神马福利影片

On September 16-18 2013, PAIS hosted the Globalisation and American Grand Strategy in a Time of Austerity Conference. It was the largest US foreign policy focused conference in Europe. The conference was funded by the 神马福利影片’s Institute for Advanced Studies, PAIS, the US Embassy London, the ESRC, the Institute for the Study of the Americas, and BISA.

It began with an exclusive early career day, followed by a master-class on US policymaking and the creation of the national economic council, delivered by Robert F. Wescott. From 1993-94 Wescott was Chief Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, and from 1999-2001 he served as Special Assistant to the U.S. President for Economic Policy at the White House. As senior economic advisor to President Clinton, he helped to develop the Administration’s policies towards the G-7, other key emerging markets, and the international financial system.

The keynote speaker was Ambassador John D. Negroponte, introduced by the Vice Chancellor Nigel Thrift. Amb. Negroponte has been US ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations and Iraq. He has served twice on the National Security Council staff, first as director for Vietnam in the Nixon Administration and then as deputy national security advisor under President Reagan. He has also held a cabinet level position as the first director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush. His most recent position in government was as deputy secretary of state, where he served as the State Department’s chief operating officer. The ambassador provided a highly stimulating discussion and an invigorating question and answer session.

He talked about how President Bush was miss sold intelligence that led to the Iraq War (which he believe Bush now regrets), and how the Bush administration believed oil was important - much more so than it actually is. If there was a slow intelligence day, then intelligence reports on oil would be given to VP Cheney to keep his office interested. In what was an open and candid talk, there were a lot of reveals about the way the intelligence community now works, and about the last few decades of American Foreign Policy.

New book published by Diane Stone: Knowledge Actors and Transnational Governance : The Private-Public Policy Nexus in the Global Agora

A global agora is emerging. The global agora is partly configured by new policy actions and partnerships where the idea of ‘public’ and ‘public sector’ is remade. However, the concept of transnational or ‘global public policy’ is neither an institutionalised nor accepted understanding of governing beyond the nation-state. Accordingly, this volume asks: What is global public policy? Where is it enacted? Who executes such policies? It addresses the meanings of ‘global public policy’ as well as the way in which policy actors in knowledge organisations like universities, research networks, think tanks and philanthropies are responding to transnational policy problems.

For more information, please click here:

One-Party Dominance in African Democracies: Renske Doorenspleet (Warwick University) and Lia Nijzink (Cape Town University), editors

Is the dominance of one political party a problem in an emerging democracy, or simply an expression of the will of the people? Why has one-party dominance endured in some African democracies and not in others? What are the mechanisms behind the varying party-system trajectories? Considering these questions, the authors of this collaborative work use a rigorous comparative research design and rich case material to greatly enhance our understanding of one of the key issues confronting emerging democracies in sub-Saharan Africa. The book compares countries with enduring one-party dominance (Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania) with countries in which one-party dominance has not continued (Zambia, Mali, Senegal).

To read more about the book, or order your own copy, click here:

On October 16th Stuart Elden was formally inducted as a Fellow of the British Academy, following his election in July. Each year, the British Academy elects up to 42 outstanding UK-based scholars who have achieved distinction in any branch of the humanities and social sciences. Others based overseas can also be elected as Corresponding Fellows, and, in addition, the Academy can elect Honorary Fellows. Fellows are scholars who have 'attained distinction in any of the branches of study which it is the object of the Academy to promote' – i.e. the humanities and the social sciences. Election is a mark of distinction, as only a very small number of scholars in any field are elected.

Stuart Elden's book The Birth of Territory was published last month by the University of Chicago Press, and on 16th October he gave a talk launching the book in the department. The book provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, it examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding.