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This paper considers the accounting and accountability practices of the UK government’s response to COVID-19 for England, focussing on the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.

Based on a close reading of the news media and official reports from government departments, Parliament select committees and the National Audit Office, among others, this paper frames the UK government's uses of accounting and accountability in its response to COVID-19. This is by using the categories of “apparatuses of security”, Foucault's schematic of government for economising on the uses of state power.

The paper shows that an important role for accounting is in the process of enabling the government to gauge the extent of the crisis and produce calculations to underpin its response, what Foucault called “normalisation”. This role was unlike statistics and economics. The government relied most on monthly statistical reporting and budgeting flexibilities. By contrast, the multi-year Spending Review and financial reporting were not timely enough. That said, financial reporting fed into financial sustainability projections and enabled audit that could provide potential accountability regarding regularity, probity, value for money and fairness. The authors’ findings suggest that, conceptually, accountability should be added to the object–subject element of Foucault's apparatuses of security because of its significance for governments' ability to pursue crisis objectives that require popular assent.

In view of the ongoing uncertainty, with the crisis extending over longer budget and financial reporting periods, a Spending Review is becoming ever more necessary for better planning, without limiting, however, the budget flexibilities that have proven so useful for rapid government responses. Moreover, the government should continue its accounting reforms post COVID-19 so that improved accountability and audit can contribute to enhanced future financial resilience.

This is the first paper to apply Foucault's notion of apparatuses of security to an analysis of government accounting and accountability practices.

This study aims to formulate the implementation model of Ship and Port Facility Security Policy based on ISPS Code in PT Pelindo II (Cirebon Branch).

The location of the study was the port area of PT Pelindo II (Cirebon Branch). It was because the controlling policy became the duties and responsibilities of each region in which it was the responsibility of PT Pelindo II (Cirebon Branch). However, because of the problem of controlling, it became a common responsibility that could be divided into other institutions such as Navy, Police, Kodim, Satpol PP and leadership apparatus ranging from local to central authorities. Data collection in this study was done by some methods, namely: interview and direct observation. This was done to provide a real and detailed picture of the implementation of Ship and Port Facility Security that is based on ISPS Code to discipline gerandong in PT Pelindo II (Cirebon Branch). The researcher conducted the data collection activity by compiling the document on the field.

Ship and Port Facility Security Policy of ISPS Code throughout Indonesia, including PT Pelindo II (Cirebon Branch), has been enacted by Ministry of Transportation since 2004 by the Decree of Minister of Transportation Number 33/2003 on the application of Amendment of SOLAS 1974 on the Ship and Port Facility Security in Indonesian territory (ISPS Code) in top-down way for good port governance that is free from any safety, health and security threats, especially gerandong because of which the implementation of ISPS Code is not working properly. The Ship and Port Facility Security Policy that is based on ISPS Code is a mandate of UN convention and the mandate of the law and order of the Minister of Transportation to conduct the port security, especially in securing the ship and port facility based on ISPS Code so that Cirebon Branch will be a world-class port. The implementation process of ship and port facility security that is based on ISPS Code in PT Pelindo II (Cirebon Branch) does not run optimally, especially in disciplining gerandong because of the lack of the socialization that was done to the target community groups and related makeshift.

From the results of analysis of several journals that became a reference for this study, there are at least three problems that need special attention, namely, general implementation problems (especially in developing countries), implementations that do not work because of leadership and implementation that cannot run if there is no benchmarking. The researcher is interested in analyzing the problem that has lasted almost for 10 years and has never been resolved until now. Many of the problems behind the phenomenon of gerandong occurred because of the interaction of government (civil society), civil society, Community Empowerment Institutions (LSM), Market (PT Pelindo) and certain community groups as well as the involvement of the apparatus. The most important of all that has been explained above is that in accordance with the feasibility of study (FS), the environmental impacts of the Development Main Plan (RIP) of Cirebon Port and its social impact analysis on the community has not been discussed. Therefore, the FS is expected to be complete and to become plenary and be more feasible to be accepted with this gerandong study.

