International diffusion of regulatory governance: EU actorness in public procurement

This paper attempts to go beyond actor‐centered explanations of the European Union's (EU) presence in regulatory politics by examining the role of the EU in the diffusion of regulatory norms and practices. We explore the international diffusion of public procurement policy, to which multiple organizations and especially the EU and the World Trade Organization have made an active contribution. Using the “opportunity‐presence‐capability” scheme, we argue that the EU is actively co‐shaping the global agenda on public procurement, mainly as a result of the “opportunity” and “presence” dimensions of its global actorness and its role in the horizontal diffusion of public procurement regulations between international organizations. For “EU as a global actor” literature to offer valuable explanations, an in‐depth analysis of its relationship with other international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, reveals significant interactions and the co‐shaping of policy agendas.     

Public responses to the presidential use of military force: A panel analysis

How do citizens respond to dramatic uses of military force? While we know a great deal about the conditions that driveaggregate changes in presidential popularity in response to a president's use of military force, we know surprisingly little about howindividuals respond to such events. What types of individuals operating under what types of conditions are more likely to support such actions? And to what extent does approval of the use of force affect subsequent changes, not only in presidential popularity, but also in more general foreign policy attitudes? We use panel survey data collected before and after the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986 to investigate the individual-level dynamics of opinion change in response to this dramatic event. Because our study neatly brackets the Libyan air strikes, we are able to examine in some detail the antecedents and consequences of individuals' reactions to a president's use of military force. We find that watching President Reagan's dramatic televised speech had an unmistakable impact in moving respondents to support the bombing. We also find that support for the Libyan air strikes appeared to precipitate greater approval for a range of more “hard-line” military responses toward terrorism, thus creating opportunities for similar-or even broader—presidential initiatives in the future. Finally, because the bombing was the only significant event occurring between the waves of the panel, our quasi-experimental design ties approval of the bombing clearly to an upsurge in presidential approval. Implications for various perspectives on presidential leadership of public opinion in foreign affairs are discussed.     

Restoring Ethnic Democracy: The Or Commission and Palestinian Citizenship in Israel

Israel's Palestinian citizens have historically enjoyed limited individual rights, but no collective rights. Their status as rights-bearing citizens was highlighted in 1967, with the imposition of Israel's military rule on the non-citizen Palestinians living in the occupied territories. It was the citizenship status of its Palestinian citizens that qualified Israel, a self-defined “Jewish and democratic state”, as an “ethnic democracy”. In October 2000 Israeli police killed 13 citizen Palestinians who participated in violent but unarmed demonstrations to protest the killing of non-citizen Palestinians in the occupied territories. Both the citizen Palestinian demonstrators and the police were engaged in acts of citizenship: the former were asserting their right as Israeli citizens to protest the actions of their government in the occupied territories, while the latter attempted to deny them that right and erase the difference between citizen and non-citizen Palestinians. Significantly, no Jewish demonstrator has ever been killed by police in Israel, no matter how violent his or her behavior. In November 2000 a commission of inquiry was appointed to investigate the killings. Its report, published in September 2003, is yet another act of citizenship: it seeks to restore the civil status of the citizen Palestinians to where it was before October 2000, that is, to the status of second-class citizens in an ethnic democracy. The Commission sought to achieve this end by undertaking a dual move: while relating the continuous violation of the Palestinians' citizenship rights by the state, it demanded that they adhere to their obligation to protest this violation within the narrow limits of the law. This article's key question is: could the Commission, by viewing the behavior of the Palestinian protestors as legitimate civil disobedience, have encouraged the evolution of Israel from an ethnic to a liberal democracy?     

Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation

Unelected officials with coercive powers (e.g., police, prosecutors, bureaucrats) vary markedly in the extent to which citizens view their actions as legitimate. We explore the institutional determinants of legitimate authority in the context of a public goods laboratory experiment. In the experiment, an “authority” can target one “citizen” for punishment following citizen contribution choices. Untargeted citizens can then choose to help or hinder the authority. This latter choice may be interpreted as a behavioral measure of the authority's legitimacy. We find that legitimacy is affected by how authorities are compensated, the transparency with which their decisions are observed, and an interaction between these. When transparency is high, citizens are more willing to assist authorities who receive fixed salaries than those who personally benefit from collected penalties, even when citizens' material incentives are controlled for. Lower transparency reduces support, but only for salaried enforcers.     

On resistance in the post-political city: conduct and counter-conduct in Vancouver

The paper contributes to understandings of contestation and resistance in urban politics, using a land use struggle against a “big-box” development in Vancouver, Canada as an example. It surveys Foucault's work on “governmentality,” highlighting the centrality of the notion of resistance in this work before focusing in particular on Foucault's yet underexplored conceptions of “conduct” and “counter-conduct”. These concepts offer an analysis of urban politics beyond the binary of successful implementation of city policies or their failure, and of cooption or revolt; therefore, proving especially useful in the analysis of urban governance which is increasingly characterised as “post-political”.     

