Civil Servants and Whistle-Blowing: Loyal Neutrality and/or Democratic Ideal?
This chapter, by a political philosopher, opens a preliminary investigation of the indirect and complex relationship between the politicisation of the civil service and the incidence of whistle-blowing civil servants. The principal question is whether politicisation generates stresses on the idea and self-image of a neutral and professional civil servant and whether this may be the cause of the paradoxical stance of affirming the traditional democratic role of the civil service by speaking up, while thereby breaking the role-boundaries of that same tradition. This is a complex and novel idea, and I attempt to lay bare some important aspects of this complexity. My hypothesis, which needs empirical research from social scientists, is that any trend to whistle-blowing civil servants may itself be symptomatic of politicisation.
The Falklands War: An Imperial History
Why did Britain and Argentina go to war over a wintry archipelago that was home to an unprofitable colony? Could the Falklands War, in fact, have been a last-ditch revival of Britain's imperial past? Despite widespread conjecture about the imperial dimensions of the Falklands War, this is the first history of the conflict from the transnational perspective of the British world. Taking Britain's painful process of decolonisation as his starting point, Ezequiel Mercau shows how the Falklands lobby helped revive the idea of a 'British world', transforming a minor squabble into a full-blown war. Boasting original perspectives on the Falklanders, the Four Nations and the Anglo-Argentines, and based on a wealth of unseen material, he sheds new light on the British world, Thatcher's Britain, devolution, immigration and political culture. His findings show that neither the dispute, the war, nor its aftermath can be divorced from the ongoing legacies of empire.
An Optimization Approach to Occupant Safety and Fuel Economy in Vehicle Design
1. Abstract A major challenge in automotive design is the creation of safe vehicles with minimal environmental impact. This study presents a modeling framework for evaluating and optimizing body designs for improved occupant safety and fuel efficiency. Vehicle body mass is considered as the main link between safety and sustainability. The modeling framework includes frontal crash energy absorption, restraint system design and fuel economy. Preliminary results indicate a Pareto-optimal curve between safety and sustainability may exist when other factors are not taken into account. A more complete modeling framework that includes more sophisticated sustainability and safety metrics, cost and other market considerations, is suggested in order to support better design and regulatory decisions. 2. Keywords: Automotive body structures, fuel economy, occupant safety, optimal vehicle design, restraint systems