A return on investment: the future of police cooperation between Australia and Indonesia

This Special Report presents a strategy for the future relationship between Indonesia’s National Police—known as POLRI—and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). It draws on 60 interviews with current and retired police officers, officials from other Australian and Indonesian agencies, and academic experts in related fields. The report presents a strategy for the future POLRI–AFP relationship in two parts. The first paperexamines the near term to early 2015. POLRI and the AFP should first aim to restore full trust and cooperation in all relevant policing areas, especially in cybercrime. Early initiatives could include a 10‑year celebration for the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation, workshops for future AFP and POLRI leaders, and a request for POLRI officers to support the AFP during the G20 meeting in November 2014. It would also be worth sponsoring an international ‘needs analysis’ for POLRI. Reinstating funding for the Law Enforcement Cooperation Program is needed to promote the AFP’s flexibility and responsiveness during this time. The second paper provides background, tracing the remarkable relationship between the Australian Federal Police and the Indonesian National Police from its early days, where the focus was on information sharing, through a journey into joint operations. The paper describes the numerous capability cooperation initiatives that the forces have undertaken, especially since 2002, and charts both successes and times where cooperation didn’t necessarily deliver as intended

The Future of European Cooperation: A View from Moscow

A discussion on a wide range of topics concerned with Pan-European cooperation including military and security issues, aspects related to socio-economic and human rights, and Russian relations with European countries and institutions, as well as the role of the United Nations, its institutions and specialized agencies in fostering multilateral cooperation. Also included is the text in Russian.Russia, Foreign Policy, International Affairs

Optimising the Mechanism for ‘Enhanced Cooperation’ within the EU: Recommendations for the Constitutional Treaty. CEPS Policy Brief No. 33, May 2003

[Executive Summary]. Policy development in the EU is often impeded by member states being either unwilling or unable to participate. One way to overcome that problem is to resort to flexible approaches accommodating diversity. Convinced that an enlarged Union would require more flexibility, the current member states agreed in 1997 to introduce a new safety valve in the treaties, named ‘enhanced cooperation’. Thanks to that mechanism, a group of member states may be authorised to use the EU framework to further their cooperation or integration in policy areas under EU competence whenever it appears impossible to do so with all of the member states. There are a number of reasons why the Constitutional Treaty under negotiation should not only uphold such a mechanism, but should improve it in various respects. The future treaty should start by suppressing redundant preconditions for authorisation, introducing the possibility for a group of willing and able to gear up (i.e. adopt more efficient decision-making procedures and embrace higher ambitions), as well as extending the scope of enhanced cooperation to foreign and defence matters. It should also suppress the minimum participation threshold and clarify the last resort stipulation. As to authorisation, the future treaty should simplify the proposal procedure, specify what may be included in the proposal, streamline the consultation and deliberation procedures, and provide that, for CFSP too, the authorisation is given by the Council acting by qualified majority or superqualified majority. Participation in enhanced cooperation should be open to all, provided that objective criteria are met. The same conditions should apply for initial and subsequent participation. Admission to enhanced cooperation should be managed by the Commission under a single procedure. Regarding enhanced cooperation’s operating mode, the future treaty should stick to the current system of ‘institutional isomorphism’ (no variable geometry in the European Parliament or the Commission). Nevertheless, participating member states should be allowed to decide, acting unanimously, that enhanced cooperation shall be governed by qualified majority instead of unanimity and/or by codecision procedure. They should also be authorised to hold restricted meetings at an informal level. The future treaty should further introduce the possibility to differentiate between the ‘pre-in’ (member states willing to participate but unable to do so from the start) and the ‘out’ (member states unwilling to participate). Finally, the status of the acts and decisions resulting from enhanced cooperation could be revisited. In any case, the future treaty should authorise the Council to decide by a qualified majority that the Union’s budget will support enhanced cooperation’s operational costs

Union-Management Cooperation: A Passing Fad or Permanent Change?

[Excerpt] Union-management cooperation is not a passing fad. It is not a new, or even a recent, development on the American labor relations scene. Nonetheless, interest in this subject has been growing. It is the purpose of this article, first, to clarify the meaning of union-management cooperation, indicating what it is and what it is not; second, to describe its history in the United States, going back to World War I; third, to explain the forces, both past and present, that have led to the development of union-management cooperation; fourth, to describe the various mechanisms employed to achieve this cooperation, including the levels of involvement and their scope; fifth, to set forth the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful union-management cooperation: and, finally, to discuss its future

History, Expectations, and Leadership in the Evolution of Social Norms

We study the evolution of the social norm of “cooperation” in a dynamic environment. Each agent lives for two periods and interacts with agents from the previous and next generations via a coordination game. Social norms emerge as patterns of behavior that are stable in part due to agents’ interpretations of private information about the past, which are influenced by occasional past behaviors that are commonly observed. We first characterize the (extreme) cases under which history completely drives equilibrium play, leading to a social norm of high or low cooperation. In intermediate cases, the impact of history is potentially countered by occasional “prominent” agents, whose actions are visible by all future agents, and who can leverage their greater visibility to influence expectations of future agents and overturn social norms of low cooperation. We also show that in equilibria not completely driven by history, there is a pattern of “reversion” whereby play starting with high (low) cooperation reverts toward lower (higher) cooperation.

