Terrorism and Beyond: a 21st Century Perspective

Abstract

This study examines trends in the incidence of international hostage‐barricade terrorism (HBT) since the late 1960s, the concurrent development of elite hostage rescue units (HRUs), and the relative effectiveness of American, Soviet, West European, Israeli, and other Third World responses—using dialogue or force—to HBT actions. Although HRUs have scored some dramatic rescues, three major hostage massacres in Third World countries in 1985–1986 and other bloody HBT incidents in 1988 demonstrated the high cost of using force prematurely and ineptly to resolve HBT crises. Focusing on these and other HRU failures, this study questions the American and Israeli “no‐ransom, no‐negotiation” policies in HBT situations and concludes that a more flexible approach of patiently “talking down” and “wearing down” the hostage‐takers through basic hostage‐negotiation techniques—even if only as a delaying tactic—is vital for maximizing the chances for rescuing hostages safely, whether through dialogue or force. Conversely, if authorities quickly resort to military action, hostages are far more likely to suffer casualties than to be rescued safely.     

Measuring Success in Coping with Terrorism: The Israeli Case

This article examines the degree of efficacy of Israel's antiterror policies and ability to cope with terrorism using seven parameters that fall into seven parameters: reduction in civilian casualties among Israelis and Palestinians, Israel's ability to cope economically, Israeli social cohesion, the status of international and domestic support for the Israeli government and the extent of weakening of international and domestic support for the Palestinian leadership. The article concludes that based on most of these parameters, Israel has been successful in coping with terrorism, although greater security must be attained through a change in Palestinian policies.     

Minimizing Unintended Deaths Enhanced the Effectiveness of Targeted Killing in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Targeted killing has become a primary counterterrorism measure used by a number of countries in their confrontation with lethal threats. This article focuses on the impact of unintended deaths on the effectiveness of targeted killing. The article evaluates the effectiveness of targeted killings carried out in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict theater that resulted in unintended deaths, compared to the effectiveness of targeted killings where the intended target is the sole person killed. Using multivariate analysis, we demonstrate that targeted killings with unintended deaths were followed by a greater number of suicide bombings and associated casualties compared with targeted killings with no unintended deaths. Based on these findings, nations involved in such conflicts should strive to inflict as few unintended deaths as possible, not only because it is morally right, but also because it is more effective in mitigating terrorism.     

THE IMPACT OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ON WHITEHALL

This article examines whether the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 has changed Whitehall. Based on a two‐year, ESRC‐funded study, it evaluates the impact of FOI on five characteristics of the Whitehall model: the culture of secrecy, ministerial accountability to Parliament, civil service neutrality, the Cabinet system, and effective government. Proponents of FOI hoped that government would be less secretive, more accountable and more effective; critics feared that civil servants would lose their anonymity, and collective Cabinet responsibility would be undermined. Drawing on interviews, media analysis, case law and official documents, the article finds that the impact of FOI is modest at most. It is not powerful enough to do much good or much ill, and the feared ‘chilling effect' on candour and record‐keeping has not materialized. Leaks do more damage than FOI disclosures. But ministers remain apprehensive about the effect of FOI on Cabinet records and discussions.     

Trust Management in the Finnish Ministries: Evaluation of Management Systems

Abstract

Our purpose was to find out to what extent civil servants—managers, specialists, and experts—in 13 Finnish ministries have confidence in their management systems. We defined trust as a kind of deep sentiment, more fundamental than mere acceptance, satisfaction or legitimacy. Trust and mistrust are strong motivators for cooperation and collaboration. They are logical outcomes of social interaction in terms of management systems and context. We found out that civil servants are more likely to trust management if it acts professionally with no emphasis on political factors. Ministers, for instance, can efficiently earn their trust with administrative experience and behavior norms. Our analysis showed that there are both well‐trusted and ill‐trusted components in management systems implicating that management must be the object of continuous development. As a whole civil servants have more confidence in work community than in strategy, structure, people policies, and administrative processes of the ministries.     

