This text presents a comparative, international study of commissions of inquiry that have been convened in response to extraordinary failures and scandals.
A number of high-profile commissions of inquiry have recently been announced or are already underway in a range of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Additionally, the events of the Bush and Blair administrations' "War on Terror" are expected to yield further controversial commissions of inquiry.
In recent years, commissions of inquiry have been common to the politics of the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia. Recent years have seen a much wider range of states establish commissions of inquiry into intelligence and security issues, and they have also played important roles in transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Commissions of inquiry are no longer even the exclusive preserve of states, as transnational institutions such as the United Nations and European Union have begun to convoke them.
This groundbreaking book comprehensively examines commissions of inquiry around the world, which have become important and increasingly invoked tools to discover truth, curb abuses, and reconcile national security imperatives with the constraints of law and human rights. It offers timely insights for national security analysts, government officials, diplomats, lawyers, scholars, human rights monitors, students, and citizens.
Features
• Gathers the expert opinions of 18 internationally recognized experts on the subject of commissions of inquiry
• Each chapter describes the specific circumstances surrounding the creation of the commission, the commission process and politics of investigation, the methods used to establish conclusions, the political consequences and impact, and the various debates regarding its purpose
Highlights
• Provides a complete, global synthesis and analysis of commissions of inquiry previously unavailable
• Contains information that is essential to academics and students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses on intelligence/security and related courses in law or politics, and is of interest to commission members and their staff, legislators, civil servants, and general readers
Stuart Farson is adjunct professor of political science and research associate of the Institute for Governance Studies at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. His published works include PSI Handbook of Global Security and Intelligence: National Approaches and Security and Intelligence in a Changing World: New Perspectives for the 1990s.
Mark Phythian is professor of politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester, UK. His published works include Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine; The Labour Party; War and International Relations,1945-2006; and Intelligence and National Security Policymaking on Iraq: British and American Perspectives.
