Strategic Horizons: Futures Forecasting and the British Intelligence Community

The article deals with the role and benefit added by the use of horizon scanning in intelligence analysis in the UK. It asserts that horizon scanning as a technique, while not entirely akin to the tradecraft of intelligence analysis, has much to contribute to its success. Specifically, is asserts that a horizon scanning function in the JIO and the Cabinet Office should be made permanent, as bureaucratic tumult in the wake of the 2010 SDSR have left the capability un-staffed, though still established. Within the UK intelligence community, such an organization may have positive roles to play in the processes of challenge, the setting of collection priorities, and overall long-term UK intelligence assessment at the national level.     

Kantian cosmopolitanism and its limits

The cosmopolitanism of the European Enlightenment was mostly a limited matter of a Eurocentric anti-nationalism promoting the ideal of Europe as an harmonious system of balancing states. Against this background, Kant’s cosmopolitan vision stands out as more inclusive because, far from restricting its concerns to Europe, it proposes to bring all of humanity together by locating its different sections in a developmental framework that runs from the most primitive of human conditions to the fullest development of Man’s moral and intellectual capacities. Like the developmental schema posited by Voltaire and the Scottish Enlightenment, this vision locates most of humanity at some distance behind Western Europe. It produces the appearance of a cosmopolitan inclusiveness by means of an equally cosmopolitan differentiation.     

Self-imposed term limits

In “Reconciling voters' behavior with legislative term limits,” Dick and Lott argue that since more senior representatives are better at rent-seeking, there is an inefficient tendency to re-elect incumbents. In their model, term limits are preferred collectively by constituencies, even though no constituency would independently oust its incumbent representative. However, many term limits are unilaterally self-imposed (in particular the 22nd amendment limiting presidents' terms to two), and their model cannot explain these limits. In this comment, I suggest that term limits may be self-imposed by risk-averse voters, who prefer cycling between left and right wing candidates to a once-and-for-all election that imposes a candidate of a single ideology on the entre electorate. The market failure that makes term limits helpful is that out of power minorities cannot bribe the median voter.     

The limits of tax and expenditure limits: TEL implementation as a principal-agent problem

Previous scholarship has shown that Tax and Expenditure Limits (TELs) often fail to constrain government growth. This paper views the implementation of TELs as a principal-agent problem. Agency theory predicts that delegation is affected by the preferences of agents and the costs of monitoring those agents. Using panel data for the US states from 1970 through 2008, I conduct an empirical test of the validity of the principal-agent model for TELs. I find that state spending limitations are only effective at cutting the growth of state and local spending under the direction of agents who have a preference for limited government. Additionally, state property tax limitations are only effective when monitoring does not require costly coordinated action. These findings contradict an alternative theory of TEL implementation that looks towards the policy’s origin. My research suggests that the arrangements of delegation determine when and under what conditions TELs effectively reduce government growth.     

Legislative term limits and state spending

Supporters of legislative term limits often claim that they will lower state spending levels. Using fiscal data from 48 states from 1977 to 2001, this paper finds little support for this assertion. Instead, this analysis finds that states with term limits have higher spending levels than states without term limits. These results suggest that term limits give legislators greater incentives to deviate from socially optimal fiscal policy by altering the legislative environment in which such policy is formulated.     

Democracy and the limits of political realism

ABSTRACT

This article explores the recent resurgence of realism in the political sciences, questioning its relevance for democratic theory. Starting from a critical review of recent works in the field, the article calls into question the relevance of empirical investigations of political reality for normative theorizing, and contends that some of the normative conclusions advanced in this literature are not warranted. More precisely, the article questions the reliability of studies of political behavior and of political opinion as a sound basis on which to draw normative inferences about democratic legitimacy. It contends that the kind of epistemic realism their authors promote cannot deliver what it promises. The article concludes by proposing an alternative interpretation of the democratic principle as a practical postulate of political reason that reconciles empirical evidence about political behavior with the classical interpretation of democratic legitimacy.     

The limits of social research

His research interests concern international housing and urban planning. His published work includes a number of edited books, most recently: Housing Markets and Policies under Fiscal Austerity; Women, Housing, and Community; The International Handbook of Housing Policies and Practices;and, forthcoming, The Deregulation of Housing.     

Contribution limits and the effectiveness of campaign spending

Much work on the apparent ineffectiveness on incumbent spending in congressional elections has hypothesized that the productivity of incumbent spending is low because incumbents operate on the “flat part” of their election returns function. Differences in campaign spending associated with state campaign finance laws allows for a test of this hypothesis because restrictions on campaign contributions tend to reduce campaign spending. Exploiting cross-state variation in campaign finance laws, this study tests whether campaign expenditures by state House candidates are more productive when candidates are subject to contribution limits. The results show that campaign expenditures by incumbents and challengers are more productive when candidates run in states with campaign contribution limits, as opposed to in states without limits. In states with contribution limits, incumbent spending and challenger spending are equally productive, and spending by both candidates is quantitatively important in increasing their vote shares.     

Democracy and modern political community: limits and possibilities

There are various limits to what is politically possible. The exigencies of economic production and exchange represent one crucial limit to possible political structures. Inherited Marxist and liberal conceptions of the relation between economic systems and political structures are incoherent; these relations need to be reconceived, yet recent socialist political thinking has preferred to focus mainly on the political domain, pursuing a theory of self-governing community. Can there today be a coherent account of such a theory? One way of showing there cannot is by pressing the question of the contours an dsubstance of modern political community. Optimistic theorists of self-governing community rely on a self-enclosed, determinate conception of community that has its imaginative roots in a vision of ancient liberty: the demos exercising legitimate and effective agency over a particular territory. But modern political community cannot be conceived of in this way: because of the presence of global processes of economic causality, there is today no fit between the territorial identity of a political community and its effective powers of agency. Modern liberty (unlike its ancient counterpart) has no specific or determinate location: its availability depends upon an elaborate division of economic and political labour. In these circumstances, it no longer makes sense to heighten the stakes of membership in a political community, as optimistic theorists of democracy do when they call for a more active and participatory civil society. The for appraising what forms of the division of political labour may be legitimate.     

Needs,welfare and the limits of associationalism

This paper presents a critical account of current associationalist proposals for welfare reform. It argues that contrary to the associationalists' own case, the institutional structure suggested by associationalism would not better provide for the needs of welfare recipients. After a detailed exposition of the fundamental claims of proponents of associational welfare, the paper challenger two of the key normative judgements that underlie the associational project. First, it criticizes the associationalist tendency to emphasize unregulated choice in welfare provision, arguing that such a settlement would ignore the important disinction between ‘needs’ and ‘preferences’. Second, it rejects the associationalists' acceptance of significant inequalities in welfare provision, suggesting that such inequlities would, almost by conceptual definition, leave many recipients' needs unfulfilled. The paper concludes by indicating that any proposed welfare reform intended to enhance provision for needs should be located within the current statist tradition.