Covering up spying in the ‘Buster’ Crabb Affair: A note

Abstract

F EWER COLD WAR myths are more enduring in the United Kingdom than that of ‘Buster’ Crabb. In April 1956, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) coaxed Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, a naval frogman from the Second World War, out of retirement to dive under the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze, while it was docked in Portsmouth. It had brought the Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and the First Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita S. Khrushchev, to the United Kingdom on a state visit. The operation, routine by all accounts, ended in both personal and diplomatic failure. Fourteen months later, the decomposed body of a frogman washed up in Chichester harbour. Despite the British government’s hope that the discovery might be the end of the affair, it fired up the conspiracy theorists, who alleged that the body could not be Crabb’s; that, in fact, he had been kidnapped, taken to the Soviet Union, and renamed Korablev.¹ The government did little to dispel such myths. A few days after Crabb’s disappearance, The Times succinctly summed up the situation: ‘official reticence about the activities which led to the death of Commander Crabb has caused much speculation.’² Curiosity was further piqued a few days later when the prime minister, Sir Anthony Eden, stated m the house of commons on 9 May that ‘it would not be in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which Commander Crabb is presumed to have met his death.’³     

试析威尔逊政府的经济思想和实践(1964-1970)

1964 -1970年的威尔逊工党政府 ,在思想上试图将科学革命与工党党章规定的目标结合起来 ,实现一种温和的扩大公有制的经济战略 ,但面对工党内部的压力、经济危机和工会的制约等因素 ,在具体行动中执行的是左右逢源的政策。这种思想和实践上的差异 ,在内部导致了思想上的混乱和争论 ,在外部表现为经济目标和政策上不确定 ,由此注定了该届工党政府的失败结局     

Australia’s relations with the European Community in a historical perspective: an elusive partnership

ABSTRACT

In 2015, Australia and the European Union successfully negotiated a Framework Agreement. This agreement is an essential step in establishing a stronger Australia–European Union partnership and achieving closer bilateral cooperation. For years, negotiating such an agreement had proved impossible. In the 1970s, successive Australian governments showed interest in enhanced collaboration with the European Community, but the political climate for closer relations was far from encouraging. This article explains why this was the case. In doing so, it also explores how the Whitlam and Fraser governments envisaged, framed and developed Australia’s ties with the European Community in the 1970s, and asks whether a more positive approach on their part could have led to a stronger relationship. Based on recently declassified government files, this article shows that although both Whitlam and Fraser fully grasped the importance of the European Community as an emerging international actor and were willing to deepen Australia’s ties with it, significant constraints existed against enhanced bilateral cooperation. With the Common Agricultural Policy still a considerable challenge to Australian economic interests and with the European Community focused mainly on the management of its internal market, broader political considerations were inevitably relegated to the margins of Australia–European Community consultations.     

The Determinants of Public Policy: What Matters and How Much

This article is a research synthesis addressing four questions critical to our understanding of the determinants of public policy. How often and how strongly do hypothetical determinants of policy—public opinion, interest groups, the party balance, and other factors—actually influence policy? Do some hypothetical determinants of policy have more influence than others? Does the way we measure policy affect our ability to explain it? And is there a connection between how strongly particular variables affect policy, and how much effort we devote to studying them? It turns out that variables hypothesized to influence policy more often than not have no effect. When variables do affect policy, researchers very seldom say anything about how much impact they have. Variables that convey the most information to policymakers about what the public wants have a greater impact than other variables, but it is less clear how the measurement of policy affects our findings. Researchers pay much attention to hypothetical determinants of policy unlikely to matter very much, and little attention to those likely to be the most important. Implications for future research are considered.     

Turkey's Bid for European Union Membership: Between "Thick" and "Thin" Conceptions of Europe

A team of Central Europe-based political geographers examines Turkey's bid for European Union (EU) membership, one of the most controversial issues confronting that country's and EU politics. The authors analyze Eurobarometer public opinion survey data on EU enlargement (and particularly Turkey's EU membership) across the 27 polities of the enlarged EU as well as in Turkey itself. The analysis of the data points to clear regional differences in support for Turkey's EU membership. Moreover, the authors' statistical analysis indicates two major components around which public perceptions of Turkey's EU membership coalesce. The first, identified as a "thick" component, based on the idea that EUrope embodies a specific cultural identity, opposes Turkish membership, whereas a second "thin" component, comprised of institutional-procedural norms, leaves the door open to Turkey. They argue that it is at the complex intersection of these two opposing views that Turkey's bid for EU membership should be located and eventually decided.     