Economic Factors for Piracy: The Effect of Commodity Price Shocks

This study treats piracy as a civil conflict event where participants are substituting from legal work to illegal activity in response to lower commodity prices (opportunity cost effect). The analysis exploits exogenous variation in nine different commodity prices across seventeen countries around the globe. Results show that as commodity prices decrease maritime piracy attacks increase, which is consistent with results found in civil conflict literature. In the context of actual commodity shocks these piracy attacks represent increases ranging from .452 to 2.59 more attacks per year in the ordinary least squares and .495 to 20.71 attacks per year in the Poisson specification.     

ISRAELI civll service positions open to political appointments

The incidence of civil service position open to political appoinment in Israel is high by the standards of other western democracies. Moreover, there may have been an increase in the cruder forms of patronage during the current National Unity Government. Without an effective opposition, both major parties may be sharing the spoils.

Among the factors that may explain the generally high incidence of Israeli civil service positions open to political appoinment are: the failure to have developed strong nores of non-partisan professionalism in the 40 years of independence; the importance of government positions in the national economy; and the lack of a strong majority party.     

An Unbearable Price: War Casualties and Warring Democracies

Israeli society has changed its attitude to the sacrifice of life in war, a change that is reflected in the bereavement discourse. Attitudes have shifted from the unquestioned justification of military losses prior to the First Lebanon War (1982) to the emergence of an antiwar bereavement discourse after the war and during the South Lebanon war of attrition that followed it. More recently, following the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Second Lebanon War (2006), a discourse that accepts losses has emerged. While the retreat from the hegemonic discourse prior to the First Lebanon War is explained by the changing attitudes to military sacrifice among the social elites, the latter shift took place in parallel with the alteration of the social composition of the Israeli Defence Force. It is argued that the social composition of the military affects the level of sensitivity to losses. While secular upper-middle class groups tend to show a high level of sensitivity to war losses, which they then translate into a subversive bereavement discourse, religious and peripheral groups with a hawkish agenda are more tolerant of military losses, or, alternatively, may seek to avoid excessive casualties by improving the military’s performance or the quality of the political directives.

Preventing elderly suicide through primary care by community-based screening for depression in rural Japan

Depression is a major cause of suicide among the elderly. Few previous community-based interventions against depression have reduced the suicide rate. This study aims to evaluate outcomes of a community-based program to prevent suicide among the elderly using a quasi-experimental design with a neighboring reference group. The program, including depression screening with follow-up and health education through primary care and public health nursing, was implemented for 10 years in Matsudai town, a rural area of Japan (population 6,015; suicide rate per 10(5) [65-year-olds] for males 290.6, and for females 361.3). Changes in the suicide risk were estimated by the incidence rate ratio (IRR). The female risk of completing suicide in the intervention area was reduced by 70% (age-adjusted IRR: 0.30; 95% CI: 0.14-0.67), while there was no change in the risk for males in the intervention area nor for males or females in the reference area (Kawanishi town: population 9,425; elderly suicide rate for males 212.2, females 151.9). A ratio of the female IRR in the intervention area to that in its prefecture was also estimated at 0.45 (95% CI: 0.19-0.97), showing that the reduction of suicide risk in the intervention area was greater than the historical trend. A community intervention against suicide using management of depression with nonpsychiatric, primary health care would be effective for elderly females, but not males.     

PATTERNS OF GOVERNMENT FUNDING TO THIRD SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS AS REFLECTING A DE FACTO POLICY AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE SECTOR IN ISRAEL

The treatment of the Third Sector and its organizations by governments in Israel has been characterized by a lack of a declared, knowledge based and centrally planned policy. It takes a haphazard form of politically driven bargains, personally attained benefits, and reactive crisis intervention solutions. Paradoxically, the lack of planning and coordination in policymaking in issues involving the Third Sector is accompanied with an elaborate system of public funding to Third Sector organizations, a system that has developed incrementally over the years. These funding patterns have accumulated to a persistent de-facto policy towards that set of organizations.

Findings on public funding to Third Sector organizations from two major research projects—the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project and the Israeli Third Sector Database—served to analyze that de-facto policy towards the Third Sector in Israel.

