Reviews

Book reviews: Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler, How History Is Bought, Packaged and Sold (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow)     

Royal Commissions in Australia: When Should Governments Appoint Them?

The Cole Royal Commission into AWB sales of wheat to Iraq once again draws attention to questions of when should governments resort to ad hoc inquiries and, in particular, establish royal commissions with their associated prestige and statutory powers to call and examine witnesses and require presentation of documents. In this article, Dr Scott Prasser, author of ‘Royal Commisions and Public Inquiries in Australia (Lexis Nexis 2006) examines the use of royal commissions and other investigatory/inquisitorial instruments of executive government by Commonwealth and state governments.     

Local policy networks in France and Britain: Policy co‐ordination in fragmented political Sub‐Systems

This article applies the concept of local policy networks to understand the emergence of local governance in France and Britain. Although the concept of policy networks needs to be used with caution, it is a useful way of mapping out the complex interdependencies of local decision makers in both states. Traditional approaches to central‐local politics in Britain and France emphasised the contrasts between the two countries, and while these continue, Cole and John argue that recent institutional and policy changes suggest a convergence to a more complex institutional environment and more decision making based on networks between organisations.     

Book Reviews

Book review in this Article
Alan Scott, Ideology and the New Social Movements
Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler (eds), Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies
Phyllis Johnson and David Martin, Apartheid Terrorism
Joseph Hanlon (ed.), The Sanctions Report: Documents and Statistics
Inter-governmental Group of Commonwealth Ministers, Banking on Apartheid
Keith Ovenden and Tony Cole, Apartheid and International Finance: a Program for Change
Steven B. Smith, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context
Hiroshi Uchida, Marx's Grundrisse and Hegel's Logic
Paul Owen Johnson, The Critique of Thought: a Re-examinaiton of Hegel's Science of Logic
Aryeh Botwinick, Skepticism and Political Participation     

Are the gatekeepers of memory awake?

Book reviews: Cole, Tim, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler, How History Is Bought, Packaged and Sold (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Finkelstein, Norman G., The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Novick, Peter, The Holocaust in American Life (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Sniderman, Paul M. and Edward G. Carmines, Reaching beyond Race (reviewed by John A. Kirk); Barbieri, William A. Jr, Ethics of Citizenship: Immigration and Group Rights in Germany (reviewed by Gregg Kvistad)     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: National Resources Planning Board Report : A Post -War Plan and Programme for the United Stated of America . The Problem of Germany . Report by a Chatham House Group. Royal Institute of International Affairs. Education and the United Nations. Report of a joint Commission of the London International Assemblly and Council for Education in World Citizenship. Need Germany Survive ? By Julius Braunthal . The Armistice of 1918. By Sir Frederick Maurice . Plan for Britain , Essays prepared for the Fabian Society, by G. D. H. Cole , Aneurin Beevan , M.P., Jim Griffiths , K. P., L. F. Easterbrook , Sir William Beveridge , Harold j. Lask . Documents on International Affairs , 1938. Vols. 1 and 2. 518 and 365 pp. By Momica Curitis.     

The Ethics of Immigration

This review essay examines recent work in political theory on the ethics of immigration admissions. It considers arguments put forward by Michael Walzer, Peter Meilaender and David Miller, among others, for state control of borders. Such arguments tend to appeal to the value of political communities and/or the exclusion rights of democratic associations, and I argue that neither of these are successful. Turning to work by Joseph Carens, Phillip Cole, Michael Dummett and others who advocate open or much more open borders, the article considers various arguments that would support this stance, including appeals to freedom of movement, utilitarianism and social justice. I argue that rights to immigration need embedding in global principles of resource redistribution. In the conclusion I sketch a cosmopolitan approach to immigration by which impartial criteria such as population density and gross domestic product would determine how many migrants states have a duty to admit.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviews in this article: Engllishness : Politics and Culture , 1880–1920. Edited by Robert Colls and Philip Dodd . The Scottish Trades Union Congress . The First Eighty Years : 1897–1977. By Angela Tuckett . Scotland : The Case for Optimism . By Jim Sillars . Atrocity and Amnesia : The Political Novel Since 1945. By Robert Boyers . Thinkers of the New Left . By Roger Scruton . Bringing the State Back In . Edited by Peter Evans , Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol . The Nation -State and Violence . By Anthony Giddens . The Political Economy of Corporatism . Edited by Wyn Grant . A World in Crisis ? Geographical Perspectives . Edited by R. J. Johnston and P. J. Taylor . The Artful Albanian : The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha . Edited by Jon Halliday . Margaret Cole 1893–1980: A Political Biography . By Betty D. Vernon Duff Cooper : The Authorized Biography . By John Charmley .     

