Documentation: Space-Based Solar Power as an Opportunity for Strategic Security

Preventing resource conflicts in the face of increasing global populations and demands in the 21st century are high priorities for the United States Department of Defense. All solution options to these challenges should be explored, including opportunities from space. In 2007, the National Security Space Office's Advanced Concepts Office presented the idea of space-based solar power as a potential grand opportunity to address not only energy security, but environmental, economic, intellectual, and space security as well. First proposed in the late 1960s, the concept was last explored in NASA's 1997 “Fresh Look” Study. In the decade since this last study, advances in technology and new challenges to security have warranted a current exploration of the strategic implications of space-based solar power. For these reasons, the National Security Space Office sponsored a no-cost Phase 0 Architecture Feasibility Study of space-based solar power in 2007.     

Fighting for relevance: Economic intelligence and special operations executive in Spain, 1943–1945

This article examines the work of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Spain during the latter part of the Second World War. Unlike SOE's broad mandate to sow dissent and disarray in occupied countries, in Spain agents were forbidden from any involvement in direct action and sabotage. Diplomatic concerns, namely the maintenance of Spanish neutrality in the war, overrode all other strategic issues in Iberia. SOE agents and leaders in Madrid, therefore, attempted to create a different role for themselves. Drawing on files released in the Public Record Office in 1998, the article highlights SOE's limited success in the effort to establish for itself a part in the Allied strategic and diplomatic campaign against German wolfram smuggling. Success proved fleeting, however, and SOE's ultimate failure, in the face of hostility from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), to prove its usefulness beyond the wolfram campaign, would lead to its withdrawal from Spain. The story of the SOE in Spain represents, on a small scale, the failure of the organization to find a niche in the British intelligence community after the Second World War.     

Echoes of Butler? The Conservative Research Department and the Making of Conservative Policy

Although it remains a comparatively little known institution, the Conservative Research Department (CRD) has played an important role in modern British political history. The last few years have seen a remarkable revival in its fortunes. In several important respects, this revival echoes that of the Department under the chairmanship of Rab Butler following the election defeat of 1945. This article examines some of the parallels to be drawn between the experience of the CRD between 1945 and 1951 and between 2001 and the present. It concludes by drawing some general conclusions about how the Conservative party should develop policy when in opposition.     

‘Close and continuous liaison’: British anti-communist propaganda and cooperation with the United States, 1950–51

In January 1948 the British government launched a new anti-Communist propaganda policy, and established a new Foreign Office Information Research Department (IRD) to coordinate that policy. This article examines the extent to which anti-Communist propaganda was coordinated with Britain's principal Cold War ally the United States, following the launch of America's own anti-Communist propaganda offensive, the ‘Campaign of Truth’ in 1950. It traces the policy and organizational machinery for cooperation which was established in 1950 and examines the implementation of the policy for ‘close and continuous liaison’ in London, Washington and in the field.     

British intelligence in the twentieth century

SIR STEPHEN LANDER, the Director-General of the Security Service, describes his Service's approach to the management of its archives which is based on its obligations under the 1958 Public Record Act. In this article, he indicates the quantity and type of records held by the Service and, illustrating with some examples, explains his Service's current file retention and release policies. The systematic programme of file releases to the Public Records Office, begun by the Security Service in 1997, has resulted in a considerable amount of intelligence archive material being placed in the public domain.     

‘A poor thing but our own’: The Joint Intelligence Committee and Ireland, 1965–72

This article explores the role of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in assessing the development of the Northern Ireland crisis from the mid-1960s until the imposition of direct rule in 1972. It argues that the JIC's very limited engagement with Northern Ireland prior to 1969 contributed significantly to Whitehall's failure to grasp the drift of affairs from the autumn of 1968 onwards. This was due to the JIC's preoccupation with Cold War issues, compounded by reluctance to interfere in the security affairs of the Northern Ireland government. When Northern Ireland became a stock item of JIC business in 1970, the JIC secretariat became heavily involved in efforts to improve the intelligence system in Northern Ireland. The article also raises the question of the JIC's role in establishing the parameters for intelligence and security operations concerning Northern Ireland, including the controversial `Five Techniques' of interrogation, the introduction of internment in 1971, and covert activities in the Republic of Ireland. The article draws mainly on JIC, Prime Minister's Office and Foreign Office records in the National Archives.     

Investigating soviet espionage and subversion: the case of Donald Maclean

This essay sets out the dimensions of investigating Soviet espionage and subversion, highlighting how Maclean's image as a Soviet agent has developed over the past 50 years. It will then consider to what extent new documents at the Public Record Office alter his image. Maclean's crime was treachery but what exactly is the intellectual challenge in investigating espionage? Just what can be achieved? Sir Dick White former head of MI6 offered this advice: Espionage is a crime that often leaves no trace of evidence. The investigator relies upon intuition for coincidences. After considering the circumstances, he might reach the moment of epiphany when all the facts added up to one conclusion¹     

‘Utterly Disgraceful’: Social Media and the Workplace

Social media use by Australian public servants has given rise to questions pertaining to their political rights, impartiality and privacy outside of work. Drawing on the recent case Starr v Department of Human Services these issues are explored. The findings suggest that social media use has heightened tensions around public servant's rights to comment on issues of the day, and its use by employees both inside and beyond the workplace remains contested terrain.     

‘… the Defence of the Realm and Nothing Else’: Sir Findlater Stewart,Labour Ministers and the Security Service

In May 2013, a report on the British Security Service (MI5) by Sir Samuel Findlater Stewart was released by the Cabinet Office. Dated November 1945, the report on the future organization and activities of MI5 was significant in that it defined the Service's post-war remit, accountability and relations with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), laying the groundwork of MI5's mandate until the introduction of the Security Service Act in 1989. The article also suggests that the report is significant, not just because it sheds important light on MI5's wartime and post-war role, but because it helps question existing assumptions about the relationship between the Security Service and the post-war Labour Government of Clement Attlee, often viewed as a troubled one.     

Democratization,regional integration,and human rights: the case of the ASEAN intergovernmental commission on human rights

Abstract

In the post‐Cold War era, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has attempted to maintain and enhance its institutional status in the Asia‐Pacific by increasing its membership and range of activities. ASEAN has tried to assume significant responsibilities for regional security and economic relations through initiatives like the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and by demanding a major role in the Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. This paper critically evaluates ASEAN's attempts at institutional expansion. It argues that ASEAN lacks the political, economic and military resources necessary to play the dominant role that it envisions for itself within the Asia‐Pacific. Its attempts to increase its diplomatic weight by increasing its membership actually have the potential to undermine ASEAN's unity as well as its standing in the world community. The East Asian economic crisis is largely exacerbating ASEAN's inherent weaknesses. If ASEAN is to remain relevant in the twenty‐first century its members need to modify their expectations of the level of international influence that ASEAN can afford them. They must also use ASEAN to directly address issues of dispute between member states. There is little evidence that ASEAN's members are prepared to reform the organization in this way. Therefore, ASEAN is likely to lose its pre‐eminent regional status to other institutions, and may even fade into irrelevance, in the next century.     

Framing lobbying messages: defining and communicating political issues persuasively

• The concept of product positioning is well established in the commercial communication sphere, as are the notions of issue definition and agenda setting in the field of political science. Less thoroughly researched, though, is an area which intersects these two fields—the way in which lobbyists use language in order to frame policy issues so as to position their organization and its policy preferences to greatest effect. Lobbyists consciously frame and define issues in an effort to encourage policy makers both to share the lobbyist's perspective on a given policy problem, and to suggest to those policy makers what policy solution ought to be adopted. In doing so, they explicitly draw upon ideas and practices more commonly associated with other forms of commercial communication such as advertising and marketing. This paper suggests that the use of language by lobbyists is a potentially fruitful field for both academics and practitioners interested in political communication broadly defined—indeed, lobbying is essentially a form of persuasive communication in the political arena. It is well understood that how political issues are presented is an important factor in the extent to which an issue will be supported; this paper focuses on how lobbyists make use of this understanding in their efforts to achieve a desired policy outcome.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking the Europe‐Taiwan relationship

This article attempts to construct an overview of Japan's defence problematique in the post‐cold war era. Its approach is to survey the historical legacies that have shaped Japan's defence policies and perceptions, and to assess how these fit, or do not fit, with the new security environment within which Japan now finds itself. The purpose is to argue that a policy of non‐offensive defence (NOD) could solve many of the difficult defence questions that Japan now faces. As a consequence, the discussion will concentrate mainly on military and political issues, mostly leaving aside questions of economic, societal and environmental security on the grounds that these issues interact less strongly with NOD. Section 1 considers the geopolitics of Japan's security that arise from its being an island country. Section 2 analyses some crucial historical considerations, particularly Japan's status as a great power, and the particular circumstances of its historical relationship with its neighbours. Section 3 looks at Japan's position during the cold war, examining how the legacies of its defeat in the Second World War blended into the demands placed upon it as a front‐line ally of the United States against Chinese and Soviet power. Section 4 surveys the actual and possible changes in Japan's security environment consequent upon the ending of the cold war. It focuses on Japan's relationships with the United States, the East Asian region, the international system as a whole, and finally on Japan's relationship with itself. Section 5 considers the requirements for a Japanese defence and security policy in the post‐cold war era.     

