Harmattan's director, Robert McKellar, has authored two books and three chapters on political risk. This page provides a short summary of each. 

​

​

Political Risk Intelligence for Business Operations in Complex Environments
 
ISBN 9780367710613
430 Pages
Published 2023 by Routledge
 
This book’s genesis was actually an initiative to update and revise political risk management training material. It was such an extensive exercise that writing a book did not seem like such a stretch. One premise of the book was that most published works, while instructive in their own ways, did not really get to the nuts and bolts of political risk at the level of country operations. Experienced readers still seemed to seek a nuanced understanding of how political risk manifested, and even more, how it could be understood and planned for. Political risk, and frameworks to analyse and plan for it, are a significant focus of the book. However, it also covers relevant intelligence concepts and practices in some detail, since they underpin any exercise to elucidate political risk to a given operation.

​

A Short Guide to Political Risk
 
ISBN 9780566091605
198 Pages
Published 2010 by Gower (later Routledge)
 
This book was part of Gower Publishing’s Short Guide series on risk. It was necessarily concise, and sought to provide readers with an introductory understanding of political risk, and political risk analysis and management approaches. It addressed both country and global level challenges and planning, and was principally focused on overseas operations as opposed to arms’ length financial investment. While now quite old, as a conceptual and practical introduction it seems to be standing the test of time.

​

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8, Political Risk Analysis as Intelligence for Contextualised and Actionable Insight, in The Routledge Handbook of Political  Risk (E.d. Cecilia Emma Sottilotta, Julian Campisi, Johannes Leitner, Hannes Meissner)
 
ISBN 9781032595405
534 Pages (Chapter 8 is 16 pages) 
Published 2025 by Routledge
 
This book is probably the first of its kind. Responding to a significant spike in private sector interest in political risk and to developments in concept and practice, the book garners thoughts, perspectives and lessons from an array of political risk thinkers and practitioners. It provides conceptual clarity, insights on relevant assessment approaches, and practical political risk management guidance at the global level and with respect to country operations. Not much in here is light reading: there is no hype, clichés, or dumbing down – it’s as nuanced as the phenomenon itself. Robert McKellar’s chapter contributed to the practitioner perspective, and focuses on how to derive actionable insight at the country level, as opposed to relying on more conventional “about the country” reports. 

 

Chapter 13, Political Risk, in The Risk Management Handbook, 2nd Edition (E.d. David Hillson)
 
ISBN: 9781398610613 
416 pages (Chapter 13 is 20 pages)
Published 2023 by Kogan Page
 
Robert McKellar wrote the chapter on political risk for the first edition of The Risk Management Handbook, which was published in 2016. The book’s editor, David Hillson, decided that given the pace of change both in risk management and in the character of business risk, a second edition was in order. I have not perused the 2016 edition for some time, but I can say that the second one examines risk and risk management from diverse perspectives, and not only is each instructive in its own right, but the conceptual links and distinctions are absorbing. In the 2023 edition, the political risk chapter gives equal treatment to global and country-level political risk, and elaborates on the link between global and operational assessment and planning.