The FBI,A Hundred‐Year Retrospective

No civilian government agency in the United States has received as much attention from authors as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Much of the early writing consisted of laudatory pieces that parroted the output of the agency’s extensive public relations apparatus. This was followed by a reactive era of critical literature following the Watergate scandal and the death of J. Edgar Hoover. This article surveys the key literature on this controversial agency, including both perspectives and insider memoirs, Hoover biographies, and recent scholarly works.     

A Creative and Aggressive FBI: The Victor Kravchenko Case

Surveying the FBI's investigation in 1944–46 of Victor Kravchenko, a Soviet employee of the wartime Soviet Government Purchasing Commission who defected in 1944, this article challenges the core assumptions underpinning post-9/11 recommendations intended to preclude future terrorist threats.     

Establishing A Mission-Based Culture: Analyzing the Relation Between Intra-Organizational Socialization Agents,Mission Valence,Public Service Motivation,Goal Clarity and Work Impact

ABSTRACT

This study contributes to our understanding of how organizations can craft a mission-based culture by examining the relationship between mission valence, PSM, goal clarity, and work impact. More specifically, the study assesses how value-laden communication with multiple intra-organizational socialization referents is related with the cited variables. The developed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modelling and a sample of 585 non-managerial employees employed by a public welfare organization. The findings confirm the claim that position in an organizational hierarchy is not likely to influence the analyzed relationships. The magnitude of the relationships, however, diverges. In contrast to previous research, the study results indicate that, in the case of lower-level employees, PSM is the most powerful predictor of mission valence. Furthermore, the results indicate that exposure to organizational values via interaction with internal socialization agents is positively related with their perceived importance. The results thus not only confirm the relevance of incorporating the institutional setting when analyzing mission valence, but also provide further proof for an institutional theory of PSM by highlighting that different organizational socialization agents could play a distinctive role in crafting PSM and a mission-based culture.     

9/11 and the FBI: The organizational roots of failure

Public discussion about the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks has focused on the human causes of tragedy – on individual mistakes, failures of leadership, and the power plays between intelligence officers in the field and policymakers in Washington. But closer examination of the FBI suggests that organizational weaknesses are the root cause of poor agency performance. Longstanding deficiencies in the FBI's organizational structure, culture, and incentive systems proved crippling in the 1990s, when the Cold War ended and the terrorist threat emerged. These lingering weaknesses ultimately prevented the bureau from capitalizing on 12 separate opportunities that might have disrupted the 9/11 plot.     

JFK,FBI, and CIA: playing hardball over an intelligence leak to the New York Times

On 26 July 1962, the New York Times published a front-page story by reporter Hanson Baldwin which, among many things, showed the vulnerability of Soviet land-based missiles, in the event of a first strike by the US. Drawing at least indirectly from a National Intelligence Estimate, it also showed how US intelligence had obtained that information. The story infuriated President John F. Kennedy, who believed it harmed the security of the United States. This article details an aggressive FBI investigation of who had leaked to Baldwin, as well as an initiative at the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct its own future leak investigations inside the US, both authorized by President Kennedy.     

Kerala's Ombudsman: A Mismatch of Mission and Capabilities

India, like many developing nations, has adopted many accountability institutions. One of these is the ombudsman. Originally a Swedish invention, ombudsman's offices were adopted by many countries over the last 50 years. Recently, the South Indian state of Kerala has instituted an ombudsman's office. While it has had notable successes in resolving minor cases related to local government institutions, it is severely constrained by an unresponsive state government. In particular, the Kerala ombudsman requires independent investigative powers and an expansion of its office.     

教育决策应正视世界文化和经济一体化的挑战

加入W TO,加速了我国融入世界文化和经济一体化的步伐。面对西方文化经济的强势地位,要保持中华民族的优秀文化传统并在融合中体现其特征与优势,必须提升教育决策的科学性和适应性,认真研究并处理好教育决策与行政决策、决策权与决策知识、中国文化与西方文化、传统教育与现代教育等方面的关系。     

If I only had a brain: Yip Harburg,J. Edgar Hoover,and the failures of FBI intelligence work

E. Y. Harburg, the lyricist behind The Wizard of Oz, remains one of the most important songwriters blacklisted during the Cold War. His removal from Hollywood features in the 1950s denied moviegoers a distinct American voice whose lyrics mixed humor and entertainment to champion liberal causes. From 1944–1972, Director J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau’s major field offices investigated Harburg. His declassified FBI file shows institutionalized incompetence in the way the Bureau went about writing reports, evaluating evidence, making conclusions, and conducting counter-intelligence work. Harburg’s story illuminates the battle between the left and right to shape popular culture during the Cold War. Hoover and Harburg held opposing views on politics, religion, economics, and race. Yet both men shared a fervent faith in popular culture’s capacity to transform America. Together they vied to remake the nation according to their own distinct visions – Hoover’s fear of declension stood in contrast to Harburg’s hope for radical progress.     

