'Talking to Fishers': A Response to Kesteven

Geoffrey Kesteven's 'Talking to Fishers' appeared in the March 1996 issue of AJPA 55(1). Here, Nick Rayns takes issue with Dr Kesteven's observations on the South East Fishery Workshop, held at Bateman's Bay in September 1994. Dr Kesteven's rejoinder follows this response.     

Performance: Promises to Keep and Miles to Go

In July 1995, the American Society for Public Administration's Endowment Board established the Donald C. Stone Fund to honor the memory of this public administration legend. Income from this fund is used to sponsor a lecture or symposium at ASPA's national conference, which reflects Stone's varied interests and contributions to the field. This year marked the tenth Donald C. Stone Lecture. On April 4, Patricia Wallace Ingraham was ASPA's Stone Lecturer and gave the following speech     

Liberalism: Interacting to Conserve

Post-war liberalism should be defined in terms of its promotion of (social) interaction. It is not to be seen as the opposite of communitarianism, as current usage implies, nor is it individualist. In practice it strengthens the nation state. It has a purpose, too, for given an innate but not perfect human conservatism, maximising interaction will minimise change. This conservatism does seem to exist, but liberalism is 'ideological' in concealing it as a goal. With success, for no change-directed and specifically anti-interactive normative theory has emerged Partly, perhaps, because it would lie outside the concept of the political entirely.     

Children's Exposure to Domestic Violence: Holding Men to Account

The issue of domestic violence has gained greater recognition within public policy in the United Kingdom over the past decade. There is a recognition that up to one million children may have been exposed to violence between the adults with whom they live. This has consequences for the child in both the short and long term in terms of social and emotional adjustment. However, most male perpetrators of domestic violence are never held to account through the criminal justice system and therefore the child protection system is the safety net for these children. This though can result in a response that is premised on women's responsibility to protect their child from experiencing harm, typically by either leaving or forcing her partner to leave. Child welfare professionals do not engage with the men who are the source of the problem, rather women are held accountable for allowing their children and themselves to be in this situation. In this article this issue is discussed and proposals offered to improve this situation through empowering women, holding men to account for their behaviour whilst also recognising their position as fathers.     

Ukraine: risks to economic stabilisation

An agreement with the IMF offers sizeable external support and a path to transforming Ukraine's ailing economy and business climate. But it remains to be seen whether the country's new government will be willing and able to stick to the conditions of this far-reaching programme.     

Spin: from tactic to tabloid

• Over the last fifteen years, the word Spin has come to define both the process of political communication, and the practice of public relations itself. The history of the term requires some examination. Arguably, until around 1992, Spin did not have such a widespread meaning—it was simply one tactic in an election campaigner's armoury.
• Now it seems to embrace the whole process of communication, not only between election campaigners and the media, but also between a Government and its people, or between a public relations professional in any field, and his or her target publics.
• The development of Spin as a word has gone through a number of stages which will be addressed in the course of this paper. It now has widespread popular usage, which has arisen through two principal processes: The increasing celebrity status of the spin‐doctor role: and the usefulness of the word to tabloid sub‐editors.
• By 1997, when New Labour came into Government, the discourse of spin was firmly established.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correction to: Issue Voting and Government Responsiveness to Policy Preferences

Political Behavior -     

Tricking Posthumanism: From Deleuze to (Lacan) to Haraway

A lineage has been drawn between the immanent philosophy articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and the work of Donna Haraway, most notably by the nomadic feminist and immanentist Rosi Braidotti. However, while containing certain parallels via the process nature of their ontologies, upon further inspection, such an equivocation is unwarranted on the grounds that it fails to remain nuanced in distinguishing the precise ‘mechanism’ or midwife that gives birth to the continued proliferation of the flux of becoming. This disparity is exposed through the erection of a homology using Lacanian psychoanalysis that eases the passing from immanentism to Haraway by showing that the latter inscribes the obverse of L'Autre (the big Other) into the field of becoming unravelling privileged channels of desire. This results in an ingenuity that can never be pinned down by the signifier and, further, actively works to subvert it through ploy.