THE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL COUNTRY RISKS: OPERATIVE PROSPECTS OF POLITICS AND BUSINESS IN THE TELEMATICS AGE

REFERENCES

1. ‘Two Syracuse teachers rank political climate in 85 nations’, New York Times, 7 December 1986.

2. These programmes have been described by R. M. Gulick, Documentation of Decision-Aiding Software: Introductory Guide, McLean, 1980, mimeo and may be obtained via the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency's Sciences Office.

3. For one of the earliest systematic approaches see Adolf Grabowsky, Staat und Raum. Grundlagen räumlichen Denkens in der Weltpolitik, Zentral-Verlag, Berlin, 1928.

4. Jeffrey D. Simon, ‘Political risk assessment. Past trends and future prospects’, Columbia Journal of World Business, 17, 3, 1982, p. 67. The difficulty of defining the term ‘political risk, is connected with the fact that very different operations and transactions of various sectors are expected to be covered by one uniform concept. An international corporation from the extractive sector, for instance, gives the following definition: Political risk is the risk or probability of occurrence of some political event that will affect the cash available to the shareholders from the corporation's investment in a project. The spectrum of possible intervening events also prevents the establishment of a scientifically sound, comprehensive definition. To this extent, all attempts at establishing scientific definitions, clarifying methods and performing globally valid calculations are directed toward working versions for the specific context of the client. This strong tie to a given context is sometimes emphasised in the literature as an overlapping characteristic of political risk analysis.

5. Dan Haendel, Foreign Investments and the Management of Political Risk, Westview Press, Boulder, 1979, p. 9.

6. Wilfried von Bredow, ‘Antagonistische Kooperation als Form der Systemkonkurenz’, in Manfred Funke (ed.), Friedensforschung. Entscheidungshilfe gegen Gewalt, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn, 1979, p. 313.

7. Samuel Allis, ‘Businesses scour foreign-risk forecasts despite doubts about validity of ratings’, Wall Street Journal, 7 March 1980.

8. Quoted in Chester L. Cooper, ‘Micawber versus de Jouvenel: planning and forecasting in the real world of Washington’ in Nazli Choucri and Thomas W. Robinson (eds), Forecasting in International Relations. Theory, Methods, Problems, Prospects, W.H. Freeman and Company. San Francisco, 1978, p. 343.

9. Uwe Nerlich, ‘Bermerkungen zur abgrenzung eines aussenpolitischen planungsbereichs’, Zeitschrift für Politik, NF 14, 1967, p. 58.

10. With reference to studies of the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Andriole, for instance, reports: “in the mid-1970s a set of microcomputer based ‘decision aids’ was developed to assist intelligence and operations analysts with real problems. Grounded in the management discipline of decision analysis, these aids enable analysts to decompose and structure problems, make probability assessments regarding the likelihood of future events, and calculate the risks associated with decision outcomes ‘interactively’ on a desk-top computer in hours instead of days. In 1978 a microcomputer was flown to the Philippines to assist U.S. negotiators with the analysis of complicated trade off decisions that arose during the U.S.-Philippines base rights negotiations, and in 1976 a computer-based decision analysis was conducted to assist the U.S. Lebanon evacuation crisis management team” (Stephan J. Andriole, ‘The computer-based crisis management technology: time was and time will’, in Gerald W. Hopple et al. (eds), National Security Crisis Forecasting and Management, Westview Press, Boulder and London, 1984, p. 85).

11. Anthony Stout quoted in Bill Keller, ‘Government experts fail as businessmen’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 February 1982.

12. Quoted in Rohan Samarajiwa, ‘The failure of IRIS and the future of the customised business information market’, Transnational Data Report, 7, 3, 1984, p. 171.