This chapter approaches the question of government and surveillance through a comparison between the control practices observable in two types of places. First, we focus on international airports, specifically the French international airport of Orly. Airports are maximum security zones where persons perceived as having no legitimate business are expelled and where suspicious objects are destroyed. The second kind of places are the ones labeled as “no-go areas”, violent pockets within urban space. Social housing projects located in the bleak suburbs of French cities are such dangerous zones. Both kinds of places – airports and no-go areas – have very different time and space features: people briefly pass through anonymous airports where relationships are kept at an impersonal minimum, whereas the population of a housing estate area is made of “permanent transients” pinned down by a shared fate of which there seems no escape.

The sudden rise of the socio-political importance of security that has marked the twenty-first century entails a commensurate empowerment of the intelligence apparatus. This chapter takes the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 as a vantage point from where to address the political significance of this development. It provides an account of the powers the Act grants intelligence agencies, concluding that it effectively legalizes their operational paradigm. Further, the socio-legal dynamics that informed the Act lead the chapter to conclude that Intelligence has become a dominant apparatus within the state. This chapter pivots at this point. It seeks to identify, first, the reasons of this empowerment; and, second, its effects on liberal-democratic forms, including the rule of law. The key reason for intelligence empowerment is the adoption of a pre-emptive security strategy, geared toward neutralizing threats that are yet unformed. Regarding its effects on liberal democracy, the chapter notes the incompatibility of the logic of intelligence with the rule of law. It further argues that the empowerment of intelligence pertains to the rise of a new threat-based governmental logic. It outlines the core premises of this logic to argue that they strengthen the anti-democratic elements in liberalism, but in a manner that liberalism is overcome.

Purpose – This chapter examines the process of radicalization, deradicalization, and support for intelligence agencies in a few well-known cases of terrorists who turned into informants.

Methodology/Approach – Five cases studies are utilized to demonstrate the process of engagement in, disengagement from, and revolt against terrorist groups. Existing literature on radicalization and deradicalization is set against the context of these case studies.

Findings – By drawing upon the experiences of terrorists who turned into informants, it is possible to prove theories on radicalization and deradicalization. In particular, the process of cognitive radicalization presumes that extremist beliefs can also be rejected (deradicalization), while the process of behavioral radicalization presumes that terrorists can distance themselves from extremist behaviors (disengagement).

Originality/Value – Scholarship has traditionally focused on “underdogs” of all kinds, with a less keen interest in elites or the actors operating on their behalf. The work of informants has often remained in a dimly lit corner of academic research. This chapter helps illuminate the path undertaken by terrorists who become informants for Western security apparatus.

This paper stems from a 12-month collaborative enquiry between a group of Syrian academics in exile in Turkey and academics from the University of Cambridge into the state of Syrian Higher Education after the onset of the conflict in 2011. The purpose of this paper is to draw on 19 open-ended interviews with exiled Syrian academics; two focus groups; mapping and timeline exercises; and 117 interviews collected remotely by collaborating Syrian academics with former colleagues and students who were still living inside Syria at the time of data collection. The findings of the research suggest that Syrian HE after 2011 was fragmented across regions; in some cases non-existent, and in others deemed to be in a state of reform in order to meet student needs. Key issues that emerged from this work are human rights’ abuses directed against academics and students including the detainment, purging and kidnapping of academics, an increased militarisation of university life and a substantive loss of academic and human capital.

