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Commission Report (commission + report)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%
Humanities and Social Sciences	30%

Selected Abstracts

ONE FIGHT, ONE TEAM: THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE, FRAGMENTATION AND INFORMATION

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 2 2006
HANS DE BRUIJN
In its report published in 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (known as the ,9/11 Commission') analyses the functioning of the Intelligence Community (ICo). It indicates that the ICo is both over-fragmented and guilty of not sharing enough information. The Commission recommends that central control of the ICo needs to be strengthened and that more incentives for information-sharing should be designed. This article takes a critical look at these two recommendations. Sharing information carries major risks and is therefore not something that can take place as a matter of course. Moreover, information has to be subject to a selection process before it can be shared. This selection cannot be measured objectively, so mistakes in the selection are unavoidable. Strengthening central control also poses risks: it engenders more battles over territory, it does not improve understanding of the capillaries of the organization , the capillaries being where the primary processes of information gathering, validation and assessment take place , and it involves the destruction of checks and balances. Fragmentation may even be functional since it leads to redundancy, itself a safeguard against the risk of misselecting relevant information. [source]

THE REPORT OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY TAX REFORM COMMISSION

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2007
Article first published online: 15 JUN 200
Four economists give their views on the economics and political economy of the Conservative Party Tax Reform Commission Report. [source]

9/11 and the ,Problem of Imagination': Fight Club and Glamorama as Terrorist Pretexts

ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2005
Per Serritslev Petersen
In the recently published 9/11 Commission Report, a major issue in the analysis of counterterrorist policy challenges is said to be ,the problem of imagination.' This problem cuts both ways, namely both in terms of the American intelligence bureaucracy's congenital deficiency in imagination (,Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies'), and in terms of the Al Qaeda terrorists' astonishing possession of imagination and sophistication (,We learned about an enemy who is sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal'). The 9/11 terrorists' imagination, I suggest, was embedded in a sophisticated cultural literacy as far as post-modern Americana are concerned, including an intimate knowledge of the apocalyptic imaginary that typifies much American fin - de - siècle fiction and film, and which, consequently, could and would serve as a reservoir of terrorist pretexts or scenarios. For the terrorist masterminding 9/11 knew exactly what he was doing: the apocalyptic phantasms of the post-modern American imaginary would be brought home to roost, as it were, with a vengeance. By way of illustration I focus on two texts, a film and novel, both produced in 1999, namely David Fincher's Fight Club and Brett Easton Ellis's Glamorama. [source]

The US 9/11 Commission on Border Control

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
Article first published online: 30 SEP 200
The collapse of Europe's Communist regimes and the breakup of the Soviet Union marked the end of the "short twentieth century" and appeared to have opened up an era of accelerating globalization,increasingly free movement of goods and capital and, if not yet free movement of persons, certainly travel less hindered by bureaucratic obstacles. The threat of international terrorism, however, places a major question mark on such expectations. The magnitude of this threat was shown by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on US targets in New York and Washington. The attacks have led to greatly increased security checks on international travel and, especially in the United States, to tightened visa regulations and border controls. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, created by the US Congress and the President in 2002, submitted its final report in July 2004. The analysis of the terrorist threat and the recommendations on how to counter it offered in this 567-page document suggest that restrictions on crossing US international borders are unlikely to be eased soon and may well be made stricter. The practical inconvenience of such measures, however, may be lessened by improvements in the technological means of identifying persons, such as through use of biological markers. Relevant passages of the 9/11 Commission Report, from Chapter 12, section 4, are reproduced below. Footnotes have been omitted. [source]

