Browsing by Department "Global Risk Governance Programme"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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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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    Defensive tactics against takeovers in theory and practice in the USA, the UK, South Africa, Germany and the EU
    (1999) Kley, Christian; Blackman, Michael
    After the takeover wave of the 1970s and 1980s in the USA and in the United Kingdom the 1990s have experienced a more moderate takeover market. Nonetheless takeovers nowadays are a major issue all over the industrialised world, in economic and legal circles as well as in society. One rather eccentric American author has even compared the takeover issue with the national debt, defence spending, and prayer in public schools. Regarding the huge amounts of money involved in takeover battles one might easily be inclined to such extreme statements.
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    Focus on victims and the community: applying restorative justice principles to wildlife crime offences in South Africa
    (2021) Hübschle, Annette; Dore, Ashleigh; Davies-Mostert, Harriet
    This note introduces a pilot project that seeks to apply restorative justice principles to wildlife crime offences in South Africa. A local conservation NGO, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, under the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) South Africa Khetha Programme and supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is piloting this innovative project in a harm landscape (wildlife crime offences) that is renowned for retributive and punitive approaches to justice. The project was launched in August 2019 and although the project team was still in the inception phase at the time of writing, team members have made great headway in developing a conceptual framework and implementation plan. This note explains why we think the time is ripe for environmental restorative justice in South Africa and how we plan to implement the pilot project; we also share lessons learnt for future initiatives and projects.
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    Going national: universal jurisdiction and the principle of complementarity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
    (2010) Rolffs, Lina; Nakhjavani, Salim A
    In a historical moment, after a couple of decades of development from Nuremberg to the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) set to work in The Hague in 2002, to fight impunity for the most atrocious crimes against international law, having an impact on the international community as a whole.1 This has been welcomed with high expectations from the civil society.2 However, negotiations on an international multilateral level require compromise, and compared to the ideal of a Court with unlimited resources and jurisdiction, the final form of the ICC does not seem to be able to live up to the expectations. The budget of this international institution is very limited, and could and should only cover the costs of proceedings for the very masterminds of crimes,3 which are in turn all too often only possible because of the participation of so many individual criminals.
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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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    The United Nations council for Namibia with special emphasis on its Decree No 1
    (1992) Bruggemann, Jur Bernd
    This thesis examines the legal status of the United Nations Council for Namibia and the validity of its actions before and after the independence of the Territory with special emphasis on its Decree No 1. Chapter I describes the natural environment of Namibia, its human resources and economic conditions. These are basic to the interpretation and evaluation of the policies concerning administration and development of the Territory. The problem of Namibia in the UN is analysed in Chapter II. All organs of the Organisation, the GA, the SC, and the ICJ found that South Africa's presence in Namibia was illegal and that South Africa had no right to administer the Territory. As a result the UN terminated South Africa's Mandate over Namibia and established the UNCfN (as a subsidiary organ of the GA irt terms of art 22 of the Charter). This body then administered the Territory until its independence in March 1990. Because UNCfN was a unique institution in the history of the Organisation, and because of the Council's uncertain legal status, Chapter IV examines the legal character of the Council and concludes that UNCfN had legitimate powers over the Territory (even with regard to foreign affairs). In its capacity as administering authority, UNCfN, on 27 September 1974, issued Decree No 1 for the protection of the natural resources of Namibia. The legal force of this Decree in international law before and after independence is the focus of discussion in Chapter V. With regard of the validity of this Decree before independence, an examination of the practice of states shows that almost all Member States of the UN denied the Decree binding force in international law. To hold otherwise would imply that the Council could create international legal obligations for UN Members, thereby giving the Council greater powers than those of a sovereign government. Because the Decree is an act of the Namibian Government (following its incorporation into the Namibian Constitution), the validity of Decree No 1 after independence is discussed in terms of the principles governing observance of foreign acts of state. The finding is that other states are free to recognise paras 1 and 3 (as self-executing acts) or execute paras 4 and 5 (as nonself-executing acts). The observance of para 2 of _the Decree as an illegal act of state in international law depends on the approach of the state concerned to the act of state doctrine. Continental states adhere to territorial principle, and so they usually deny the validity of illegal foreign acts, whereas Anglo-American jurisdictions refuse to examine foreign acts in terms of their compliance with international law. Because of the confusion surrounding the judicial use and proper scope of the doctrine, however, one can only speculate that an American might observe para 2 of the Decree.