Drawing on classical Athens the paper explores the qualities and workings of direct democracy and provides a simple model of public choice to analyse policymaking with specific reference to war and peace. Given the cost and the benefits of defence and the public revenues at the time, it looks...

In conflict zones, the phrase, “The democratic process is a vital part of the peace process”, is often heard. Yet many voting procedures are far from “peace-ful”. Indeed, in many instances, divisive and adversarial voting procedures have not only failed to heal the dispute, they have in...

A simple model of public good expenditure is developed where government service levels are affected by a potential insurgency. Counterinsurgency measures can reduce the effectiveness of resistance and alter the level of support for the government. In general, a very limited counterinsurgency is...

This paper contributes to the literature concerning burden sharing in specific crisis response operations. We provide a quantitative expression of burden-sharing behaviour of the NATO and Non-NATO allies during the International Security Assistance Forces operations in Afghanistan from 2001 to...

The US Department of Defense (DoD) and the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are the two institutions responsible for the medical care of military personnel and Veterans. DoD’s major policy and operational personnel changes impact the VA by modifying the characteristics of Veterans...

The US has withdrawn from Iraq and is planning to do likewise from Afghanistan in 2014. This article argues that the US has been fighting at least 5 wars, most of which are unannounced and undeclared, and are fought with air power and robotics technology.

This paper brings together the notions of 'demand-led innovation' and 'related variety' to suggest a new economic diversification policy model, namely demand-led related diversification. The paper argues that economic diversification efforts in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region have...

It has been suggested that in order to address current complex problems, scientists have to take on new roles that link the production and use of knowledge. However, what exactly these new roles mean is often not clearly identified. This paper contributes to this by discussing relevant...

The major research-intensive pharmaceutical companies (big pharma), are facing a profound crisis. Their R&D expenditures have grown at a staggering rate, while the creation of drugs that represent truly novel advances in therapy, so-called new molecular entities (NMEs), has stagnated. Here I...