Crossman and Beyond: House of Commons Select Committees in the 1960s

Assessments of the work and impact of house of commons investigatory select committees during the 1960s usually centre on the success or otherwise of the new ‘specialist’ committees established in the second half of the decade. This article uses both quantitative and qualitative evidence to give a more rounded picture, including both new and existing committees. It concludes that 1960s select committees were more popular, active and influential than has previously been appreciated. It also argues that there has been an overvaluation of the role of the Labour cabinet minister, Richard Crossman, in promoting and establishing these committees, and that support for committee work on both front benches and back benches was rather more widespread and substantial than has been assumed. In particular, the article contends that Harold Wilson's role in advancing the work of select committees has been underestimated.     

Does foreign policy represent the views of the public? Assessing public and elite opinion on New Zealand's foreign policy

This article1 1. We would like to thank Philip Nel, Robert Patman, Steve Hoadley and Chris Rudd for their advice and overall contribution to this research project. We would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. View all notes investigates public opinion on New Zealand's foreign policy, drawing on the findings of a comprehensive poll of general public and elite opinion conducted in 2008. It analyses what New Zealanders think about a range of foreign policy issues and whether public opinion matches actual foreign policy. It argues that the majority of the public support the broad parameters of official policy, but that there are significant differences of opinion in some specific areas, particularly trade agreements and defence. These differences correspond in particular to political orientation and age, gender and income level. The article also outlines the key differences between public opinion and the opinion of the positional elite. Overall, it is argued that the New Zealand public does have clear opinions on foreign policy issues and that these are generally consistent. The article proposes more frequent polling and more public debate over foreign policy.     

Were New Labour’s cultural policies neo-liberal?

This article assesses the cultural policies of ‘New Labour’, the UK Labour government of 1997–2010. It takes neo-liberalism as its starting point, asking to what extent Labour’s cultural policies can be validly and usefully characterised as neo-liberal. It explores this issue across three dimensions: corporate sponsorship and cuts in public subsidy; the running of public sector cultural institutions as though they were private businesses; and a shift in prevailing rationales for cultural policy, away from cultural justifications, and towards economic and social goals. Neo-liberalism is shown to be a significant but rather crude tool for evaluating and explaining New Labour’s cultural policies. At worse, it falsely implies that New Labour did not differ from Conservative approaches to cultural policy, downplays the effect of sociocultural factors on policy-making, and fails to differentiate varying periods and directions of policy. It does, however, usefully draw attention to the public policy environment in which Labour operated, in particular the damaging effects of focusing, to an excessive degree, on economic conceptions of the good in a way that does not recognise the limitations of markets as a way of organising production, circulation and consumption.     

Fearing Food: The Influence of Risk Perceptions on Public Preferences for Uniform and Centralized Risk Regulation

Public opinion features prominently in policy research because it sets bounds on the definition of policy problems and acceptable policy solutions. We contend that public opinion is also important for setting bounds on the level of government at which policy hazards are regulated by shaping preferences for uniformity of regulation and, relatedly, preferences for centralization. We offer a theoretical argument for why risk creates pressures for uniform standards and examine the extent to which preferences for uniformity and centralization are the product of fairly stable individual-level predispositions (e.g. partisanship and ideology) versus more fluid attitudes like perceptions of risk, which vary in response to crises, new information, and issue framing. We test our argument using survey data in the policy domain of food safety and find that individuals who anticipate greater risk from food-borne illness prefer more uniform food safety regulation, which translates into preferences for federal-level policymaking. Our results imply that contextual circumstances and strategic communications that influence risk perceptions can create not only generalized public demand for more regulatory policy but specific demand for uniform, centralized regulation.     

Recent work on Italian cinema

The end of the Cold War, the globalization of markets, and the end of Fordist models of production have all radically changed the context within which the European parties of the Left operate. This article, through an analysis of a broad range of recently published literature on New Labour in Britain and the Democratici di sinistra in Italy (and its predecessor, the PDS), examines the way these transformations have affected the two parties in recent years. Both have for some time been involved in processes of gradual adaptation of their economic and social policies. The texts analysed reveal that within the Left itself there are diverging perceptions of the value of this adaptation. In one view it represents a 'third way' between subordination to neo-liberalism and a social-democratic model now regarded as obsolete. A more critical view sees the changes as giving way to the technocratic Right.     

