Big strategy to little strategy: a multiple case analysis of public affairs planning

Grand strategy or overall strategy is essential to successful strategic communication planning as are the tactics of any campaign to accomplish that longer‐term strategy. That is what is meant in thinking of big strategy to little strategy in the title of this study. The terms play off the phrase, the big idea, generally credited to David Ogilvy who some call the father of advertising but also used by Edward Bernays, who some call the father of public relations, in his 1936 work, Biography of an Idea: The Founding Principles of Public Relations. The purpose of the present study was to meld the big and little concepts of strategy in public relations through analyzing strategic communication plans for Multi‐National Forces‐Iraq, a United Nations military force of 40 countries led by the United States. It encompassed multiple case studies that included interviews, documents, participant observation, and direct observation in strategic communication planning. It also confirmed the usage of research and overarching goals as big strategy, and the operational and tactical parts of public relations planning as little strategy although big strategy can be elevated to the highest corporate levels as well.     

Competitive analysis,structure and strategy in politics: a critical approach

• This article begins by arguing that the structure of the political market differs significantly from business markets and that, consequently, the prescribed strategies from ‘traditional’ marketing theory are not always appropriate in politics.
• Then the military metaphor is applied to the political market and its ability to illuminate competitive strategy in this market is explored. Particular attention is paid to the interaction of direct and indirect strategies in politics over the lifecycle of a parliament.
• The relevance of military principles in implementing the strategies identified is then considered. The paper concludes with a wider discussion of the limitations of the military/competitive model as applied to politics and a general indication of how a more comprehensive competitive model might be created.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dimension manipulation and choice strategy in US-China relations: a spatial game-theoretical analysis

Political and economic relations between the United States and China are viewed as two games in a two-dimensional evaluation space of decision making: a deadlock game along the political dimension and a prisoners’ dilemma game along the economic dimension. Based on a spatial game framework, this study shows that dimension manipulations and different choice strategies across these two evaluation dimensions will result in different game equilibria. Specifically,dimension combination anduniform strategy would keep U.S.-China relations in the status quo, anddimension differentiation ordiverse strategy would benefit both sides. Two policy suggestions are derived from this analysis. First, both sides should de-link political and economic dimensions and separately evaluate political and economic relations along these two distinct dimensions. Second, both sides should follow diverse strategy if political and economic relations have to be simultaneously evaluated in the two-dimensional policy making space.     

An analysis of police traffic stops and searches in Kentucky: a mixed methods approach offering heuristic and practical implications

Is race a significant predictor of being searched by the police? Is race a significant predictor of having positive search results during traffic stop? We address these two questions by analyzing traffic stop data (n > 93,000) collected by two state and 24 local police agencies in a single state during the 2001 calendar year. Our findings show that race does correlate with a fruitful traffic stop but not in the manner that may be commonly thought. To supplement and better contextualize our quantitative findings, an exploratory study was then designed that used the focus group interviewing technique with groups of officers from five of the participating agencies to explore their perceptions of (1) traffic stops and searches and (2) public allegations of racial profiling and bias-based policing. The findings from this qualitative phase of the study highlighted the officers’ perceived role as community problem solvers “who profile problems and not people.” In tandem, this mixed-method approach was instrumental in advancing our knowledge of both the patterns and results from related searches, in addition to better contextualizing the underlying perceptions of officers regarding the use of race in “solving” community problems. The results from this combination of methodological approaches offer important heuristic and practical implications.     

Lockean Self-Ownership: Towards a Demolition

Self-ownership is the moral principle that one ought to be left free to do whatever one chooses so long as non-consenting other persons are not thereby harmed, in specified ways. The principle is foundational for one tradition of political liberalism running from Locke to Nozick. This paper aims first to clarify this principle, in part by contrasting it with a kindred principle of 'self-benefit', and secondly to develop its implications for justified private property ownership. These implications are more meagre than is usually supposed. The principle is indeterminate in ways that undermine its claim to adequacy. Finally, further reasons for rejecting the self- ownership principle are suggested.     

Impact of accountability on the performance of police service: Palestinian police case study

In the Palestinian case, the police officers tried to provide some requirements and undertake some development initiatives. The issue of accountability was the most important part of them. Therefore, this research provides an assessment and analysis for the issue of accountability in the Palestinian police. It aims to identify the relationship and impact on the development of police performance. The researchers used a questionnaire for this purpose, which was distributed to a sample of 332 police personnel in the four largest police departments in the West Bank. The SPSS software was used to analyze the data. The results indicated that the elements of the Palestinian police system are subject to accountability through clear structures, mechanisms, procedures, and standards from inside and outside of the system. This system of accountability has a clear impact on the development and improvement of the performance of police elements.     

