Louise Fawcett guest-edits The Middle East virtual issue in International Affairs
In the issue, Prof Fawcett brings together 15 articles published between 1926 and 2017 which provide an insight into the key political events affecting the region.
Linking Cyber Strategy with Grand Strategy: the Case of the United States
Valentin Weber's article in The Journal of Cyber Policy argues that a link between U.S. cyber strategy and U.S. grand strategy is largely missing.
Integrating Offensive Cyber Capabilities: Meaning, Dilemmas, and Assessment
Across the world, states are establishing military cyber commands or similar units to develop offensive cyber capabilities. One of the key dilemmas faced by these states is whether (and how) to integrate their intelligence and military capabilities to develop a meaningful offensive cyber capacity. This topic, however, has received little theoretical treatment.
Voter reactions to incumbent opportunism
Opportunistic incumbent behavior to gain electoral advantage flies in the face of democratic accountability and should elicit voter disapproval. Yet incumbents routinely behave opportunistically. This observation is puzzling. We address this puzzle by offering the first systematic, individual-level analysis of voter reactions to opportunism. We combine four original surveys with embedded experiments and focus on a common form of opportunism in parliamentary systems—opportunistic election timing to favorable economic conditions.
Artificial Intelligence, Authoritarianism and the Future of Political Systems
In February 2017 Scientific American featured a special issue, which revolved around the question: "will democracy survive big data and artificial intelligence." According to the issue, humanity is undergoing a profound technological transformation, and the advent of large-scale social and behavioral automation would change how human societies will be organized and managed.
Promoting International Cooperation in the Age of Global Space Governance: A Study on On-orbit Servicing Operations
Dr Nikita Chiu is Research Fellow in Robotics at the Centre for Technology and Global Affairs at University of Oxford with an additional focus on space sustainability. She is also Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at University of Cambridge. Her article on international cooperation and on-orbit servicing operations appears in Acta Astronautica.
Abstract:
The rise of China's security-industrial complex
Digital Open Source Intelligence and International Security: A Primer
Akin Unver argues that intelligence is a key and continually changing the practice of statecraft. While this practice has historically been dominated by the states, merchants, and the clergy, the late-20thcentury has witnessed the privatization of intelligence and surveillance equipment and broadening of the concept of intelligence.
Rethinking the epistemic case against epistocracy
In this article, I focus on arguments which suggest that disenfranchising persons on the grounds of incompetence is likely to produce epistemically sub-optimal decisions. I suggest three ways in which such arguments can be strengthened. First, I argue that they can be untethered from the controversial ‘best judge’ principle, according to which each person is the best judge of his or her own interests. Second, I suggest that epistemic arguments against epistocracy are currently insensitive to the nature of the groups that would be excluded on the grounds of incompetence.