Book Reviews

Book reviews: Barkan, Peter, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historcal Injustices (reviewed by Matthew Dodd); Tokar, Brian (ed.), Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering (reviewed by John Dupré); Powell, Lawrence N., Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, The Holocaust, and David Dukes's Louisiana (reviewed by Clive Webb); Pinto, António Costa, The Blue Shirts: Portuguese Fascists and the New State (reviewed by Alexander G. Nesterov); Kershen, Anne J. (ed.), Language, Labour and Migration (reviewed by Mike Cole); Holt, Thomas C., The Problem of Race in the Twenty-first Century (reviewed by Andrew M. Kaye); Kline, Wendy, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (reviewed by Dan Stone)     

Private tax collection—remnant of the past or a way forward? Evidence from rural Uganda

This article examines the growing role and impacts of private tax collection under fiscal decentralisation in Uganda. Based on evidence from six rural councils, three aspects of privatised tax collection are examined: (i) the impact on the nature of fiscal corruption; (ii) the problem of overzealous collection; and (iii) the challenge of assessing revenue potentials. While possibly meeting short‐term demands for local revenue growth and stability, the present form of private tax collection appears to transform the nature of fiscal corruption by reducing corruption at collection point and transferring the problem into the district administration. Moreover, while the charge of overzealousness permeates historical and theoretical work on privatised tax collection, the Ugandan experience casts doubt on its general validity. Instead, perverse distributional effects are the most likely cause of deteriorating state‐citizen relations in rural Uganda. Finally, the article considers the merit of the prediction of private collection as a preferred contractual choice for certain indirect taxes, suggesting that problems of asymmetric information in assessing the revenue yields of most rural markets are exaggerated. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A review of security and privacy concerns in digital intelligence collection

In recent years, government leaks have brought many alleged potential privacy violating intelligence collection programs to the public arena. Intelligence collection can affect the privacy rights of citizens from any country. While the concept of privacy is a complicated one, United States citizen privacy is protected by various policies and laws. This paper reviews these alleged intelligence collection programs, as well as specific laws set in place to protect privacy. Also presented are discussions on public opinion and whether or not digital intelligence collection are providing a safer environment for Americans.     

Professionalizing clandestine military intelligence in Northern Ireland: creating the Special Reconnaissance Unit

This article explains the origins of the British Army’s covert counter-insurgency intelligence efforts in Northern Ireland, and shows how the army professionalized its approach to clandestine intelligence collection there. It traces the pre-1969 precedents for covert collection. It also shows that the early ad hoc efforts proved insufficient and problematic; some collection operations were exposed and compromised. Thus, the army decided to ‘professionalize’ the clandestine collection of intelligence, and created a special body–the Special Reconnaissance Unit–to handle the task. This laid the foundations for later intelligence successes and for current army intelligence doctrine.     

Mayoral Public Sector Work Experience and Tax Collection Performance in Colombian Local Governments

ABSTRACT

Local governments in Latin America tend to have limited capacity to collect taxes. Existing theory explains tax collection performance as a function of political, socio-economic, and cultural factors. Yet across Latin America, tax collection performance varies greatly between localities that are similar along these dimensions. We suggest that organizational capacity, represented by managers' human capital, explains variation in local tax collection performance. We test this theoretical idea against panel data on most Colombian local governments, where elected mayors are the top managers determining the local tax collection strategy. We examine two indicators of tax collection performance: (1) the per-capita amount of property tax collected and (2) property tax collected as a percentage of total property valuation. Controlling for important confounders, the length of the mayor's prior public sector work experience is positively associated with the per-capita amount of property tax collected but not the percentage of total property valuation collected in property tax. Our results suggest that Colombian mayors gain relevant skills over their career. Our study has implications for other developing countries with a similar property tax collection system.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
G overnment and P arliament : a S urvey from the I nside . By H erbert M orrison , P.C., C.H., M.P.
G erman M arxism and R ussian C ommunism . By J ohn P lamenatz .
S ocialist T hought: M arxism and A narchism . 1850–1890. By G. D. H. Cole.
T he C hallenge of S ocialism . Edited by H enry P elling .
S ocial M obility in B ritain . Edited by D. V. G lass .
L a F onction P ublique . By R oger G régoire .
T he T ransfer of P ower in I ndia . By E. W. R. Lumby.
H itler's E urope: S urvey of I nternational A ffairs , 1939-1946. Edited by A rnold and V eronica T oynbee .
D ocuments on I nternational A ffairs , 1939-1946. Vol. II. Edited by M argaret C arlyle .
L egal C ontrols of I nternational C onfict . A Treatise on the Dynamics of Disputes- and War-Law. By J ulius S tone .
P olitics in P ost -W ar F rance . By P hilip W illiams .     