Resilient Social Contracts and Peace: Towards a Needed Reconceptualization

ABSTRACT

This article makes the case for rethinking the social contract concept with attention to countries affected by conflict, fragility, and fraught transition. Inspired by related policy efforts and engaging scholarship across multiple disciplines, this piece and the multi-country research represented in this Special Issue aim to build the intellectual lineage of the concept. A conceptual framework and proposed heuristic device for enhancing policy and practice is presented. Five case studies and a thematic paper on inclusion are discussed with this in mind. Comparative findings and implications are assessed for how resilient social contracts aid the attaining and sustaining of peace.     

Explaining Privatization: Notes Towards a Predictive Theory

This article starts from the assumption that some of the theoretical work used to explain welfare-state expansion can be used 'in reverse' to explain privatization, here seen as welfare state contraction, i.e., the transfer from the public to the private sector of the responsibility for certain activities involved in welfare provision. To this end, valiants of the 'power resources' approach are examined. Finding that the 'labour movement' thesis does not have a strong predictive value, I then discuss the 'game theoretical' variant of the 'power resources' approach. Its usefulness for predicting privatization patterns seems limited because of the reductionism built into it. Following the neo-Institutionalists' argument that actor preferences and strategies both reflect and form institutional arrangements of the welfare state, some institutional typologies are developed which are relevant to the course and patterns of privatization. An ideal-type dichotomy between 'pluralist' and 'corporatist' institutions is discussed, in connection with a further delineation of decision-making, financing, and implementing structures. In conclusion, an effort is made to combine actor-oriented and institutional approaches to formulate some preliminary predictions about when and where certain patterns of privatization will occur.     

Political Parties: Towards a New Theoretical Synthesis

Three conceptions of the political party can be distinguished. They are Seller's socio-cultural cleavage approach; Lawson's notion of the linkage party, based upon participatory, policy-responsive, clientele reward and government directive linkages; and Offerlé's conception of parties as political enterprises concentrating upon partisan supply to the political market. After suggesting that, whatever their partial merits, none of these approaches provides the basis for a comprehensive theory of political parties, a dual party approach is prepared. Every party exists in and for itself as well as interacting with a constraining environment. A dialectical model, based upon relations between internal decision-making and external competition within the context of the rules of the game, offers the best prospect of further advance in the study of political parties.     

Beyond the media's explanation: Examining the determinants of attitudes toward torture

The question of what constitutes torture has perhaps never held as prominent a place in US political discourse as it has since the attacks on 9/11. This has fueled a national conversation that causes us to consider to what extent do our actions as a nation reflect our values as a nation? In a post 9/11 world in which the country will confront terrorism at home and abroad and our values will be tested we should strive for a better understanding of citizens' attitudes towards the practices that are (and have been) used to counter terrorism. To the extent that democratic theory is correct in necessitating public policy and public opinions to be reasonably congruent, understanding the distribution and formation of citizen attitudes towards torture is an important endeavor.     

Towards a democracy-centred ethics

Abstract

The core idea of this paper is that we can use the differences between democratic and undemocratic governments to illuminate ethical problems. Democratic values, rights and institutions lie between the most abstract considerations of ethics and meta-ethics and the most particularised decisions, outcomes and contexts. Hence, this paper argues, we can use the differences between democratic and undemocratic governments, as we best understand them, to structure our theoretical investigations, to test and organise our intuitions and ideas, and to explain and justify our philosophical conclusions. Specifically, as we will see, a democracy-centred approach to ethics can help us to distinguish liberal and democratic approaches to political morality in ways that reflect the varieties of democratic theory, and the importance of distinguishing democratic from undemocratic forms of liberalism.     

Towards a New Ireland

Despite all the contemporary difficulties that we face on the island of Ireland, twenty-four years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there is a clear sense of hope for a better future. We should be optimistic for our shared future, even if we do not agree on what form that should take. We cannot discuss Northern Ireland or its future without acknowledging that Brexit has significantly shifted the conversation. Not only has it brought Anglo-Irish relations to a low not seen in the past twenty-five years, but it has also damaged the reputation of the UK internationally and brought the topic of Irish unity back to the fore of our political discourse.     

Cities and people: Towards a gender-aware urban planning process?

Recognition of the deficiencies of traditional ‘blueprint’ approaches to land use and infrastructure planning has led to increased emphasis on management of the process of urban development. Such management should recognize the distributional impacts of decision-making and be responsive to the needs of residents. However, much urban planning activity has been and continues to be gender-blind. In order to redress this deficiency, it is argued that increased understanding is needed of women's economic and social roles in urban society, their exclusion from economic opportunities and decision-making processes, and the discriminatory nature of much legislation. Urban residents’ experience is shaped both by household strategies and by the way in which they are affected by or can affect planning, investment and management decisions made at the neighbourhood or city level. Differing experiences may be related to class and ethnicity, but are also likely to be gender-specific. The potential impact of policy and investment in a variety of sectors of urban development on residents, especially women, is explored. Recommendations are made for a more gender-aware approach to planning for economic activity, land and shelter, public transport and infrastructural and social services, and for specific actions to be taken by both planners and residents.