Explaining the size of the public sector

This paper aims at providing an explanation for the size of the public sector based on the idea of “social insurance”. The main assumption made is that the public sector is less efficient but also less volatile than the private sector. The “demand-driven” level of the public sector that is derived as the one that maximizes the utility of the representative employed consumer depends positively on the variance of private output. An increase in the size of the public sector has a positive effect on expected employment and a negative effect on expected consumption. The size of the public sector set by the government which maximizes the probability of being re-elected will be higher than the “demand-driven” level if voters' preferences for employment is higher than the consumption loss associated with public employment.     

The Challenges of Consulting the Public on Science Policy: Examining the Development of European Risk Assessment Policy for Genetically Modified Animals

With the growing importance of public engagement in science policy making and declining levels of public trust in food production, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has attempted to embed “good governance” approaches to strengthen scientific independence and open up risk decision making, which include the use of public consultations. However, “opening up” of risk assessment policies reveals some tensions; namely, balancing the goals of scientific excellence and transparency, protecting science from interests, addressing value judgments, and limited opportunities to debate ethical and social issues. EFSA's development of risk assessment policy for genetically modified animals is used as a case study to analyze these tensions. This analysis suggests that in order to fulfill good governance commitments and maintain trust in risk governance, closer cooperation between EFSA and the European Commission is required to provide “space” for debating the broader risk management issues. This publically accessible space may be needed alongside rather than instead of EFSA's consultation.     

North Korea's military power

Recent diplomacy has made the situation on the Korean Peninsula less tense than it was a year ago. But given North Korea’s dismal track record in complying with agreements, the country’s military capabilities remain a concern. Apparent confidence-building steps may be public gestures calculated to prolong negotiations or deflect international criticism. There has been no significant change in North Korea's military posture.     

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of “equality-as-same” to one that treats children as “differently equal” members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.     

Police bureaucracies,their incentives,and the war on drugs

After 1984 local law enforcement agences in the U.S. substantially increased arrests for drug offenses relative to arrests for property and violent crimes. This paper explores why this reallocation of police resources occurred, focusing on alternative “public interest” and bureaucratic self interest explanations. The Comprehensive Crime Act of 1984 is shown to have altered the incentives of police agencies by allowing them to keep the proceeds of assets forfeited as a result of drug enforcement activities. Empirical evidence is presented which shows that police agencies can increase their discretionary budgets through the asset forfeiture process.     

How Do States Implement Liberal Immigration Policies? Control Signals and Skilled Immigration Reform in Australia

States often face immigration “control dilemmas” between popular pressures for tighter immigration controls versus economic pressures for more liberal work visa controls. Using a systematic process analysis of recent policy developments in Australia, this article argues that the Howard government's large expansion of “wanted” forms of immigration hinged upon its ability to control “unwanted” forms of immigration. The concept of “control signals” is introduced to account for the government's success in exiting an immigration control dilemma, which allowed it to pursue skilled immigration reforms that would have otherwise proven difficult. A research agenda is established for examining the conditions under which the use of control signals is likely to be successful and for applying the concept to other realms of public policy where states face control dilemmas.     

Activists playing a dual role: identities,organizational goals,and public relations practices

• This study explores the relationship among identities, goals, and public relations practices of an activist organization through in‐depth interviews and document analysis. Findings suggest different levels of the participant organization's identity in communication with its different audiences. In playing its dual role (as a “public” to its target organizations and a “public communicator” to its own publics), the organization acts as an honest representative voice and a credible source of information to both parties, a process that requires a balance position compatible with its mission. Its public relations practices were found to be consistent with the identities it appropriates and the values it respects.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

(Sex) Crime and Punishment in the #MeToo Era: How the Public Views Rape

One of the core tasks of a well-functioning state is providing fair and adequate criminal justice. Recent events have raised concerns that the US exhibits a “culture of rape,” wherein victims are often disbelieved and blamed. Scholars have not yet examined how the public understands rape and how it should be punished, despite the important role that public pressure has played in the #MeToo era. We present an empirical conceptualization of rape culture to generate predictions for how various attributes of rape incidents affect the likelihood that they are perceived as punishable crimes. In a series of conjoint experiments, we demonstrate that details relating to the victim’s consent and credibility significantly decrease participants’ propensities to support reporting to police or to recommend a severe punishment for the perpetrator. The results show that emphasizing certain legally irrelevant features of rape strongly affect whether the public views an incident as severe or worthy of punishment.

