Role Of Private Actors Research Articles

Cybersecurity and Italian critical infrastructures: the return of the state?

ABSTRACT Security strategies have increasingly come to include references to critical infrastructures, seen as security assets to be preserved. In the Italian case, the rise in cyberattacks against critical infrastructures has been associated with a perception of their increasing relevance as potential threats. This has led to renewed attention towards the governance model adopted in this issue area and, in particular, towards the role of private actors and public-private partnerships, the actual owners of the infrastructures, now called upon to contribute to the provision of security as a public good, but with limited capabilities and a limited interest in doing so. Looking at the Italian case, the article shows that the traditional cybersecurity governance model, involving private actors in an equal relationship with public actors, has seen a subtle and gradual shift towards an increasing strengthening of the authority of public actors (verticalization).

The Public-Private Challenge: The Role of Private Actors in Defining, Safeguarding and Implementing Public Interests

The Public-Private Challenge: The Role of Private Actors in Defining, Safeguarding and Implementing Public Interests

Hexahelix Concept in The Development of Eco-Tourism Area in The Kelating Traditional Village Eco-Tourism Area, Kerambitan District, Tabanan Regency

One of the ecotourism that is developing in Tabanan Regency is ecotourism which is managed by indigenous peoples with the aim of empowering local indigenous communities. One of these actor collaborations is known as the Hexahelix Concept, which is a collaboration of six actors in managing ecotourism areas. This research uses mixed methods with the main focus on qualitative methods and strengthened by quantitative research methods. The indicator used in this research is the role of each actor in solving the problems faced by the manager. There are 13 informants to be interviewed and 75 respondents. The results of this study are the role of government actors as evidenced through the provision of road infrastructure access to the location of the ecotourism area in the Kelating Adat Village, the role of community actors (Indigenous Villages and BUPDA) in the development of ecotourism areas in the Kelating traditional village is realized through the establishment of the Baga Utsaha Padruwen Adat Village (BUPDA). ), the role of private actors in the development of ecotourism areas in the Kelating Traditional Village is realized through its CSR program in the development of ecotourism areas in the Kelating Traditional Village, the role of university actors in the development of ecotourism areas in the Kelating Traditional Village is realized through the implementation of community service activities through the creation of a master plan, and the role of media elements and creative communities in the development of ecotourism areas in the Kelating Indigenous Village by helping to promote and publicize the location of the ecotourism area in the Kelating Traditional Village through social media content created by the creative community, and publication of articles or literature. exclusive putan in newspapers by mass media.

Public–Private Interactions in Privacy Governance

This paper addresses the possible roles of private actors when privacy paradigms are in flux. If the traditional “informed consent”-based government-dominated approaches are ill-suited to the big data ecosystem, can private governance fill the gap created by state regulation? In reality, how is public–private partnership being implemented in the privacy protection frameworks? This paper uses cases from APEC’s Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as models for exploration. The analysis in this paper demonstrates the fluidity of interactions across public and private governance realms. Self-regulation and state regulation are opposing ends of a regulatory continuum, with CBPR-type “collaboration” and GDPR-type “coordination” falling somewhere in the middle. The author concludes that there is an evident gap between private actors’ potential governing functions and their current roles in privacy protection regimes. Looking to the future, technological developments and market changes call for further public–private convergence in privacy governance, allowing the public authority and the private sector to simultaneously reshape global privacy norms.

