Whatever Happened to Overloaded Government?

Anthony King was, among other things, an outstandingly acute public intellectual. His work on overload and policy fiasco exemplifies this. His original diagnosis in his famous paper of 1975 was deeply pessimistic in character, but subsequent adaptations by government solved many of the original problems arising from dependency relations. These adaptations amounted to the creation of a Madisonian system of regulation that insulated policy makers from democratic pressures. But these adaptations in turn created new difficulties that lie at the root of the analysis in King and Crewe's The Blunders of our Governments, published nearly four decades after King's original classic paper.     

‘Remaining awake through a great revolution’: The rhetorical strategies of Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King, Jr is the most recognisable face of the black Civil Rights movement in America in the 1950s and 1960s. His ‘I’ have a Dream’ speech, given in 1963 as part of the march on Washington, has been identified as a key moment in American history, beyond just its importance to the Civil Rights movement. King's lasting place in American history has recently been codified in the declaration of his birthday as a National Holiday by the Reagan Administration in 1986. Unlike other Civil Rights leaders, King gained support from black and white communities for his program of change. In fact, King's major successes in gaining Presidential support for Civil Rights Bills in 1964 and 1965 resulted from his ability to win the support of Northern white liberals for Federal intervention in Southern race relations. Although considerable work has been done on the methods through which King's campaigns sought to tap white support for Civil Rights, scant attention has been given to one of the central vehicles through which King was able to mobilise white support, his language. Despite the publication of two recent studies on King's rhetoric, (Miller 1992; Lischer 1995) scholars have largely ignored King's rhetoric as a source of study. In this paper, I seek to fill some of this gap by analysing the key rhetorical strategies King employs to win support from his predominantly white audience in his speech ‘Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution’.     

“The Mother of Reason and Revelation”: Benjamin on the Metaphysics of Language

This paper is a reconstruction of Walter Benjamin's philosophy of language, especially as it expressed in 1916's “On Language as Such and the Language of Man”. I read Benjamin's theory as a contribution to what Charles Taylor has called the “expressivist” tradition that includes eighteenth century thinkers like J.G. Herder and J.G. Hamann. Hamann's work and his interpretation of the theological concept of condescension are of particular importance. Although Benjamin's views are often regarded as impenetrable or mystical, they are relevant to and, in part, motivated by concerns of more mainstream twentieth century philosophy of language, in particular Russell's paradox. His “metaphysics of language” understands reference or designation, central to analytic theories of meaning, as derived from a more fundamental, aesthetic meaning.     

From Africa and Back

This paper intends to continue the work of the late Cheik Anta Diop and to bring it into modern times, limiting myself to the case of Ethiopia and of its philosophical literature expressed in g ‘ < ‘ z language. Cheik Anta Diop claimed that the source of Greek philosophy is the cosmogony of ancient pharaonic Egypt. This paper would like to show that the philosophy which had such a remarkable development in the Greek-speaking world (Ionia, Magna Graecia, continental Greece) came back to its place of origin, to Africa, to Egypt during the late Hellenistic period. It travelled from Egypt to Abyssinia first with works written in Egypt, by Ethiopian scholars living in the Skete monastery, and translated from Greek to g ‘ < ‘ z then with works like The Book of the Philosophers and The Life and Maxims of Sk ‘ nd ‘ s , g ‘ < ‘ z works translated and adapted from the Greek via Arabic. This cultural impact comes to an end as far as g ‘ < ‘ z philosophical literature in concerned with the Treatise of Wäldä 0 ‘ ywåt in the early 18th century.     

