Diplomatic Sigint and the British Official Mind during the Second World War: Soviet claims on Turkey, 1940–45

Historians of Soviet foreign policy have recently revisited the issue of Soviet claims against Turkey: a Stalinist objective during the period of the Nazi–Soviet Pact and in the immediate post-war era. Recently opened archives show that the British response to Soviet claims in 1945 was driven by comprehensive access to Turkish diplomatic correspondence. However, the British failed to recognize wartime decrypts that indicated continuity in Soviet ambitions in Turkey since 1940. This failure reflected the responsibility of the operational departments of the Foreign Office for the assessment of diplomatic Sigint, and the absence of a genuine political intelligence department with eyes for anything other than current lines of policy.     

Difference in Marx: the lumpenproletariat and the proletarian unnamable

This article considers the place of difference in Marx's politics through an exploration of his categories of the lumpenproletariat and the proletariat. Far from a simple set of class subjects or empirical peoples, these two categories are argued to describe particular modes of political composition . Despite the frisson of difference and excess which is usually associated with Marx's lumpenproletariat, it is argued to describe a mode of composition - and, in relation to anarchism, a politics - oriented not towards difference and becoming, but towards present identity . The proletariat, on the other hand, is shown to be not a People, historical Subject or identity, but a 'minor' political mode of composition immanent to the manifolds of capitalism, and premised on the condition that, as Deleuze puts it, 'the people are missing'.     

Response to Cilluffo and Gergely

Research on the motives of those who engage in small group political violence typically takes a qualitative or quantitative form. I argue that researchers should seek to understand why people engage in small group political violence, and that the best way to achieve such understanding is to employ both. The advantages of this approach are discussed in this paper, as is the importance of recognizing that the activities of all actors in any given violent location, including state actors, should be accounted for in research.     

Health care reform content and process:propositions from the states

Health care reform and cost containment have become central campaign and policy issues in the United States. Although focus now centers on federal health care reform policy, state governments have been actively introducing health care reform legislation. Some of the health care reform initiatives on the state level have influenced deliberations on the federal level and President Clinton's health care reform initiatives will spur further state experimentation regardless of legislative success in Congress, In 1992 nearly all 50 states had either legislation introduced, or special task forces assigned that addressed health care reform issues. This exploratory research compares the content and process of health reform in four states that attempted major reform in 1992—Florida, Washington, Michigan, and Wisconsin—and draws propositions for state reform based on comparisons of content and process. The four states chosen represent geographic diversity and a balance between legislation seeking partial change and legislation calling for universal health care reform. The principal reform bills in each state are compared and assessed on the degree to which they address eight reform elements; high tech medicine, administration, tort reform, long-term care, regulation, insurance mandates, small business insurance, and insurance portability. These initiatives are also compared on a series of reform process variables that relate to the political process for adopting reform: degree of health sector support, type of political strategy used, reform champion, degree of cooperation among policy stakeholders, and timing of initiative. Based on these four cases the phased/partial approach seems to have a greater chance for legislative success than immediate universal reform. Florida's partial, consensus-building approach resulted in the only signed bill of the four states. Washington's bill, which also took a partial approach, passed the state senate before ultimate defeat in 1992 and eventual passage in 1993. Neither of the more ambitious universal health care reform packages introduced in Wisconsin or Michigan got out of committee. Although some of the plans were thorough, none adequately addressed the tradeoff between increasing access to care and containing costs. In addition, this study will demonstrate that universal health care legislation, does not necessarily equate to comprehensive health care reform. The propositions derived from this research have implications for future state health care reform efforts, as well as for federal health care reform policy in terms of the substantive content of reform proposals and the political process by which they are advanced.