New World Order and NATO's War against Yugoslavia

The aim of this paper is to examine the main dimensions of the New World Order, which followed the collapse of "actually existing socialism," in connection to the parallel rise of the internationalized market economy. Thus, the economic dimension of the New World Order is discussed in terms of the emergence of neoliberal globalization. The political dimension is examined in terms of the parallel development of a new informal political globalization which is managed by a newly emerged transnational elite. Finally, the ideological dimension is discussed in terms of the development of a transnational ideology, a kind of ideological globalization, whose core is the doctrine of limited sovereignty. It is argued, with particular reference to the Yugoslavian case, that the three "wars" launched by the transnational elite so far (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan) have been aimed at securing the stability of the New World Order in its economic and political dimensions, by crushing of any perceived threats against it .     

Iraq: The New Criminal 'War' of the Transnational Elite

Abstract The aims of this paper are fourfold: first, to show that the present invasion and occupation of Iraq is in fact the culmination of a campaign that began with the 'war' in the Gulf in 1991 and continued with over a decade of constant bombardment and embargo, with the overall aim of establishing a client regime in Iraq as a means of achieving a number of important economic and geopolitical aims; second, to discuss the role of the UN in the New World Order and the change in this role between the 'Clinton doctrine' and the 'Bush' doctrine'; third, to discuss the criminal invasion itself and the dubious character of the 'victory' claimed by the transnational elite,1 all the members of which, directly or indirectly, took part in this campaign; fourth to examine the role of the Left in relation to the 'war'.Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. (British) Proclamation of Baghdad, 19 March 1917 Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors. Tony Blair's address on Towards Freedom TV, 10 April 2003     

An ethical judgment framework for corporate political actions

• Despite the popularity of businesses' involvement in politics, little discussion has been conducted on the ethics of corporate political actions (CPAs) in the business, corporate social responsibility, business ethics and ‘business and society’ literatures. The sporadic studies on ethics of CPA mainly focus on one or two aspects of the CPA in judging its ethics, such as its goal or means or consequences, very little has been done in a systematic way to analyse and articulate ethical standards for those corporations and industries who proactively seek to influence government officials. This study attempts to make up this gap. By applying three basic ethical principles including Utilitarian theory, theory of rights and theory of justice into the CPAs, I propose an ethical judgment framework for CPAs. The ethical judgment framework focuses on and judged by four issues/attributes of a CPA, including the goals/purposes of the CPA, the means taken to achieve the goals, the consequences resulted from the CPA, and the process of the CPA. The ‘means’ and ‘consequences’ are the core criteria in the framework, but ‘goals’ and ‘process’ also contribute to the ethical judgment of a CPA.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The battle for Mosul

Iraqi government and allied forces are poised to decisively retake Mosul from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, within the next few months. But the presence of ISIS in Syria will still pose the risk of the group's resurgence in Iraq until the Iraq–Syria border is secure and ISIS has been denied control of Raqqa, its Syrian base and self-declared capital.     

Political Marketing Management of Parliament Under the Presidential Government System: A Lesson Learned from the Indonesia House of Representative Post–New Order Soeharto

Modern political marketing management of parties, government, and parliament have gradually taken place within and across democratic countries ruled under either the parliamentary government or presidential government systems. Little attention, however, has been directed to the extent to which modern political marketing management of parliament has taken place within countries run under the presidential system of government, especially Indonesia. As led by hypothetical-inductive approach, this work has been specifically directed to explore (1) the dynamic exchanges and interactions; (2) the nature and structure of political market arenas; (3) types of political products; and (4) models of political marketing management of the Indonesian parliament/the Indonesian House of Representatives. This work explores the extent to which institutional marketing management strategies have been advanced by the Indonesian Parliament/the Indonesian House of Representatives since Post–New Order Soeharto up to the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) government era (2004 to 2014).     

Governance in Government: A Modest Proposal

This article recalls evidence in the Hutton and Butler reports about changes in decision-making procedures in government, including the role of Cabinet and of the Cabinet Office in supporting collective decisions; and the failure to circulate papers on Iraq to Cabinet or to use a cabinet committee. The government`s response has been largely intelligence-specific and evades the wider criticisms. This article makes the modest proposal that Parliament should impose standards of governance on governments that broadly match those already imposed, with government support, on the boards of private sector companies (based on the Combined Code of Corporate Governance and the Companies Act 1985). It would make sense for the Select Committee on Public Administration to work out and publish a specific proposal. The government would be asked to report after a year on action taken to improve governance standards. This proposal should be pursued after the election.     