The economy of qualities

The aim of this paper is to highlight the main characteristics of what the authors call 'the economy of qualities'. The authors show that qualifying products and positioning goods are major concerns for agents evolving within the 'economy of qualities'. Competition in such an economy is structured through two basic mechanisms. The first is what the authors propose to call the process of singularization of products. The second is the mechanism whereby consumers are attached to, and detached from, goods that are proposed to them. At the heart of these logics, one can find multiple socio-technical devices that are designed by economic agents, which ensure the distribution of cognitive competencies, and which constantly and finely tune supply and demand. Relying upon Jean Gadrey's work, the authors claim that the economy of qualities is nowhere more effective than in services providing activities, and especially in those sectors that invest heavily in New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Finally, the authors suggest that, in the economy of qualities, the functioning and the organization of markets are issues that are shared by scholars and actors. In these highly reflexive markets, a collaboration between them is needed.     

Transitions in Defense Management Reform: A Review of the Government Accountability Office’s Chief Management Officer Recommendation and Comments for the New Administration

The Government Accountability Office believes the answer to the U.S. Defense Department’s persistent management problems is to be found in the creation of a new position, chief management officer, to oversee defense business transformation. The recommendation for this position is reviewed and used to raise questions and spur inquiry in the areas of evidence‐based reform, the relationship between policy and administration, auditor overreach, and sustaining reforms through transition. The latter portion is expanded in this time of transition, and recommendations are made to the new administration to develop a management agenda, to the defense career executives to facilitate the transition, and to the next comptroller general to consider how the Government Accountability Office’s varied roles produce outputs that align with the desired outcomes in both the policy and administration domains.     

Decentralization,local governance and centre–periphery conflict in Sierra Leone

Issues of centralization–decentralization and centre–periphery resource distribution are frequent administrative and political concerns which can have, upon occasion, very profound consequences for the stability of a society. An analysis of recent events in Sierra Leone demonstrates their significance. On 25 May, 1997 the country's first democratically elected government in almost 30 years was overthrown after little more than a year in office by a group of rebellious military officers. Most commentators have attributed this turn of events simply to military disgruntlement. In fact, a careful analysis demonstrates that the central government's commitment to decentralization and the strengthening of local governance exacerbated the centre–periphery conflict issues that have plagued the country since its independence and thus were the real underlying causal factors. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does agency competition improve the quality of policy analysis? Evidence from OMB and CBO fiscal projections

Public management scholars often claim that agency competition provides an effective institutional check on monopoly authority, and hence, leads to improvement of administrative performance in public sector agencies. This logic was central for creating the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 1975 to challenge the policy information provided by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). We challenge this conventional wisdom by demonstrating that CBO has failed to enhance the quality of U.S. fiscal policy analysis on its own terms; nor has it spurred improvements in OMB's performance. Our empirical results indicate that the quality of OMB's fiscal projections has often deteriorated since the establishment of CBO as a rival bureau. We also show that both public and private information is being shared by these agencies to produce a similar caliber of task outputs. The broader implications of our study indicate that although politicians face incentives to employ agency competition in governmental settings, this type of bureaucratic strategy does not necessarily enhance the quality of administrative performance. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Schumpeter's economic theory and the dynamic accounting view of the firm: neglected pages from the Theory of Economic Development

Abstract

The first English translation of some of Schumpeter's (1926) pages of the Theory of Economic Development is presented. These neglected pages are remarkable because they significantly add to Schumpeter's masterpiece on a number of issues concerned with accounting, law and economics of the firm. They show that Schumpeter considered understanding the firm, together with innovation, as important scientific problems. Schumpeter doubts the explanatory value of proprietary entrepreneurship and provides an early justification of the dynamic entity view of business activity generated by the firm as a becoming concern. He discusses its implications for understanding issues of economic organization and corporate governance, and suggests some theoretical insights concerning business capital and money under conditions of real dynamics and complexity. The doors opened by Schumpeter indicate that money and accounting are fundamentally coupled as complementary institutions in framing and shaping the economic and monetary process of the firm as an enterprise entity.     

