ONE FIGHT,ONE TEAM: THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE,FRAGMENTATION AND INFORMATION

In its report published in 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (known as the ‘9/11 Commission’) analyses the functioning of the Intelligence Community (ICo). It indicates that the ICo is both over‐fragmented and guilty of not sharing enough information. The Commission recommends that central control of the ICo needs to be strengthened and that more incentives for information‐sharing should be designed. This article takes a critical look at these two recommendations. Sharing information carries major risks and is therefore not something that can take place as a matter of course. Moreover, information has to be subject to a selection process before it can be shared. This selection cannot be measured objectively, so mistakes in the selection are unavoidable. Strengthening central control also poses risks: it engenders more battles over territory, it does not improve understanding of the capillaries of the organization – the capillaries being where the primary processes of information gathering, validation and assessment take place – and it involves the destruction of checks and balances. Fragmentation may even be functional since it leads to redundancy, itself a safeguard against the risk of misselecting relevant information.     

SELF-INTEREST,EQUITY, AND CRIME CONTROL: A GAME-THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF CRIMINAL DECISION MAKING

Employing the analytic technique of game theory, we attempt to answer questions about how individuals with different proclivities to use crime to accomplish ends, and different beliefs about society's fairness, are likely to respond to different incentives and disincentives that are derived from strain and neoclassical deterrence theories. Our analysis indicates that the crime control policies typically recommended by adherents of both theories are often logically invalid, given the premises upon which they are supposedly based. For example, our analysis suggests why punishment strategies like “three strikes and you're out” and “entitlement strategies” such as welfare and other short-term redistributive payment programs fail to deter crime. Finally, after including notions of equity with traditional rational choice assumptions, our analysis identifies a mix of theoretically derived strategies that may more effectively deter crime.     

Policy and Organizational Change in the Federal Aviation Administration: The Ontogenesis of a High‐Reliability Organization

Although the high‐reliability organization (HRO) literature identifies several attributes that differentiate HROs from other types of organizations, these studies do not explain how an HRO comes into being, nor do they provide a means to gauge or measure the extent to which an organization exhibits the specified features. This article reports the results of a 97‐year longitudinal case study tracking the emergence and continuation of HRO characteristics in the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control operations to answer the following questions: how do HRO functions emerge in public organizations, and do policy changes lead administrative changes, or is there little relation between policy and organizational change? The analysis shows that (1) HRO characteristics emerged incrementally over an extremely long period of time, and (2) policy changes preceded organizational changes early in the process of HRO development, but the relationship of policy change to organizational change decreased in later stages.     

The Liberian Centenary

As the republic of Liberia celebrated its centenary on the 26thJuly, the Liberian Minister was asked in May to address a jointmeeting, under the Chairmanship of Sir Drummond Shiels. Liberiaalways raises a number of important and delicate questions,so that we give a rather larger space than usual to discussion,and further comments by Mr. Lewis Smart, an engineer with extensiveknowledge of the subject.     

What Next： beijing After the Olympics

FEW will argue that the recently concluded beijing Games will stand as a great example in the annals of the Olympic movement. but beyond the obvious, concrete legacies represented by beijing’s entirely modernized, envy-inducing infrastructure, the true impact of the 2008 Olympics will take time to manifest itself as China continues its march forward.     

London 2012：Young Chinese Athletes Begin to Prepare for Gold

CHINESE athletes achieved remarkable success at the XXIX Olympic Games,earning a record number of gold medals in disciplines long dominated by China,such as weightlifting,diving and gymnastics. But they also scored impressively in other events,such as swimming,fencing and archery,establishing a presence that is certain to reap victories in London in 2012.