Advanced technology and public policy: Multinational weapons acquisition

This article's purpose is to examine the role of institutions in the innovation and dissemination of advanced technology in the international policy arena, focusing specifically upon multinational cooperation in the acquisition of advanced technology weapons. The analysis examines interrelationships among different national public policy processes and compares cross-nationally the role of governmental and non-governmental organizations in policy formulation. An analytic framework for comparative analysis of organizational objectives is developed and then applied to four cases of multinational cooperation. Based upon the results of this comparative analysis, the article's conclusion sets forth some observations potentially applicable to a policy aimed at furthering transatlantic cooperation in particular, and more generally, to public policy and technology.This is a revised version of a paper originally prepared for a Technology and Public Policy Workshop held under the auspices of the Technology and Policy Program at MIT on 16–17 February 1979. The sponsorship of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. The author particularly wishes to thank Peter deLeon for his asistance and encouragement. The research was performed under grants from The Brookings Institution, while the author was a Fellow with the Defense Analysis Staff, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Readers should take careful note of the fact that the views expressed in this paper are those of the author alone and do not reflect official positions of the US Government or its component agencies, nor are these views necessarily shared by The Brookings Institution or the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.     

Constraints, states, and wars

Abstract. The rational choice assumption is already disputable at the individual level of decisionmaking. At the level of collective decision-making unitary rational action is an unrealistic assumption. It neglects the transitivity of collective preferences issue, the logic of collective action and freeriding, the agency problem, and the human tendency to agree with each other irrespective of the facts. While unitary rational action is rejected as a basis for theorizing on international relations and war, the idea of decision-making under constraints seems as valid in the interstate context as in economics. The most important constraints on national security decision-making are the anarchical character of the international system and the corresponding need for self-help, the security and the territorial delimitation dilemmas, the presence or absence of plausible blueprints for victory, and the presence or absence of domestic constraints on bellicosity. A simple explanatory model of war built on these ideas is suggested and tested with dyadic data for the 1962–1980 period. In addition, there is some discussion of why collective security is doomed to fail, and why hegemony rather than balance improve the prospects of peace.     

Problems,politics, and policy streams in policy implementation

We apply Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) to policy implementation to reflect a nested process separate from but interdependent with policymaking. Then, we generate a hypothesis concerning the conditional nature of problems, policies, and politics stream impacts on policy implementation. We test our hypotheses with state‐level implementation of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, using a pooled data set of 10 years of toxic releases data. Findings suggest an important interaction occurs among problems, policies, and politics during the policy implementation process. More specifically, when any of the three is held at median levels, only marginal differences in outputs occur; however, when all three are increased to extreme levels, substantive differences emerge. Conclusions connect policy implementation to larger issues of MSF theoretical development and suggest implications for governance.     

British attitudes on nuclear weapons

• In an increasingly unstable world post‐911, the political landscape seems to be continually shifting, with many of the old certainties around combatants and how to wage war being subject to revision—not least the role of nuclear weapons in a post‐Cold War age. But have our attitudes towards the development and use of nuclear weapons fundamentally changed over the past 50 years? Andy Byrom, Associate Director at Ipsos MORI, examines data from the previous half‐century which lead to some surprising conclusions.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hypersonic weapons and strategic stability

Hypersonic weapons, which combine the speed of the fastest ballistic missiles with the manoeuvrability of cruise missiles, will enter the arsenals of China, Russia and the US over the next five years. Whether their arrival starts an action–reaction cycle in military spending or further weakens crisis stability may depend on whether the countries building these weapons can agree on ways to control their proliferation.     

Williamson Murray's wars: A review essay

Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. xix, 494, £33.50 or $50 (hb); £13.20 or $19.50 (pb).