Tag: Privatisation

Free Download Riikka Koulu, "Law, Technology and Dispute Resolution: The Privatisation of Coercion"
English | 2020 | pages: 227 | ISBN: 0367665239, 113855538X | PDF | 35,7 mb
The use of new information and communication technologies both inside the courts and in private online dispute resolution services is quickly changing everyday conflict management. However, the implications of the increasingly disruptive role of technology in dispute resolution remain largely undiscussed. In this book, assistant professor of law and digitalisation Riikka Koulu examines the multifaceted phenomenon of dispute resolution technology, focusing specifically on private enforcement, which modern technology enables on an unforeseen scale. The increase in private enforcement confounds legal structures and challenges the nation-state’s monopoly on violence. And, in this respect, the author argues that the technology-driven privatisation of enforcement – from direct enforcement of e-commerce platforms to self-executing smart contracts in the blockchain – brings the ethics of law’s coercive nature out into the open. This development constitutes a new, and dangerous, grey area of conflict management, which calls for transparency and public debate on the ethical implications of dispute resolution technology.

Free Download A Politics of Inevitability: The Privatisation of the Berlin Water Company, the Global City Discourse, and Governance in 1990s Berlin By Ross Beveridge (auth.)
2012 | 234 Pages | ISBN: 3531182196 | PDF | 2 MB
This book provides a detailed analysis of the controversial privatisation of the Berlin Water Company (BWB) in 1999. As with other cases of privatisation around the world, the city’s government argued there was no alternative in a context of public debts and economic restructuring. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, the analysis presented here steps outside the parameters of this neat, straightforward explanation. It problematises the ‘hard facts’ upon which the decision was apparently made, presenting instead an account in which facts can be political constructions shaped by normative assumptions and political strategies. A politics of inevitability in 1990s Berlin is revealed; one characterised by depoliticisation, expert-dominated policy processes and centred upon the perceived necessities of urban governance in the global economy. It is an account in which global and local dynamics mix: where the interplay between the general and the specific, between neoliberalism and politicking, and between globalisation and local actors characterise the discussion.