NASA’s Time to Shine: Approaching Procurement in the ‘New Space Age’

With the increasing presence of commercial activity in outer space, the dynamics between public and private entities are shifting. Within these changing dynamics, the role of private actors pose novel opportunities and unprecedented challenges to space agencies. This article considers the role National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has undertaken in seeking to redefine and maximize the potential these new relationships. Paying attention to how these innovative mechanisms have enabled NASA to rediscover its direction and regenerate its mission; catapulting itself to the forefront of the New Space Age, the paper analyses whether NASA truly sets a precedent for other nations and agencies to follow-suit. NASA, ESA, JAXA, Procurement, Contracts

The privatised city: technology and public-private partnerships in the smart city

ABSTRACT The ‘smart city’ movement asks new questions about the role of private actors in urban governance. Smart technology providers, because of their unique position, influence policymaking through their products and services. Yet, the effect of this role on public values remains unaddressed. This article considers how the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in smart city development challenges public values, particularly accountability and transparency. It shows how both PPPs and smart cities frame for-profit firms as central actors in creating efficient and innovative public services and infrastructure. The risks privatisation poses for public values have to be reassessed, in light of the issue of vendor lock-in and the value-embedding capacity of technology. Furthermore, this article suggests that to mitigate such risks, data protection legislation is insufficient: the wider notion of publicisation, namely the extension of public norms to private actors acting for public purposes, needs to be re-examined in the context of the smart city. Therefore, this article contributes to the literature with a novel discussion of the possibilities and limits of using smart city PPPs as tools to safeguard public values.

From Data Retention to Facial Recognition Technologies: Counter-Terrorism Implications for Human Rights and the Rule of Law

This submission to the UN Special Rapporteur concerns the human rights and rule of law implications of technical assistance in counter-terrorism strategies, and the “new technologies”, such as AI and facial recognition technologies in particular. It draws attention to several issues: • The human rights implications of national and international data retention & intelligence sharing regimes for countering-terrorism, violent extremism and national security; • The role of private actors in the protection of fundamental human rights while countering- terrorism, violent extremism and national security; and the insufficiency of the relevant binding international human rights legal framework; The rule of law implications of automated decision-making in counter-terrorism efforts; • The chilling effect of facial recognition technologies used in public spaces to counter- prevent terrorism and violent extremism on human rights; and the absence of any oversight mechanisms of such technology used in many countries around the world.

Protests and Public Space Surveillance: From Metadata Tracking to Facial Recognition Technologies

Protest movements are gaining momentum across the world, with Extinction Rebellion, ‘Black Lives Matter, and strong pro-democracy protests in Chile and Hong Kong taking centre stage. Yet many governments have implemented various measures that severely impair the right to protest, especially during crises, like the global COVID-19 pandemic. In this submission to the Thematic Report to the 50th Session of the Human Rights Council, I draw attention to several issues: • The role of metadata tracking and data retention laws in suppressing political protests around the world; • The chilling effect of facial recognition technologies used in public spaces on the right to peaceful assembly and protest, and the absence of oversight mechanisms or adequate safeguards in many countries around the world; • The role of private actors in assisting governments to curtail protests; and the insufficiency of the international human rights legal framework to ensure the protection of human rights by private actors.

Blurred Responsibilities of Disaster Governance: The American Red Cross in the US and Haiti

The influence of private actors, such as non-profit organizations (NPOs) and firms, has been increasing in disaster governance. Previous literature has interrogated the responsibilities of states towards citizens in disasters, but the roles of private actors have been insufficiently challenged. The article politicizes the entangled relations between NPOs, states, and disaster-affected people. It proposes the Rawlsian division of moral labor as a useful, normative framework for interrogating the justice of disaster governance arrangements in which ‘liberal’ states are involved. Liberal states have two types of responsibilities in disasters: humanitarian and political. The humanitarian responsibilities imply provision of basic resources needed for the capacity to make autonomous choices (domestically and abroad), while the political responsibilities imply provision of the institutions needed for the liberal democratic citizenship (domestically). Through this analytical lens and building on the wealth of existing scholarship, we illustrate the disaster governance role of the American Red Cross in the United States (a 2005 hurricane) and in Haiti (the 2010 earthquake). Where, in Rawlsian terms, United States is interpreted as a ‘liberal’ society, Haiti is framed as a ‘burdened’ society. The article proposes five points to consider in analyzing disaster governance arrangements under neoliberal regimes, structured around the division of humanitarian and political responsibilities. The article illustrates how NPOS are instrumental in blurring the boundaries between humanitarian and political responsibilities. This might result ultimately in actual vulnerabilities remaining unaddressed. While the Rawlsian approach challenges the privatization and lack of coordination in disaster governance, it is limited in analyzing the political construction of ‘burdened’ societies.

