CHAPTER TWO
How Do We Understand Intelligence?

Introduction

This chapter identifies the central conceptual and theoretical issues that we must confront in order to enhance our ability to understand and explain intelligence processes within the context of contemporary governance. To some, this may seem a rather tedious exercise - why not just get on with examining what might seem the more interesting and exciting aspects of intelligence? This is tempting but would be ultimately futile - there is a wealth of literature that does nothing but describe the real or imagined 'facts' of intelligence successes and scandals, but, taken overall, it adds up to a highly coloured and distorted view of intelligence, including its relation to government and the state. Practitioners, for their part, may well complain that conceptual discussions will not necessarily lead directly to improvements in the performance of intelligence. But we would argue that such discussions can indirectly affect practice through better-informed public debate, awareness and self-reflection among customers and decreasing ignorance in the academic world.1 Therefore our objective in this chapter is to explain our approach to core issues of theory and method and suggest a framework for research into intelligence that will assist anyone who seeks to understand intelligence.

In the previous chapter we defined intelligence as the mainly secret activities - targeting, collection, analysis, dissemination and action - intended to enhance security and/or maintain power relative to competitors by forewarning of threats and opportunities. We need to be concerned with concepts and theory in any field of study because of their indispensable role in generating and organizing knowledge. The need is greater when studying intelligence because, as we noted in Chapter 1, historical accounts have always constituted the main literature, especially in Britain.2 The theoretical assumptions behind this work have tended to be those of the international relations school of realism wherein the 'great game' was played out between states whose core concern is security, threats could be objectively measured and the 'truth' of what happened discovered by the accumulation of oral and written evidence.

What kind of theory is most likely to be productive? The mainstream within Anglo-American social science since the 1950s has been behaviouralism, with the following significant features: general law-like statements can be induced from empirical research and observation of social systems; political behaviour displays regularities; as in the natural sciences, appearance and reality are the same; and neutral value-free research is possible. Knowledge claims are then tested by subsequent research and confirmed, modified or abandoned in the light of the findings.3 This approach has its roots in positivism that is based on the foundationalist ontology; that is, the 'real world' exists independently of our knowledge, which is developed by observation, and the aim of social science is to generate explanations of what 'is', not to be concerned with philosophical or normative questions of what 'ought' to be. Positivism incorporates a powerful preference for quantitative research and the ultimate goal is prediction,4 but it is of limited help in analysing intelligence.

Critical Realism

Value-free social science is impossible because analysts are embedded within the sociopolitical context that is the subject of their study. Since analysts cannot claim value-freedom for their findings, they must acknowledge what their value assumptions are in order that their arguments can be evaluated in that context. Analysts cannot claim superiority for their views simply because they occupy a privileged scientific viewpoint from which to observe, but they can make their reasoning, methods and sources transparent to others so that the validity of their arguments can be judged.

Thus, our objective is to establish some principles upon which progress can be made rather than arguing for the necessary superiority of any particular conceptual framework; ultimately, choice will be finalized on the basis of the personal beliefs and objectives of the analyst. There is some reality in the world,5 but the process of understanding it requires critical self-reflection on how we understand. Thus, theory and empirical work are inextricably linked:

theory is a guide to empirical exploration, a means of reflecting more or less abstractly upon complex processes of institutional evolution and transformation in order to highlight key periods or phases of change which warrant closer empirical scrutiny. Theory sensitises the analyst to the causal processes being elucidated, selecting from the rich complexity of events the underlying mechanisms and processes of change.6

Neither deduction nor induction alone is adequate in social science: we do not discover new events but we do discover new connections and relations that are not directly observable and by which we can analyse already known occurrences in a novel way. This creative process of redescription, or abduction, is what investigators or doctors do as they test out different hypotheses or diagnoses.7 By applying alternative theories and models in order to discern connections that were not evident, intelligence scholars are doing what, as we shall see throughout the book, good intelligence analysts do. But in doing so, neither group is merely describing reality as if through a clear pane of glass: they are seeking to make sense and thus actively 'create' the worlds of intelligence, government and international relations.8

The Critique of Positivism and Challenge of Postmodernism

Positivism and behaviouralism have been subject to numerous criticisms. Some can be reiterated a fortiori with respect to studying intelligence. Theory cannot be developed simply by accumulating observations of reality, but itself plays a part in determining what are relevant facts. Whether or not we agree with the proposition that 'all the most important questions about society are empirical ones, as are the most important answers',9 an approach relying solely on induction cannot suffice; to embark on research about the intelligence process without some prior conceptual framework, model or theory is to invite death by drowning in a sea of information. Of course, this fate is routinely avoided, but only because of the implicit frameworks we employ.

Behaviouralism is inadequate because it requires observability as a criterion for evidence and actors who cause events (see further below on agency and structure). The intelligence literature is replete with accounts of individuals who claim to have had a great impact on events, either in the formation and operation of intelligence services or as agents working for some organization (and sometimes for several). Such historical accounts are a rich source of material, but, of themselves, can provide only part of the basis for more general statements about intelligence processes. Any attempt to devise a theory of intelligence would be doomed if it were based only on what we can observe, whether or not it is from official sources. Compared with other areas of governance, and, according to our definition, secrecy being a significant feature of intelligence processes, we shall never be able to theorize in a way that behaviouralists would regard as methodologically credible.

The critique of positivism has been developed into a range of post-positivist approaches.10 One major strand of post-positive thinking is feminism, though this follows a number of different routes, for example, liberal, radical, Marxist. Although some feminists share a positivist approach by arguing that certain aspects of the nature and experience of women are universally true, others point to the different experiences of women as mediated by class, ethnicity, culture and sexuality.11 There has been little direct feminist study of intelligence per se, but more critique of the state-centric definitions of security deployed in traditional international relations. Here, the connection between states and sovereignty, backed up by the state's claim to the internal monopoly of legitimate violence and readiness to use force externally in pursuit of its interests, has led to national or state security with its embedded intelligence technologies becoming the central analytical concern.12 The steady entrenchment of patriarchal norms through the process of state formation marginalizes the experience of many women, for whom (in)security means something quite different.

A more comprehensive view of security, which begins by asking what, or who, most threatens particular groups of people, will disrupt any notion of national security, for the greatest threats to people's security in many cases are local state agents or military personnel, or 'home' men who are constructed as soldier-protectors of the very people they endanger.13 To the extent that most intelligence literature has spun-off from a concern of international relations with state or national security, then it is equally susceptible to this critique.

Postmodernism represents the most radical departure from positivism. Since intelligence is about the production of knowledge, with agencies operating at the cutting edge of new information and communication technologies (ICT), it seems entirely appropriate to explain it with...