It is no accident that the unofficial authority on containment, the historian of American foreign policy John Gaddis of Yale, is also Kennan's official biographer; though it is deeply ironic that an overt admirer of George W Bush should have been asked to write a life of his bitterest critic.
Every time I meet someone and they ask about the name's origin, I become the unofficial authority of that weird, paradoxical island everyone heard of once in geography class.
With no internal authority, unofficial power structures develop.
Gatekeepers (persons, who hold official as well as unofficial positions of authority and access to community resources, that are familiar with the behaviours and lifestyles of the target population) as well as those completing FGDs and KIIs were asked to identify (nominate) persons for study participation.
His story encapsulates what experts and campaigners say is a quiet scandal in the education system, with a growing number of children being illegally denied an education through unofficial exclusions and local authority failings.
The tribunal in question, in one family's courtyard in a poor neighborhood in the capital of Mali, has no legal power but plenty of moral authority: its unofficial judges are trying the World Bank and the I.M.F. for their role in Africa's economic and social crises.
It would not be until halfway through the war – and after dogs had demonstrated their worth in battle in unofficial capacities – that the authorities came around".
Instead we get retired Major-General Patrick Cordingly, commander of the Desert Rats in 1971, acting as the unofficial voice of British military authority in Iraq.
"This is entirely unacceptable", said Fernando Cheung, a pro-democracy MP, "up to now the whole handling of the Lee Bo fiasco is being conducted through unofficial means, bypassing the Hong Kong authorities, and Lee Bo seems to be releasing messages under the gun", he said.
However, correspondents say Chen's house arrest, or "soft detention" in Chinese, was an unofficial measure imposed by the local authorities, not by a court, so he was not a fugitive.
The truck convoys encountered many official and unofficial roadblocks, where soldiers or local authorities demanded bribes in the form of money or "small gifts" of commodities from the trucks.
