DCI'S PRODUCTION ENHANCEMENT AWARDS, FY 83-84

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83M00171R000300080002-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 21, 2005
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: July 1, 1981
• Content Type: MF

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JUL 1 188$.
Director
Intelligence Community Staff
tOCCED ` _~_
SUBJECT: DCI's Production Enhancement Awards, FY 83-84
REFERENCE: Your Memorandum of 26 March 1981
I am pleased to submit the attached proposal as INR's response
to the DCI's request for innovative ways to improve the quality of
intelligence analysis. The proposal is directed at one of the more
persistent and pervasive difficulties encountered in political
analysis: giving due weight to how traditional belief systems and
other cultural elements interact with non-traditional ones to help
shape the domestic political behavior and external policies of par-
ticular foreign governments and peoples.
We estimate that, if selected for implementation, the proposed
project would require awards of $750,000 in FY 83 and a like amount
in FY 84.
As requested by your staff, we are sending copies of this sub-
mission directly to those members of the selection panel listed
below.
Attachment:
As stated
cc: CIA -
DIA -
IC Staff -
INR
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THE CULTURAL ELEMENT
IN
POLITICAL ANALYSIS
Terms of Reference for a Contract Research Project
PURPOSES AND OVERVIEW
The primary purpose of this project is to enhance the quality of
political analysis by probing the impact that culture has on politics and
providing materials that will enable intelligence analysts (and those in
related USG professions) more readily and reliably to prepare (and ap-
preciate) culturally sensitive political analysis. To that end, the
project envisions five types of products:
1. A sophisticated checklist of politically salient aspects of
culture, with explanatory, illustrative, and comparative com-
mentary. The checklist should serve as a guide for experi-
enced USG professionals required to observe, explain, or
operate in or toward any foreign political system.
2. A series of concise and rigorous statements each dealing with
culture and politics in one of twenty-five selected countries
(see Annex A). Each statement should result from careful
application of the checklist and be designed as an aid to
country experts, primarily intellicence analysts but also
other USG employees assigned to reporting, analytical, repre-
sentational, negotiating, policy development or other politi-
cal functions with respect to the country.
3. A report, with recommendations, on techniques for conveying
to experienced USG foreign affairs professionals the type of
advanced cultural understanding embodied in the checklist
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and country statements. The techniques should be those judged
most effective for use in short courses at the Foreign Service
Institute and other USG educational institutions in which
analysts and related professionals receive advanced training.
4. A report on the feasibility of producing, at little or no cost
to the USG, a volume of readings in culture and politics for
each or some of the selected twenty-five countries. Each
volume should be designed to add illustrative depth to the
major points made in the country statement, which should be
the focal piece of the volume.
5. A series of well-prepared direct encounters between USG analysts
and other professionals, on the one hand, and outside scholars
and experts on the other. The meetings should be geared to
the preparation, review, and refinement of the materials
specified above. They should provide opportunities for the
participants to probe and possibly reduce the limits to their
understanding of culture and politics. To the extent this
takes place, there can be improvements in the art of political
analysis long before final materials are prepared, and the
quality of the materials will be enhanced.
The secondary purpose of this project is to stimulate in the aca-
demic sector additional multi-disciplinary, and preferably self-
sustaining, effort to advance knowledge of culture and politics in its
theoretical, methodological, and practical dimensions. If, as work on
the project proceeds, it is determined that this can best be accomplished
through the development of a national center of excellence for advanced
research, writing and teaching in this field, the Department of State's
Bureau of Intelligence and Research will be prepared to entertain
follow-up proposals for an appropriate USG role in that development.
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To explore and advance this purpose, the contractor will provide for a
National Council on Foreign Cultures and Politics of
distinguished scholars to advise the contractor on the project and to
assess the need for a sustained effort beyond the life of the project.
BACKGROUND
In the USG, analysis of the political life of foreign countries
is an art which seeks to explain and anticipate events and developments
of importance to US policy-makers. Over the past several years there
has been a growing belief among the practioners of the art, and among
their clients, that, while perfection of a fully reliable art is un-
likely, improvements in the state of the art are possible and important
to achieve.
Full mastery of even the current state of the art of foreign politi-
cal analysis is difficult. It requires, among other things, language
fluency (at least bi-lingual) and a profound sense of place and history.
