McIntosh on governance and accountability

Overview and scrutiny committees have been introduced in England and Wales as part of constitutional arrangements designed to improve local accountability. This article presents a conceptual framework for the evaluation of scrutiny arrangements based on five variables which have been identified as impediments to parliamentary scrutiny. A survey of Welsh councillors suggests that they perceive ‘resources and technical support’, ‘one-party dominance’, and ‘the relationship between scrutiny and the executive’ as factors which may influence the effectiveness of local scrutiny. The paper concludes that these findings have important implications for the extent to which political management reforms can enhance local accountability.     

Book notes

Law

Nan Berger, Rights, A Handbook for People Under Age, Penguin Books, 1974, £0.60, pp. 160.

M. D. A. Freeman, The Legal Structure, Longmans, 1974, £1.20, pp. 242.

Harry Calvert, Social Security Law, Sweet and Maxwell, 1974, £3.60, pp. 318.

D. Foulkes, The Local Government Act, 1974, Butterworths, 1974, £3.60, pp. 118.

Planning

J. Bailey, Social Theory for Planning, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975, £4.25 (cloth), £1.95 (paperback), pp. 167.

Gordon E. Cherry (ed.), Urban Planning Problems, Leonard Hill, 1974, £4.50, pp. 259.

Ursula K. Hicks, The Large City: A World Problem, Macmillan, 1974, £6.50, pp. 270.

League of Women .Voters Education Fund, Supercity I'Hometown, USA, Prospects for Two‐Tier Government, Pall Mall Press, 1974, £4.75, pp. 139.

Research

A. F. Comfort and C. Loveless, Guide to Government Data, Macmillan, 1974, £5.95, pp. 404.

G Easthope, History of Social Research Methods, Longmans, 1974, £1.20, pp. 169.

E. Krausz and S. H. Miller, Social Research Design, Longmans, 1974, £1.00, pp. 118.     

HISTORICAL LEGACIES IN RISING POWERS

This articles emanates from the observation that realms like theory and broad comparison have typically focused onWestern concerns and geography while actors such as China and Turkey have been relegated to the undervalued field of areas studies. Noting that this inhibits our ability to uncover important cross-regional comparisons, the author suggests that “former empires/rising powers” (FERPs) across (Eur)Asia are a promising unit of analysis. To make the case for the FERPs, the author embeds four cases—Turkey, Iran, Russia, and China—in a common problematique, showing that their encounter with Western hegemony/ modernity engendered three waves of confrontation vis-à-vis the legacies of empire. These confrontations entailed Eurocentric denial as well as Occidentalist reification of native pasts, both of which are being superseded by what the author calls “authenticist” histories empowered by the crystallization of multiple modernities. The author then develops a theoretical framework to capture how reinvented pasts serve as sources of identity, normativity, and action. This approach enables an in-depth account of the Turkish case to show that both official and market actors claim continuity with an Ottoman-Islamic heritage from which a homegrown humanism is said to emanate. These narratives—and the tools through which they are promoted from the cultural industries to public diplomacy—may be helping Turkey and other erstwhile (Eur)Asian empires recalibrate national identity and international purpose at a time of global transformation.     

Pakistan,economic change and social scientists

Abstract

The classic works on modern China—by Harold Isaacs, Edgar Snow, Jack Beiden, even Mao Tse-tung himself—have all led us to believe that the revolutionary ferment which surged through China in the twentieth century was the result of rural impoverishment, economic stagnation and governmental weakness and decay. All of them stressed the crucial role of Western and Japanese imperialism which had reduced China to such a sorry state in the first half of the twentieth century.     

Was the Antitrust Action that Broke Up the Movie Studios Good for the Movies? Evidence from the Stock Market

The Paramount antitrust litigation was a series of eight actionsbrought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) beginning in 1938and ending in 1949 against the major motion picture studios.In the early cases the DOJ succeeded in changing industry contracts,but it took a decade of litigation to accomplish what the DOJwanted, which was to break up the studios and force them tosell their theater chains. We use stock market evidence to evaluatethe impact of events in the Paramount litigation on firm value.By the stock market's assessment, the Supreme Court decisionwas the major event. But the impact of this and other decisionson integrated and nonintegrated defendants, and on a nondefendant,does not support the view that the courts dismantled a successfulmonopoly; indeed, the contrary may be true.     

Social capital and knowledge acquisition in professional-client relationships

This paper examines the role of social capital in professional-client relationships. We consider exploring the effects of social capital on the creation of human capital, a subject which is worthwhile investigating within all professions. In this paper, we concentrate on what are known as the structural and attributive dimensions of social capital and aim to understand their effects on the knowledge acquisition of professional practitioners. We analyse the association between social capital and human capital (i.e., knowledge acquisition) in the context of the lawyer-client relationship. Through the application of social capital theory, this paper seeks to advance our knowledge of the relations between professionals and clients. More importantly, the study contributes to improving our understanding of the role of social capital in influencing a lawyer's ability to retain and win new clients.     

The Philadelphia predictive policing experiment

Journal of Experimental Criminology - This place-based, randomized experiment explored the impact of different patrol strategies on violent and property crime in microscale predicted crime areas....     

What's wrong with the Intelligence Cycle

In the modern era, almost all intelligence professionals will study the Intelligence Cycle as a kind of gospel of how intelligence functions. Yet it is not a particularly good model, since the cyclical pattern does not describe what really happens. Policy officials rarely give collection guidance. Collection and analysis, which are supposed to work in tandem, in fact work more properly in parallel. Finally, the idea that decision makers wait for the delivery of intelligence before making policy decisions is equally incorrect. In the modern era, policy officials seem to want intelligence to support policy rather than to inform it. The Intelligence Cycle also fails to consider either counter-intelligence or covert action. Taken as a whole, the cycle concept is a flawed model, but nevertheless continues to be taught in the US and around the world.