Green citizenship: a review and critique

This paper reviews the literature on green citizenship and argues that the concept of citizenship has done much to advance green theory building internally but that in order to deepen an already substantial area of scholarship, promote a more inclusive and emancipatory environmental politics, and augment their contribution to the larger body of citizenship studies, greens will need to broaden their approach to the concept. This review highlights the tendency within green theorizing to privilege particular conceptions of the natural world and humans' relations to it, and draws attention to the work of those scholars explicitly engaged in incorporating the social construction of nature into their theories of green citizenship. The essay concludes by identifying three particular areas in which green theorizing has contributed to citizenship studies.     

The methodology of judicial behavior research: A review and critique

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the development of a better fit between theory and methodology in judicial behavior research by reviewing, assessing, and making recommendations for the use of the latter. The methodological practice of judicial behavior research is assessed, and recommendations and projections to the future are provided. Four components of methodology—research design, data sources and generation procedures, operationalization and measurement of concepts, and statistical methods and measures—are discussed. Judicial behavior is understood to have a primary focus on the explanation of the behavior of individual decision makers, but also includes decision making within or by groups of decision makers and by courts.     

Against agency: a positional critique

Abstract

This paper uses the changing historical and theoretical frames within which management pay and investor claims are considered to provide a critique of the functionalist approach of agency and to develop an alternative, positional explanation of rewards. The first part of the paper draws on the contrast between the pre-1940 critique of the rentier and the post-1980 discursive construction of the shareholder to raise important contemporary questions about position and reward. The second part develops the idea of positional rewards to challenge agency assumptions by arguing that both giant firm managers and the less visible, though larger, group of intermediaries use their position to skim value. In contrast, the experience of position is more mixed for shareholders, who are generally passive value surfers. The final section of the paper argues that a renewed emphasis on position will enable a problem shift from value creation to value capture.     

In search of international political economy a review essay

John Edelman Spero, The Politics of International Economic Relations (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977).

Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest. Raw Materials, Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978).

Charles‐Albert Michalet, Le capitalisme mondial (Paris: Presses universi‐taires de France, 1976).     

Legal international migration across the northern frontier of Mexico

The impact of the Simpson-Rodino Law of 1986, which increased legal commuting labor migration across the Mexican-U.S. border, is examined using data from surveys undertaken in 1986 and 1990. "Using these data and LOGIT regression models which include variables related to individuals as well as their household members and their context, statistical evidence is generated in support of the propositions that, i) an expansion occurred of the spectrum of social strata incurring in this type of migration; ii) the selectivity characteristics of new entrants into this migration group show a reproduction strategy oriented toward upward mobility; and iii) contextual factors led to a geographic redistribution of the commuter migrant group in the state of Baja California." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

The southern border and international migration from the perspective of NAFTA

"Constitution of a trade bloc between Mexico, the United States and Canada through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in this decade has called attention to...the role of Mexico's southern border, Central American conflicts and migrations from that era. Relevant adjustments have been made to Mexico's policy in approaching problems regarding its southern neighbors. These changes respond largely to the perception held by larger economic blocs and migration generated by unequal development levels within these regions and countries." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Culture vs citizenship? A review and critique of will Kymlicka's multicultural citizenship

The article presents a review and critique of Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. I focus primarily on the normative elements and consequences of Kymlicka's theory and present an alternative to his liberal defence of group‐differentiated rights. In marked contrast to Kymlicka, I argue that to truly protect their cultures minority groups must forge closer ties with their respective states. Furthermore, I suggest that multicultural citizenship can only be achieved through a commitment by both majority and minority groups to toleration and respect for deep diversity. To be effective, multiculturalism should be considered to be an ordering principle of the regime.     

Positivism and its limitations for strategic intelligence: a non-constructivist info-gap critique

Knowledge underlies rational choice between options. Predictive optimization is the prioritization of options according to their predicted outcomes based on available knowledge. The epistemological justification of predictive optimization is based on positivism, which asserts that facts and laws about the world exist and are discoverable. However, knowledge of human affairs in strategic adversarial interactions is often severely limited and erroneous: residual uncertainty is often vast. This results especially from deception and innovation by the adversary which introduce deep Knightian uncertainty. Consequently, predictive optimization is unreliable: outcomes may differ substantially from predictions. An alternative strategy for prioritization of options is info-gap robust satisficing: achieve critical goals (that are adequate but perhaps suboptimal) over a wide range of deviation of reality from current knowledge. The epistemological justification of robust satisficing is based on extending positivism to acknowledge and manage the unknown. Prioritization of options by robust satisficing manages both the limitations of knowledge and the need for achieving critical goals. This critique of positivism is not constructivist. Rather, we extend positivism to account for highly deficient knowledge. We present several examples and conclude by discussing the relation between inductive, abductive and deductive inference.     

