“Man plans,God laughs”: Canada's national strategy for protecting critical infrastructure

Critical Infrastructure Protection seeks to enhance the physical and cyber‐security of key public and private assets and mitigate the effects of natural disasters, industrial accidents and terrorist attacks. In 2009, several Canadian governments published the National Strategy and Action Plan for Critical Infrastructure (NS&AP), a framework for governments and the owners and operators of critical infrastructure – largely in the private sector – to collaborate on the security and increased resiliency of Canada's critical assets. Drawing on the social science risk literature, audits, and a three‐year research and education project, this article argues that the strategy of relationship building, collaborative risk management and information sharing is under‐developed and limited by market competition, incompatible institutional cultures, and legal, logistical and political constraints. The NS&AP should better delineate risks and identify how governments can work with industry, and acknowledge the paradox between trust and transparency, the role of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise, and how risk management processes can vary.     

Spoiling Through Performative Nonviolence: Ritualistic Funerary Practice as a Violent Dissident Irish Republican (VDR) Spoiling Tactic

This article assesses how Violent Dissident Irish Republican (VDR) groups have turned to funerary practice as a spoiling tactic in post–Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland. In doing so it moves the lens of interrogation away from the residual violence exercised by these groups and onto other nonviolent mechanisms and strategies. Locating this discussion within the wider study of the VDR phenomenon, the article asserts that militarized and ritualized funerals possess propagandistic and mobilizational benefits that make them particularly conducive to spoiling activity in a post-conflict site that is increasingly embracing the process of normalization.     

Social Health Insurance and the Use of Formal and Informal Care in Developing Countries: Evidence from Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme

This paper studies the relationship between the use of formal and informal health care in a developing country setting by examining the introduction of a social health insurance scheme in Ghana. We estimate the effects of gaining coverage on changes in care seeking behaviour and show how these effects differ by age and wealth status. District-level differences in the implementation of the insurance scheme provide exogenous variation in access to insurance and allow us to address issues with selection into coverage. Results indicate that insurance access strongly increased use of formal care and reduced out-of-pocket expenditures on health services.     

Introduction: rising powers and the future of global governance

There has been much debate over the extent to which the rising powers of the global South are challenging contemporary global political and economic governance. While some observers see an emancipatory potential in the redistribution of power among states, others see the rising powers as firmly located within the Western-centred neoliberal world order. This collection of papers seeks to go beyond the state-centrism of existing approaches by examining how challenges to global governance by rising powers are rooted in specific state–society configurations. Through studies of Brazil, India, China and other important developing countries within their respective regions, such as Turkey and South Africa, the papers examine the way domestic structures, arrangements, actors and dynamics influence the nature of the international interventions and behaviour of rising powers. They ask how their increased political and economic enmeshment in the international system impacts upon their own internal societal cohesion and development. By examining these issues, the papers raise the question of whether the challenge posed by the rising powers to global governance is likely to lead to an increase in democracy and social justice for the majority of the world’s peoples.     

Taking the High Ground: FEMA Trailer Siting after Hurricane Katrina

Using data on more than 300 census blocks from across New Orleans, Louisiana, this article investigates two steps in the placement of temporary housing after Hurricane Katrina. First, the authors seek to understand the factors that determined whether census blocks were selected for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers. Then, in light of the widespread resistance to the trailers, they focus on variables that influenced whether trailers were successfully placed on those sites. Despite past research arguing that race, collective action potential, and political factors are the primary determinants of facility placement and the success or failure of the attempt, these data show that technocratic criteria dominated. Interestingly, although census blocks in less vulnerable areas were more likely to be selected as locations for FEMA trailer parks than ones in more vulnerable areas, it was precisely the former areas where siting success was less likely. Flood‐resistant areas that decision makers chose for housing were less willing to accept such projects than more flood‐prone ones.     

New Sources for the Study of Iraqi Intelligence during the Saddam Era

The US Department of Defense (DOD) has made available to scholars a significant collection of documents captured from the files of the Saddam-era Iraqi intelligence services. DOD is also studying ways in which further such documents can be released. These documents paint a picture in many ways reminiscent of the intelligence services of the totalitarian Soviet Union. These and forthcoming documents may enable important research on Iraq and on the role of intelligence services in totalitarian states. One newly available document gives the Iraqi General Military Intelligence Directorate's assessment of Iran on the eve of the Iran–Iraq War.