In this lecture, Sir John Adye will draw on his professional experience as the Director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and now as Chairman of Identity Assurance Systems Ltd. He will reflect on how GCHQ’s role has developed over the past 100 years, in carrying out its vital national tasks - Signals Intelligence and Cyber Security. Sir John will then discuss some international challenges which face the UK and our allies, in a rapidly developing digital environment.

There seems to be a growing consensus that previous assumptions about the long term consequences of China’s rise have turned out to be misplaced. Rather than China becoming ‘socialised’ into the liberal global order (and democratising at home), a China challenge to that order is instead being identified. This is seen not just as a challenge to the distribution of power within the current system, but to some of the fundamental norms and principles that underpin it, as well as to the theories and concepts that are used to try to understand it and predict future behaviour.

Abstract:

Prof. Klein will present a portrait of Abbas as PA President including in comparison to his predecessor - Arafat. Klein deals with these two leaders in my forthcoming book Arafat and Abbas: Portraits of Leadership in a State Postponed (C Hurst & Co Publishers, May 2015)

About the speaker:

In February 2013, General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, published “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations” in the Russian military trade journal Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kurier. In this article, Gerasimov lays out his perspective—and the prevalent view in Russian security circles—of the recent past, present, and expected future of warfare.

How do campaign contribution limits alter the influence of donors over elected officials? We propose a model to explore this question and test its implications using data from Colombian municipalities. Using a regression discontinuity design that exploits institutional rules determining contribution limits based on population thresholds, we find that looser campaign limits reduce the number of donors per candidate and increase the average donations received by the winner of the election.

Ian Holliday is Vice-President (Teaching and Learning) at the University of Hong Kong. Previously he was Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at City University of Hong Kong. He was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.