A Great Desire for Children: The Beginning of Transnational Adoption in Denmark and Norway during the 1960’s

This article examines the beginning of transnational adoption in Denmark and Norway to illuminate the role of private actors and associations in Scandinavian welfare systems. Utilizing case studies of two prominent private adoption actors, Tytte Botfeldt and Torbjørn Jelstad, the article analyzes how these Nordic welfare states responded to the emergence of transnational adoption in comparison with both each other, neighboring Sweden, and the United States. This study shows that private actors and associations strongly influenced the nascent international adoption systems in these countries, by effectively promoting transnational adoption as a progressive and humanitarian form of global parenthood; while simultaneously emphasizing the responsibility of the welfare state to accommodate and alleviate childless couples’ human rights and need for children. A need that was strong enough that couples were willing to transcend legal, national, and racial borders. Ultimately, Danish and Norwegian authorities not only had to show leniency towards flagrant violations of adoption and child placement rules, but also change these so that families could fulfill their great need for children by legally adopting them from abroad.

Tackling segmentation to advance universal health coverage: analysis of policy architectures of health care in Chile and Uruguay

BackgroundWith the turn of the century, most countries in Latin America witnessed an increased concern with universalism and redistribution. In the health sector, this translated into a wide range of reforms to advance Universal Health Coverage (UHC) that, however, have had to cope with health systems that stratified the population since their foundation and the further segmentation inherited by market-oriented policies in the 1980s and 1990s.Studies on social welfare stress the relevance of cross-class alliances between the middle and working classes to reach universal and sustainable social benefits. Consequently, the endurance of separate health schemes across groups of the population in most countries in Latin America may seriously hamper the efforts towards UHC.AimThis article addresses the potential of current policy architectures of health care to tackle segmentation between social classes in access to health services in two of the best performers of health coverage in the region, namely Chile and Uruguay.MethodsThe article is a comparative case study based on a literature review and applies an analytical framework that links universal outputs to the policy architectures of health care. The study assesses universal outputs in terms of coverage, generosity and financial protection, identifying equity gaps in each of these dimensions across groups of the population.FindingsLatest processes of reform for UHC in Chile and Uruguay perform highly regarding population coverage. Nevertheless, equity gaps in access to quality services and financial protection remain. In both countries, such gaps relate to the eligibility criteria. In Chile, segmentation is reinforced by the persistence of separated pools of resources that hinder solidarity. Besides, the significant role of private actors and differences in quality between public and private service providers continue to push middle and upper-middle classes to private options. Uruguay’s health reform reinforced the public system and promoted financial solidarity by pooling and progressively allocating resources. Despite this, fragmentation in service provision continues the segmentation of access to health care.ConclusionsThe study shows differences in the options of reforms for UHC in Chile and Uruguay and the relevance of policy architectures to reverse, or conversely deepen, segmentation across groups of the population.

Regulators and villains: the dual role of private actors in diamonds and caviar

In the past decades, private actors have become key actors in regulation and enforcement of various forms of trade. In this paper, we focus on the role of private actors in the regulation of the trade in diamonds and caviar. We examine the stages of calling for additional regulation; setting regulatory requirements; and determining and effectuating compliance mechanisms. Our analysis illustrates that private actors may play important roles in this process, but at the same time be unaware of loopholes that illegal operators may exploit, whereas others may commit crimes themselves. These dual roles reflect the various activities of private actors in different representations. We argue in this article that the increased involvement of private actors in processes of regulation may not only benefit but also constrain the effectivity, competence and meaning of such regulatory frameworks within contemporary society.

