Agency Termination in the UK: What Explains the ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’?

In October 2010, the UK’s Coalition Government announced a radical reduction in the number of public bodies in the UK. This research tests the impact of three factors identified in the termination literature as affecting agency survival: political turnover, age and agency type. The research found that advisory Non-Departmental Public Bodies were five times more likely to have been identified for abolition or merger than other agency types. The research also found that agency age was a factor, but that political turnover was not significant.     

Who “Wins”? Determining the Party of the Prime Minister

The prime ministership is the preeminent political post in parliamentary democracies. Yet few studies examine PM party choice, perhaps under the assumption that the choice is a simple function of party size. In this article, we argue that key strategic actors and the context in which government negotiations take place can play a critical role in PM party choice. We test our hypotheses using a mixed logit with random coefficients on an original data set comprising PM selection opportunities in 28 European countries. Our methodological approach allows us to incorporate qualitative concerns about heterogeneity and causal complexity into our analysis. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that the largest party is often disadvantaged when it comes to PM party choice, that some presidents play an influential role in choosing the PM, and that the value of being the incumbent depends on one’s performance in office and how the previous government ended.     

Modernization without the market? The case of the ‘Soviet East’

This paper examines the contradictory nature of the ‘modernizing’ encounter between the former Soviet state and Cnetral Asian societies with a view to exploring more fully a path that purported to be transformative in the absence of a market economy. This encounter was evaluated by some as a radical break with the past and by others as an instance of cultural stasis and continuity. This apparent paradox is explained with reference to the specific features of the command economy and Soviet nationalities policy and their interplay with local forms of social organization. The main argument is that what appeared to some commentators as ‘traditionalism’ was as much a response to and creation of the system itself as a feature of local communities.     

Whose ‘Freedom of Navigation’? Australia,China, the United States and the making of order in the ‘Indo-Pacific’

The so-called freedom of navigation through the Malacca straits and the South China Sea, some of the world’s busiest trade routes, has long been of concern to scholars and practitioners of international politics in the region. Increasing tensions around territorial disputes recently propelled the issue to the forefront of global foreign and security policy making. Yet, despite the frequent invocation of threats to the ‘freedom of navigation’ for the justification of military measures to protect the ‘liberal rules-based order’, the substance of this rule or norm remains ambiguous and the nature of the threatened order unclear. Located at the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australian discourses represent a suitable case for clarifying both. Starting from the original provisions on navigational regimes in international law, this study analyses the meanings that officials, think tank analysts and academics have been attributing to the freedom of navigation and contextualize them in the evolving debate about order. Focusing on political rather than legal discourses, it finds that concerns with the freedom of navigation are largely unrelated to the safety of maritime transport. Instead, they serve as proxy for an increasingly static imagination of international order – written backward in time – to be secured.     

The rise of the ‘new agenda’ and the decline of partisanship

Has the rise of so‐called new social movements contributed to an undermining of parties in Western nations? This study reviews the arguments alleging this to be the case, and then summarises the results of 229 public opinion surveys from 17 nations. The surveys indicate that those who hold ‘post‐materialist’ values are stronger partisans than those with ‘materialist’ values. The analysis concludes that much of the literature has overstated the contrasts between movements and parties, that the mass public does not differentiate itself into ‘party’ and ‘movement’ categories, and that parties have been resourceful in protecting themselves against the depradations that movements might cause.     

Winning the ‘losers’ but losing the ‘winners’? The electoral consequences of the radical right moving to the economic left

Voters with lower socio-economic status are now consistently overrepresented among the radical right electorate. According to the ‘new winning formula’, many radical right parties increasingly move to the left on socio-economic issues to cater to these voters. This study tests a crucial assumption underlying this formula: whether radical right parties with socio-economically left-leaning positions actually attract more working class voters. By mapping class characteristics of the electorate of 10 radical right parties at three time points (based on surveys) against these parties' positions on the economic dimension (according to experts), this study shows that the ‘class gap’ - the extent to which class indicators predict voters' propensity to vote for the radical right - is significantly larger for socio-economically leftwing parties.     

UK Labour and the EU Single Market: ‘Social Europe’ or ‘Capitalist Club’?

This article looks at the UK Labour Party’s view of the EU single market over the last four decades, focussing on three case study periods when this issue was particularly salient: first, the time of the single market’s introduction under Neil Kinnock’s leadership; second, the A8 accession with Tony Blair as Labour Prime Minister; and third, between the 2016 European referendum and 2019 general election during Jeremy Corbyn’s time as party leader. This historical narrative uses the theoretical approach of Harvard economist Dani Rodrik—of a ‘trilemma’ faced by national policy makers in response to globalisation—as a lens to describe a clear arc in Labour’s policy towards the single market across the three case studies. A position of initial scepticism moved to support under Kinnock’s leadership, and then active encouragement under Blair, before coming back again under Corbyn to uncomfortable non-commitment. This arc directly correlates with the ebb and flow of the party’s overall economic approach—first the Keynesian, national Alternative Economic Strategy at the time of the party’s 1983 general election defeat; then, the deviation under Blair to a policy that actively encouraged cross-border market liberalisation; and finally the return to an Alternative Economic Strategy-style approach under Corbyn.     

