Ruralisation: a tool for rural transformation

There is a concept that development practitioners have either not heard of or not read, or have chosen to ignore – ruralisation. Unlike urbanisation in urban studies, ruralisation is rarely used as a concept in rural research. It remains a poorly explored concept. By challenging existing notions about the use of the concept, this article attempts to (re)introduce ruralisation as a fundamental concept in rural studies. What is ruralisation? Why do we need it? How can we use it for rural transformations? The article addresses these critical questions. It defines ruralisation and presents its conceptual framework for rural transformation.     

Networks,Hierarchies, and Hybrids

Clusters of organizations making at least modest efforts to collaborate on implementing joint solutions to public sector problems are often called “networks.” By directing attention away from the hierarchical aspects of these clusters, and towards the voluntaristic and egalitarian aspects, this nomenclature can undermine and distort our understanding of the phenomenon. Such organizational clusters can be more fruitfully thought of as “implementation hybrids,” a type of collective production arrangement that has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses, which this article delineates.     

The use and abuse of intelligence: An intelligence provider's perspective

There is a widely held perception that intelligence is the purloining of secret information from foreign countries, which is then used for advantage in wartime and as an aid to diplomacy and statecraft in peacetime, and the catching of foreign spies, or counterintelligence. In reality, intelligence serves a number of other purposes, such as technology development in support of other intelligence programmes, support to treaty negotiations and monitoring, arms control, and more. Several recently declassified Cold War intelligence activities are reviewed as examples of some of the other uses and benefits of intelligence gathering, and to show that leaders, policy makers and other consumers of intelligence may choose to use, abuse or ignore it, depending upon their own predilection, prejudices, biases, or political agendas, and sometimes altering the original intent of the intelligence.