United States' strategic possibilities in the South Caucasus

South Caucasus is an area where the United States can obtain a wide number of strategic advantages if a coherent policy towards South Caucasus and the Caucasian Region is developed. This article seeks to throw light on some of the most important objectives the United States can obtain in the region, and explain how the policy of multiple outlets is a cornerstone in American policy for South Caucasus. Furthermore we look at the problems of the current policy, especially those concerning the Baku‐Ceyhan pipeline.     

Extreme nationalism and violent discourses in Scandinavia: ‘the resistance’, ‘traitors’, and ‘foreign invaders’

This is a comparative analysis of neo‐Nazis and anti‐immigration activists in Norway, Denmark and Sweden with regard to their rhetoric and justifications for violence against ‘foreigners’ and political opponents, and actual patterns of violence and harassment. Different traditions of nationalism in the three Scandinavian countries, and highly dissimilar historical experiences ‐ especially during World War II ‐influence the rhetorical strategies of the two types of extreme nationalists, and their respective abilities to appropriate national symbols. However, based on divergent historical analogies, most extreme nationalist groups present themselves as a ‘resistance movement’ fighting ‘foreign invaders’ and ‘traitors’.     

Saab,British aerospace and the JAS 39 Gripen aircraft joint venture

While most combat aircraft used by the Royal Swedish Air Force (RSAF) were designed and manufactured in Sweden and, with the exception of surplus aircraft, only delivered to the RSAF, the JAS 39 Gripen multi‐role aircraft is different. Gripen aircraft being delivered to the RSAF are partly manufactured by British Aerospace (BAe), and Saab and BAe are, ‘arm in arm’, marketing it abroad. This article describes the background of as well as the Saab‐BAe Gripen joint venture as such, and raises a few issues involved in Europe's ‘globalization’ of national military‐industrial activities.

By joining up with BAe, Saab has joined one of the major aerospace companies in Europe. It seems likely that the Saab‐BAe joint venture is Sweden's exit from indigenous combat aircraft designs, and the entrance to European multinational projects in the future. BAe's role in Europe's aircraft and missile industrial restructuring is likely to decide Sweden's place and role. The joint venture as such, and the problems involved in reaching a united, binding and in its implementation restrictive European export Code of Conduct, suggests that the Gripen will be exported according to the common export interests in Britain and Sweden.     

Does social trust determine the size of the welfare state? Evidence using historical identification

Most modern welfare states offer an extensive array of services and benefits that are wholly or partly financed by tax revenue. One missing link in explaining the long-run sustainability of such comprehensive welfare states could be the already-existing stock of trust. Indeed, our cross-country results suggest that trust determines the size of welfare states as well as three features that are arguably necessary for their preservation: high levels of political confidence, strong legal institutions protecting private property rights, and low levels of bureaucratic corruption.     

Public choice, political economy and development: an introduction to the life, times and themes of Martin Paldam

Martin Paldam is one of the most prominent figures of Danish economics and European public choice. In this introduction to the special issue, we identify five of the areas, where he has made significant contributions: (1) vote and popularity functions and political business cycles; (2) democracy and institutions; (3) the economics of corruption; (4) development aid; and (5) social capital.     

Improving the democratic accountability of EU intelligence

The 9/11 attack and the ‘war on terrorism’ have been followed by a discussion on intelligence deficits. However, surprisingly little attention has been given to the issue of agencies' democratic accountability. This article argues the benefits of oversight for democracy and its significance for the improvement of services' performance. It puts EU intelligence agencies, which have hardly been the subject of any debate, at the centre. While acknowledging that the major threats to civil liberties of European citizens are posed by national intelligence agencies, it identifies the establishment of mechanisms for quality control of EU intelligence as the main challenge at the EU level.     

The Epistemic Status of Intelligence: An Epistemological Contribution to the Understanding of Intelligence

We argue that the majority of intelligence definitions fail to recognize that the normative epistemic status of intelligence is knowledge and not an inferior alternative. We refute the counter-arguments that intelligence ought not to be seen as knowledge because of 1) its action-oriented scope and 2) its future-oriented content. We dismiss the traditional infallibilistic understanding of knowledge and follow David Lewis' argument, that knowledge is fallible and context-sensitive. Thus, we argue for the importance of developing a methodology by which the entitlement, justification and robustness of claims to intelligence-knowledge can be assessed.     

Contested Urbanism: Struggles about Representations

Iconic architecture plays a crucial role in cities' interurban competition. This is also the case with Copenhagen which has used iconic architecture as part of its boosterism to gain investment, to increase tourism and to attract the creative class. This battle over the symbolic representation of city dynamism, architectural identity and market competitiveness is expressed in discourses and visual signs in space—be it cyberspace, on location, in newspapers or debates. The articulation of representations and meaning can produce conflicts which show the voids, ruptures, and rational generatives at play. This article will exemplify how actors' use of a specific spatial dispositif of visibility and legibility may be intertwined with particular discourses on community, architectural heritage and identity of place. Two cases are chosen, the first concerns resistance towards high-rise buildings and the second concerns a current debate about the development of a ‘metropol-zone’. Both cases concern Copenhagen. The signifying dispositifs (content, argument, rationality) in each case will be identified and the paper will emphasise how certain dispositifs of the visible and the arguable become strategically intertwined through symbolic, visual and virtual representations of the wrongs of current urban planning.     

DOES OWNERSHIP MATTER FOR THE PROVISION OF PROFESSIONALIZED SERVICES? HIP OPERATIONS AT PUBLICLY AND PRIVATELY OWNED CLINICS IN DENMARK

In terms of clinical procedures (to take the example used in this article, hip operations), both public and private organizations provide highly professionalized services. For this service type, our knowledge about ownership differences is sparse. To begin to fill this gap, we investigate how the ownership of hip clinics affects professional behaviour, treatment quality and patient satisfaction. The comparison of private and public hip clinics is based on data from the Danish Hip Arthroplasty Register and the Danish Central Patient Register combined with 20 semi-structured interviews. We find that private clinics employ stronger individual financial incentives and try harder to increase the income/costs ratio than do public clinics. Private clinics optimize non-clinical factors such as waiting time much more than public clinics and have fewer complication-prone patients than public clinics. However, the clinical procedures are very similar in the two types of clinics. Private clinics do not achieve better clinical results, but patient satisfaction is nevertheless higher with private clinics. The implication is that ownership matters for highly professionalized services, but professionalism neutralizes some – but not all – ownership differences.     

Generosity: No Doubt, but at Times Excessive and Delusive

One of the ways in which the artificial languages of mathematics are “generous”, that is, in which they assists the advance of thought, is through its establishment of advanced operatory structures that permit an even further advance of intuition. However, this generosity may be delusive, suggest ideas which in the longer run turn out to be untenable. The paper analyses two cases of “honest generosity”, namely a “proof” of the sign rule “less times less makes plus” from the 1340s and a result in partition theory obtained by Euler by means of rash manipulations of infinite series and products, case-Cantor’s introduction of transfinite numbers from 1895-and (in modern terms) a failed attempt to extend the semi-group of algebraic powers into a complete group, also from c. 1340. Gewöhnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hört es müsse sich dabei wohl auch was denken lassen Goethe, Faust I, 2565-2566 He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well that today’s young innocent faces will be tomorrow’s clientele Tom Lehrer, “The Old Dope Peddler”