What for short-hand purposes can be called the cultural aspects of
history are often those most inaccessible to the non-native, the most
difficult to master. Yet most country experts agree that these aspects
play an important role in shaping contemporary political life and that
a well-informed understanding of this role is essential to high quality
political analysis.
That is the premise on which this project is based. The materials
on culture and politics produced by the project are envisioned (a) as
aids through which experienced professionals called upon to apply their
analytical skills to a particular country can more reliably and rapidly
develop the advanced cultural understanding required, and (b) as valued
reference aids for even the most fully experienced country experts.
Materials of that nature will have the added utility of making intelli-
gence and policy officers who are not country experts sensitive to this
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dimension of sophisticated political analysis and related policy thought
and action.
DESCRIPTION
Culture is a broad concept. Precisely which aspects of culture
are politically salient is a matter to be determined on a case by case
basis. The key to each such determination, however, is that it include
those aspects of culture which are manifest or latent in the contemporary
political life of a country, whether in its institutions or in the
thought patterns, perceptions and behavior of its leaders, populace, or
sub-groups of either. Allowances will have to be made for single and
multi-cultural societies, for those with unbroken if evolving traditions
and those with multiple layers of different traditions variously synthe-
sized.
It is likely that a broadly useful checklist of politically salient
cultural features will have to consider, if not include, such matters
as the following:, The meanings embedded in religious, folk, or phil-
osophical(beliet systems for such fundamental concepts as man, nature,
society, the supernatural, time, history, universality, truth, causa-
tion, and rationality; the perceptions of self, other,we-they, friend,
alien, enemy; the meaning of more explicitly political (in the West)
concepts, such as authority and state, power and its transfer, govern-
ment and leadership, law and legitimacy,conflict and consensus, rights
and duties, policy and comity, negotiation and bargaining, frontiers
and foreigners, nation and world, property and public/private, and
politics itself.
Anthropologists; historians of religion, ideas, literature and the
arts, as well as of politics; ancient and modern observers and travelers;
cross-cultural humanists and social and behavioral scientists; practical men
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from such diverse fields as diplomacy, business and science have en-
countered and reflected upon politics and culture in various parts of
the world. This has resulted in a sizable and diverse literature, full
of insights and aphorisms and images, some contradictory, some no
longer meaningful to the modern American mind, many distorted by the
parochialism of the observer, some overtaken by waves of cultural dif-
fusion, some deeply embedded in elaborate stereotypes or simple prej-
udices. For some countries, some of the literature has been synthesized
under such rubrics as national character, political thought, moderniza-
tion, and "why they behave like Patagonians." For most countries,
what is lacking is a concise, coherent, systematic synthesis which lays
bare the historical and culture reasons why political structures, pro-
cesses, beliefs, perceptions and behavior in country X are what they
are, and distinguishes those likely to change only slowly if at all
from those subject to radical transformation in an age of rapidly but
unevenly growing intercourse among peoples and nations.
If fully adequate statements of this type exist for any of the
subject countries, this project should identify them, but in all cases
the central objective is to provide such a synthesis. In no case is it
anticipated that field work will be undertaken to produce additional
raw material for synthesis.
To assure that the statement on each country is rigorous, as com-
plete as possible, and sharply focussed or. what is relevant it should
be prepared by an acknowledged expert in the field guided by the anno-
tated checklist prepared by this project. In addition it should be
thoroughly reviewed by other experts using techniques like those
specified below. These reviews are important for another reason: To
provide opportunities for those direct encounters between USG analysts
and outside scholars the importance of which is discussed in paragraph 5
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under Purposes above. In addition, whenever feasible, the contractor
should encourage other reviews in usual academic settings, such as
panels of appropriate professional or learned associations.
MONITORING ARRANGEMENTS
The Director of the State Department's Office of Long-Range Assess-
ments and Research, or his designee, will be the Contract Officer's
Technical Representative (COTR). The COTR will be the official point
of contact for the principal investigator and others of the contractor's
technical personnel. The COTR will assemble a small working group of
officers from the Department and other interested agencies to advise and
assist him in discharge of his responsibilities for this project.
RESEARCH TASKS AND PHASES
All products should be delivered in final form three years after
signing of the contract, or earlier as scheduled in this ection.
Because of the complexity and breadth of the project, it should have
two distinct phases with the Department of State having the choice of
canceling, amending, or proceeding on schedule with the second phase
after evaluation of the results of Phase I. Proposers are invited to
propose modifications in the phases and related research tasks outlined
in
here when such modifications promise .improvements/efficiency and/or
quality of products.