State and Local Governance Fifteen Years Later: Enduring and New Challenges

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 2008
Frank J. Thompson
This article draws on the contributions to this issue and related evidence to assay the extent to which the states and larger local governments have moved in directions endorsed by the Winter Commission in 1993. The commission's recommendations targeted (1) the political context of state and local governance, with a particular focus on executive leadership, campaign finance reform, and citizen engagement; (2) the specifics of public administration, with primary emphasis on empowering managers through internal deregulation and bolstering human resource capacity; and (3) the nature of the relationship between the national government and the states in a key policy arena. Significant changes in the fabric of state and local governance have occurred in each of these three areas over the last 15 years. Many of these modifications are consonant with the thrust of the Winter Commission report, but the evidence also points to the limits of state and local reform. Further reform initiatives should be built on systematic efforts to advance knowledge concerning the origins, nature, and outcomes of the array of institutions and processes present at the state and local levels. [source]

The Challenge of Strengthening Nonprofits and Civil Society

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 2008
Steven Rathgeb Smith
The Winter Commission Report was centrally concerned with improving the performance of state and local governments. Since the issuance of the commission's report in 1993, the delivery of services by state and local government has been substantially changed by the growing role of nonprofit organizations in providing public services and representing citizen interests. As a result, state and local governments and nonprofit agencies are faced with complex governance challenges. The central argument of this paper is that despite the dramatic changes in the relationship between government and nonprofit organizations in recent years, the key tenets of the Winter Commission report,the need for improved training and education, greater transparency and accountability, more emphasis on performance, and improved citizen engagement,remain deeply relevant in improving the governance of the public services in an increasingly complex policy process and service delivery system at the state and local levels. [source]

Reforming Leasehold: Discursive Events and Outcomes, 1984,2000

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2001
Sarah Blandy
This article uses discourse analysis to explore and explain the limits of ongoing efforts to resolve the problems experienced by long leaseholders living in private flats in England and Wales. Attention is focused on the position of leasehold within the three discourses of property law, housing, and housing law, as revealed through the language used in legislation, consultation papers, Law Commission reports, political statements, media representations, and the accounts of leaseholders themselves. The implementation gap between legislative intentions and effects, so often neglected in discussion of housing policy, is explored. The article considers policy and legislation in the light of a metanarrative encompassing all aspects of the multi-occupancy of blocks of flats. [source]

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same?

BRITISH JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION, Issue 4 2002
A Response to the Audit Commission's Report on Statutory Assessment, Statements of SEN
This article provides a response to some of the issues raised by Anne Pinney's summary, published in the September issue of BJSE, of the Audit Commission's report on statutory assessment and Statements of Special Educational Needs. In developing her critique, Lani Florian, lecturer in special and inclusive education at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education and Editor of the Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, asks a series of important and challenging questions. Can the broad notion of ,special educational needs' complement ideas about ,areas of need' or ,categories of handicap' and enable young people with severe, complex or long,term disabilities to have their needs met? Is SEN funding fairly distributed, among pupils with special educational needs in particular and across the education system in general? Should the relationship between the processes of formative and statutory assessment and Statements of Special Educational Needs be reconceptualised? Can the protection offered by the Statement be maintained in association with the development of good inclusive practices? And if there is to be a move away from provision designed to address children's individual difficulties, what forms of thinking, procedure and practice will enable staff to develop new ways of meeting the needs of all learners? I hope that the questions raised by this article will stimulate other commentators to contribute to the debate about our responses to special educational needs in the pages of BJSE [source]

From Pariah State to Global Protagonist: Argentina and the Struggle for International Human Rights

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 1 2008
Kathryn Sikkink
ABSTRACT Democratizing states began in the 1980s to hold individuals, including past heads of state, accountable for human rights violations. The 1984 Argentine truth commission report (Nunca Más) and the 1985 trials of the juntas helped to initiate this trend. Argentina also developed other justice-seeking mechanisms, including the first groups of mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared, the first human rights forensic anthropology team, and the first truth trials. Argentines helped to define the very term forced disappearance and to develop regional and international instruments to end the practice. Argentina thus illustrates the potential for global human rights protagonism and diffusion of ideas from a country outside the wealthy North. This article surveys Argentina's innovations and proposes possible explanations, drawing on theoretical studies from transitional justice, social movements, and norms cascades in international relations. [source]