     

Arrested conflict: transnational place-making in Polish-German border towns

This paper studies the role of cross-border interactions and public spaces in the local mediation of national conflicts in three Polish-German border towns. It draws on Luc Boltanski's pragmatic sociology in order to address questions raised in the recent literature on urban conflict and borders. Our analysis traces transformations under Schengen in relation to Boltanski's concepts of uncertainty, justification and tests. We investigate ordinary inhabitants' everyday experiences through different place-making strategies in the context of a shifting border. Recent transformations challenge a longstanding situation of “arrested conflict” rooted in blocked local networks, disconnected from supranational discourses of cooperation.     

Black Disembodiment in the Age of Ferguson

One of the more striking features of the Black Lives Matter movement against racialized police brutality has been the focus on violence inflicted on “black bodies.” On one hand, the language of “black bodies,” as opposed to simply “black people” or “black personhood,” makes the issue of racial violence more visceral and immediate to white audiences otherwise indisposed to perceive black pain as a moral problem. On the other hand, it represents a theoretical challenge to dominant understandings of pain, suffering, and individuality based on liberal subjectivity. Exemplifying both of these aspects, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent work, Between the World and Me, provides a deep philosophical reflection on the moral and political problem of “black disembodiment.” This article tracks the theme of disembodiment in Coates’s book by foregrounding the role that feminist theories of embodiment play in his exploration of the contemporary black condition in America.     

Surviving local government policy intervention: the case of embedded markets within a historical cultural cluster

China's name derives from “china” (porcelain), and “China” (pronounced as “Changnan”) is the former name of Jingdezhen, the capital city of porcelain—through whose exports of “blue‐and‐white” china the country gained international renown. The 2200‐year‐old porcelain cluster in Jingdezhen has survived through multiple empires with distinct policies towards the development of the city's dominant industry. This in‐depth case study examines interactions between local government and the business community to discover the effectiveness of policies and the perception of those policies by entrepreneurs through qualitative research employing Grounded Theory methodology. The centralized institutional structure in China contributes significantly to the findings of a total split of “government action” from “public perception” and leads to new considerations for policy‐makers to redesign their economic development strategies and plans to engender real effects in the desired direction. This paper also provides an exemplary lesson for historical cultural clusters seeking to escape from unfavorable policy interference. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

RECONCILING THE IRRECONCILABLE? THE RESOURCE ASSESSMENT COMMISSION,RESOURCES POLICY AND THE ENVIRONMENT*

Abstract: This paper investigates the place of the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC) in the reform of resource policy-making undertaken by the Hawke government in the aftermath of its experience of the Wesley Vale pulp-mill dispute. The paper argues that the RAC was seen as a foundation upon which the reformed process would rest. The RAC's role would conform to the essence of “accordism”—that is, it would seek to depoliticise information and scientific data by filtering the wide range of inputs at the evaluative stage whilst attempting to reconcile hitherto irreconcilable interest groups from the development and environment sides of the land-use debate. The paper begins by exploring the origins of the RAC. It then reviews the RAC in action and concludes by analyzing the role of the commission within the broader context of the Hawke government's pursuit of “consensus politics”.     

Extending the “voting with the feet” proposition: the impact of local economic development actions on immigration across Mexican municipalities

Tiebout's “voting with the feet” proposition directs attention to the role of local authorities in delivering public services, and the implications of their decisions in people's choice of place of residence. Similarly, the bottom-up approach to economic development places a relevant role of local governments in promoting higher standards of living. By considering the latter, the former can be extended as citizens can choose a jurisdiction not only on the basis of a combination of taxes and public services but a broader mix of public goods. This paper analyses the effects of the fundamental features of the bottom-up or local economic development (LED) approach on population mobility among Mexican municipalities. This study finds significant evidence of a positive impact of LED elements on immigration during the period between 1990 and 2005.     

The scent of a green carnation: A review of the queer year

The “Blitz spirit” is a popular story about the British public during the Second World War, uniting together with defiance and resilience to overcome the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. Previous work has revised this wartime story as a propagandistic construction of national identity and popular memory. Therefore, this paper reviews the Blitz spirit as a myth. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) then examines how this myth was retold in British newspapers after the July 7th bombings in London. I examine how this myth was constructed and the ideological role it played after the attacks. Similar to previous revisions of the Blitz myth from 1940, I argue that social and political complexities after July 7th were often suppressed by messages that sought to evoke a sense of “Britishness” defined by a previous generation. Whilst the July 7th bombings were not a case of traditional warfare or attacks carried out by a foreign force, I argue that wartime analogies often supported military responses in the war on terror and evoked a foreign threat.