北洋政府时期社会舆论中的外交系

巴黎和会与华盛顿会议以后,王正廷、顾维钧、王宠惠等人纷纷回国入主北京内阁,而且一度左右北京政坛.时论对他们参与内政的评价褒贬不一,而党派之争又使他们的身份复杂化,要客观地评价他们,既要注意其自身的因素,也要兼顾到当时的社会舆论.     

The 2019 European Elections: a ‘second-order’ vote with ‘first-order’ effects

ABSTRACT

In this article we provide a general interpretation of the results of the 2019 elections of the European Parliament in Italy. The Italian case contains several elements that are, at the same time, ambivalent and interesting, especially if observed in a larger, European-wide comparative perspective. Besides a general interpretation of the vote for the European Parliament, the article discuss also the consequences of the elections results for the transformations of the Italian party system and the patterns of government formation in a context characterized by an increasing process of political integration in a multilevel political system. Finally, we discuss the trend of Euroscepticism in the Italian public opinion and the role played by radical or ‘sovranist’ parties in promoting a feeling of distrust or detachment towards the European Union.     

A Behavioral Theory of Policy Feedback in Tobacco Control: Evidence From a Difference‐In‐Difference‐In‐Difference Study

Public policy scholars argue that in highly tangible policies, such as tobacco control, the public learns from the direct experience of the beneficial effects of the policy. Empirical evidence supports this argument, suggesting that in the United States the introduction of tobacco control measures makes people more inclined to further regulation. By relying on a set of cases which allows testing the effects of the introduction of tobacco control measures across European countries on a series of relevant variables, this study confirms that the introduction of tobacco control measures makes the public more inclined to further regulation. Yet, when the effects of these policies are disaggregated between smokers and nonsmokers, results show that these positive effects are driven by smokers. This puzzle suggests that different effects than mass attitudinal policy feedback effects, driven by learning from direct experience, might explain the positive reaction to tobacco control. This study puts forward a behavioral theory of policy feedback, which suggests that smokers react positively to the introduction of tobacco control measures because they see these measures as commitment devices, which can help them quit smoking. Evidence for this argument is found by demonstrating that the introduction of tobacco control measures increases smokers’ welfare.     

The Effects of Beneficiary Targeting on Public Support for Social Policies

We assess the tendency for the public to use group‐centric policy evaluations with evidence from a survey experiment concerning two issues within the social policy domain, health care and aid to cities. By randomly varying target group identity within each issue and using both negatively and positively regarded groups our evidence shows that differences exist in the tendency for members of the public to use group‐centric heuristics. Group‐centric evaluations are related to party identification and political ideology. Across both issues conservatives and Republicans are more likely than liberals or Democrats to adopt a group‐centric heuristic. Partisan and ideological differences suggest that established theories miss the mark by emphasizing how universal policy designs are preferred to designs that target unpopular groups.     

Are Canadians Stealth Democrats? An American Idea Comes North

In an influential 2002 study, John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse make the provocative argument that high numbers of Americans seek “stealth democracy,” that is, processes that discover the will of the people without requiring substantial citizen effort. This article applies the concept in a Canadian province and argues that the stealth democracy measure represents an ambiguous amalgam of attitudes that are only loosely related to one another, and which do not appear to represent a single, underlying concept. We draw on 2011 Saskatchewan Election Study data and find that Saskatchewan responses to the stealth democracy items generally parallel the responses gathered in previous studies conducted in the United States, Finland, Britain, and Australia. We move beyond these studies by examining the components of the stealth democracy index. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of stealth democracy be rebuilt to better distinguish among attitudes toward democracy, politics, and governing.     

Re-examining the Australian public's attitude to military casualties: post-heroic or defeat-phobic?

Australia, like most other developed democracies, is often alleged to suffer from ‘casualty phobia’. The perception that the Australian public will not tolerate casualties in foreign conflicts has shaped the decisions of both civilian and military policy makers. Measures taken to protect Australian forces from casualties may, for instance, also serve to increase the risk to civilians in the country to which they are deployed. The USA underwent a similar debate some years ago. Innovative public opinion research techniques—especially ‘survey experiments’ which allow researchers to establish causal relationships by consciously manipulating one variable while holding others constant—have established that the American public are not reflexively casualty-phobic and that the impact of casualties on public opinion can be outweighed by other factors, such as the public's confidence in the mission's overall success. In this article, the author replicates one of the key survey experiments from the US debate, suitably adapted to Australian conditions, with a nationally representative sample of Australian voters. The author finds that the same pattern holds in Australia as in the USA: casualties do lower public support for a given mission, but the mission's chances of success matter more.