Privatisation — A History and Survey of Changes in Organisation Structures, Cultural and Environmental Profiles

This paper provides a brief history of changes after privatisation to organisational structures and cultural profiles of affected entities. It assesses the experience of change in the electricity industry in New Zealand, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and the State Electricity Commission of Victoria and then examines results of a survey of senior executives of organisations privatised in Australia between 1990 and 1998. These senior executives had access to knowledge of pre- and post-privatisation conditions and their answers to a series of questions on organisational structure, cultural and environmental issues were analysed. The detailed answers involve limited areas of 'no change' but, critically, significant cultural changes relating to private ownership are established. These are summarised for readers' convenience by tables and discussed within the text.     

The Politics and Reality of Environmental Justice: A History and Considerations for Public Administrators and Policy Makers

This article provides a short history of the environmental justice movement in the United States and discusses four dominant problems in environmental justice discourse. It also will discuss three other aspects of the environmental discourse: weak empirical research; the failure to recognize the distinction between hazard and risk; and the possibility that environmental justice is more about fear, blame, procedural inclusion, and power politics than it is about public health in minority and low–income communities. More rational mechanisms for managing the issue would better serve the ideal of democracy, giving society a better chance of solving public health problems in minority and low–income communities.     

Bad History

If history is a sort of radar for the ship of state, then the machine has broken down, just at the point where Gordon Brown, trained as a historian, takes over control. Caught up in the best-seller business, popularised on TV, it has come to reflect metropolitan commercial drives, the obsessions of The Hitler Channel or the 'publish or be damned' ethos of the Research Assessment Exercise. Fashionable discourses about identity and postmodern consumerism, and the palsied traditions of Fogeydomboth remote from the basic business of getting, spending and governing-may offer a niche-marketing future, but are more likely to speed the vessel towards the rocks.     

"历史向'世界历史'转变"的过程与环节——兼论"唯物史观"对社会历史解释的主线和界域

"历史向‘世界历史'的转变"是马克思、恩格斯论证"唯物史观"最重要的论据之一.在<德意志意识形态·费尔巴哈>章"未誊清稿Ⅲ"开头的两个片段中,他们详尽地描述了由城乡分离→行会制度的建立→商人作为一特殊阶层的出现→工场手工业的产生→人口跨国度的迁徙和"流浪"→"商业和工场手工业集中于一个国家的现象"→大工业的发展与垄断等各个环节次第过渡的历史进程.正是对这些细节的描摹和勾勒昭示出"唯物史观"的思维主线、思考重点、擅长领域和诠释界域,更提供了我们透视招致其之后坎坷命运的内在理论根由.因此,不应该把"唯物史观"对历史的解释简单化、极端化.     

论环境行政权与公民环境权的协调

自由经济思潮激发人们贪婪的逐利欲,肆无忌惮地掠夺自然资源,破坏生态平衡,引发严重的生态危机。为维护公共利益,环境行政权从传统的行政权中延伸出来,亦赋予公民以环境权,以期达到"源头控制",但受制于环境问题的复杂性及环境行政权本身的缺陷,二者出现错位。该文顺延上述思路,讨论环境行政权与公民环境权的协调。     

Environmental feudalism

He is author of The Political Limits of Environmental Regulation.     

Diversifying British Political History

This article explores what the diversification of British political history might look like. Building on an expanded definition of citizenship and attention to ‘ordinary’ politics, it suggests several questions which might diversify political history's content and approach. Whom do we count as political actors? Who has access to democratic processes and where does politics happen beyond these processes? To what forms of political thought do we attend? Drawing on examples from my own research on refugees and asylum seekers in modern Britain, and on the wider field of modern British history, I demonstrate the possibilities of diversification as a way to enliven political history's future.