NATO expansion and Russian national interests

The article centres on the debate in Russia about NATO expansion into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and how expansion affects re‐emergent Russian national interests post‐Madrid. The author examines official Russian arguments against expansion as well as the views of policy‐makers and political commentators, assesses the impact of NATO's plans on Russian‐Western Security and disarmament arrangements and analyses Russia's relations with her neighbours in CEE, the CIS and Asia.     

Contents of Volume 9

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 9     

Bidding behavior in the department of defense's commercial activities competitions

From 1978 to 1994, the Department of Defense conducted more than 2,000 competitions in which private contractors and the government's in‐house team bid to provide a service performed in‐house before the competition. A three‐equation model is constructed, which is used to estimate the in‐house bid, the minimum contractor bid, and the in‐house team's baseline cost. The model accounts for the fact that the in‐house bid is constrained not to exceed its baseline cost. The estimates are used in simulations of the savings from the completed competitions ($1.55 billion annually, 35 percent of the baseline cost) as well as the savings from various alternative policies, including competitively tendering all the functions on the Department of Defense's list of potential candidates ($7.58 billion annually). © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Between Devolution and Direct Rule: Implications of a Political Vacuum in Northern Ireland?

It is over a year since the collapse of the devolved administration at Stormont, which left one region of the United Kingdom without a functioning executive. Reluctance to introduce direct rule from Westminster reduced Northern Ireland to a desiccated form of governance. This article examines the nature and form of government in this political vacuum. The consequences of this system are examined in terms of the absence of legislation, mechanisms for scrutiny, and participation in intergovernmental relations. In the absence of devolution and direct rule, the potential for greater involvement of the Irish government in the affairs of Northern Ireland is also considered.     

Can Making It Harder to Convict Criminals Ever Reduce Crime?

This paper attempts to find the optimal level of the burden of proof needed in criminal cases in order to minimize crime. It also aims to provide an explanation for the higher burden of proof required in criminal cases than civil cases. It assumes that police officers receive incentive payments for convictions in cases they investigate. Although the direct effect of a higher burden of proof requirement is to reduce the probability of conviction, the indirect effect is to force police officers to build stronger cases and put more effort into finding suspects who are more likely to be guilty. Moreover, the increase in the marginal probability of conviction potential criminals face when they actually commit a crime increases. These factors imply that a reduction in the burden of proof will not necessarily reduce crime.     

Avoiding the internet of insecure industrial things

Security incidents such as targeted distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on power grids and hacking of factory industrial control systems (ICS) are on the increase. This paper unpacks where emerging security risks lie for the industrial internet of things, drawing on both technical and regulatory perspectives. Legal changes are being ushered by the European Union (EU) Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive 2016 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR) (both to be enforced from May 2018). We use the case study of the emergent smart energy supply chain to frame, scope out and consolidate the breadth of security concerns at play, and the regulatory responses. We argue the industrial IoT brings four security concerns to the fore, namely: appreciating the shift from offline to online infrastructure; managing temporal dimensions of security; addressing the implementation gap for best practice; and engaging with infrastructural complexity. Our goal is to surface risks and foster dialogue to avoid the emergence of an Internet of Insecure Industrial Things.