Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

Constructing the Political Spectacle

This article examines the contribution of the activities of FRONTEX, the Agency in charge of managing operational cooperation at the external borders of the European Union (EU), to the securitisation of asylum and migration in the EU. It does so by applying a sociological approach to the study of securitisation processes, which, it argues, is particularly well-suited to the study of securitisation processes in the EU. Such an approach privileges the study of securitising practices over securitising ‘speech acts’ in securitisation processes. After identifying two main types of securitising practices in general, the article systematically examines the activities of FRONTEX and the extent to which they can be seen as securitising practices on the basis of these two (non-mutually exclusive) criteria. The article shows that all the main activities of FRONTEX can be considered to be securitising practices. The article therefore concludes that the activities of FRONTEX contribute to a significant extent...

EU border security and migration into the European Union: FRONTEX and securitisation through practices

The European regulatory space has been expanding rapidly since the 1990s. The double movement towards a single market on the one hand and a Single European Regulatory Space on the other is evident almost everywhere. A new regulatory architecture is emerging and is expressed in the extension of regulatory capacities beyond the European Commission via two major forms of institutionalization: agencies and networks. This paper explores the politics and architecture of the institutionalization and administrative rationalization of the EU regulatory space and demonstrates (a) how agencies replace networks in a process that might best be called ‘agencification’; (b) how agencies compete with networks and are often able to create, employ, and control them, creating what might best be called ‘agencified networks’; and (c) how networking empowers agencies creating a new type of regulatory organization that might best be called a ‘networked agency’.

/pdf/regulatory-networks-and-regulatory-agencification-towards-a-5cllho3kkw.pdf

Regulatory networks and regulatory agencification: towards a Single European Regulatory Space

After every emergency exercise or actual incident, reports are circulated that usually identify lessons that have been learned from the event. This paper identifies recurring themes from the lessons learned that can be widely applied across sectors. Typically, lessons are expressed in a form that is specific to the actual event that has transpired, the sector in which it has occurred, and the aims of the reporting organization. Reports relating to seven incidents that have occurred in the United Kingdom and internationally, from a range of sectors and with varying parameters, have been reviewed. It is concluded that organizations can become wiser by looking at incidents outside their own sector and by using these recurring themes to explore the resilience of their emergency plans. Recommendations are also made for best practices to improve the learning of lessons within organizations.

Enhancing Organizational Resilience Through Emergency Planning: Learnings from Cross‐Sectoral Lessons

Disasters and crises have been part of the human experience since people started living in groups. Through the centuries, however, new hazards and risks have emerged that have added to the possibilities of new disasters and crises arising from them. Only a very small fraction of risks and hazards actually lead to a disaster or crisis, but they are usually a necessary condition for such surfacing. New types have emerged while older ones have not disappeared. The development of synthetic chemicals in the 19th century and nuclear power in the 20th century created the risk of toxic chemical disasters and crises from radioactive fallouts. Ancient disasters such as floods and earthquakes remain with us today. This chapter raises the question of whether we are at another important historical juncture with the emergence of a new distinctive class of disasters and crises not seen before.

/pdf/a-heuristic-approach-to-future-disasters-and-crises-new-old-hfp46yqtwu.pdf

A Heuristic Approach to Future Disasters and Crises: New, Old, and In-Between Types

Martijn Groenleer (Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management, Technical University, Delft, 2600 GA Delft, Delft, Netherlands. E-mail: M.L.P.Groenleer@tudelft.nl) Delft: Eburon Academic Publishe...

The Autonomy of European Union Agencies: A Comparative Study of Institutional Development

/pdf/organizational-cooperation-in-crises-4mn0yffps4.pdf

Organizational Cooperation in Crises

Part 1 Public Sector Reform, Electricity Policy and Crisis Preparedness in New Zealand Part 2 The Power Outage Crisis: Key Events and Critical Decisions Part 3 Urban Crisis Management in Auckland: Thematic Analysis Part 4 Lesson for Crisis Managers

Auckland Unplugged, Coping with Critical Infrastructure Failure

Crisis communication: learning from the 1998 LPG near miss in Stockholm.

/pdf/crisis-management-in-russia-overcoming-institutional-5biybg1kdn.pdf

Lina Svedin

Papers

The Autonomy of European Union Agencies: A Comparative Study of Institutional Development

Organizational Cooperation in Crises

Auckland Unplugged, Coping with Critical Infrastructure Failure

Crisis communication: learning from the 1998 LPG near miss in Stockholm.

Crisis management in Russia: overcoming institutional rigidity and resource constraints