Discourses of morality and truth in social welfare: the surveillance of British widows of the First World War

Drawing on Sarangi and Slembrouck's work on the language of State-sanctioned bureaucracy, this paper will explore one of the ways in which this developed in Britain in the early twentieth century. Looking in particular at the war widows' pension scheme as implemented under the Royal Warrant of 1916, this paper will explore how the first (financially) non-contributory pension, and the first specifically directed towards women in Britain, developed a system of State-sanctioned surveillance and parsimony that continues to this day. The data used draw upon a number of individual case studies, showing how the State saw part of its role as the obligation to subject women to scrutiny and judgement, making infidelity and misbehaviour grounds for the denial of their widows' pension. As this article will explore, a wide variety of agents positioned themselves as, in some way, responsible for the moral surveillance of widows and even the most gossipy reports appear to have been treated with some degree of seriousness. This article will illustrate how a “new” type of bureaucratic relationship developed between State and citizens in the early twentieth century that remains in place a century later.     

New Labour in Power: Five Problems of Contemporary History

The history of New Labour is highly politicised, deployed either for its policy lessons (good or bad) or as a weapon in Labour's factional struggles. But, just as historians in the 1990s reassessed the premierships of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, so the distance of time and the opening of archives offers an opportunity to reappraise New Labour as history. Such work raises five methodological challenges: the lack of sufficient distance from the subject to tell whether policy innovations will remain popular and permanent; the long shadow the Iraq war casts over this whole period; the deluge of data and sources available; the continuing and controversial part that key actors, such as Tony Blair, are still playing; and the lack of expertise any one author will inevitably face in some policy areas. This article addresses each of those difficulties in turn.     

Local governance and water resource management: experiences from Northern Namibia

Like many semi‐arid countries in Africa, Namibia has been experiencing water shortage for a long period of time. Prior to its independence in 1990, most of Namibia's water points—namely, the boreholes—served white‐Namibians (about 7% of the national population of predominantly German descent) and their commercial farming areas. But their water needs have been satisfied at the expense of those indigenous Namibians and their communal areas (where some 80% of the national population originates). Independence, however, brought with it a new hope for the indigenous population: since 1990, the government has been working diligently to reform the country's local governance, and make local government agencies more effective, efficient and responsive to common people and their needs. This article sheds light on how, within the background of the government's decentralisation efforts, the management and distribution of water resources have changed in an independent Namibia, reporting findings from research conducted in a newly emerged village council in the north of the country. Drawing on historical and contemporary practices, we describe and analyse the role of decentralised local government in water resource management in northern Namibia, where today, more than 50% of the national population (i.e. the indigenous Oshiwambo‐speaking people) resides. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of English Language Learner Reclassification on Student ACT Scores,High School Graduation,and Postsecondary Enrollment: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Wisconsin

The recent increase in the number of students classified as English language learners (ELLs) has focused significant attention on reclassification policy, which governs the process by which ELLs move toward, and are deemed to reach, full English proficiency. In this paper, we draw on a data set containing annual individual‐level records for every Wisconsin student ever classified as an ELL between the 2006–07 and 2012–13 school years to estimate the effects of being reclassified at the end of 10th grade—a crucial period on the pathway to postsecondary education—on several measures related to students’ postsecondary attainments. We estimate these effects in a regression discontinuity framework, exploiting Wisconsin's policy rule that automatically reclassifies ELLs who score above a specified cutoff on the state's English language proficiency exam. Our analysis indicates that being reclassified as fully English proficient in 10th grade has a positive effect on students’ ACT scores. It also provides some evidence of a positive effect on high school graduation and the probability of enrolling in a postsecondary institution the fall after graduation. Together, our analyses provide evidence on the effects of a policy directly relevant to the country's fastest growing student population, and we close the paper with a discussion of the implications for research and policy.     

Political‐Administrative Relations: Impact of and Puzzles in Aberbach,Putnam, and Rockman, 1981

Political‐administrative relations became an issue once politicians and administrators came to be considered as distinct actors in the public realm. This happened in the late eighteenth century, and several authors since then explored the nature of this relationship in normative and/or juridical terms. But it took almost two centuries before it became an object of systematic empirical study in a comparative perspective: Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman ( APR 1981 ). The APR study was the first to use survey methods and to advance empirically based theory. In this article we discuss the intellectual attention for this topic since the early nineteenth century, APR's findings and impact and—given APR's influence upon methods—some intriguing problems with the framework that they developed. Finally we list some potential new avenues of research.     

