The Church Committee Investigation of 1975 and the Evolution of Modern Intelligence Accountability

Since 1975, lawmakers have displayed four responses to the call for greater intelligence accountability on Capitol Hill. Some have taken the approach of ‘ostriches’, content to bury their heads in the sand and continue the earlier era of trust when members of Congress deferred to the decisions of the executive branch within the domains of intelligence. Others – indeed, a majority – have chosen to become unalloyed boosters for intelligence –‘ cheerleaders’ who view their job primarily as one of explaining the value of intelligence to the American people and supporting intelligence missions with robust funding and encouragement. Taking the opposite approach, another set of lawmakers – the ‘lemon-suckers’ – have consistently found fault with America's attempts to spy on adversaries or overthrow regimes that fail to accommodate US interests. Finally, some lawmakers have been ‘guardians’, striking a balance between serving as partners of the intelligence agencies on Capitol Hill and, through a persistent examination of budgets and operations, demanding competence and law-abiding behavior from these agencies. The guardian model fits best into the framework of democratic theory.     

Congressional Supervision of America's Secret Agencies: The Experience and Legacy of the Church Committee

In 1947, the United States created a modern intelligence community to guard against another surprise attack like the one at Pearl Harbor. This community consists of 13 major agencies, among them the CIA and the FBI. Concealed from public view, they pose a significant challenge to the concept of government accountability in a democratic society. This article examines the failure of congressional lawmakers to hold the secret agencies accountable during the Cold War. Contrary to recent theoretical research on legislative oversight, which suggests reasons that accountability has been strong in the United States, this study finds that a weak system of legislative review has permitted a dangerous erosion of civil liberties. The study also explores the efforts of the Church Committee in 1975 to fashion new safeguards that would reduce the probability of further abuse of power by the intelligence community.     

新时代公民教育的困境与突围

中国走向现代化强国,有赖于我国公民整体素质的提升。新时代,公民教育是中国寻求稳定向前发展的重要基石。我国的公民教育亟须根据新时代所处的多元困境进行实践突围,抓住时代洪流的机遇,坚定马克思主义的旗帜不动摇,建立适应新时代的中国特色公民教育模式。     

Interest groups in Brazil: a new era and its challenges

This article provides general and specific insights into Brazil's developing interest group system. In doing so, it presents a theoretical foundation for understanding this group activity, past and present. The general insights of the role of interest groups under limited political participation and authoritarian regimes down to the 1980s plus the period of democracy since then, provide background for the specific insights of the article. The specifics focus on three aspects of Brazil's contemporary interest group activity: (1) utilization of a neo-institutional analytical approach for understanding the interest group environment; (2) an analysis of the types of lobbying activity that takes place in Brazil today, including a case study; and (3) an assessment of the level of development of the group system by placing it in a comparative perspective with both advanced liberal democracies and other Latin American countries. The findings show that Brazil is, indeed, taking on many of the characteristics of a developed interest group system; but its past, its political culture, its political economy, and, paradoxically, its new-found status as an international power, work to present several challenges to its group system and thus to a full democratization of the country. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The CIA and congressional oversight: learning and forgetting lessons

Organizations both learn lessons and forget lessons. A lesson said to be learned by the CIA as a result of the negative reaction of congressional overseers to its interrogation program was the need to create opportunities to provide information and interact with them. The historical record shows that this was a lesson already learned. Why then the need to relearn it? It is suggested here that organizational forgetfulness may be triggered by the same factors which promote learning: perceived problems with organizational performance, opportunities to act, and people.     

新时代全面深化改革的哲学内涵

改革开放是党在新的时代条件下带领全国各族人民进行的新的伟大革命,是当代中国最鲜明的特色。作为高校的一名思想政治理论课(《马克思主义基本原理概论》课程)教师对此深受启发。全面深化改革正是以习近平同志为核心的党中央在新时期对马克思主义思想的继承和发展;是站在历史高度,结合当代中国社会现实,对马克思主义历史唯物主义方法论的灵活运用,蕴含着深刻的哲学底蕴;对指导当代中国社会实践具有重大的现实指导意义。     

新时代深入实施精准扶贫的政治意义

从2013年习近平总书记在湖南考察时正式提出精准扶贫到十三五规划的制定,不难看出党和国家对扶贫攻坚的决心和希望。2017年召开了党的十九大,报告指出中国特色社会主义正式进入新时代,也意味着中国进入了全面建成小康社会的决胜时期。而扶贫攻坚作为最后的推手也成为检验全面小康社会是否顺利建成的标准。新时代下的精准扶贫战略作为习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想的重要组成部分,从加强党的领导、保障民生、决胜全面小康、实现共同富裕四个方面体现了特殊的政治意义。     

The intelligence of fear

Intelligence agencies long have brought unwelcome news to civilian political and military masters – and sometimes suffered severely for it. Even in Western democracies, insecurities and outright fear produce behavioral responses by individuals and defensive institutional reactions that distort normal intelligence activities and affect the overall performance of intelligence agencies. Causes of fear include: political leaders, overseers, agency managers, and the security elements of their organizations. This article highlights the importance of institutional factors, especially organizational cultures and incentives, on the activities and overall performance of intelligence agencies and suggests that motivated biases, caused by personal and organizational self-interest and fears, are more significant causes of intelligence failures than are commonly believed.     

Political Science as a Broad Church: The Search for a Pluralist Discipline

In 1996 Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann published an edited collection of essays, A New Handbook of Political Science , that provides probably the best overview of the discipline of political science, at least as seen through the eyes of the mainstream of the profession. Goodin is an American working at the Australian National University, while Klingemann is a German working in Berlin. Nevertheless, their overview represents an American view of political science, which is hardly surprising as more than 75 per cent of living political scientists are American. Overall, they present a picture of the discipline as professional, pluralistic and improving rapidly. Here, we take issue with that view, not as an ambition, but as a reality. In contrast, we argue that political science, particularly US political science, is still dominated by a positivist epistemology and, particularly, by behaviouralist and rational choice approaches that are underpinned by that positivism. We begin by outlining Goodin and Klingemann's argument and critiquing it. Subsequently, we take issue with them empirically, using evidence drawn both from their own edited collection and an analysis of the contents of the two foremost US and UK journals; in the US the American Political Science Review , the American Political Science Association's main journal, and the American Journal of Political Science , and in the UK the British Journal of Political Science and Political Studies , the Political Studies Association's main journal. The methodology adopted is discussed below. In the last section, we consider the consequence of our findings for the future of political science in Britain.