Responsible Participation, Community Engagement and Policing in Transitional Societies: Lessons from a Local Crime Survey in Northern Ireland

The new structures of policing in Northern Ireland have been internationally lauded as a success, but the manner in which police-community relations are unfolding in local settings is less clear. In this article we draw on a local crime survey conducted in a Republican area in Belfast to examine residents’ views of policing and to highlight residents’ concerns about police effectiveness in dealing with crime and disorder. Drawing on Habermas’s concept of ‘responsible participation’, we also consider the role that community organisations can play in helping overcome local scepticism and developing positive forms of engagement with the police. © 2012 The Authors

Semiring induced valuation algebras: Exact and approximate local computation algorithms

Local computation in join trees or acyclic hypertrees has been shown to be linked to a particular algebraic structure, called valuation algebra.There are many models of this algebraic structure ranging from probability theory to numerical analysis, relational databases and various classical and non-classical logics. It turns out that many interesting models of valuation algebras may be derived from semiring valued mappings. In this paper we study how valuation algebras are induced by semirings and how the structure of the valuation algebra is related to the algebraic structure of the semiring. In particular, c-semirings with idempotent multiplication induce idempotent valuation algebras and therefore permit particularly efficient architectures for local computation. Also important are semirings whose multiplicative semigroup is embedded in a union of groups. They induce valuation algebras with a partially defined division. For these valuation algebras, the well-known architectures for Bayesian networks apply. We also extend the general computational framework to allow derivation of bounds and approximations, for when exact computation is not feasible.

Assessing the extent to which temporal changes in waterbird community composition are driven by either local, regional or global factors.

1. Lough Neagh and Lough Beg Special Protection Area (SPA, hereafter Lough Neagh) is an important non-estuarine site in Britain and Ireland for overwintering wildfowl. Multivariate analysis of the winter counts showed a state-shift in the waterbird community following winter 2000/2001, mostly due to rapid declines in abundance (46–57% declines in the mean mid-winter January counts between 1993–2000 and 2002–2009) of members of the diving duck guild (pochard Aythya ferina, tufted duck Aythya fuligula and goldeneye Bucephala clangula) and coot (Fulica atra), a submerged macrophyte feeder.
2. Only pochard showed correlations between declines at Lough Neagh and those of overall species flyway population indices to suggest that global changes could contribute to declines at the site. However, indices from the Republic of Ireland showed no overall decline in the rest of Ireland. Tufted duck indices at the site were inversely related to indices in Great Britain. Lough Neagh goldeneye indices were positively correlated with indices in the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain, suggesting that short-stopping could contribute to declines at the site. Coot declines at Lough Neagh did not correlate with trends elsewhere, suggesting local factors involved in the decline.
3. These analyses indicate that although there are potentially different explanations for the dramatic declines in these four waterbird species at this site, the simultaneous nature of the declines across two feeding guilds strongly
suggest that local factors (such as loss of submerged macrophytes and benthic invertebrates) were involved. An assessment of the food supply, local disturbance and other factors at Lough Neagh is required to find an explanation for the observed adverse trends in wintering numbers of the affected species.
4. This study highlights the potential of waterbird community structure to reflect the status of aquatic systems, but confirms the need to establish site-specific factors responsible for the observed changes in abundance of key waterbird species at a site.

A Life Course Perspective on Urban–Rural Migration: the Importance of the Local Context

The relationship between migration and age has long been established, and most recently, there have been calls for the inclusion of a life course perspective to migration research. In this paper, we explore Northern Ireland’s internal migration patterns, and in particular, we test for the importance of urban to rural migration at different stages of the life course. Data from the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study are used for the first time to analyse urban–rural migration patterns. The resulting modelling demonstrates unique aspects of urban to rural migration within Northern Ireland, which up until now have gone largely
unreported. Results from logistic regression modelling suggest that there is an age selectivity to urban– rural mobility but not necessarily at the life course stages predicted from a review of the life course migration literature. Individuals in younger age groups (at the household and family formation stages of the life course) are most likely to make an urban to rural move in Northern Ireland, with a decline in the likelihood of this move type with age. Possible explanations are offered linked to Northern Ireland’s settlement hierarchy, rural planning policy, and family farming traditions. The findings challenge researchers to pay due attention to how migration processes may play out differently in varying geographical, social, and planning contexts and emphasise the importance of structural factors to explain migration patterns.

Understanding leadership in local churches

A sociological examination of the concept of leadership and its application to understanding social interactions and power relations in local churches, based upon ethnographic investigation into London Methodist churches.