| Historically, researchers made few attempts to study criminal espionage empirically. The few studies that do exist focus primarily on describing the characteristics of United States citizens who have committed espionage against the United States. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the patterns of espionage by convicted offenders across nations between 1991 and 2011. Specifically, the researcher utilized cross-sectional comparative historical case studies of convicted spies in the United States, Australia, China, Great Britain, India, Israel, Iran, Russia, and Taiwan between the years of 1991 and 2011. The sample included all identified cases in the in nations and years specified and utilized measures and coding procedures similar to those employed by Wood and Wiskoff (1992), Herbig and Wiskoff (2002), and Herbig (2008b) in their studies of American espionage in the post-Cold War period. Several significant changes in the patterns of espionage across the sampled years and between targeted nations were identified. Using globalization theory as a context for the study, the findings of this study inform both researchers and practitioners in the field on the way espionage has changed since the end of the Cold War, particularly due to the expansion of globalization, the decentralization of threat across multiple nations and transnational actors, and the increase in technology. |