Scientific Advice at a Time of Emergency. SAGE and Covid-19

The challenge for experts in government is often described as one of speaking unwelcome truths to a resistant power. Yet, just as problematic can be instances where the advice is welcome and so left unchallenged. Two such cases in which the UK government followed flawed expert advice are considered: intelligence assessments and military advice leading up to the 2003 Iraq War and the role of SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) during the first stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Governments need to interrogate advice and make sure that they understand its underlying assumptions and implications. It remains vital to protect the independence of the experts, but to get the best out of their advice early and active political engagement is required rather than an arms-length relationship.     

Royal Commissions in Australia: When Should Governments Appoint Them?

The Cole Royal Commission into AWB sales of wheat to Iraq once again draws attention to questions of when should governments resort to ad hoc inquiries and, in particular, establish royal commissions with their associated prestige and statutory powers to call and examine witnesses and require presentation of documents. In this article, Dr Scott Prasser, author of ‘Royal Commisions and Public Inquiries in Australia (Lexis Nexis 2006) examines the use of royal commissions and other investigatory/inquisitorial instruments of executive government by Commonwealth and state governments.     

A Policy Delphi study in the socialist Middle East

The Delphi Method has been applied to a wide variety of predictive and consensus building problems in the West. It has achieved mixed success in its ‘native’ environment. This paper reports on the successful use of the Delphi by an interdisciplinary, international team of English-speaking consultants in an Arabic-speaking country, politically dominated by a centralist regime. In the sixth year of the Iran-Iraq war, a group of international consultants proceeded with the development of a master plan for the development of the City of Baghdad, the Greater Baghdad Area and Central Iraq. Work on the plan had begun in 1982 but had been slowed by the war and its effect on the Iraqi economy, a lack of consensus on the part of the Iraqi government and a substantial degree of uncertainty in the government's confidence in the consulting team's perceptions. An accelerated form of the Delphi was structured and applied over a period of three weeks, employing high ranking members of the Iraqi technocracy. The results indicated a good degree of consensus on a number of material issues. The consultants obtained a clearer picture of the client's desires, and the client was left with greater confidence in the consultant's perceptions of the planning problems and solutions. There was a notable reduction in the level of uncertainty and disagreement among both Iraqi and expatriate members of the planning team. Finally, there was an increased acceptance of the resulting master plan due to the demonstrable participation of senior government officials in its formulation and the credibility they attached to the process of the Delphi. At the time of writing, the plan has been accepted by the government of Iraq.     

从9·11事件到伊拉克战争泥潭——布什政府言论的历史

围绕美国在伊拉克战争受挫过程描述布什政府危机言论的历史。布什总统9·11之后发表了煽情的夸大危机的言论,反恐备战和占领伊拉克过程中将此类言论充分展开,美国陷入战争泥潭后此类言论一度达到高潮,布什第二届总统任期中,他的"立场坚定"的美名就已失去了修辞的魅力。     

Informality and Circumscription: The Blair Style of Government in War and Peace

In the latest of his periodic 'overflights' of the Blair style of government since 1997, Peter Hennessy examines the significance of the 2004 Butler Report (on intelligence and weapons of mass destruction prior to the Iraq War) for Tony Blair both as war premier and also as an indicator of his governing practices in general. He concludes that the Cabinet's overall performance on the road to war was seriously inadequate, and is especially critical of its failure to test out fully the Attorney General's opinion in the legality of the war.     

Priming time for Blair? Media priming, Iraq, and leadership evaluations in Britain

Priming is often mentioned in studies of media effects in Britain, yet empirical tests of its extent and nature are lacking; most evidence of priming effects is from the United States. Moreover, research on British elections concludes that the media have little impact on the public’s perceptions of issues, including in the 2005 election. In this paper we argue that priming by the British media has been misconceived and thus not studied adequately. We demonstrate that the issue of the war in Iraq was primed by media coverage in 2005, both as a consequence of the volume of coverage of the issue and its tone. The influence of Iraq was not just long-term, via its impact on confidence in the Labour government or Tony Blair’s reputation, but was also affected by media coverage during the campaign. We also demonstrate that the media’s coverage of Iraq in 2005 influenced voters’ evaluations of Blair by polarizing consumers of the same news. Finally, we find slightly more of an impact of the tone of coverage of Iraq in 2005 but it is moderated by the editorial stance of the newspaper—the editorial stance of British newspapers still seems to matter, suggesting that the dealignment of the British press has not eliminated the influence of reading a newspaper that endorses a party, no matter how qualified that endorsement may be.     

From Blair to Brown: The Condition of British Government

Peter Hennessy examines the conduct of central government since 1997, especially Cabinet processes during the build-up to the Iraq war of 2003. He discusses the degree to which both Blair and Brown over the past months have appeared to run against aspects of the governing style of the administrations they have jointly dominated. He assesses what Gordon Brown's floated idea of a written constitution might mean in practical terms and makes a particular case for a War Powers Act.     

Shocks and oscillations: The political economy of Hungary

While economic voting studies exist for the new democracies in post-communist Europe, time-series vote functions are scarce. Here, we fill this void by testing how public support for the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) responds to political shocks and economic oscillations, using monthly data from 2002 to 2009 (N = 83). As the economy fluctuates, on both objective and subjective measures, Hungarians reward or punish the Prime Minister’s party in the traditional manner. Political shocks, including the change to an MSZP minority government, the 2006 riots, and the IMF bailout, induced increased support for the party while troops in Iraq and the election campaign led Hungarians to be less supportive of the party. Clearly, government support in Hungary can be explained in political economic terms, despite the newness of democracy and the severe economic uncertainties of the times.     

Something Old, Something New: A Historical Perspective on the Butler Review

Simon Case and Catherine Haddon demonstrate the value of contemporary history by looking at the recent Butler Report into intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in its historical context. Intelligence failures form the most visible activity of the intelligence services, yet from the policy-maker's perspective it is important that the intelligence process remains undisturbed so that the intelligence product remains useful. The intelligence effort on Iraqi WMD, as with previous changes in intelligence targets, shows the difficulties in establishing good intelligence on a new threat. Increases in demand and the centrality of intelligence put more pressure on the intelligence services. Butler has set a precedent for public awareness and therefore a desire for accountability that must be internalised by government and the intelligence services. The problems experienced over Iraq show the need for continual reappraisal by both producers and users of intelligence products, particularly in light of defence policy changes and the wider machinery of government.     

Iraq: A 'Never-Ending Nightmare'?

Malone, D. (2006) The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council 1980–2005 . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tyner, J. (2006) The Business of War . Aldershot: Ashgate.
Herring, E. and Rangwala, G. (2006) Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and its Legacy . London: Hurst & Co.
Parsi, V. E. (2006) The Inevitable Alliance: Europe and the United States beyond Iraq . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dumbrell, J. and Ryan, D. (eds) (2007) Vietnam in Iraq: Tactics, Lessons, Legacies and Ghosts . London: Routledge.     

The Reckoning: Official Inquiries and the Iraq War

The moral and political reverberations of the Iraq War of 2003 are still being felt all over the world. In the belligerent democracies of the West, official inquiries of all kinds and conditions have probed and exposed the nature of government, the reflexes of the national security state, and, most extraordinarily, the sensitive relations between rulers and intelligencers. For all parties the consequences have been severe. Focusing on Britain, and especially on the inquiries led by Lord Hutton and Lord Butler - an odd couple but a revelatory combination - this article takes stock of the reckoning.     

Corporate political action in China and America: a comparative perspective

• Corporate political action (CPA) is always an interesting topic for management scholars since 1980s. There are a large plenty of literatures from different disciplines focus on this topic. But till now, studies on this topic are almost conducted under the Western culture and taking the Western countries as objective, very few studies are conducted in non‐Western countries, and specifically, the CPA in China is nearly untouched. Due to the differences of culture and political economy between China and the West, CPA in China may be very different from the West's. This article discusses the similarities and differences of CPA in China and America. The result shows that due to the differences in culture and political economical system between China and America, CPA in China is very different from America. This study will help to understand the CPA in China for outsiders, especially for Americans. It also helps multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China to take suitable political actions to support their interests.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Evolution of Chinese Administrative Studies: Where Is the Field of Chinese Administrative Science Headed?

Is Public Administration (PA) as a field of study a basic science? If not, could PA generally and Chinese PA (CPA) in particular become a basic science or a design science? To address these questions, this essay reviews pertinent literature to underscore the major problems, basic deficiencies, and critical issues of CPA, and then reviews ongoing CPA research to shed light on its future development. Our review shows that PA lacks an intellectual core that defines the nature of public administration as a professional practice, and in turn, the nature of PA as an academic discipline. Further, while CPA bears the same deficiencies, it also suffers from three maladies, namely, reductionism, traditionalism, and conservatism, which together reinforce mediocrity. In view of all these issues and problems, where CPA is headed? Our literature review reports some ongoing research breakthroughs in CPA, including ontological confirmation of public administration nature and identification of necessary conditions for effective administrative results, which form a basis to suggest that CPA may become a basic science and design science.

     

Neoliberalism by other means: the “war on terror” at home and abroad

This paper offers a theoretical framework for understanding both the invasion of Iraq and the “war on terror” in the context of neoliberal globalization. I argue that both the foreign and domestic policy pursued by the Bush administration under the rubric of the war on terror are in fact best understood as strategies for advancing the neoliberal agenda, in large part by seeking to undo gains made by the labor movement during the 1990s. I argue that for this ambitious and aggressive administration, the post‐9/11 atmosphere offers the prospect of permanently restructuring both popular expectations of government and the ability of working people to challenge corporate prerogatives.