James Bond,Ian Fleming and intelligence: breaking down the boundary between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’

This article looks to answer the question of why the James Bond novels and films should matter to scholars of intelligence and national security. We argue that Bond is important because, rightly or wrongly, and not without inaccuracy, it has filled a public knowledge vacuum about intelligence agencies and security threats. On another level, this article explores the unexpected yet important interactions between Bond and the actual world of intelligence. We contend that the orthodoxy dictating that Bond and spying are diametric opposites—one is the stuff of fantasy, the other is reality—is problematic, for the worlds of Bond and real intelligence collide, overlap and intermesh in fascinating and significant ways. In short, Bond is important for scholars because he is an international cultural icon that continues to operate at the borders of fiction and reality, framing and constructing not only public perceptions but also to some degree intelligence practices. Core narratives of intelligence among not only the public but also policymakers and intelligence officers are imagined, sustained, deepened, produced and reproduced through and by Bond. We conclude that Bond and intelligence should be thought of as co-constitutive; the series shapes representations and perceptions of intelligence, but it also performs a productive role, influencing the behaviours of intelligence agencies themselves.     

Complex Contracting: Management Challenges and Solutions

Governments at all levels buy mission‐critical goods and services whose attributes and performance requirements are hard to define and produce. Many governments—and the public managers who lead them—lack experience and knowledge about how to contract for complex products. The contract management counsel provided to public managers is thin. Missing is a conceptual managerial framework to guide purchasing the complex products that are often so critical to public organizations' core missions. Drawing on perspectives from across the social sciences, the framework presented in this article provides guidance on how managers can harness the upsides of complex contracting while avoiding its pitfalls. The framework helps identify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for the purchasing government and the vendor—the win‐win. To illustrate the framework, the article provides examples of successful and failed acquisitions for complex products such as transportation projects, social service systems, and information technology systems.     

Writing suffragette history: the contending autobiographical narratives of the pankhursts

On 10 October 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organisation that was to become the most notorious of the groupings campaigning for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian England. Their militant campaign was led by Emmeline and her eldest daughter, Christabel, the WSPU's Chief Organiser, the two younger Pankhurst daughters, Sylvia and Adela, also becaming active in the movement. While all four women wrote accounts of the campaign, the focus here is on the published autobiographical narratives of the three elder Pankhurst women – Emmeline's My Own Story (1914), Sylvia's The Suffragette Movement (1931) and Christabel's Unshackled (1959). In particular, the ways in which these women presented themselves and each other, and how they related the story of their private family relationships as mother, daughters and siblings, is explored     

The Women's Party of Great Britain (1917–1919): a forgotten episode in British women's political history

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the Women's Party, founded by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in November 1917 at a time when Britain was still fighting in World War One. It examines the origins and aims of the Women's Party which, with the slogan ‘Victory, National Security and Progress’, conflated the winning of the war with the women's cause. It is contended that global politics on the world stage as well as local politics at home shaped the agenda of the Women's Party in many differing ways.     

The Impact of the Unemployment Rate on Unemployment Benefits in Barbados: An Impulse Response Approach

The purpose of this article is to determine how the rate of unemployment will impact on unemployment benefits in Barbados using annual data from 1982 to 2009 with the use of an impulse response function. The results show that when a shock is applied to the rate of unemployment, which causes it to rise, unemployment benefits will contract marginally and this reaction will not stabilize until the 14th period when a new equilibrium will be attained. Since this new equilibrium will lie below the original equilibrium, rising unemployment will impact negatively on unemployment benefits although this decline will only be marginal.     

THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN REGULATORY REFORM: THE CASE OF ELS

Abstract: The effects of the Electronic Lodgment Service on relations between tax agents and the Australian Taxation Office provide evidence for both the value and limitations of integrating information technology innovation with regulatory reform strategy. IT innovations such as ELS can promote cooperative regulation. The limitations of this achievement are largely limitations of regulatory context and strategy.