Durkheim's ‘Two laws of penal evolution’

Two types of recent contributions to the discussion of a ‘crisis’ in law recall issues in Weimar labour law. Wolfgang Teubner and others propound a ‘reflexive law’ patterned on the multiple constitutions of collective labour law; and American ‘critical legal studies’ dismiss legal reasoning and press for frankly ‘altruistic’ policy-making in the courts. The Weimar controversy over the extent to which ‘works-community’ supercedes the legal attributes of the employment relationship as specified by the older law of contract shows, first, that the characteristic collectivism and institutionalism of the socialist labour movement's legal strategy was premissed on a complementary political conception of the organization of labour, and, second, that Socialist lawyers defended a legal discourse which was critical of prevailing doctrine but grounded in its systematizations, as essential to their struggle against the amorphous, nominally altruistic reading of the employment relationships which the German courts and then the Nationla Socialist regime imposed upon labour. Their recognition of the problems posed by deficient or excessive politicization of law makes them again important, notwithstanding their political defeats, and their survivors' disillusionment.     

Results of the Office of Policy's 2001 User Satisfaction Survey

In the summer of 2001, individuals who had an active professional interest in research or policy issues related to Social Security or to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) were surveyed by the Gallup Organization, under contract to the Social Security Administration (SSA). The survey had two goals. One was to determine the extent to which SSA's research, statistical, and policy analysis work was focusing on topics and issues of widespread concern to users. The other was to gauge user satisfaction with the products of that work. Most of SSA's research and analysis is carried out by the Office of Policy. Responses were obtained from 1,043 persons out of a sample of 1,800. Respondents were most likely to have been interested in Social Security or SSI issues for at least 10 years, to have used information from SSA multiple times during the preceding 2 years, and to have worked for the government, a college or university, or a nonprofit service organization. Results suggest that most users were satisfied with the quality of SSA's research, statistical, and policy analysis information products. Overall, 86 percent of those who had used products from SSA in the preceding 2 years were very or somewhat satisfied, 10 percent were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and only 4 percent were somewhat or very dissatisfied. 70 percent to 89 percent of users were satisfied with the accuracy, clarity, comprehensiveness, objectivity, timeliness, usefulness, and ease of finding the information. They were most satisfied with accuracy and objectivity and least satisfied with timeliness and the accessibility of products. 62 percent of respondents were very or somewhat satisfied with SSA's identification of and work on new and emerging research and policy issues over the past 2 years, 24 percent were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and 15 percent were somewhat or very dissatisfied. Respondents were asked to characterized their professional interests in two ways--as related primarily to Social Security, SSI, or both programs, and as related primarily to retirement issues, disability issues, or issues in both areas. Satisfaction varied, sometimes substantially, with professional interests. On all measures, Social Security specialists were more satisfied than SSI specialists, and retirement specialists were more satisfied than disability specialists. Note that of respondents interested primarily in the SSI program, 93 percent were also more interested in disability issues. The survey asked users to recommend ways of improving SSA's research, statistical, and policy analysis, and to recommend issues for SSA's research and policy agenda in the near future. Only 39 percent of users offered recommendations for improvement, and of those recommendations, no single issue predominated. In general, the most common recommendations were for increased data analysis in particular areas and for improved dissemination of information. A large proportion of respondents (77 percent) suggested issues that SSA should include in its research and policy agenda. Although the recommendations were quite diverse, two types appeared to dominate--disability issues and programs, and Social Security solvency and reform proposals. Some of the suggestions for disability research and policy work seem to suggest that the lower satisfaction ratings of specialists in this area reflect generalized dissatisfaction with the structure and administration of disability programs themselves rather than dissatisfaction with the quality of SSA's research and policy products. The Office of Policy is developing specific proposals for improving products and services, based on the survey's findings. By improving the quality and content of its statistical and analytical information, SSA will continue its efforts to meet the needs of a diverse research and policy community.     

Bringing accountability for results to government in British Columbia

In British Columbia, Canada, an initiative is underway to introduce results-focused accountability reporting for government ministries and Crown corporations. This significant change is coming about through a unique collaboration of government, the Legislative Assembly, and the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia. This article describes: the background leading to the initiative; the conceptual framework, including the areas of government covered by the initiative and the methods of accountability reporting; the issues around implementation of results-focused government, including education and cultural change at administrative and political levels; and the success of the initiative to date. While the real success of this initiative will only be evident in a few years' time, the coming together of many parts of government to develop a common vision of what government should look like, and the development of a better understanding by all the parties to this process of one another's position and priorities, are already paying dividends.