Far Apart but Close Together: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of the Career Structure and Organisational Culture of the Post-War British Diplomatic Service

A good deal has been written about the organisation and structure of the British diplomatic establishment since 1945. This analysis uses detailed quantitative and qualitative data to develop an understanding of the background and career trajectories of the most senior figures in the Diplomatic Service in 1975. By tracing their careers, it is possible to identify more precisely than before the changing educational and social background of these individuals when compared with previous generations of diplomats. This analysis also examines certain core features of the culture of the diplomatic establishment during the post-war decades, analysing how it both shaped and was shaped by particular structures and practices. Despite the existence of a peripatetic career structure that dispersed members of the diplomatic establishment around the globe, there were still numerous opportunities for the kinds of personal contact necessary to maintain an integrated culture.     

The Preventive War that Never Happened: Britain,France, and the Rise of Germany in the 1930s

The theory of “preventive war” states that, under certain conditions, states respond to rising adversaries with military force in an attempt to forestall an adverse shift in the balance of power. British and French passivity in response to the rapid rise of Germany in the 1930s would appear to constitute one of the leading empirical anomalies in the theory, one the theory's proponents must explain. After clarifying the meaning of the preventive motivation for war and specifying the conditions under which it should be the strongest, we examine French and British behavior in the crises over the Rhineland in 1936 and Sudeten Czechoslovakia in 1938 through an intensive study of government documents and private papers. We argue that French political leaders, anticipating a continuing adverse shift in relative power, wanted to confront Hitler, but only with British support, which was not forthcoming. British leaders believed, even by 1936, that the balance of power had already shifted in Germany's favor, but that German ascendancy was only temporary and that British rearmament would redress the balance of power in a few years. We contrast our argument with alternative interpretations based on domestic political pressures and ideologically driven beliefs and interests.     

The Military as a Split Labor Market: The Case of Women and Religious Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces

A conflict between religious male soldiers and secular female soldiers has emerged since the 2000s within the Israel Defense Forces. This clash has gradually taken the form of religious rhetoric, articulated by rabbis and other religious activists, that has moved from refraining from publicly questioning the fitness of women as combatants to discourse that gradually delegitimized women’s service. Based on the theoretical theme of the split labor market, I will argue that there is a link between the extent to which the growing introduction of women into field units threatens to devalue the religious youth’s symbolic rewards and the escalation in anti-feminist rhetoric, whose ultimate goal is to exclude women from the military.     

Crime Reporting Decisions and the Costs of Crime

The paper develops a model of crime reporting based on an economic approach. It identifies the principal costs and benefits of reporting from the victim’s perspective, taking account of insurance provision and the risk of intimidation by an offender. It shows how a victim might use backward induction to infer a rational reporting strategy. The recording of crime by the police is a process that relies on victim reports, and is thus influenced by the reporting decisions made by victims. The paper uses empirical evidence from the British Crime Survey and from the International Crime Victims Survey to explore the hypotheses generated by the model. It finds support for the suggestion that the propensity to report a crime increases with the size of the loss entailed. The paper also explores the implications of the findings for the estimation of the costs of crime. Reporting and intimidation costs are generally excluded from bottom-up estimates of costs, an omission that may be quite serious in the context of offences such as domestic violence.     

Further observations on the speed of death in hanging

Given that most fatal hangings are suicidal and occur in locations that have been selected to conceal this activity (thus maximizing the chances of a lethal outcome), there has been very little corroboration of the speed with which unconsciousness and death may occur. A 35-year-old male is reported who committed suicide by hanging immediately after talking to his spouse. Police investigations confirmed her reliability as a witness indicating that lethal anoxia in this case had occurred within a very short time (most likely in less than 1 min) of suspension. The speed with which death may result from hanging not only gives an insight into fatal pathophysiological mechanisms, but also provides useful information for situations where a lethal outcome is to be avoided, or is not intended. For example, individuals at risk of suicide who are being monitored in institutional facilities need to be constantly under direct visual surveillance as significant hypoxia can be rapidly induced, parents and caregivers with infants and children in potentially unsafe sleeping environments need to realize how swiftly death or irreversible anoxic brain damage may occur from neck compression, and those who engage in recreational asphyxia should be informed just how quickly a fatal outcome may ensue.     

The Culture Cult Revisited

Society - What is the gravest threat to “open” democratic societies today? In Karl Popper’s view it was tribalism. By contrasting closed autarkic Sparta and free-trading Athens,...