Globalisation:The BAP in Context

Finding reliable information for the British American Project (BAP) is difficult, and that is indicative of the secrecy of the organisation. Not only is there a ban on journalists attending their conferences,unless having been invited as a fellow, little has been said by former fellows other than it was a positive experience and a great opportunity to develop social capital.

BAP was founded in 1985 as a means of countering anti-american sentiment within British intellectual spheres. Anti American sentiment could be seen as having a basis in their continued pursuit of nuclear proliferation and Reagans. The aim of the annual conferences was to try and counter any Left leaning sentiment amongst future influential individuals and foster shared values between elites on both sides of the Atlantic.

The most efficient and scholarly way of organising research around the BAP is to arrange a problematic which is broader than just the BAP but in keeping with the constraint of elite social networks which include think-tanks, corporations and state actors. From this analysis, there can be a construction built around the key actors and their associations and world views which helps to properly conseptualise the political make up and objectives of the BAP. In this sense the BAP can be viewed in a particular context: that it is galvanised and ideologically bound by the individuals who attend and are invited to attend, and this further amalgamtes the networks to which each of these individuals belong. This also helps to compensate for the lack of public information on the BAP itself.