‘An interesting and plausible proposal’: Bruce Lockhart,Sidney Reilly and the Latvian Riflemen,Russia 1918

The details of the plot by Lockhart and Reilly to overthrow Lenin in summer 1918 are well established, as is the role played by the Cheka in infiltrating it. One element remains unclear, however: why did Britain's Russia expert and her ‘master spy’ think that Lenin's ‘praetorian guard’, the Latvian Riflemen, might be ‘turned’. New evidence reveals that anti‐Bolshevik sentiment was growing among Latvian troops in autumn 1918, giving good grounds to embark on the enterprise. It was ‘an interesting and plausible proposal’, which failed partly because of Cheka penetration but also because Reilly changed the nature of the original proposal.     

Democracy and Interest Groups

This article analyses the differences in institutional design in national parliamentary control over European Union affairs among EU member states. It proceeds from a preference-based perspective, drawing on the principal–agent framework, and a time-based perspective, inspired by the historical institutionalist approach. The article involves a qualitative comparative analysis of strong control and a quantitative, correlation analysis of variation in the degree of control. It argues that time-based factors provide a more persuasive overall explanation for the differences in control than preference-based factors.     

Clinching the ‘Return to Europe’: The Referendums on EU Accession in Estonia and Latvia

There are two salient features of the referendums on EU membership in Estonia and Latvia. Firstly, the results with decisive pro-EU majorities went easily beyond expectations based on previous opinion poll trends, where these two Baltic states had shown less public enthusiasm for integration than other Central and East European countries. This fact owed much to convincing arguments about abandoning international isolation and about geopolitical choice, with strong historical overtones. The anti-accession cause in both countries suffered from various weaknesses even though, in Estonia though not in Latvia, Eurosceptical attitudes were in evidence. Secondly, there was much less support for EU entry among the strong Russian minorities in both countries. This difference was partly due to the higher incidence of economic circumstances in determining voting behaviour but also to the fact that pro-EU (hence, pro-West) arguments were implicitly and sometimes explicitly unfriendly to Russia. In turn, this also showed that the Soviet legacy was particular to these Baltic countries compared with other accession states from CEE.     

Does politics matter?

Nomination: Comparative politics matters by Geoffrey K. Roberts, p.99
Reflections: Does politics matter? Increasing complexity and renewed challenges by Frank Castles & Robert D. McKinlay, p.102     

The Conservatives and the Civil Service: ‘One Step Forward,Two Steps Back’?

The period since 1979 has witnessed more radical change in the civil service than in any other peacetime era in its history. Such has been the order of change that Lord Bancroft, the former Head of the Home Civil Service, has suggested that the civil service was in danger of being 'demolished' and of there being a return to the ills of the 'unreformed' service before the 1850s. This would be to take the 'two steps back' of the article's title before the Northcote-Trevelyan report and the Warren Fisher era. Against the background of this possible outcome, this article evaluates the Next Steps programme and the other initiatives promoted by recent Conservative governments, before concluding that the requirements of the work and a markedly unified career civil service need not be compatible, and that there is at least the possibility that the various changes when fully implemented could represent 'one step forward'.