Testing the ownership society: Ownership and voting in Britain

Prior work on political effects of personal asset ownership in the United Kingdom has found a causal link between home and share ownership and conservative political preferences and voting. These estimates appear to confirm the “ownership society” thesis tying privatization and asset ownership to improved prospects for conservative parties. This paper proposes a new identification strategy for testing this causal connection that improves on earlier research designs. I exploit temporal variability in panel data to better specify the definition of home ownership and control for unobserved confounders associated with ownership. Under this design, home ownership is found to have no or very weak effects on voting in the 1997 and 2001 General Elections. Where weakly significant results are found, they suggest a mixed effect on partisan outcomes at the ballot box. Finally, while extending this strategy to financial assets does support the “ownership society” hypothesis, doing so illuminates a very different set of identification problems, which point to underlying flaws in the “ownership society” argument itself.     

Rejecting “rights-based approaches” to development: Alternative engagements with human rights

Following the growth of “rights-based approaches,” an increasing trend within recent research has been to establish the diverse opportunities, challenges, and potential pitfalls such approaches offer development NGOs. Although these areas remain important to current policy and practice, they equally stifle further research that is required concerning alternative engagements with human rights. This article argues that closer attention must be directed towards understanding how and why numerous development NGOs have rejected such approaches, whilst also embedding a strong and strategic use of “rights talk” within everyday campaign practice. This article draws upon recent qualitative research into practitioner responses to “rights-based” and wider human rights practice and, in so doing, enlists an in-depth analysis of two distinct subcategories of development NGOs — “faith-based” and “political.” The article proposes two current “perspectives” on human rights practice and a new and alternative engagement with a discourse of rights.     

Email Fraud: Language,Technology, and the Indexicals of Globalisation

This paper investigates a corpus of email messages known as “419 scams”: a form of financial fraud in which huge offers of money are being made to people provided they pass on bank details and other personal information to the perpetrators. This kind of message presents us with a typical instance of “globalized” communication: they are produced in the margins of the world (the term “419 scam” is Nigerian) and sent to other places; they are electronically mediated; and they are written in varieties of “world languages”, mostly English. In the messages, authors claim particular identities and relationships, and have to do so using specific, generically regimented forms of communication. Investigating such forms yields a complex view of what it takes to communicate in a globalized environment: at least three different forms of communicative competence seem to be blended. First, authors require technological competence, the capacity to control, explore and exploit the communicative opportunities offered by global email systems. Second, they require cultural competence: they need some awareness of genres and genre expectations among their addressees in order to stand a chance of success. And thirdly, they need linguistic competence: the capacity to actually produce linguistic messages that are congruent with the projected identities and relationships in the transaction. We see that whereas the first two forms of competence appear to be well developed, the third is often problematic, yielding rich indexical signals pointing towards fraud. The genre of email fraud thus yields insights into the changing nature of communication in the age of globalization.     

Learning in government programs and the usefulness of cost-benefit analysis: Lessons from manpower and urban renewal history

Especially in the social program area, the outcomes of new programs are extremely difficult to predict, and it is rarely clear a priori which of several competing program techniques ought to be tried. In such an atmosphere, ex post program evaluation methods which take account of possibilities of “learning by doing” can promote the selection over time of those program elements which maximize beneficial results per unit cost. A basic premise of this paper is that recent applications of cost-benefit techniques have frequently ignored learning considerations, greatly reducing their usefulness. The “learning by doing” features of the recent history of manpower and urban renewal programs are examined to demonstrate the plausibility of this premise.     

From disguised protectionism to rewarding regulation: The impact of trade‐related labor standards in the Dominican Republic

Policymakers in the Dominican Republic have responded to foreign pressure by rewriting their labor laws and revitalizing their labor ministry. What are the likely consequences? Is aggressive labor law enforcement more likely to protect vulnerable workers from abuse and exploitation or to undermine their ability to compete for labor‐intensive employment in an unforgiving world economy? And what are the broader implications of the answer? I address these questions by analyzing qualitative as well as quantitative data on workplace regulators empowered by the Dominican Republic in response to trade‐related labor standards imposed by the United States and find that they reconcile social protection with economic adjustment by simultaneously discouraging “low road” employment practices like informality, union‐busting, and the exploitation of child labor, and encouraging “high road” alternatives that link firms, farms, and families, on the one hand, to public educational, training, and financial institutions, on the other. The result is a potentially inclusive alternative to the repressive industrial relations regime that fueled export‐led development – and the East Asian “miracle” in particular – in the late twentieth century.     