Debating the ghost of Marshall: a critique of citizenship

Significant changes to societies and the jettisoning of social rights are limiting access to conventional citizenship and fueling a new criterion by which a substantive ‘citizenship’ may now be claimed. Specifically, fame, fortune and a kind of martyrdom are, de facto, the new ways in which an individualistic approach is used to access citizenship, initiating a two-tiered system of inclusion. This article uses a Canadian context to examine the relevance of Marshall's concept of citizenship. The argument will follow in four parts. First, I review Marshall's construct of social rights and take up some of the ‘internal’ critiques of its limits. Second, I examine the gendered limits of social citizenship claims. Third, I explore what amounts to an ‘external’ critique of Marshall, i.e. thinkers like Beck who argue that the debate has moved on from how to do ‘social rights’ to an attack on the very notion of (social) rights. Finally, I propose what a citizenship without social rights concretely amounts to in the modern world.     

Participatory planning as a deliberative democratic process: a response to Hodgson's critique

This paper is a response to Hodgson's recent critique of our model of participatory planning through negotiated co-ordination. His critique focused on four issues: the coherence of our distinction between market exchange and market forces; our understanding of tacit knowledge; the scope for innovation in our model; and the alleged problems of information overload and cognitive limitations. In this response we argue that Hodgson misinterprets our model as being based on the aggregation of individual preferences, whereas it is in fact a model of participatory planning through a process of deliberative democracy.     

Corporate governance,property and democracy: a conceptual critique of shareholder ideology

Despite the resilience of national institutions and practices there are increasing signs that national systems of corporate governance are giving way to an idealized American model of shareholder activism and liquid equity markets. These pressures are ideologically backed by 'shareholderism', which consists of three claims: a prudential, a functional and a moral claim. The prudential one claims superior efficiency for shareholder control and market allocation of capital. The functional one bases its claim for shareholder control on the contribution of risk-carrying capital. The moral one is based on a liberal doctrine of ownership that grounds exclusive control rights in title-holders. This paper addresses the functional and moral claims. It argues that public equity markets do not contribute capital and that the Lockean conception of property is both untenable and morally reprehensible. Instead corporate democracy is proposed as a way to accommodate the conflicting claims of stakeholders. To do so an intelligent division of democratic labour is required. The paper ends with a sketch of such a model, through short outings to the real world of Dutch corporate governance.     

Rethinking Representation from a Communal Perspective

Most foundational theories of congressional representation were developed during an era of less polarized and less partisan politics. These theories viewed the incumbency advantage as buttressed by the fact that some constituents were willing to support legislators from the opposite party because of their “home styles.” But in an era of policy immoderation in Congress, this perspective leads to an assumption that citizens evaluate their members of Congress based on what those legislators do for them individually, rather than what they do for their districts more broadly. In this paper, we ask whether citizens take the interests of their fellow constituents into account when evaluating their members of Congress. Using both survey data and an experiment, we uncover support for the notion that citizens take a more communal view of representation as at least part of their evaluations of their representatives. This suggests individuals may have a more nuanced understanding of representation than purely self-interested approaches tend to assume.     

Sites and services schemes in Dacca: A critique

This paper presents a critical analysis of two sites and services projects in Dacca, in the light of previous studies of low income housing. The analysis demonstrates that resource limitation is not the most important factor preventing resolution of the low-income housing problem, that there is a perverse use of resources which makes the situation worse, and that this use continues because it is in the pecuniary interest of the dominant interest group. The conclusions drawn are far from optimistic: (a) without radical changes in the main direction of resource allocation, there exists little or no possibility for an improvement in the living conditions of poor families; and, (b) the provision of housing for the lowest income group is more a question of political will and social engineering than building technology.