Outsourcing the Welfare State: The Role of Private Actors in Welfare Fraud Investigations

This article discusses the growing trend to employ private parties as informants, private detectives and providers of digital technology (e.g., automated risk assessments) to predict and investigate welfare fraud. In this article, we argue that this type of outsourcing is problematic for multiple reasons. First, private actors and governments often have an ill-defined contractual relationship which creates legal uncertainty and promotes the use of unconventional evidence-gathering instruments. This issue also raises concerns regarding the accountability of public bodies and the transparency and fairness of administrative procedure. Second, the private enforcement of anti-fraud regulations is susceptible of endangering the adequate pursuit of the public interest due to the misalignment of public and private interests. Third, the outsourcing of enforcement tasks to private technology companies and their opaque automated systems can be detrimental to the right to due process, the right to non-discrimination, and the privacy of welfare recipients. This article contributes to the literature with a novel critical account of how private actors are reshaping the welfare state.

Expanding the Thin Blue Line: Resident Patrols and Private Security in Late Twentieth-Century New York

In the late 1960s and 1970s, New York City experienced escalating crime alongside residents’ growing frustration with the inability of municipal officials and the police to curtail it. These forces led a range of New Yorkers, from those in low-income neighborhoods to those in business districts, to sidestep the police and reimagine their responses to crime. Increasingly, everyday residents formed neighborhood patrols and hired guards, while businesses and institutions employed private security forces. These developments forged a new role for private actors in the patrolling of city streets. Over time, as resident patrols waned and as security guards proliferated, the private sector gained significant new capacities to surveil and police public space. Additionally, by formalizing a cooperative relationship with private security forces, the New York police and municipal authorities captured these private resources for the expansion of the carceral state.

The Role of State Regulation and Businesses Towards Sustainable Development: The Case of Angola

The challenges to achieve sustainable development within planetary boundaries in Africa are immense. This article outlines the extent to which the current regulatory and policy frameworks in Angola ensure sustainable development, do not contribute to human rights violations, and secure the social foundation for humanity within planetary boundaries. There are multiple economic, social, political and legal challenges in Angola, which are hindering the enforcement of sustainability and human rights regulations. The article shows that while the effective protection of the environment and its people has been echoed in relevant sustainable development legislation and policies by the State in Angola it does not fully correspond with people´s daily-lived experience. In this context, because social and planetary boundaries are complex and interdependent, the role of private actors and public cooperation with African states is essential. Businesses play a key role in ensuring that the Angolan State honours its commitment to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, all of this must go hand in hand with not creating false expectations among its people. It is necessary to strengthen the enforcement of the national regulatory framework and policies in order to ensure that companies operating in the country adhere to, and contribute to, the achievement of human rights and sustainable development in order to secure the social foundation for humanity.

Private engagement in refugee education and the promise of digital humanitarianism

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the prevalence of technological interventions in education in emergencies through a case study of private participation in Syrian refugee education in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. This research is conceptually situated within critiques of ‘digital humanitarianism’, simultaneously interrogating the role of technology in humanitarian responses and the roles of private actors who promote this technology. Our study demonstrates that a pervasive optimism concerning education technology in emergencies accompanies a surge in private actor engagement in Syrian refugee education. Findings indicate that while access to technology in educational settings is important to the Syrian refugee populations, private actors’ disproportionate focus on technology is problematic, particularly when technological interventions are viewed as panaceas for refugee education; designed free from coordination; driven by profit motivations; and developed in a manner decontextualised from the learning context. This study attends to the necessity of countering the overwhelming optimism about technology as a panacea for refugee education, which fails to problematise the implications of interventions developed in the Global North for a distant ‘other’ in the Global South.

