This text presents a comparative, international study of commissions of inquiry that have been convened in response to extraordinary failures and scandals.
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.

Stuart Farson is adjunct professor of political science and research associate of the Institute for Governance Studies at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
Mark Phythian is professor of politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester, UK.

1 Toward the Comparative Study of National Security Commissions of Inquiry
Stuart Farson and Mark Phythian
2 Influence without Power: Commissions of Inquiry and the Australian Intelligence Community
Andrew O'Neil
3 Public Inquiries in Canada: Making Espionage, Organizational Culture, Wrongdoing, and Mass Murder More Transparent
Stuart Farson and Reg Whitaker
4 The Politics of Commissions of Inquiry into Security and Intelligence Controversies in Britain
Mark Phythian
5 Inquiring into Dirty Wars: A "Huge Smokescreen of Humbug"?
Peter Gill
6 The Role of Judges
Ian Leigh
7 The Politics of U.S. National Security Commissions
Kenneth Kitts
8 Investigative Oversight of the American Intelligence Community: Promise and Performance
Glenn Hastedt
9 Commissions of Inquiry as Agents of Change in the Israeli Intelligence Community
Shlomo Shpiro
10 Legislative Commissions of Inquiry in Spain
Antonio M. Díaz Fernández
11 Cover Up or Dig Up? Inquiries into Security Services in Welfare States: The Cases of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark
Janne Flyghed
12 Commissions of Inquiry in South Africa's Intelligence History 1960-2005
Kevin A. O'Brien
13 Commissions of Inquiry into National Security and Defense Affairs in the Southern Cone: The Cases of Argentina and Chile
José Manuel Ugarte
14 European Parliament and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Inquiries into Intelligence and Security Issues
Aidan Wills
15 The United Nations Iraq Oil-for-Food Inquiry
Reid Morden
16 Inside a National Security Inquiry: The Aspin-Brown Commission at Work
Loch K. Johnson
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors