Two recent articles in Le Monde capture the mixed views of Iraqis regarding the showdown with adSadr and his Mahdi Army. One, from Baghdad, asserts that all sides see no prospect for a peaceful outcome.

The views of alSadr's group, according to the head of its Baghdad bureau, sheik Raed alKadoumy, rule out negotiations -- either with the American "occupiers" or the government.    more »

Some additional observations on yesterday's thoughts re the organizational design challenges of reforming the intelligence community. The other side of the Commission's reform package is going to be even harder than the restructuring of the executive branch. The NYT has a good editorial on it yesterday, and it makes for gruesome reading:

The 9/11 commission report has inspired an unseasonable burst of activity on Capitol Hill, whose denizens are usually hibernating or campaigning at this time of year. Nine committees or subcommittees have scheduled hearings this month on the commission's suggestions for improving intelligence-gathering and strengthening domestic security. But Congress has so far ducked what the commission called one of its "most difficult and important" recommendations - its earnest plea that Congress get its own house in order by streamlining the rules, regulations and insanely redundant committee structure that make it impossible to exercise rational oversight over the intelligence activities of the executive branch.    more »

Is the proposal of the 9/11 commission really adding another layer of bureaucracy, or trying to impose a coordinator to herd cats? Brayden King has a post criticizing the idea of a new "intelligence czar." He cites with approval a recent Slate article by Duncan Watts: "Decentralized Intelligence: What Toyota can teach the 9/11 commission about intelligence gathering." Key thoughts from Brayden:

Watts takes to task the idea that a centralized director is going to improve the federal government’s ability to coordinate information about potential terrorist threats and other criminal behavior. He asserts that centralization is meant to insert control over a system of intelligence collection where cooperation was previously lacking. Watts believes however that while the idea of control is philosophically pleasing, it is much harder to institute and attempts to increase control may actually backfire by further plugging up the system with bureaucratic sludge.    more »

Wondering what "neuroeconomics" is but afraid to ask? With the word floating around various posts, links and abstracts, it's getting a bit like nano-anything. Though a lot less ubiquitous.

Here finally is a great thumbnail -- not toooo cryptic, but not chapter-length. Courtesy Kevin McCabe at George Mason University who posts (infrequently) to his cleverly-named Neuroeconomics blog.

Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary research program with the goal of building a biological model of decision making in economic environments. Neuroeconomists ask, how does the embodied brain enable the mind (or groups of minds) to make economic decisions? By combining techniques from cognitive neuroscience and experimental economics we can now watch neural activity in real time, observe how this activity depends on the economic environment, and test hypotheses about how the emergent mind makes economic decisions. Neuroeconomics allows us to better understand both the wide range of heterogeneity in human behavior and the role of institutions as ordered extensions of our minds

Now that wasn't too painful was it?

All joking aside, the neural cognition metaphor is a potential breakthrough for social sciences more generally and economics especially. The vocabulary and metaphors we use are the basis of all explanatory narratives, from classical history to quantitative financial economics, regardless of whether our hypotheses are testable through experimental techniques. In turn, those narratives form the background against which we make decisions, from the most personal ways we choose to live our lives to the most public decisions of war and peace.    more »

Dan Drezner and John //// have produced the first academic paper on blogs written by prominent, experienced bloggers. Entitled Whats ...   more »