Contested meanings,myths and hyperimages of the apocalypse: the Bakhtin Circle and the politicisation of catastrophism

This article considers the depoliticising effects of current images and myths of apocalyptic visions, such that the world faces a catastrophe whether this emerges from environmental degradation, mass migration, terrorism, or global financial collapse. In our digital media age, apocalyptic images are now also captured through the raw footage of actual disaster events. In the article we call such footage, “hyperimages”. The power of the hyperimage is not, as Baudrillard once said, that reality is “just like the movies”, rather, hyperimages demonstrate that the image captured and shown to others is all too real because they depict actual everyday disasters. Importantly, such is the power of hyperimages that they are often employed by the political right to help them construct a hegemonic project aiming to win state power and to influence state policies. Drawing on the Bakhtin Circle, however, we show that hyperimages are also mediated and circulated through a multitude of social groups and voices in society, which contain seeds of radical heteroglossic alternatives to that of the right. Following this, the article then examines how responses to apocalyptic hyperimages can be politicised in a progressive direction.     

A more-than-human political moment (and other natural catastrophes)

Catastrophic events such as wildfires are predicted to increase and intensify because of climate change. This paper speculates on how politics may look within such a context by deploying Rancière's political theorisations. We examine how a posthumanist re-configuration of this humanist notion of politics contributes to thinking about, acting for, and living within a rapidly changing climate. Specifically, we make a case for “more-than-human” political moments using the illustration of wildness – in the form of a wildfire – breaking free of wilderness and burning the settled lands of human habitation. In doing so, we draw on a relational ontology that re-configures agency and speech as “more-than-human”.     

Do technocrats boost the acceptance of policy proposals among the citizenry? Evidence from a survey experiment in Italy

Are policies proposed by technocrats more easily accepted by citizens than those proposed by traditional partisan actors? This is a crucial question, as politicians increasingly rely on technocrats for resolving “wicked problems” such as financial, environmental, and health crises. To answer this question, we conducted a survey experiment among 5000 Italian respondents. At the time of our experiment, Italy was governed by a “grand coalition” of various technocratic and partisan actors, enabling us to realistically vary the proponents of different policy proposals. Overall, citizens are more likely to accept policies proposed by technocrats as opposed to party leaders. In particular, we find that technocratic proponents boost policy acceptance even more for economic and valence issues. Furthermore, we find that this “technocratic effect” is generally stronger among citizens who are more likely to disagree with the policy content.     

In the name of the nation: reflections on nationalism and patriotism1

Treating nationhood as a political claim rather than an ethnocultural fact, this paper asks how “nation” works as a category of practice, a political idiom, a claim. What does it mean to speak “in the name of the nation”? And how should one assess the practice of doing so? Taking issue with the widely held view that “nation” is an anachronistic and indefensible or at least deeply suspect category, the paper sketches a qualified defence of inclusive forms of nationalism and patriotism in the contemporary American context, arguing that they can help develop more robust forms of citizenship, provide support for redistributive social policies, foster the integration of immigrants, and even serve as a check on the development of an aggressively unilateralist foreign policy.     

Corporate values of the 25 largest European banks: Exploring the ambiguous link with corporate scandals

Corporate value statements communicate what a firm aspires for and what drives their value creation. In addition, corporate values often also define which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Ideally, corporate values are representations of a firm's informal corporate values and organizational culture. However, in practice, there is an inherent tension between the aspirations and actual values and ensuing behaviors of and within a firm—let alone the potentially different interpretations of abstract corporate value statements. In this paper, we set out to provide more clarity on what corporate values are, how they are inherently ambiguous, and how in practice they compare to firm involvement in scandals. For this purpose, we study the corporate values of the 25 largest European banks after the financial crisis. “Integrity” appeared to be the most common value among the 25 banks, followed by “customer focus.” Nonetheless, over the past 6 years, 15 out of the 25 studied banks were involved in one or more scandals. Scandals can be systematic or caused by rogue employees, and benefitting the firm or their customers—in the latter case, providing an interesting interpretation of the customer focus value. Additionally, we found that courage or its synonyms were barely mentioned among banks' corporate values, potentially providing an additional explanation for the fast size of the financial crisis. Finally, we found that banks that had inclusive social principles such as respect, solidarity, and equality did not face large-scale scandals.     