英汉句法对比在大学英语教学中的运用

在20世纪初,中外语言学家们就开始对比研究英汉之间的异同。到了20世纪70年代,语言学家和外语专家们便开始逐渐将英汉对比的原则和研究成果运用于英语作为第二语言的教学。以英汉在句法层面的对比为例,来强调和证明英汉对比的研究成果对于大学英语教学的各个教学环节,尤其是阅读理解、翻译和写作等具体技能的培养和提高具有非常重要的指导作用和意义。     

The Hyper-Hermeneutic Gesture of a Subtle Revolution

Abstract

I argue that Shakespeare's Timon of Athens exemplifies the concept of mourning play that Walter Benjamin had in mind when he wrote The Origin of German Tragic Drama. While others have interpreted the play in various ways, no one has attempted to understand Timon in a Benjaminesque manner that seeks to show the emergence of baroque tragedy as a new aesthetic form at odds with, and liberated from, classical tragedy's mythical foundation and instead premised on historical time and progress. In my discussion, I question the view that Timon possesses inheritable or transmissible human social bonds that can be the subject of annihilation as is the case in Shakespeare's other tragedies. Rather, Benjamin sees in allegory, as illustrated by Timon of Athens, the social condition of modernity replete with suffering, chaos, and violence, but devoid of real human bonds; indeed, it is without human meaning.     

Reinventing Amtrak: The politics of survival

This article argues that Amtrak's design as a “quasi-public, for-profit” corporation was seriously flawed from its beginnings. The corporation was isolated from America's private railroads, and isolated from trust-funding financial mechanisms that supported highways, airports, and mass transit. It depended on powerful Democratic congressional patrons and labor union support for protection from Republican executive budget cuts. But these allies pushed Amtrak into running far more costly service than was good for its bottom line. The corporation was already engaged in an internal reorganization designed to bring it closer to its customers, when the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election launched an external effort to reorient and restructure Amtrak. There are three possible outcomes of the two-sided reinvention process: status quo and continued slow decline; partnership based on new relationships between Amtrak, federal and state governments, and the private sector; and privatization which might still require substantial public expenditures for some time. Synchronizing the opportunities created by both the internal and the external reinvention efforts is the key to whether Amtrak can emerge as a viable and valuable provider of rail transportation in the 21st century.     

Between continuity and change: The EU's mechanism of differentiated value integration

How does the European Union integrate new values into the text of its treaties? A growing body of literature indicates that, in the past three decades, new norms and values have entered the EU's discourse, resulting in what is usually termed ‘normative power Europe’. Yet the research and knowledge to‐date about the EU's discursive assimilation of new values and norms is surprisingly poor. As any institutional change, such integration has the potential to undermine the coherence of the EU's identity and thus also its objective to ‘speak with one voice’. This article explores the EU's discursive management of the continuity‐versus‐change imperative by analysing the integration of new values into the text of its treaties. This issue is addressed based on a quantitative content analysis on the full texts of European founding treaties between the 1950s and 2009. Findings show that the distribution of the EU's values in the text is not uniform: while the language of market economy and democracy is pervasive, the values of peace, European identity, rights and social justice are mentioned less frequently and in restricted linguistic environments. To account for the differences in the integration of values into the EU's treaty discourse, the article develops the notion of a discursive mechanism of differentiated value integration (MDVI). This rationale echoes the logic of differentiation in policy implementation employed by the EU. It is claimed here that, applied in the European discursive arena, MDVI allows radically different readings of the same text. This helps the EU to maintain a coherent value identity while at the same time enabling change.     

Serbia: new leadership,same challenges

The results of Serbia's 2012 elections, which saw the incumbent pro-European administration ousted from power by considerably more nationalistic candidates with ties to Serbia's wartime leadership, were greeted with dismay in many countries. But rather than reverting to the bellicose rhetoric of the 1990s, as some had feared, Serbia's new leaders are deploying a strategy of pragmatism in tackling the country's most enduring issues.     

