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Building civilian interagency capacity for missions abroad : key proposals and issues for Congress / Nina M. Serafino, Catherine Dale and Pat Towell -- National security professionals and interagency reform : proposals, recent experience, and issues for Congress / Catherine Dale -- Interagency collaborative arrangements and activities : types, rationales, considerations / Frederick M. Kaiser.

ABSTRACTAn assumption of multivariate normality for a decision model is validated in this paper. Measurements for the independent variables of a bond rating model were taken from a sample of municipal bonds. Three methods for examining both univariate and multivariate normality (including normal probability plots) are described and applied to the bond data. The results imply, after applying normalizing transformations to four of the variables, that the data reasonably approximate multivariate normality, thereby validating a distributional requirement of the discriminant‐analysis‐based decision model. The methods described in the paper may also be used by others interested in examining multivariate normality assumptions of decision models.

This article introduces a new dyadic dataset measuring formal diplomatic relations. These data were coded from the Europa World Yearbook annually from 1960 to 2013 for 18,317 unique country dyads, and include the level of diplomatic representation (whether the diplomatic connection is focused on a single or multiple target countries) as well as a summary measure that captures both directed and shared dyadic level of representation. We compare the new data with data gathered previously by the Correlates of War project and find significant specific discrepancies in the period between 1970 and 1985. We then test the new data by replicating Neumayer (2008) generally validating those findings: distance, power, and ideological affinity each matter when sending and receiving formal diplomatic relations. However, using the new annual diplomatic representation data, we demonstrate a different relationship between power, affinity, and probability of diplomatic connection: dyadic foreign policy affinity is a more important driver of diplomatic exchange if both the sending and receiving countries have average relative material capabilities and matters little if one or both countries in the dyad are very powerful or very weak relative to previous model results.

Objectives: To review the strategies employed by overseas cigarette manufacturers operating in Thailand to obstruct the passage and subsequent enforcement of national public health legislation, specifically the ingredients disclosure provision of the 1992 Tobacco Products Control Act.

Background Recent attempts by large tobacco companies to represent themselves as socially responsible have been widely dismissed as image management. Existing research supports such claims by pointing to the failings and misleading nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. However, few studies have focused in depth on what tobacco companies hoped to achieve through CSR or reflected on the extent to which these ambitions have been realised. Methods and Findings Iterative searching relating to CSR strategies was undertaken of internal British American Tobacco (BAT) documents, released through litigation in the US. Relevant documents (764) were indexed and qualitatively analysed. In the past decade, BAT has actively developed a wide-ranging CSR programme. Company documents indicate that one of the key aims of this programme was to help the company secure access to policymakers and, thereby, increase the company's chances of influencing policy decisions. Taking the UK as a case study, this paper demonstrates the way in which CSR can be used to renew and maintain dialogue with policymakers, even in ostensibly unreceptive political contexts. In practice, the impact of this political use of CSR is likely to be context specific; depending on factors such as policy élites' understanding of the credibility of companies as a reliable source of information. Conclusions The findings suggest that tobacco company CSR strategies can enable access to and dialogue with policymakers and provide opportunities for issue definition. CSR should therefore be seen as a form of corporate political activity. This underlines the need for broad implementation of Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Measures are needed to ensure transparency of interactions between all parts of government and the tobacco industry and for policy makers to be made more aware of what companies hope to achieve through CSR.

Background Impact assessment (IA) of all major European Union (EU) policies is now mandatory. The form of IA used has been criticised for favouring corporate interests by overemphasising economic impacts and failing to adequately assess health impacts. Our study sought to assess how, why, and in what ways corporations, and particularly the tobacco industry, influenced the EU's approach to IA. Methods and Findings In order to identify whether industry played a role in promoting this system of IA within the EU, we analysed internal documents from British American Tobacco (BAT) that were disclosed following a series of litigation cases in the United States. We combined this analysis with one of related literature and interviews with key informants. Our analysis demonstrates that from 1995 onwards BAT actively worked with other corporate actors to successfully promote a business-oriented form of IA that favoured large corporations. It appears that BAT favoured this form of IA because it could advance the company's European interests by establishing ground rules for policymaking that would: (i) provide an economic framework for evaluating all policy decisions, implicitly prioritising costs to businesses; (ii) secure early corporate involvement in policy discussions; (iii) bestow the corporate sector with a long-term advantage over other actors by increasing policymakers' dependence on information they supplied; and (iv) provide businesses with a persuasive means of challenging potential and existing legislation. The data reveal that an ensuing lobbying campaign, largely driven by BAT, helped secure binding changes to the EU Treaty via the Treaty of Amsterdam that required EU policymakers to minimise legislative burdens on businesses. Efforts subsequently focused on ensuring that these Treaty changes were translated into the application of a business orientated form of IA (cost–benefit analysis [CBA]) within EU policymaking procedures. Both the tobacco and chemical industries have since employed IA in apparent attempts to undermine key aspects of European policies designed to protect public health. Conclusions Our findings suggest that BAT and its corporate allies have fundamentally altered the way in which all EU policy is made by making a business-oriented form of IA mandatory. This increases the likelihood that the EU will produce policies that advance the interests of major corporations, including those that produce products damaging to health, rather than in the interests of its citizens. Given that the public health community, focusing on health IA, has largely welcomed the increasing policy interest in IA, this suggests that urgent consideration is required of the ways in which IA can be employed to undermine, as well as support, effective public health policies.

European policymakers have recently become increasingly committed to using Impact Assessment (IA) to inform policy decisions. Welcoming this development, the public health community has not yet paid sufficient attention to conceptual concerns about IA or to corporate efforts to shape the way in which IA is used. This essay is a thematic analysis of literature concerning IA and associated tools and a related assessment of the European Union's (EU) new 'integrated' IA tool. Eight key concerns regarding IA are identified from the literature, many of which relate to the potential for undue corporate influence. Assessment of the EU's IA tool suggests that many of these concerns are valid. The findings raise crucial questions about the role of IA in public policy. By focusing mainly on the impact on the economy and business environment, the EU's current approach to IA may undermine healthy public policy. Those interested in public health need to acknowledge and respond to the problems associated with IA and evaluate the effects of 'integrated' IA tools on policy decisions affecting public health.

OBJECTIVES: To provide an overview of the complicity of British American Tobacco (BAT) in the illicit trade of cigarettes across the African continent in terms of rationale, supply routes and scale. METHODS: Analysis of internal BAT documents and industry publications. RESULTS: BAT has relied on illegal channels to supply markets across Africa since the 1980s. Available documents suggest smuggling has been an important component of BAT's market entry strategy in order to gain leverage in negotiating with governments for tax concessions, compete with other transnational tobacco companies, circumvent local import restrictions and unstable political and economic conditions and gain a market presence. BAT worked through distributors and local agents to exploit weak government capacity to gain substantial market share in major countries. CONCLUSIONS: Documents demonstrate that the complicity of BAT in cigarette smuggling extends to Africa, which includes many of the poorest countries in the world. This is in direct conflict with offers by the company to contribute to stronger international cooperation to tackle the illicit tobacco trade.