“They might read a fly speck”: musical literacy as a discursive resource in Louis Armstrong's autobiographies

Jazz has been described as a music in which the “oral” element plays a crucial role, in opposition to Western “classical” music, seen as a chiefly “written” tradition. Although such an image is frequently advocated by critics and musicians themselves, it is also true that it can generate ambivalence and negative outputs, such as the persistent myth of “primitivism” and “naivety,” often associated with jazz music. Building on Social Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aims at analyzing how the representations of “orality” and “literacy,” that emerge in some autobiographical narratives by Louis Armstrong, are generated, and how they can work as semiotic and discursive resources. It argues that the different depictions of musicians, and the attitude displayed toward musical literacy, are sensitive to the historical, societal, and political context in which texts have been produced and published, as well as to the narrator's willingness and ability to resist or subvert dominant discourses. Moreover, the characterization of a musician (or a category of musicians) as able or unable to access musical literacy can also serve local purposes, such as expressing the narrator's stance toward narrative characters.     

Naming without shaming: The publication of sanctions in the Dutch financial market

Enforcement agencies increasingly disclose or “name and shame” corporate offenders. This article uses responsive regulation as a framework for an empirical study of the impact of non‐anonymous publication of sanctions in the Dutch financial market. These publications are characterized as “naming without shaming”, because they are used for technical guidance rather than with the intention to shame. The findings show that naming offenders functions as a general deterrent in the market for financial intermediaries, but considerably less so in the capital market. In both markets, the publication of sanctions weakened the impact of enforcement. In the capital market, the publications neutralized the seriousness of offenses and contributed to the image of the regulator as powerless. In the market for financial intermediaries, naming offenders was perceived as stigmatizing shaming and led to defiance, rather than compliance. The case study suggests, however, that the publication of sanctions may provide an opportunity for guidance, provided they contain a moral message, rather than technical instruction.     

Policymaking for emerging technology: the case of earthquake prediction

How does a nation formulate policy for a technology not yet quite “ready” but which may nevertheless have to be used? Earthquake prediction illustrates some of the policy issues relevant to this question. Earthquake prediction is a technology that is still in the research and development (R & D) stage. Yet predictions have been made and can be expected in the future. The question for policymakers is, are the predictions “ready enough” to use - do the risks of doing nothing in response to a scientific prediction exceed those of a false alarm? As earthquake prediction represents an emerging technology, it calls for a developing policy framework. What is the nature of “present” developing policy? How did this policy come to be? How adequate is it? What needs to be done? This article attempts to answer such questions, dealing primarily with U.S. policy, but also drawing on the experience of other nations, particularly Japan.     

Training for development management: Reflections on social know-how as a scientific and technological system

This paper explores the linkages between development, “appropriate” administrative technology and the training of development managers. In so doing, it traces the intimate relationships between development administration, conceptual paradigms and administrative know-how as a scientific and technological system. Orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy and critical paradigms are discussed and a number of elements to reformulate a development administration paradigm are considered. Based upon this discussion the paper concludes with a tentative outline identifying training needs for development managers and a number of observations about such training: its “appropriatness”, professionalisation and the issue of international cooperation.     

Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance

While organized business is a key actor in regulatory politics, its influence is often conditional on the level of unity or conflict occurring within the business community at any given time. Most contemporary regulatory policy interventions put pressure on the normal mechanisms of business unity, as they are highly targeted and sector‐specific. This raises the question of how business unity operates across a highly variegated economic terrain in which costs are asymmetric and free‐riding incentives are high. In this paper, we empirically assess patterns of business unity within regulatory policymaking across different regulated sectors. Our analysis utilizes data from hundreds of regulatory policy proposals and business community reactions to them in the telecommunications, energy, agriculture, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors over a variety of institutional contexts. We find considerable empirical support for the “finance capital unity” hypothesis – the notion that the financial sector enjoys more business unity than other regulated sectors of the economy. When the financial sector is faced with new regulations, business groups from other sectors frequently come to its aid.     

THE NEW POLICY CHALLENGES OF FINANCIAL SERVICES GLOBALIZATION

Can nation states cope with numerous public policy challenges–ranging from regional financial crises to the failures of large financial services firms–posed by today's globalized financial and monetary landscape? As Benjamin Cohen has argued “governments must consciously adapt to a dramatic transformation of their status, from monopolists to oligopolists, if they are to adequately represent the interests of all their citizens in monetary affairs.” This article briefly examines the nature of the policy challenges facing states and reviews the findings of symposium contributors who explored the national, regional and international responses of states to the fast moving global financial and monetary developments.     

Market failure,government failure,and the private supply of public goods: The case of climate-controlled walkway networks

Two opposing models of public-goods undersupply are those of “market failure” and “government failure”. Empirical work on the relative explanatory power of these two frameworks has been limited by the scarcity of acceptable data. The case of climate-controlled walkways in major urban cores is a rare instance where such difficulties can be overcome. We investigate the supply of CCWs in 55 large city-cores in North America. We find that (1) CCW networks are well-supplied by market forces, when (2) such forces are not frustrated by government policy. We also find evidence that (3) rules-based regimes dominate discretion-based regimes. These results are consistent with the position that the “government-failure” paradigm is a viable alternative to the traditional “market failure” paradigm.     

Neighborhood Disorder and Local Participation: Examining the Political Relevance of “Broken Windows”

Anyone who has lived in, driven through or walked by a “bad” neighborhood has a sense of the attributes that render such places unique: graffiti, litter, public intoxication and much more. According to the well-known theory of “broken windows,” these readily observable corporeal characteristics signal neighborhood disorder and lead to increased criminal behavior. This article investigates the implications of disorder for political behavior, taking particular care to distinguish between the objective tangible conditions of disorder and residents’ subjective interpretations of those conditions. Utilizing exceptionally rich data, this analysis reveals that while certain aspects of objective “reality” are consequential, perceptions of such reality are a more powerful mechanism through which neighborhood disorder impacts local political engagement. For some political outcomes, a heightened sense of the problems associated with disorder is linearly associated with an increase in participation. For others, the pattern is parabolic: those who perceive so little disorder that they remain content or so much disorder that they become disaffected are substantially less likely to take action to make their communities better. Ultimately, holding objective contextual features constant, the lenses through which residents interpret things like “broken windows” are critical determinants of grassroots politics. This information, combined with broader understandings of what shapes perceptions of disorder, lays the foundation for structuring policy in ways that facilitate grassroots activism—a vital component of the American democratic process.     

The Emergence of the Citizen Concept in Modern China: 1899–1919

The term “citizen” was translated into Chinese in the early 20th century, which showed a striking feature of “translated modernity”. By creatively translating citizen into guomin, intellectuals of the late Qing and the early ROC (Republic of China) imagined different roads of Chinese nation-state building. In the late Qing period, “citizen” was translated from the perspective of statism. By doing so, they intended to build a powerful sovereign state by changing people’s servile thoughts and arousing their modern citizen consciousness, so a nation-state rather than citizenship rights was their real goal of translating the concept. Considering the early ROC could not be a powerful nation-state, intellectuals of the early ROC changed the statist strategy and translated “citizen” from the perspective of “individualism”, which aimed to build a more liberal nation-state by cultivating people’s consciousness of individuality and utilitarianism. The translation of “citizen” in the late Qing and early ROC periods reflected the phenomenon of “translated modernity” which often appeared in the process of political modernization in colonial countries. That is, in order to shake off external oppression and establish an independent nation-state, intellectuals often resorted to the translation of important political concepts. The newly translated terms form new power redistribution, political ideology, and political imagination which promote the development of political modernity.