Crime in all its manifestations has in recent times increased in such measure in South Africa that it has converted the new democracy into one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Crime took over from political violence as the country's biggest nightmare. At this stage thuggery has become so firmly established that the govennnent finds it extremely difficult to curb the crime and violence that have increased hand over hand.
This article focuses on the relation between agenda dynamics and multi-level governance for a specific type of policy problems: intractable policy controversies. It discusses migrant integration policies in the Netherlands as a case-study, analysing problem, political and policy agendas in the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam and on the national level, as well as the relation and interaction between these policy levels. The article shows that in a contested policy area like migrant integration, patterns of agenda setting often have a strongly level-specific character, leading to different policy frames and thus complicating modes of governance in multi-level setting. Precisely when the framing of policy problems itself is at stake, level-specific agenda dynamics will produce different policy frames also in multi-level policy settings. This makes multi-level governance in terms of effectively coordinating relations between policy levels to create congruence of policies between different levels a particular challenge when faced with this type of policy problems. Adapted from the source document.
In: Policy sciences: integrating knowledge and practice to advance human dignity ; the journal of the Society of Policy Scientists, Band 46, Heft 3, S. 217-236
We are just at the very beginning of the revolution in warfare brought about by robotics. Automatic arms are easier to use, are more autonomous and the range of their applications is widening. But these instruments raise many questions: they can be turned against the original user, and they create problems with doctrine and strategy. They also give rise to legal issues and cause us to question the relationship between government and electorate with regards to the act of war. (Politique étrangère (Paris) / SWP)