Is the Tax Collection Effort an Indicator of the Financial Condition of Spanish Municipalities?

ABSTRACT

The financial crisis beginning in 2007 drastically affected the financial resources of different governmental organizations, causing critical imbalances between resources and expenditure needs. This study aims to analyze whether the municipal tax collection effort in Spain could be an indicator of the financial condition of these institutions. As a preliminary step, a new methodology is used to assess their financial condition. We test tax collection effort as an indicator on a sample of more than 5,000 Spanish municipalities with fewer than 75,000 inhabitants. Results confirm that the budgetary solvency dimension is associated with the tax collection effort for all municipalities studied. Furthermore, in municipalities with populations of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, the level of the tax collection effort is indicative of most of the financial condition dimensions.     

What's the Harm? The Ethics of Intelligence Collection

Abstract

As the professional practice of intelligence collection adapts to the changing environment and new threats of the twenty-first century, many academic experts and intelligence professionals call for a coherent ethical framework that outlines exactly when, by what means and to what ends intelligence is justified. Reports of abuse at detention centres such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the ever increasing use of technological surveillance, and the increased attention on the use of torture for intelligence collection purposes have all highlighted a need to make an explicit statement about what is and what is not permissible intelligence practice. In this article an ethical framework will be established which will outline under what circumstances the use of different intelligence collection activities would be permissible. This ethical framework will first underline what it is about intelligence collection that is ‘harmful’ and, therefore, should be prohibited under normal circumstances. The ethical framework then outlines a set of ‘just intelligence principles’, based on the just war tradition, which delineate when the harm caused can be justified. As a result, this article outlines a systemic ethical framework that makes it possible to understand when intelligence collection is prohibited and when it is permissible.     

Counterterror intelligence operations and terror attacks

We present a formal model of an intelligence agency that must divide its resources between the collection and analysis of information pertaining to terror plots. The model highlights the negative consequences of queues which form when collection exceeds analytic capacity. We incorporate the response of a terrorist organization to the operating characteristics of the intelligence system it faces, and solve for equilibrium strategies for the intelligence system and terrorist organization. Our results demonstrate the importance of properly balancing resources between collection and analysis, and stand in contrast to the observed state of overcollection in US intelligence agencies.     

Is small beautiful? Village level taxation of natural resources in Tanzania

This article examines collection of natural resources revenue by village governments in Tanzania as part of a decentralisation reform. An analysis of empirical data in the form of taxation records from 14 villages, which collect and retain revenues on natural resources utilisation suggests that decentralising revenue collection to the lowest local government tier may yield: (i) considerable increases in revenue collection; (ii) increased transparency in public finances through requirements that village governments document their incomes and expenditures to the villagers; and (iii) a financial surplus that is used to finance public services at the village level. The evidence presented in this article suggests that decentralising taxation to the lowest local government tier may be a viable approach to enhance revenue collection on the utilisation of relatively low value natural resources, and assure that a share of the collected revenue is used to finance public services. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Day in the “Swamp”: Understanding Discourse in the Online Counter-Jihad Nebula

The counter-jihad scene can be understood variously as a collection of parties, pundits, and movements all linked by a common belief that the West is being subjected to takeover by Muslims. In this article, I seek to improve academic understanding of this collection of movements, parties, and ideas by analyzing the discourse presented by a collection of online advocates whom I describe as the counter-jihad nebula. The findings suggest a need to at least partially re-evaluate the role of the nebula within the wider counter-jihad scene as well as the relationship between the wider counter-jihad scene and mainstream political discourse as expressed through various media outlets.