Civil Domain Research Articles

Setting up a surveillance system in the civil domain with cooperating UAVs and UGVs

This work gives an overview of the project SiNafaR, safe navigation for autonomous robot systems, which aims at identifying requirements, legal aspects in Germany, and finding technological solutions for heterogeneous multi robotic systems in the civil sector. Based on a security services scenario a surveillance system consisting of UAVs and UGVs is proposed. Main technological gaps, such as assessable localization, reliable communication and consistent HMI are identified and solutions are presented.

Revalorizing the Political: Towards a New Intellectual Agenda for African Civil Society Discourse

Who needs civil society? What is civil society useful for? While the foregoing and similar dilemmas dominated the early civil society literature on sub-Saharan Africa, this was soon followed by a steady shift to the analysis of non-governmental organizations. The shift foreshadowed the recent methodological approach to civil society research which emphasizes ‘measuring’ and ‘surveying’ civil society. In this essay, I contend that this approach, to the extent that it seems to totalize civil society as component voluntary associations that can be measured, deepens the crisis of understanding which it aspires to transcend. Yet, although I critique—and reject—this approach, I argue nonetheless that it ought to be seen as an opportunity to reinstate a more theoretically robust and politically driven imagination of civil society, one that problematizes, not just civil society organizations that are, ultimately, only an aspect of civil society, but the civil domain as a whole. While conceding that ‘measuring’ civil society has its own merits, I insist that it comes with a real danger of, first, reducing civil society to organizations, especially organizations that can be measured; and second, distracting students of African societies from the politicality that underpins much of the continent's socio-economic woes.

L’indemnisation des victimes d’actes criminels

L’indemnisation des victimes d’actes criminels

Revisiting the crisis of representation thesis: the Indian context

This article addresses the ‘crisis of representation’ thesis by examining some of the findings of a survey conducted in Delhi in 2003. On the basis of the data collected during the course of the survey, it revisits two rather significant questions that have been thrown up by the thesis. First, how valid is the assumption that people have lost confidence in the capacity of political parties to represent them in forums of policymaking? Second, have people really come to believe that civil society groups, such as non-governmental organizations, can better help them resolve the oft intractable problems of everyday life? The answers to these questions could help to throw light on two vital political and theoretical issues: the relationship between citizens and the world of representative politics in particular, and the adequacy of representative democracy in general. The findings of the research project tell us that the crisis of representation runs deep and that people seem to have lost confidence in the ability or indeed the political will of all organizations, whether they belong to the political or the civil domain, to address their basic problems.

Law in the Sociological Enterprise: A Reconstruction.

Part 1 Law in the sociological enterprise: introduction a sociological conception of law law and social relationships persons and nonpersons the civil domain and nonpersons the civil domain in society social and legal expectations the constitutive effects of law. Part 2 Law and society: introduction the civil contract and family life in the United States the civil contract and working life in the United States final words - law in the sociological enterprise cases cited a brief guide to case citations.

Le républicanisme du possible : les opportunistes. (Boissy d'Anglas, Lanjuinais, Durand -Maillane. . .)

Christine Le Bozec, Republican conceptions : the opportunists (Boissy d'Anglas, Lanjuinais, Durand de Maillane...). On 14 Germinal Year III, the Convention elected an eleven-member commission. They became the final editors of the Constitution of Year III. Observing their political trajectory, past and future, and their discourse at the time, Christine Le Bozec establishes the unity of their social conceptions (e.g., the Nation must be led by its "best" — in other words, property holders ; equality is to be limited to the civil domain) and of their institutional conceptions. However, they diverged over conceptions of the Republic. For some, the Republic had simply been a means of defense, among other possibilities at another time, of the ideals of 1789. For the others, former Girondins, the Republic was the only possible régime.

After the Cold War: Obstacles and Opportunities in Cutting Arms Budgets

The end of the Cold War offers the opportunity to shift resources from the military to the civil domain. Reductions in military spending by advanced industrial countries would be economically beneficial; they could help to reduce budget and trade deficits and thereby ease the debt burden on poor countries. There are, however, strong political and institutional obstacles to such a shift. Military power is thought necessary to counter the spread of violence and the proliferation of weapons in the developing countries and Eastern Europe. High-technology arms projects, favored by the arms industries, will put pressure on military budgets in the future. To overcome these obstacles, this paper proposes a new approach to security: economic cooperation and peaceful, democratic ways to manage conflicts; a defensive lower-technology military posture; and support to local conversion initiatives in defense-dependent areas by labor unions, churches, and other community groups.