Trump's dangerous new foreign-policy team

US President Donald Trump's naming of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state and John Bolton as national security adviser reflects his determination to align his foreign-policy team more closely with his own political inclinations. But the new appointees may face resistance to disruptive moves involving Iran, North Korea and other major international security challenges from the Pentagon – in particular, Secretary of Defense James Mattis.     

Bypassing a Centralized State: The Case of the Greek Subnational Mobilization in the European Union

For over 25 years successive administrative reforms have taken place in Greece, with a view to modernizing the subnational institutions. The European pressures come across as an influential factor inducing the process of change. But what has been the subnational responsiveness related to the rationalization initiatives? The aim of this paper is to investigate the Greek subnational authorities’ mobilization in the European arena, providing evidence of their bypassing the central state from a multi-level governance perspective. Building on the division between ‘financial' and ‘regulatory' mobilization, empirical data are drawn from the EU's environmental policy financial mechanism and the subnational representation and networking in Brussels. The figures show that only a few Greek subnational authorities financially mobilize; the vast majority show inertia. Moreover, their regulatory mobilization is hardly evident. It is argued that although the EU offers substantial incentives for mobilizing, domestic institutional capacity also accounts for much variation.     

Marx and Engels's Electoral Strategy: The Alleged versus the Real

In a recently published collection of interviews with “the most prominent scholars in comparative politics since World War II,” Adam Przeworski revealed that his writings from the 1980s on Social Democracy served a political end, that is, to defend it from critics such as Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, and Luxemburg. His co-authored book, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (1986), still a classic in the sub-field, claims that none other than Frederick Engels sanctioned Social Democracy's quintessential stance, the peaceful or parliamentary road to socialism. A close reading of Paper Stones reveals, however, that it misrepresents—sometimes in quite blatant fashion—the views of not only Engels but Marx as well. This involves the omission of contradictory evidence from many places in the Marx–Engels corpus, the same text, the same page or even the next sentence. Przeworski's reinvention of Marx and Engels duplicates what Edward Bernstein did more than a century ago in his quest to revise their views. Paper Stones excludes evidence that challenges its central finding that the reformist outcome for European Social Democracy was inevitable—a claim, therefore, that can only remain hypothetical.     

Great Expectations: The Job at the Top and the People who do it

Anthony King thought and wrote a great deal about British prime ministers and political leadership more generally. But in contrast to the way in which single papers embodied his contribution to our understanding of ‘government overload’, ‘executive‐legislative relations’ and ‘career politicians’, his contribution to our understanding of the prime ministership was defined by a body of work. This essay explores that body of work and identifies some of the themes that characterised it. It then relates King's work to claims about the ‘presidentialisation’ of the office, as well as the importance of the expectations surrounding contemporary prime ministers. As Britain grapples with the challenge of Brexit, we should all take note of his counsel against expecting too much in the way of ‘strong’ prime ministerial leadership.     

Towards a postmodern science of language

This article outlines the terms and rationale for a ‘postmodern’ science of language, and illustrates it with reference to a single text: President George Bush's speech to Congress in the wake of September 11. It first addresses the issue of whether and how students of language can or should draw on scientific concepts and theories, and where the acute anxieties on this topic come from. It then proposes that a new stage in science needs to be recognised that changes the terms of the relations between science and the humanities. ‘Postmodern’ forms of science accept and work with the uncertainty, unpredictability, ambiguity and contradiction that characterise the phenomena of language and society in every era, and is especially marked in the present ‘postmodern condition’. The article then briefly explains key concepts from this body of scientific work: Poincare´'s Three Body Analysis, Prigogine's far-from-equilibrium analysis, Zadeh's fuzzy logic, Mandelbrot's fractals, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and Lorenz's Butterfly Effect.