国家安全中枢的构筑——对十八届三中全会决定“设立国家安全委员会”的解读

国家安全委员会具有“内外兼备”的基本职能,即：将维护国家安全与创新社会治理、创新有效预防和化解社会矛盾体制、健全公共安全体系等内政事务并列并举,在维护国内安全稳定方面也肩负重任。它较之现今的“国安领导小组”更为广泛和重要,是一个应对有别于国家日常工作之外的应急的危机管理机构,是应对可能的、突发的、潜在的对国家安全、利益构成威胁的前瞻性机构。     

Ungoverned space? Examining the FARC's interactions with local populations in Northern Ecuador

The Ecuadorian state has long been absent from the regions along its northern border with Colombia. I argue that this lack of state presence has allowed non-state armed groups and criminal organizations space to not only operate from these areas, but also, to challenge and change the relationship between local populations and the Ecuadorian state. After reviewing theoretical approaches to concepts of changing security paradigms and ungoverned space, the article details the conditions that have allowed armed groups, specifically the FARC, to take advantage of the lack of state presence along Ecuador's northern border.     

Upstream engagement and downstream entanglements: The assumptions,opportunities, and threats of partnering

This article addresses Western recruitment and management of personnel from non-Western countries in armed forces as part of a strategy of state stabilisation, examining its risks and benefits. ‘SFA’ (Security Forces Assistance) to indigenous forces has long been practised by the West and seems to have returned in recent years in a new form with the creation of armies in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, while providing cheap, proxy substitutes for the West and offering opportunities for state-building, the policy creates its own problems and can have significant, negative consequences.     

Urban violence and the militarisation of security: Brazilian ‘peacekeeping’ in Rio de Janeiro and Port-au-Prince

Despite problems of violence domestically, Brazil has played a key leadership role as part of MINUSTAH peacekeeping operations in Haiti since 2004. This article addresses how Brazil's international military engagement is shaping domestic approaches to urban security, and what may be the implications of the use of military strategies, operations, and norms to address issues of public security in Brazilian cities. It is argued that current approaches toward urban security employing military-trained peacekeepers actually represent a continuation of old paradigms, yet these recent militarised approaches are likely evolving into newer and potentially more accountable forms by constraining indiscriminate use of force and establishing a positive state presence in marginal urban areas. As such, the article connects long-established issues of dealing with urban violence in Latin America with ongoing debates in the United States and beyond about post-counterinsurgency approaches to increasingly urban conflict settings. It reflects on potential lessons to be learned from the Latin American perspective, while showing also how these have changed over the last decade. The article concludes that despite the potential utility of force in some urban conflict settings, this approach could entail a normative shift towards legitimising forceful containment of violence, and hinder democratic consolidation in Brazil.     

Political transition to democracy

This paper argues that the crisis of electoral democracy in Zimbabwe and Cote d'Ivoire is a result of underlying structural and institutional deficiencies within national and regional multinational institutions. It assesses the extent to which they have been ‘enablers’ or ‘spoilers’ of electoral-based transitions to democracy. Yet it avoids generalisations of the security sector's involvement in political transitions. In terms of structure, the paper is divided into four sections. Section one will briefly discuss the theoretical perspectives of the election-democracy trajectory. It argues that although elections are a major variable for democracy, unless the ‘ecology of elections’ is conducive, elections may not be an instrument of transition to democracy. The second section analyses the militarisation of politics and the role of the security sector in aiding or stalling democratisation. Section three will assess the role of regional organisations such as the Southern African Development Community, Economic Community of West African States and the African Union in electoral-based political transitions in Africa. Lastly, the paper will discuss how the security sector and multinational African institutions can aid political transitions to democracy in troubled African countries.     

Neglected but affected: voices from the oil-producing regions of Ghana and Uganda

The ‘resource curse’ is the paradoxical theory frequently used to explain how a seemingly desirable asset, such as oil, can actually pervert an economy, erode governance, perpetuate conflict, and ruin local communities to the extent that it becomes a curse. New oil discoveries in western Ghana and western Uganda have raised concerns for the democratic prospects and future stability of these countries and their surrounding regions. Based on field interviews in these oil-producing regions, this report summarises how local communities have been affected thus far and their concerns for the future. The authors assess the extent to which each country is vulnerable to oil-induced instability, and identify groups or communities that would be most likely to perpetuate it. Lastly, it provides some assessment of the future trajectory of each country.     

An Integro-Differential Approach To Terrorism Dynamics

This article introduces integro-differential equations as a new technique to study terrorism dynamics. An integro-differential equation is a mathematical expression that contains derivatives of the required function and its integral transforms. The technique is applied to two different dynamic models in terrorism: terrorism and tourism, and terrorist innovations. In the first model the number of tourists that appears in an integral term and also in a derivative term is impacted by the number of terrorists. In the second model the integro-differential equation for terrorist innovations relates them to terrorist attacks. The article shows how to solve, analyze, interpret, and deal with integro-differential equations. Integro-differential equations shed light on aspects of the models ignored when other techniques are used. This is particularly important for the evaluation of current counterterrorist policies, as well as to the formulation of new ones.     

SECURITY GOVERNANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA

In the ten years since the establishment of South Africa's first inclusive democratic government, an ambitious, extensive and systematic process of reform has been carried out in the governance of security. The process is widely regarded as having been successful and a model for other processes of ‘security sector reform’ in the context of transitions from authoritarian forms of governance to democratic ones.

That this been achieved with hardly a shot fired in anger is a remarkable achievement and a credit to visionary political leadership as well as organisational capacity, in other words to effective security governance.

At the same time, progress has been uneven and sometimes fragmentary, policy intentions and commitments have not always been translated into practice, the end results have not been to everyone's liking, and transformation has engendered its own pathologies. Thus several challenges remain in improving security governance.

This article provides a broad overview of the roles played by the various actors in the governance of the security sector, including the executive, parliament and civil society. It examines the main policy frameworks and touches on organisational transformation, because it is impossible to deal with governance in isolation from these issues. Policy processes and the frameworks they give rise to—in particular—are critical for effective governance. This article deals with the defence, safety and security and intelligence fields. A comprehensive overview would need to include the governance of criminal justice and foreign policy. The article does not seek to make an overall evaluation of governance, but to identify achievements, shortfalls and challenges.     

THE LAND IS THE ECONOMY

This article revisits Zimbabwe's land question from the vantage point of having been written five years after the ‘fast-track’ land redistribution programme was launched. Without belittling the accomplishments of land reform in the first 19 years of the country's independence, it is generally clear that the sweeping programme of 2000–2003, the most comprehensive of its kind, created a new paradigm. Clearly, the consequences will take many years to work themselves out through the country's political, economic and social fabric.

The article briefly defines what may be termed ‘old’ and ‘new’ versions of Zimbabwe's land question before outlining the salient aspects of the reform process itself. It then assesses the outcomes of the redistribution, the apparent lacuna between ‘land’ and ‘agrarian’ reform, and the debate that the reform process itself has kindled. Transforming land distribution into qualitative agrarian reform has proved an Achilles heel in the arguments put forward by the proponents of the fast-track programme. Finally, recommendations are provided as to what is necessary to secure land and agrarian reform in the short, medium and long term.