The large-scale funding of Third Sector organizations and specifically service providing organizations in the fields of “Education” and “Health”, alongside with the meager support of other types of organizations imply a conception of the Third Sector as a complementary organ of government. The statist ideology this funding pattern reveals results in a non-deliberate yet unmistakable policy. It is geared towards utilizing the Third Sector to replace and complement the public sector in providing different essential services, and at the same time minimizing or ignoring other roles of the sector altogether (advocacy, innovation, development of civil society).

This policy has concrete consequences. Since government funding is the major funding source of the Third Sector in Israel, these preferences influence the nature and the composition of the sector. It strengthened the service provision tendency and increased the major role religion plays in the sector on the one hand. On the other hand it undermines the development of foundations as a significant alternative to public funding and the development of civil society.

The findings point out to some of the social origins of the Israeli Third Sector. Among these we discuss the major role these organizations played in the pre-state era, the centrality of religion in the Jewish State, the centralist and statist ideologies of the first Israeli governments and some political arrangements which still are in effect after decades. Our data show that despite the structural changes that the Israeli society and polity underwent since the 1970s, the economic structure of the sector and its public funding patterns have basically stayed the same. That is in spite of the drastic growth and diversification the sector enderwent since the 1980s. Third Sector policy too still carries a strong statist flavor, as it completely ignores the rising element of civil society.

The clear consequences of that unplanned de-facto policy raise various questions regarding the roles of the Third Sector in Israel, the necessity of a systematic public debate on these roles and the desired government policy towards the sector in light of these roles.     

The Conservatives and the Civil Service: ‘One Step Forward,Two Steps Back’?

The period since 1979 has witnessed more radical change in the civil service than in any other peacetime era in its history. Such has been the order of change that Lord Bancroft, the former Head of the Home Civil Service, has suggested that the civil service was in danger of being 'demolished' and of there being a return to the ills of the 'unreformed' service before the 1850s. This would be to take the 'two steps back' of the article's title before the Northcote-Trevelyan report and the Warren Fisher era. Against the background of this possible outcome, this article evaluates the Next Steps programme and the other initiatives promoted by recent Conservative governments, before concluding that the requirements of the work and a markedly unified career civil service need not be compatible, and that there is at least the possibility that the various changes when fully implemented could represent 'one step forward'.     

Operation Anaconda: Perception Meets Reality in the Hills of Afghanistan

The initial encounters between Al Qaeda and the U.S. military taught both a series of lessons that reverberate across the battlefields of Afghanistan today. Both sides entered the fray with preconceived ideas of their enemy—ideas that disappeared on the battlefields of the Shahi-Kot valley. The United States was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the siege of Tora Bora. Their battleplan called for a lightning fast operation using highly mobile U.S. and Afghan forces to envelop the enemy, but failures of intelligence and the fog of war transformed Anaconda into a long, slow struggle against an often invisible foe. Al Qaeda had all the advantages of terrain and defense but was unable to cause the massive casualties they thought would drive the American invaders from Afghanistan. Both sides left the battlefield with valuable lessons that have prevented any similar encounters since silence returned to the Shahi-Kot.     

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN THE UK, 1999–2005: REVOLUTIONARY FAILURE OR EVOLUTIONARY SUCCESS?

In December 1999, the UK Civil Service Management Board agreed an internal reform programme, complementing the more externally‐oriented ‘modernizing government’ programme, to bring about major changes in the functioning of the civil service –‘step change’ rather than continuous improvement. This paper suggests that the aims of the reform programme were only partially achieved. While some step changes did indeed occur, even such central elements of reform as ‘joined‐up’ working with other public organizations were still only at an initial stage some three years later and others – for example, business planning and performance management systems – have taken 20 years to achieve acceptance within the civil service. It appears that examples of meteoric change are rare in the civil service – the reality of the changes are better characterized as ‘evolution’ and ‘continuous improvement’ than ‘revolution’ and ‘step change’.     

In the Shadow of the Ombudsman: Civil Society and the Struggle for an Independent Human Rights Institution in St Petersburg,Russia

Abstract

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) have become hallmarks of good governance and democracy. Although many countries have an NHRI, it remains unclear how they operate on the regional level in political systems where democracy malfunctions and human rights are under pressure. Drawing on interviews, this essay examines how Russian nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) established a shadow Ombudsman—the Human Rights Council (HRC)—to protest against the appointment of an Ombudsman in St Petersburg and put pressure on authorities to inaugurate a new and independent Ombudsman. Although we would expect relations between the Ombudsman and NGOs to deteriorate when civil society is under pressure, this essay finds that political repression and the persona of the current Ombudsman, Alexander Shishlov, have brought civil society and the Ombudsman closer together.     

