Review article

The Burning Question, Michael Simmonds, Adam Smith Institute, 1989, pp. 43, £9.00.     

France,Britain and the intervention in Libya: an integrated analysis

This article seeks to explain the decisions by Nicolas Sarkozy's France and David Cameron's Britain to intervene in the 2011 Libyan crisis. None of the three major theories of international relations—constructivism, defensive realism and liberalism—can explain on its own such intervention decisions as the Libya case. The article's novel analytical model proposes that each theory emphasizes factors and mechanisms that explain part of the decision-making process and that these factors interact with state behaviour in complex ways. Britain and France initially began to consider intervention because they felt that the emergent norm of the ‘responsibility to protect’ applied to the Libyan case and because they believed the massive flows of refugees fleeing the violence were a threat to their border security. Both countries believed military intervention could be successful at relatively low cost and that if they did not intervene the problem would not be solved. At that point, the Sarkozy and Cameron governments engaged in initial action that made them more likely to intervene by jeopardizing their future economic relations with the Gaddafi regime and making him more likely to threaten them with future terrorist attacks. Taking initial action also meant that French and British prestige would ultimately have suffered had they not intervened to achieve a satisfactory solution to the crisis. Paris and London viewed international and regional support as a critical prerequisite for intervention and they sought and attained it. Finally, the Sarkozy and Cameron governments were able to minimize any domestic political risk of intervening because they had public and/or opposition party support.     

Home is where the heart lies? A study of false address giving to police

Purpose. The purpose of the present paper is to identify the cognitive processes associated with the construction of a false address, and explore how this can be used to identify and trace those who give a false address to police. It is hypothesized that most people find it difficult to spontaneously fabricate an entire false address. As a consequence they provide identifiable clues as to the real address being concealed. Methods. A quasi‐experimental research design was employed where 142 students were first asked to generate a false address and second to analyse it to ascertain how random they considered it to be. Results. Participants, overwhelmingly, stated that the false addresses generated contained elements of truth which could be used to identify their real place of residence. Although most participants appeared capable of generating bona fide false postcodes, comparison with an official UK postcode list identified over 60% did not actually exist. Conclusion. People generally rely on pre‐existing address knowledge as opposed to random generation, with the latter appearing more cognitively effortful. As such, they often unwittingly provide clues to the real address being concealed, therefore, affording increased possibilities in identifying them as liars at point of contact and in tracing them after the fact.