Phase I
The first phase should be completed 18 months after the signing of
the contract. This includes State Department evaluation of Phase I.
Task I.1. The contractor is to prepare a structured checklist of
politically salient cultural elements with explanatory, illustrative
and comparative commentary. The checklist is to be suitable for use
by all authors of country studies as initial guidance for their research
and writing. In addition, it should provide guidance for experienced
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foreign affairs professionals preparing to undertake analytical or other
political work on or in a new country of assignment. Performance
Period: Months 1 & 2.
Task 1.2. The contractor, in consultation with the COTR, is to: re-
fine (a) the criteria for the composition and selection of members, and
(b) a statement of responsibilities for, a National Council on Foreign
Cultures and Politics; recruit the members of the Council;
and schedule its first meeting. (Proposals should contain the proposer's
concept of the composition and responsibilities of the Council.)
Task 1.3. The contractor is to convene, in consultation with the
Council and the COTR, a multi-disciplinary, multi-regional panel of scholars
and USG officers to review and critique the product of Task I.1; revise the
product as necessary; reconvene the panel (perhaps reconstituted after con-
sultation with the COTR); make final revisions and deliver 300 copies of a
"First fl ition" checklist to the State Department. Performance Period:
Months 3 & 4.
Task 1.4. The contractor is to submit to the COTR a carefully recon-
sidered and justified list of the ten country case studies to be completed
by the end of Phase I. (Proposers are requested to include such a list and
the rationale for the countries selected in initial proposals). Each item
on the reconsidered list is to be accompanied by the names of three
scholars or experts each of whom the contractor and the Council believe to be
fully qualified to-undertake-
o undertake the study and for each of whom the contractor
has reason to believe that person would be available to prepare the study.
Performance Period: Months 2 &3.
Task 1.5. The contractor is to consider State Department comments on
any or all aspects of the product of Task 1.4 and to consult with the COTR
to arrive at a definitive selection of countries and scholars. Performance
Period: Department comments, month 4; contractor sub-contracting with ten
selected scholars or experts, months 5 through 9.
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Task 1.6. The contractor will identify and collect appropriate
literature on each of the 25 countries, giving emphasis however to the
ten countries included in Phase I. To the extent possible, the State
Department will make available unclassified USG studies and documents
to be added to the collection. The contractor will make each country
collection available to the pertinent author who in turn will be expected
to add to and refine the collection in doing his research and writing.
An annotated. list, up-dated monthly, of materials collected on each
country is to be maintained by the contractor to be delivered to the
Department at its request. Performance period: Months 1-18.
Task 1.7. No more than four months after signing a sub-contract
with an author for an individual country statement, the contractor will
provide to the Department a well-written and well-edited draft of that
statement. The contractor will also schedule, in consultation with the
COTR, meetings of two types of panels to review and critique each state-
ment: (a) A multi-disciplinary, multi-regional panel of scholars and
present and former USG officers sensitive to cultural factors in political
thought and action. (This may be either the same or a similar panel to
that engaged in Task 1.3, and it may be asked to review two or more state-
ments at a single meeting.); (b) A multi-disciplinary panel of scholars
and USG officers who are recognized experts on the country in question.
Reflecting upon the results of these reviews, the contractor will under-
take whatever additional steps are required to produce what the contractor--
assisted by the re-convened panel of country experts--judges to be a
rounded and rigorous statement for each particular country. One
thousand copies of each "First edition" statement are to be delived to
the Department--each professionally edited, to contain between 12,000 and
15,000 words, and in a format to be agreed but to include a 2-3 page
"highlights" section, appropriate introductory material, and a selected
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and annotated bibliography. Performance period: Months 8-15.
