Coming in from the cold: bringing the Intelligence and Security Committee into Parliament

The establishment of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in 1994 for the first time allowed British parliamentarians access to intelligence agency staff and records. However, as a committee of parliamentarians, but not a parliamentary committee, the ISC was a constitutional anomaly. In 2013, significant reforms reconstituted the ISC as a parliamentary committee, with enhanced powers and an expanded mandate. Drawing on interviews with ISC members and detailed examination of committee business, this article examines the impact of recent reforms. It argues that while reform has had a significant impact on the committee, in a number of respects it remains strongly constrained by government.     

The efficiency of regulatory arbitrage

Public Choice - Classic public choice skepticism about the regulatory state, based on theories of rent-seeking, rent extraction and regulatory capture, is based on the unrealistic, and usually...     

Building informal knowledge‐sharing relationships between policy makers and academics: Insights from a PM&C engagement project

This article outlines an innovative project to encourage knowledge sharing and engagement between academics and a policy team within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C). The project was designed to enhance policy advice by drawing on a group of academics outside the policy ranks to act as a sounding board, to question, and provide differing perspectives within the policy process of crafting advice to government. External expertise and particularly academic research has the potential to improve evidence‐based policy but often fails to be specific or timely for those at the “pointy end” of policy decision making. An informal knowledge sharing framework has the potential to improve the exchange of information through confidential and targeted conversations between researchers and public servants as one way of overcoming these barriers.     

Governance gaps in eradicating forced labor: From global to domestic supply chains

A growing body of scholarship analyzes the emergence and resilience of forced labor in developing countries within global value chains. However, little is known about how forced labor arises within domestic supply chains concentrated within national borders, producing products for domestic consumption. We conduct one of the first studies of forced labor in domestic supply chains, through a cross‐industry comparison of the regulatory gaps surrounding forced labor in the United Kingdom. We find that understanding the dynamics of forced labor in domestic supply chains requires us to conceptually modify the global value chain framework to understand similarities and differences across these contexts. We conclude that addressing the governance gaps that surround forced labor will require scholars and policymakers to carefully refine their thinking about how we might design operative governance that effectively engages with local variation.