Current and future monetary cooperation with a focus on the possible monetary union of Gulf Cooperation Council

There is a lot of effort to create new monetary unions in the world. This paper focuses on the cooperation in the monetary field with a view to a possible monetary union of Gulf Cooperation Council. Some existing and proposed monetary unions are discussed in the paper. The focus is especially on the proposed monetary union among states of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In the context of the emerging monetary union, countries of GCC are facing many challenges. The paper presents attempts of GCC countries to cooperate in the monetary field, barriers, benefits of the single currency and a couple of criteria by which can be assessed, whether a monetary union is the right step for this area. Some criteria of the Optimum Currency Area theory are applied to these countries here as well.monetary union, Gulf Cooperation Council, Optimum Currency Area theory, single currency

Rethinking international cooperation in criminal matters in the EU: moving beyond actors, bringing logic back, footed in reality

International cooperation in criminal matters in the European Union has grown exponentially over the past few decades. Importantly, there is a wide variety of authorities involved therein, rendering the traditional distinction between police and judicial cooperation outdated. Furthermore, its rapid growth exposed this policy field to inconsistencies and incoherence. Additionally despite the wave of new legislation, important lacunae can be identified, setting important challenges for the future. The combination of these issues clarifies the title of this book: there is a pressing need to rethink international cooperation in criminal matters. In answer to a call from the European Commission, the authors have designed a comprehensive methodological framework to review the entirety of international cooperation in criminal matters, combining desktop reviews, expert consultations, member state questionnaires and focus group meetings in each of the member states to obtain a comprehensive overview of the currently experienced obstacles and future policy options that are both needed and feasible. Over 150 individuals contributed to the study, with different background, including academics, lawyers, policy makers, police, customs, intelligence services, prosecution, judiciary, correctional authorities, Ministries of Justice and Home Affairs. This book provides an overview of the research findings and the recommendations formulated. They include but are not limited to (1) a helicopter view on cooperation with criminal justice finality, (2) a clear demarcation of the role of the judicial authorities, (3) a comprehensive review of refusal grounds, including proportionality and capacity concerns, (4) an assessment of gaps in the current body of instruments regulating international cooperation in criminal matters and possible remedies thereto, (5) a well-considered further development of Eurojust and (6) ensuring EU wide effect of mere domestic actions

Role of Networking in Innovation Promotion and Cluster Modernization: “House of the Future” Case

This paper stresses the potential of innovative business cooperation networks in promoting regional competitiveness. It is based on the case study of a cooperation network, named “House of the Future”, carried out in the framework of a project where the University of Aveiro has an important role. It suggests success factors in the development of co-operation networks between firms from various sectors and a university. The aim of the “House of the Future” initiative is to promote an innovative approach to inter-organizational cooperation joining together firms from a number of different industrial activities related with the habitat meta-sector. This collaborative effort can function as an experiment for the design of regional innovation policies.

Spillover modes in multiplex games: double-edged effects on cooperation, and their coevolution

In recent years, there has been growing interest in studying games on multiplex networks that account for interactions across linked social contexts. However, little is known about how potential cross-context interference, or spillover, of individual behavioural strategy impact overall cooperation. We consider three plausible spillover modes, quantifying and comparing their effects on the evolution of cooperation. In our model, social interactions take place on two network layers: one represents repeated interactions with close neighbours in a lattice, the other represents one-shot interactions with random individuals across the same population. Spillover can occur during the social learning process with accidental cross-layer strategy transfer, or during social interactions with errors in implementation due to contextual interference. Our analytical results, using extended pair approximation, are in good agreement with extensive simulations. We find double-edged effects of spillover on cooperation: increasing the intensity of spillover can promote cooperation provided cooperation is favoured in one layer, but too much spillover is detrimental. We also discover a bistability phenomenon of cooperation: spillover hinders or promotes cooperation depending on initial frequencies of cooperation in each layer. Furthermore, comparing strategy combinations that emerge in each spillover mode provides a good indication of their co-evolutionary dynamics with cooperation. Our results make testable predictions that inspire future research, and sheds light on human cooperation across social domains and their interference with one another