The overall design involved two workshops held in Turkey (in June and July, 2017) at which the Cambridge team explained the stages of undertaking qualitative research and planned the collaborative enquiry with Syrian co-researchers. The first workshop addressed the nature of qualitative research and explored the proposed methods of interviewing, using timelines and mapping. The instruments for interviewing were constructed in groups together and mapping was undertaken with the 21 Syrian academics in exile who attended the workshop. Syrian academics also built their own research plans as a way of expanding the consultation dimension of this project inside Syria, engaged in survey and interview protocol planning and discussed ways to access needed documentation which could be drawn upon to enrich the project. The Syrian co-researchers interviewed remotely HE staff and students who had remained in, or recently left, Syria; the key criterion for group or participant selection was that they had recent and relevant experience of Syrian HE. The second workshop focused on data analysis and writing up. There was also wide consultation with participants inside and outside Syria. As part of the research, the Cambridge team conducted open-ended interviews with 19 Syrian academics and students living in exile in Turkey. This involved interviewing Syrian scholars about their experiences of HE, policy changes over time and their experiences of displacement. The researchers developed this protocol prior to the capacity-building workshops based on previous research experience on academic and student displacement, alongside extensive preparation on the conditions of Syrian HE, conflict and displacement. In addition to interviewing, a pivotal element of methodological rigour was that the authors sought to member check what participants were learning through mapping and timeline exercises and extensive note-taking throughout both workshops. The major issues that the authors confronted were ethical concerns around confidentiality, the need to ensure rigourously the protection of all participants’ anonymity and to be extremely mindful of the political sensitivity of issues when interviewing participants who may not feel able to fully trust “outsider” researchers. Issues of social trust have been reported in the literature as one of the most significant drawbacks in conducting research in “conflict environments” (see Cohen and Arieli, 2011) where academics and students have been working and/or studying in autocratic regimes or were operating within political contexts where being open or critical of any form of institutional life such as university work or the nation could cost them their jobs or their lives.

The accounts of Syrian academics and students emerging from this work point to some of the state-building expressions of HE manifested in the shaping of professional and personal experiences, the condition and status of HE, its spatial arrangements and their associated power formations, and resulting in feelings of intense personal and professional insecurity among Syrian scholars and students since 2011. While acknowledging that the Syrian situation is deemed one of the worst humanitarian crises in the region in recent decades, these accounts resonate, if in different ways, with other studies of academics and students who have experienced highly centralised and autocratic states and tightly regulated HE governance regimes (Barakat and Milton, 2015; Mazawi, 2011).

Currently, there is virtually no research on the status and conditions of higher education in Syria as a consequence of the war, which commenced in 2011. This work presents a first-person perspective from Syrian academics and students on the state of HE since the onset of the conflict. The major contribution of this work is the identification of key factors shaping conflict and division in HE, alongside the political economies of HE destruction which are unique to the Syrian war and longstanding forms of authoritarian state governance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore security management in the hospitality sector of Jamaica.

The paper is based on a combination of available documentary sources and in‐depth interviews conducted with key players in the fields of law enforcement, security management and hospitality in Jamaica.

Jamaica's image as a tourism destination has been severely damaged by reports of its high murder rates. With the exception of tourism harassment however, visitors to the island are largely unaffected by crime. This outcome is not accidental; rather it is the result of a social consensus combined with a well‐articulated, comprehensive, long‐term crime management strategy involving multiple stakeholders ranging from the level of government to the individual hospitality establishment. Despite these positives however, the paper expresses serious doubts about the sustainability of the existing tourism and hospitality model.

The study is qualitative in nature and focuses on the hospitality sector in the major commercial centre and one of the major resort centres. Both have been characterised by high levels of criminal violence in the last decade. As such the results may offer important insights into crime management and tourism development but cannot be generalised.

The paper carries significant implications for policy in that it analyses the challenges of security management in a tourism destination marked by severe and complex and social contradictions.

Despite the enormity of the public discourse on the impact of crime on tourism, there has been little scholarly analysis of the challenges of security management in an environment marked simultaneously by extreme tourism dependence and extreme levels of criminal violence.

Here, we examine the challenges to democratization in Bahrain, with a particular focus on how the recent 2011 Uprising has resulted in a deepening of authoritarianism. It is argued that the recent unrest has brought into sharp relief the absence of “quality” democracy in Bahrain, and that any form of democratic transition is dependent on the will of a conservative Al Khalifa-Saudi nexus. While the pro-democracy movement may have prompted minor concessions on the part of the government, the extent of the popular mobilization triggered the Al Khalifa regime’s authoritarian reflex, and they have reacted to throttle the Uprising by putting in place legislative, ideological, and political barriers to reform, which points not only to a current de-democratization, but also a lack of future democratization. In addition to arguing for the post-2011 undoing of democracy in Bahrain, this paper also points to two major barriers to future democratization; (1) a conservative, post-Independence Al Khalifa-Saudi coalition assisted by large military resources (2) protracted communal tension brought about by the government’s instrumentalization of sectarianism.