A Failure to Communicate: 9/11 and the Tragedy of the Informational Commons

ABSTRACT

We investigate how networks among service organizations are integrated through a shared participant type of governance. Shared participant governance is a non-brokered type of network coordination where a network is governed by its members without a separate governance entity. We study the integrative capacity of this type of governance by measuring the effect of participation in a shared participant governance on tie formation in networks among service organizations. We analyze three networks of service organizations in three districts of Antwerp, Belgium. In each of these districts, the networks are governed by welfare meetings, defined as a shared participant type of governance. We use exponential random graph models. The results show that a shared participant type of governance has a positive effect on tie formation. We also find that the positive effect on tie formation is dependent on the active participation of centralized actors in the welfare meetings.     

US state crimes related to nuclear weapons: Is there hope for change in the Obama administration?

Given the long history of US state crimes related to nuclear weapons and the aggressive unilateralism of the George W. Bush administration that compounded these crimes, the election of Barack Obama created a “hope” for “change” in American nuclear weapons policy. While it is too early to render any conclusive judgment, we offer a preliminary assessment of the Obama record with regard to nuclear weapons based on a number of significant policy statements made and official actions taken, including Obama's 2009 Prague speech, the signing of the new START agreement in April 2010, the administration's 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Washington DC Nuclear Security Summit, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference of 2010. Although the new administration has taken some steps to reduce the likelihood of the use or threat to use nuclear weapons, we conclude that under President Obama the US continues to be in violation of the solemn legal obligation to disarm as imposed by the NPT treaty of 1968. We also briefly note some of the structural and cultural factors related to the American empire that hinders any president from changing American nuclear weapons policy.     

Book reviews

Amir Taheri, Holy Terror: The Inside Story of Islamic Terrorism. London: Century Hutchinson; Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, 1987. Pp.313. £12.95/$19.95 (hardback); £3.95 (paperback).

Robert O. Slater and Michael Stohl (eds.), Current Perspectives on International Terrorism. London: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. Pp. 288. £29.50/$39.95 (hardback); £13.95 (paperback).

Juliet Lodge (ed.), The Threat of Terrorism. Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books; Boulder, CO.Westview Press, 1988. Pp. 280. £35/$33.50 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback).

Edward F. Mickolus with Peter A. Flemming (compilers), Terrorism, 1980–1987: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. Pp. 314. £49.50/$55.     

Why Freedoms Do Not Exist by Degrees

The overall freedom of an individual or a society is something that exists in differing degrees. By contrast, anyone's particular freedom to engage in this or that mode of conduct is something that exists (or does not exist) in an all-or-nothing manner. Many political philosophers have taken a contrary view, however, and have contended that each particular freedom exists to a greater or lesser extent in proportion to the easiness or difficulty of exercising it. This essay argues that the temptation to view particular freedoms as matters of degree can be overcome when careful attention is paid to three distinctions: overall liberty versus particular liberties, the existence of any particular liberty versus the probability of its emergence, and becoming more free to do something versus becoming free to do something in more ways. By properly marking these distinctions, one can readily apprehend that the existence or inexistence of each particular freedom is characterized by no gradations – an insight that improves one's understanding of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of any such freedom.