Network Politics,Political Capital,and Democracy

Abstract

Is network politics a good or a bad thing for democracy? Seen from a narrow perspective of democracy the answer is clear. It is a bad thing. However, seen from broader perpsective the answer is more complex since it does not only focus on the preservation of representative democracy but also on the promotion of organizational democracy in civil society and on the enhancement of the citizens' political capital, that is their endowment, empowerment and political identity. The complexity of the relationship between democracy and network politics is apparent in a case study of political decision making in Skanderborg, a small town in Denmark.     

How Can African Governments Reach Poor Farmers with Fertiliser Subsidies? Exploring a Targeting Approach in Ghana

African governments have been pursuing reforms to improve the targeting of fertiliser subsidy programmes, but recent experience suggests that these reforms have not ensured that subsidies reach intended beneficiaries. Using a targeting approach based on proxy means tests with carefully selected indicators, this paper suggests that Ghana’s fertiliser subsidy programmes can be targeted to the country’s poor and smallholder farmers more efficiently and more cost-effectively. While a universal subsidy in 2012 is estimated to have reached 11 per cent of poor farmers, the proposed targeting approach would have reached 70 per cent of the poor farmers in northern Ghana and 50 per cent of poor farmers in southern Ghana. Targeting reduces the costs of leakages by about 72 per cent, thus justifying the costs of administering targeted programmes using the poverty proxies. Furthermore, we show that once the initial models are constructed, the targeting approach can be used for nearly 20 years without any significant losses in accuracy. We propose that policy-makers should consider implementing this targeting approach on a pilot scale involving a few communities and, if found successful in practice, in a larger-scale programme.     

Slavery food,soul food,salvation food: veganism and identity in the African Hebrew Israelite Community

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the transformation of meaning of food items central to African American fare from symbols of slavery to means of salvation as the African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC) live out their Biblically inspired lifestyle and perfect the vegan diet at its core. Although originating in Chicago in the late 1960s, for over 40 years the institutional and residential base of this transnational millenarian community has been in the Israeli desert town of Dimona. Based on long-term ethnographic acquaintance with their foodways in Israel and in the US, our analysis follows the AHIC’s eclectic incorporation of circulating religious, political, and scientific theories into their Bible-based cosmological-nutritional tenets of regenerative health and spiritual salvation. We argue that their ‘Edenic Diet’ reacts to the traumatic history of African Americans as slaves and as a discriminated against minority in the US, by serving as a means in their struggle for place and acceptance in modern Israel and an active component in their social and spiritual plans for the future.     

Rose,Orange, and Tulip: The failed post-Soviet revolutions

In 2003–2005, democratic revolutions overthrew the Georgian, Ukrainian, and Kyrgyz post-Soviet authoritarian regimes. However, disillusioned citizens witness today their new leaders creating a Bonapartist regime, entering into open conflict with former revolutionary allies or being forced to accept cohabitation with leaders of the previous regime. This article argues that despite internationally acclaimed civic mobilisation, civil society's weakness seriously affected the three revolutionary processes. These were in fact initiated, led, controlled, and finally subordinated by former members of the authoritarian regimes’ political elite. Finally, the supposedly democratic revolutions proved to be little more than a limited rotation of ruling elites within undemocratic political systems.     

Assessing the Performance of a Court System: A Comprehensive Performance Measures Approach

Many court systems suffer from long lead times, poor service quality, and low throughput. In many cases improvements are continuously introduced through various managerial and professional methods. This article proposes a set of measures to assess the effectiveness of court systems. This set of performance measures includes response-time, throughput, and work-in-process. While court systems generate a multitude of statistical data it is difficult to apply them across individual courts.

The article tailors well established generic performance measures to the specific court arena. The individual measures are aggregated into a single figure that assesses the court's performance along the time axis and relative to comparable court systems.

The proposed measure of performance and the aggregate score were validated with real life figures from the Israeli court system.