collection in a statutory environment
    (2018) Corbett,Trevor R; Berg, Julie; Shearing, Clifford
    Researchers studying intelligence ethics have rarely had access to the insight of serving intelligence practitioners. In this study, a small number of practitioners were sampled in an attempt to gain an understanding of the techniques they use to make sense of the ethically questionable tasks they are required to undertake within the legal framework of the institution of intelligence. The researcher argued that intelligence practitioners may use some of the neutralization techniques found in criminological and psychological models in order to remain effective in an environment which places their personal ethical framework at risk of compromise. In some aspects, themes seemed to correspond with the Rational Choice Theory of Cornish and Clarke (1986), the Neutralization Theory of Sykes and Matza (1957) and the Cognitive Dissonance theory of Festinger (1957). Themes were categorised under two primary headings: the institutional framework and a conceptual and theoretical perspective of ethics in relation to intelligence practice. It could be argued that intelligence ethics studies may be entrenched in the overarching fields of philosophy, criminology and psychology as they all offer useful explanations of how deviant behaviour is understood and justified by individuals. A combination of factors played into how they made ethical decisions and how they justified (or did not) these decisions. Findings suggested a combination of institutional frameworks (deontologically derived rules predetermined by the institution) and personal ethical frameworks (derived by each individual participant’s family, religion etc) were key in creating a working ethical framework (intertwining the former and the latter) which allowed/justified them in making ethical decisions which they considered vital to a nation-state’s survival.