Initially based mainly on the use of Navy Vessel Protection Detachments (VPDs) paid by shipowners, Italian maritime security legislation also allows for the use of Privately Contracted Armed Security Personnel (PCASP) when VPDs are not available. Hence, Italy has adopted a hybrid antipiracy approach that entails two different forms of private sector involvement: the financing and partial control of public military forces by the maritime industry and the provision of armed security by PCASP, an option that includes Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). This opening to the commercial sector is significant as one of the first of its kind in a state that has adopted a tight monopoly over the provision of armed services and can be explained as the interplay between the willingness to respond to the needs of the maritime industry and a long-standing resistance against loosening state control over the use of force.

No abstract

This paper presents an integrated floating power supply solution for feeding data acquisition circuits in a current sensor chip realized in monolithic high voltage technology. The main feature of this supply is that the floating n-epi pocket it is realized in, is biased with a voltage lower than the maximum voltage value present in the pocket itself. Measurements performed on two test chips showed good agreement with simulation results. The test phase highlighted some problems in the supply circuit, but their causes have been understood and can probably be solved in the future implementation of the circuit.

In 2011, the growing number of pirate attacks prompted several flag states to authorise the use of armed guards aboard vessels. Despite facing the same threat, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Italy have adopted three distinct approaches to securing their merchant ships, ranging from the exclusive use of private security companies (PSCs) to the employment of military personnel only. This article conducts a congruence testing of the main theoretical explanations for the use of PSCs on land against UK, Dutch and Italian vessel protection policies. By relying on sequencing as a technique for theoretical synthesis, we develop a multicausal explanation of states' vessel protection arrangements, showing the varying influence of functionalist, ideational, organisational and political drivers of security privatisation at different phases of the policy process.

Starting from the imperfect nature of Myanmar's democracy, this paper aims to answer two questions. First, can Myanmar's transition be defined as a case of democratization, or is it, rather, a case of authoritarian resilience? To state this differently: is the progress enjoyed by Myanmar's polity the outcome of an ongoing process that is supposed to lead to a fully fledged democracy, or, rather, an attempt to enshrine elements of authoritarian governance under a democratic guise? Second, if the balance leans towards the latter instead of the former, how did authoritarian resilience work in Myanmar? The transition is analysed from a long-term perspective, moving from the 1988 pro-democracy uprising up to the most recent events. Data were collected from available published sources and from three fieldworks conducted by the authors in Myanmar. The paper concludes that Myanmar's transition is better understood as a case of authoritarian resilience than as democratization and highlights three core traits of Myanmar's authoritarian resilience: first, the very top-down nature of the political transformation; second, the incumbents’ ability to set the pace of political reform through the use of repression and political engineering; and third, the divide-and-rule strategy used as a means to keep contestations separated and local.