Task I.B. There is evidence that experienced foreign affairs pro-
fessionals, those who have already demonstrated a considerable ability
to communicate in and adjust to unfamiliar cultural environments, are
slow to acknowledge the need for the more advanced cultural knowledge
it is the purpose of this project to produce, especially when tradi-
tional teaching methods are used to make that knowledge available. This
research task should produce a report in the form of a catalogue or
handbook of teaching methods, materials, and techniques successfully
used for this purpose, each item described and evaluated as to its
strengths and weaknesses. It is especially important to distinguish
from one another items which are successful for preparing a person with
respect to a single culture from those which are successful for simul-
taneously preparing a number of persons each going to or involved
analytically with a different country; items of the latter type should
be stressed. Items should also be evaluated on the feasibility of
incorporating them in relatively brief courses for experienced profes-
sionals. Unconventional and innovative items, tested or deemed worthy
of testing, should be sought out. Proposers should specify in some
detail how they would approach and pursue this task. Ten copies of a
draft report should be delivered to the COTR and 100 copies of a final
report 30 days after he conveys to the contractor the Department's
comments on the draft. Performance period: Months 1-8 for preparation
of the draft report.
Task 1.9. To assist in evaluating the results of Phase I, the
contractor will undertake a review of the checklist (product of Task
1.3) in light of: the experience of using it as guidance for the ten
country statements of Phase I, any feedback from USG professionals,
and any academic reviews whether or not encouraged by the contractor.
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The contractor will deliver to the COTR ten copies of either a draft
"Second Edition" of the checklist or a report explaining why such an
edition is not necessary. Performance Period: Months 16 & 17.
Task I.10. Also to assist in evaluating the results of Phase I,
the contractor will undertake a review of the report on teaching
techniques (product of Task 1.8) in light of any feedback from the
Foreign Service Institute and other institutions of advanced training--
USG or otherwise--which have employed or reviewed the report. The con-
tractor will deliver to the COTR ten copies of a draft revised report
or a different report explaining why revisions are not necessary. Per-
formance Period: Months 16 & 17.
Task I.11. While the Department is evaluating the results of
Phase I, the contractor will, in consultation with the authors of the
ten completed country statements, consider the feasibility of producing
for each country a companion Book of Readings with brief connecting
materials, the entire volume designed to add illustrative depth to the
major points made in the country statement, which should itself be the
focal piece of the volume. If the contractor concludes that a volume
for each of one or more of the ten countries is feasible, he will sub-
mit to the Department a formal proposal for production and publication
at no or least cost to the US Government. Alternatively, the contractor
should submit a report explaining why such volumes are not feasible.
Performance period: Months 15-18.
Phase II
The second phase, if undertaken, should be completed 36 months
after signing of the contract. The objectives of Phase II are:
-- To publish, if needed, the "Second Edition" of the checklist,
with the contractor delivering to the COTR 1000 copies (see
Task 1.9).
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To prepare for each of the remaining 15 countries the kind of
statement produced in Phase I for the original 10 countries,
using as guidance the "Second Edition" of the checklist if
there is one.
-- To publish, if needed, the revised report on teaching techniques,
with the contractor delivering to the COTR 100 copies (see
Task I.10).
-- To prepare a report, endorsed by the Council, on steps needed,
if any, to stimulate and sustain additional efforts in the
academic sector to advance knowledge of culture and politics in
its theoretical, methodoligical, and practical dimensions. The
report should include recommendations concerning arrangements
whereby USG foreign affairs professionals can continue to bene-
fit from this effcrt.
Proposers: should assume that the applicable aspects of Phase I
tasks will be repeated in Phase II, although the contract may be amended
to reflect the evaluation made at the end of Phase I. Before or during
Phase II, the contract may also be amended, if necessary, to incorporate
the Department's acceptance in whole or in part of the contractors pro-
posal for Books of Readings (see Task I.11 above).
DELIVERABLES AND DATES
As specified in RESEARCH TASKS AND PHASES section above.
LEVEL OF EFFORT
The Department estimates this entire project would require 12-15
professional person years. Proposers' budget submissions should allo-
cate costs for professional time and other expenses to Phases I and II
to show the cost for each phase separately.
PUBLICATION RIGHTS
1. In its final, delivered form each product of this project is
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expected to be of publishable quality. The Department reserves the
right to reproduce or re-issue these materials in any quantity it
determines is needed for non-commercial dissemination, including, at
the Department's option, sales through the Government Printing Office.
2. The Department will be prepared to negotiate with the contractor
other publication and dissemination arrangements which are advantageous
to the USG and fair to the contractor, authors, and proposed publisher(s).
These negotiations may include arrangements, if any, for publication of
Books of Readings for some or all of the countries.
3. Any proposer, who has reason to believe arrangements can be
made with a publisher which will produce income for the contractor that
can be used to offset part of the cost of this project to the USG is
invited to include details in the proposal.
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