Pulling the Levers: Transformational Leadership,Public Service Motivation,and Mission Valence

This article contributes to our understanding of public service motivation and leadership by investigating ways in which organizational leaders can reinforce and even augment the potential effects of public service motivation on employees’ attraction to the organization’s mission (mission valence). The results contribute to two research questions. First, the findings provide new evidence on the sources of public service motivation. The authors find that transformational leadership is an organizational factor associated with higher public service motivation. Second, the article examines the relationship between transformational leadership and mission valence. The authors find that transformational leadership has an important indirect effect on mission valence through its influence on clarifying organizational goals and fostering public service motivation.     

Capitalism,Socialism and the Challenge of Degrowth: Introduction to the Symposium

This is an overview of a symposium on degrowth centred on Giorgos Kallis’ call for a socialism without growth, which insists on the need to be mindful of throughputs and the ecological consequences of any socialist project. Summarising and critically evaluating the various positions expressed by all the symposium participants, we find that Kallis’ ideas can be promising in drawing closer different Green Left perspectives, including ecosocialist, ecofeminist, and eco-Marxist. This complementarity is possible provided that degrowth proponents clearly align themselves politically on the side of the broad anti-capitalist Left and that the critiques expressed by the other symposium participants-especially with respect to Indigenous Peoples’ worldviews and practices and the dynamics that subtend the capitalist mode of production—become essential to degrowth platforms. We find already enough overlap among the diverse leftist positions represented in this Symposium for, at a minimum, continuing dialogue and, hopefully, politically beneficial mutual transformation and unification.     

Answering the Public Choice Challenge: A Neoprogressive Research Agenda

A neoprogressive research agenda is developed to challenge public choice theory's position as the new orthodoxy in both understanding and guiding policy choices about urban service delivery. Such a challenge requires more than accumulating negative empirical tests. Rather, we must accept the new burden of proof laid on proponents of progressive reform institutions by the theories of nonmarket failure and quasimarkets, ideas that undermined the intellectual pillars supporting progressive reform institutions and can only be challenged by new ideas. Public choice theory itself, broadly considered, is proposed as a valid source of such new ideas. Three research programs, in part already underway, are outlined as essential building blocks in the research agenda, focusing, respectively, on blunting the rough edges of the theory of nonmarket failure, coordinating the empirical critiques of quasimarkets in a new theory of quasimarket failure, and developing the new institutionalism so that it can provide the basis for comparing the production outcomes of alternative urban institutions.     

Poverty Reduction in A Transforming China: A Critical Review

This review essay surveys the literature that explains China’s poverty reduction progress since the late 1970s. It examines three dominant explanations: geographic conditions, economic growth, and anti-poverty policies, whose impacts on poverty have evolved with China’s socioeconomic transformation. The review finds that the government has come to play an increasingly significant part in mitigating geographic adversity and making growth more inclusive for the poor over the last two decades. However, our understanding of the political institutions and processes underpinning poverty reduction remains incomplete because most studies concentrate on national and provincial authorities but overlook the county government. As counties have gained considerable resources and authority in poverty reduction, an investigation of their capacity and efficacy is fundamental to explain their various poverty alleviation outcomes. This essay thus proposes a framework for future research that investigates county governments’ bureaucratic arrangements and their relations to society to explain their performance in poverty reduction. This essay concludes with lessons and limitations of China’s government-led poverty alleviation campaign.

     

面对经济全球化:经济特区的机遇、挑战与举措

加入ＷＴＯ ,是中国顺应世界经济全球化发展潮流 ,加快国家社会经济发展的重大战略选择 ,其结果必然是“入世”后的中国经济会更广泛更深入地融入整个国际分工体系 ,使中国面临着分享经济全球化利益的巨大机遇 ,同时 ,又不得不面对经济全球化所提出的种种挑战。具体到各个经济特区说来 ,情况也是如此 ,一方面 ,国家“入世”给经济特区全面参与经济全球化带来了前所未有的新机遇 ,另一方面 ,也对特区经济能否在国际市场的“大比拼”中站稳阵脚保持胜势提出了严峻挑战。各个经济特区能否正确把握到这种“机遇与挑战同在”的形势 ,保持清醒的认…