Beyond legislation: reconsidering the locus of power in EU regulatory governance

ABSTRACTThe EU’s character as a regulatory state is widely accepted, yet more research is needed to shed light on the relationship between primary and secondary legislation, as well as other types of rule specification. Applying these concepts to EU rulemaking is insightful since rules adopted through the ordinary legislative procedure (primary legislation) usually only set a broad framework. Yet prior to implementation at the national level, many policies are subject to rule specification through executive decisions (secondary legislation), or through private actors (private regulation). Nevertheless, analysis of the growth of European regulation has mostly focused on primary legislation. By contrast, the question how secondary legislation and private regulation relate to primary legislation has attracted far less attention. I argue in this paper that a focus on primary legislation risks leaving us with a biased account of the power balance in European policymaking. The paper follows a case-oriented strategy with the aim to develop a workable operationalisation of the core concepts. It compares two fields of legislation, namely European product and energy policy. It first retraces the evolution of primary and secondary legislation, but also voluntary agreements as an implementing instrument and the role of private actors’ expertise in these fields, and then assesses the relationship between these regulatory tools based on document analysis and expert interviews. The goal is to work out discrepancies between the formal allocation of competencies and the actual locus of power. The findings show that solely looking at primary legislation leads to several misperceptions, such as overstating the relative importance of certain policy instruments, or the achieved degree of administrative centralisation.

Sino–Africa Bilateral Economic Relation: Nature and Perspectives

Review of more than 100 articles accessed in literature survey for the last decade of dynamic China–Africa economic relation has been done with an objective of examining the nature and perspectives of Sino–Africa relation along Trade, FDI and Aid channels. China–Africa relation is a win–win in the short and medium run but the long-run impact is far from clear. Governance issues, environmental concern, asymmetric trade relation, prospects for African industrialisation, technology transfer and employment generation, and so on are debatable issues in most of the literatures assessed. Beneficial roles include that coordinated involvement of Chinese private sector alongside with State-owned enterprises and integrated application of trade, aid and FDI tools from Chinese side would remain to be a beneficial scheme in the African context. Researches can take up the impact of the relation on multilateral and bilateral development actors role in Africa; collaboration mechanisms among the actors; impact on sustainability of natural resource extraction; Africa’s industrialisation and technology transfer; Africa’s Global Integration and Institutional Development; Role of Private Actors; Sector specific impacts of the relationship.

Outsourcing the Welfare State: The Role of Private Actors in Welfare Fraud Investigations

This article discusses the growing trend to employ private parties as informants, private detectives and providers of digital technology (e.g., automated risk assessments) to predict and investigate welfare fraud. In this article, we argue that this type of outsourcing is problematic for multiple reasons. First, private actors and governments often have an ill-defined contractual relationship which creates legal uncertainty and promotes the use of unconventional evidence-gathering instruments. This issue also raises concerns regarding the accountability of public bodies and the transparency and fairness of administrative procedure. Second, the private enforcement of anti-fraud regulations is susceptible of endangering the adequate pursuit of the public interest due to the misalignment of public and private interests. Third, the outsourcing of enforcement tasks to private technology companies and their opaque automated systems can be detrimental to the right to due process, the right to non-discrimination, and the privacy of welfare recipients. This article contributes to the literature with a novel critical account of how private actors are reshaping the welfare state.

The Role of Private Actors in Preventing Work-Related Risks: A Law and Economics Perspective

This contribution considers the regulation of work-related risks such as industrial accidents and occupational diseases, and more specifically the role of employers and employees in the regulation and prevention of such risks. First, a law and economics perspective will be provided on the delegation of regulatory design and enforcement tasks to private actors. Thereby it will be assessed (for the specific case of work-related risks) what are the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of private regulation and enforcement compared to public regulation and enforcement, taking efficiency as a main goal. Efficiency in that respect relates to finding an optimal way of dealing with market failures, such as externalities in the form of work-related accidents and diseases. Secondly, confronting theory with practice, examples of private regulation of work-related risks will be provided for the Netherlands, which largely relies on collective labour agreements and private enforcement mechanisms. The role of liability insurers as an important potential driver of actions taken by employers and employees will be highlighted, as well as the importance of having (e.g. in administrative law) a smart mix between public law and self-regulatory mechanisms.