Legislative review of the concept ‘possession right’

With the legislative review of police oversight currently taking place in South Africa, now is a good time to reflect on the regulation of the private security industry. This article does so by focusing on three challenges to the current private security regulatory systems: the increased pluralisation of policing within public spaces; the operation of hidden sectors within the industry; and the nature of criminal abuses perpetuated by the industry. We do this to demonstrate the need for a re-imagining of what regulation, especially state regulation, of this industry should entail. The aim of the article is not to review the current legislation or to identify gaps and propose means of filling those gaps, but rather to reflect on the underlying premises informing the legislation and propose a shift in thinking. We do this by briefly identifying two phases of state regulation in South Africa, implemented before and after the change to a new democratic dispensation, and suggest that we are now entering a third phase of regulation. We conclude with suggestions as to what this third phase may entail.

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Coalition Policymaking and Legislative Review

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055405051518 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 99 (1) ◽

pp. 93-106 ◽

Cited By ~ 106

Author(s):

LANNY W. MARTIN ◽

GEORG VANBERG

Keyword(s):

Agency Problems ◽

Coalition Government ◽

Parliamentary Democracies ◽

Legislative Review ◽

Institutional Mechanism ◽

Legislative Institutions

Political scientists know remarkably little about the extent to which legislatures are able to influence policymaking in parliamentary democracies. In this article, we focus on the influence of legislative institutions in periods of coalition government. We show that multiparty governments are plagued by “agency” problems created by delegation to cabinet ministers that increase in severity on issues that divide the coalition. We also argue that the process of legislative review presents an important—but understudied—institutional opportunity for coalition partners to overcome these tensions. We evaluate our argument using original legislative data on over 300 government bills collected from two parliamentary democracies. The central implication of our findings is that legislatures play a more important role in parliamentary democracies than is usually appreciated by providing a key institutional mechanism that allows coalition partners with divergent preferences to govern successfully.

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The Argument from Concept Possession (1)

God and Phenomenal Consciousness ◽

10.1017/cbo9780511498961.004 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 36-57

Author(s):

Yujin Nagasawa

Keyword(s):

Concept Possession

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