Getting CIA History Right: The Informal Partnership Between Agency Historians and Outside Scholars

The common task of all historians is to endeavour to present history as accurately and objectively as possible despite gaps in the record or a paucity of evidence. Intelligence historians face particular challenges in making sense of what too often is history deliberately shrouded. Staff historians of the Central Intelligence Agency operate mostly in the secret world and yet rely on the fine work of ‘outside’ historians. There is in effect a largely unstated, certainly informal, but absolutely crucial partnership between CIA historians on the ‘inside’ and dedicated scholars on the ‘outside’. It is not too much to say, in fact, that accurate and objective history about the CIA is possible only through this informal partnership.     

Public Provision for Urban Water: Getting Prices and Governance Right

Public sector monopolies are often associated with inefficiencies and inability to meet rising demand. Scholars attribute this to fundamental problems associated with public provision: (1) a tradition of below‐cost pricing due to populist pressures, (2) owner–regulator conflicts of interest, and (3) perverse organizational incentives arising from non‐credible threat of bankruptcy, weak competition, rigidities, and agency and performance measurement problems. Many governments worldwide have shifted to private provision, but recent experience in urban water utilities in developing countries has shown their limitations because of weak regulatory regimes compounded by inherent problems of information, incentives, and commitment. This article examines the paradoxical case of the Phnom Penh Water Supply in Cambodia to illustrate how public provision of urban water can be substantially improved by getting prices and governance right. Findings have implications for the search for solutions to provide one billion people worldwide with better access to potable water.     

Getting the Order Right: Child Support Guidelines and the Cost of Raising Children

This article argues that the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) estimates of parental expenditures on children are an appropriate economic foundation for state child support guidelines. The USDA’s estimates are consistent with the public policy purposes of state guidelines and may improve the extent to which they accomplish federal intent. The article examines the role of valid and reliable child cost estimates in advancing the policy objectives for child support, summarizes the theoretical and empirical challenges of estimating those costs, suggests the limitations of the most widely used estimation methods in relation to the policy purposes described earlier, and evaluates the USDA’s method in relation to those same purposes. The evidence suggests that guidelines based on the USDA’s estimates are more likely than the most commonly used estimates to yield adequate child support orders and to allocate economic responsibility for children appropriately among the custodial parent, the noncustodial parent, and the state.     

The Changing Public-Private Infrastructure Mix: Economy-wide Implications

This article provides an economy-wide perspective on the changing role of the public sector in developing economic and social infrastructure in Australia. It analyses the scale and macroeconomic significance of the key economic and social infrastructure sectors — communication services, electricity, gas and water supply, transport, education, health and community services, government administration and defence. It then canvasses the major policy issues that have arisen in the progression from public to private infrastructure provision and considers why concerns about the trend fall in traditional public works spending may be misplaced in light of recent economic and institutional changes.     

Direct and Indirect Xenophobic Attacks: Unpacking Portfolios of Identity

Political Behavior - Political threats are typically conceptualized by scholars as targeting particular groups of people. We call for also conceptualizing threats as political attacks directed...     

论沉默权对传统侦查取证理念的冲击及应对策略

沉默权与我国传统诉讼价值观念的冲突 ,实质上是权利本位与义务本位的冲突。沉默权制度在我国刑事制度中的最终设立 ,必将给侦查取证活动带来最直接的冲击。如果不完善相应立法和执法环节 ,不仅使沉默权的设立目的难以实现 ,也会使侦查取证工作加大执业风险。因此 ,从立法上要尽快明确无罪推定原则 ,取消立案程序 ,重新设置强制措施的体例 ,明确技术侦查手段的法律性质等 ;要改变侦、控分离 ,缺乏司法审查制约的体制 ,加强取证人员的科学物证意识 ,加大侦查工作的技术含量 ,以应对沉默权带来的挑战。     

The Democratic Soup: Mixed Meanings of Political Representation in Governance Networks

This article explores how political representation is enacted in governance networks, where interdependent actors from government, business, and civil society coproduce public policy. A combined dramaturgical and discourse analysis considers how representation is staged, performed, and articulated in a case study of recent Dutch energy reforms. The findings suggest that networks produce a kind of "democratic soup" where actors and institutions enact alternative meanings of representation that sit uncomfortably alongside representative democracy's emphasis on political authorization, accountability, and responsiveness. These democratic attributes appear to be decoupled from representation in governance networks and thus need to be secured through other means.     

The American Right and Israel

In recent years there has been considerable controversy over the relationship between the United States and Israel. Neoconservatives and Christian Zionists have been vociferous in support of the relationship, while John Mearsheimer and other critics have questioned what America gains from such an alliance. While the G. W. Bush administration has often been portrayed as uncritically favouring Israel, it was the subject of criticism on the issue from within the American Right. Now it is the Obama administration which is drawing fire for its stance on Israel.     

The Howard Government: The Extent to which Public Attitudes Influenced Australia's Federal Policy Mix

This article focuses on the interaction between government policy and public attitudes in order to explain why the Howard government was reasonably pragmatic given that it maintained enough popular support to win four successive federal elections from 1996, and why such a relationship is crucial to evaluating policy trends in Australia's liberal democracy in terms of understanding both policy possibilities and limitations no matter how flawed or divisive certain policies may appear to be.     

China and International Order: The Limits of Integration

Journal of Chinese Political Science - What does the rise of China mean for the international order, especially the liberal institutional order? Despite of the enormous scholarly attention paid to...