Price competition and the acquisition of weapons systems

The acquisition of major weapons systems by the Department of Defense shares many elements of traditional “natural monopoly” problems in that efficiency considerations often require that only a single producer exist. This article examines the costs and benefits associated with introducing added producers as a means of stimulating competition. The costs are largely those entailed in transferring technology from the firm that originally developed the system to other potential producers, costs that are concentrated at the beginning of the acquisition period. The benefits are manifested primarily in the form of possible reduced acquisition costs spread over the acquisition period. Under appropriate circumstances, the use of price competition to allocate production contracts can be cost-effective. Some familiar analytical techniques help program managers to recognize such circumstances.     

The nuclear weapons issue in the 1983 British general election

Abstract. In common with many other Western European countries, the issue of nuclear weapons rose to political prominence in Britain in the course of the 1980s. However, whereas the issue was often taken up by newly formed environmentalist parties elsewhere, it differentiated the traditional parties one from the other in Britain. This was made possible by the Labour party's manifesto commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. This article details the views of the British electorate on the nuclear issue and assesses its importance for individual voting patterns in the 1983 general election. The electorate shows itself able to distinguish between, and hold opposing views on, nuclear weapons in principle and control over them in practice. Its general support for them, however, means that Labour's perceived hostility to them cost it a considerable number of votes in net terms. These losses could have been mitigated, perhaps even turned into gains, had the party emphasised the security problems stemming from Britain's lack of control over American nuclear weapons on its soil.     

Politics and the Turkish military

As NATO prepares to expand into Eastern Europe, the military of one its longest-standing members, Turkey, is openly at odds with the country’s democratically elected government. Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, under pressure from his generals for months, has been forced to concede political power. The military’s successful challenge to civilian authority, in keeping with Turkey’s praetorian traditions, could have dangerous consequences. The very threat that it now struggles against – radical Islam – could deepen its hold on Turkish society as a result of the armed forces’ challenge to the political order.     

浅析军法从严原则的中美军事法体现

军法从严原则是各国军事法的基本原则之一，为军法的顺利实施以及军队整体战斗力的提升提供了基本保障。本文对中美两国军事法的军法从严原则进行了基本的阐述，并进行了简单的比较，旨在为我国军事法的进一步完善提供一点粗浅的建议。     

Combinatorics in the theory of utility

It used to be thought that the utility or pleasure that goods gave consumers depended on the whole on the nature of the goods and, particularly, on its quantity. This is half true, half false. The utility obtained from a set of goods depends mainly on how the goods are ordered and combined within the dynamic time sequence represented by consumption. In other words, it depends less on what the goods are and more on how the goods are positioned. Understanding this offers huge possibilities within the theory of utility--and thus of consumption--as it allows us to apply the arsenal of tools available to us in the mathematic speciality known as combinatorics, as applied to utility. If each combination of goods poses a utility, we can rank these combinations differently using ordinal criteria and real transitive preferences. From there we can establish a set of menus, from best to least poor, and, armed with this information, work out a theory of individual choice. This is in brief the purpose of this work.     

浅论军事司法功能

在深入贯彻依法治军原则的形势下，军事司法的地位更加凸显，已成为维护军事利益、保障军人合法权益的重要手段，是实现公平正义的最终救济性措施。军事司法不同于普通司法的内在结构，决定了军事司法具有不同于普通司法的特殊功能，充分认识军事司法的功能，对于完善军事司法立法、改革军事司法制度都具有极为重要的意义。     

Applying residence rules to the military

Walter P. Hollmann was for nearly twenty years chief of California’s state population research program in the Department of Finance, from which he is now resired. He and his staff were regular users of census data as well as active participants in efforts to make them more comparable through time and more relevant as administrative statistics. He was one of the organizers of the Federal-State Cooperative Program in estimates and projections.     

COVID-19 and the US military

COVID-19 has challenged US military readiness and raised some strategic concerns. Overall, however, the military's response appears to have struck a sensible and effective balance so far, establishing procedures for containing the disease while continuing deployments and crucial operations.     

The RAF and the utility of airpower

This year marks the centenary of the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force (RAF), the first independent air force, and the end of a ‘100-year experiment’. During that period, it has become clear that airpower has limitations, and the RAF and other air forces continue to face many of the same fundamental challenges.     

Assessing the Effects of Public Participation

This article presents the results of research designed to test participatory democracy assertions that high-quality public participation can affect participants' beliefs in desirable ways. It examines the relationships between exposure to quality participation and participant beliefs about the trustworthiness and responsiveness of a public agency and the value of including different viewpoints in public meetings. After participation in quality project meetings, participants were significantly more likely to believe the agency was responsive to public concerns. The results indicate that some specific aspects of quality participation are positively associated with expectations about the agency's responsiveness and performance. Positive associations were also found with tolerance for differences of opinion. These results have important implications for public administrators and theorists of participatory democracy.     

The hierarchy of military death

The Israeli government's hesitation during the Second Lebanon War (2006) and before the 2009 Gaza War to launch widespread ground operations that might result in the loss of the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers sparked criticism that the government had become overly sensitive to soldiers' lives. This criticism contended that the government considered the soldiers' lives more valuable than the lives of civilians. How can this inversion be explained? I argue that the political reality differs from the normative one, ranking soldiers rather than citizens higher on the hierarchy of risk. The hierarchy of risk on which the state positions its citizens and soldiers results from the encounter between two variables: the degree of choice available to those whom the state designates for possible death, and the political cost resulting from the choice, especially when the state fails to justify their death. The higher the group's rank in the hierarchy, the more protected it is because the state tries to minimize its exposure to risk. When the state cannot mitigate the tensions inherent between its duties toward groups placed on the highest rungs in the hierarchy, it may use excessive lethality that claims more civilian casualties from its enemy.