The ‘Post-Holocaust Jew’ and the Instrumentalization of Philosemitism

Abstract

Altfelix attempts to examine and explain why xenophiles are politically prone to an ambivalent re-utilization of xenophobic images of the Other. In Germany both ‘the Jew’ and ‘the Ausländer’ have been instrumentalized xenophilically in their capacity as abstract notions by certain system actors and publics in a manner which appears to shed more light on the in-group than the Other. Xenophilia as a self-oriented, positive in-group evaluation may be identified as particularly evident in the post-war German political discourse on the Holocaust. In similar fashion to antisemitism, philosemitism represents an ‘allosemitic’ (Bauman) abstraction of ‘the Jew’, whose evocation is comparable to the idea of a ‘good foreigner’ as expressed in Ausländerfreundlichkeit (foreigner-friendliness). Xenophilia/philosemitism—like xenophobia/antisemitism—is dependent upon a relative opposition between ‘concretized Self’ and ‘abstracted Other’. Altfelix argues that this relationship emerges for two reasons. First, manifestations of xenophilia are generally preceded by bouts of xenophobia. Consequently, some publics may identify a need for creating a positive in-group focus. In this, the Other must not become too concrete for fear of distracting attention away from the xenophile's agenda. Second, the difference between Self and Other must be effectively maintained, since the xenophile's raison d'être depends upon it. Post-war German philosemitism appears to be a good exemplar for this definition of ‘xenophilia’. It demonstrates the dangers of moving within an allosemitic cycle in which difference becomes a method of keeping otherness at bay through abstraction. The fear of a misremembrance of the Holocaust resulting from an abstract memorialization seems to provide a very solid political basis for perpetuating a philosemitic identity construction of ‘the Jew’ as abstracted Other.     

The price of everything and the value of nothing? Unravelling the workings of Russia's ‘virtual economy’

The unprecedented reliance on non-monetary exchange (NME) in transactions among industrial enterprises is one of the most remarkable features of Russia's post-Soviet economic transformation. This paper argues that firms engage in NME in order to discount nominal prices which remain well above market-clearing levels. The mechanisms which prevent a convergence between formal and actual transaction values include asset valuation rules, depreciation schedules, tax regulations and an inadequate bankruptcy mechanism. These distortions to the price-formation mechanism effectively operate to sustain a subsidy regime which has hitherto shielded much of Russian industry from the rigours of the market. The analysis concludes with an examination of the 1998 financial collapse, arguing that the crash was rooted in the breakdown of the subsidy system just described, a process which was strikingly similar to the breakdown of the Soviet economic system a decade earlier.     

Three Sorries and You’re In? Does the Prime Minister’s Statement in the Australian Federal Parliament Presage Federal Constitutional Recognition and Reparations?

Then newly elected Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a historic statement of “Sorry” for past injustices to Australian Indigenous peoples at the opening of the 2008 federal parliament. In the long-standing absence of a constitutional ‘foundational principle’ to shape positive federal initiatives in this context, there has been speculation that the emphatic Sorry Statement may presage formal constitutional recognition. The debate is long overdue in a nation that only overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and recognised native title to lan with the High Court’s decision in Mabo in 1992. This article explores the implications of the Sorry Statement in the context of reparations for the generations removed from their families under assimilation policies (known since the Bringing Them Home Inquiry as the Stolen Generations). We draw out the utility of recent human rights statutes—such as the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT)—as a mechanism for facilitating justice, including compensation for past wrongs. Our primary concern here is whether existing legal processes in Australia hold further capacity to provide reparation for Australian Indigenous peoples or whether their potential in that regard is already exhausted. We compare common law and statutory developments in other international jurisdictions, such as Canada, as an indication of what can be achieved by the law to facilitate better legal, economic and social outcomes for Indigenous peoples. The year 2008 also saw Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper express his apology to residential school victims in the Canadian Parliament, providing thematic and symbolic echoes across these two former colonies, which, despite remaining under the British monarchy, both forge their own path into the future, while confronting their own unique colonial past. We suggest that the momentum provided by the recent public apology and statement of “Sorry” by the newly elected Australian Prime Minister must not be lost. This symbolic utterance as a first act of the 2008 parliamentary year stood in stark contrast to the long-standing recalcitrance of the former Prime Minister John Howard on the matter of a formal apology. Rather than a return to a law enforcement-inspired “three strikes and you’re out” approach, Australia stands poised for an overdue constitutional and human rights-inspired “three ‘sorries’ and you’re in”.     

The Fate of ‘Big Government’ in the United States:Not Over,But Undermined?

Big government in the United States has never been as expansiveas the big state abroad. Whatever its scope, there is little evidence that the days of big government are numbered. Among both the public and organized interests there is at once antagonism toward big government and yet consistent support for many of the protections it affords, including those provided by the U.S. federal government's largest, and sure to get larger, social programs. The most important story is not the threat of a reduced state, but rather itstransformation. Continuing attempts to privatize its administration could put much of the big state, including its social programs, in the hands of big business.     

The ‘I’ and the ‘we’ of citizenship in the age of waning democracy: Wolin and Balibar on citizenship,the political and dedemocratization

Despite drawing on different historical traditions and philosophical sources, Sheldon Wolin and Étienne Balibar have come to see citizenship and democracy in fundamentally similar ways. However, the work of one has not been considered alongside that of the other. In this paper, I examine some of their key texts and draw out three areas of common concern: the historical specificity of the political, citizenship as a dialectical process and dedemocratization. The significance of Wolin and Balibar’s writing on citizenship and democracy lies in a set of proposals for the eternal rebirth of the citizen as democratic agent between action and institution, hierarchy and equality, individual and community, difference and the universal. Their open-ended frameworks can be seen as an antidote to contemporary pessimism about the fate of democracy as either political order or normative ideal. I conclude by suggesting that contemporary Ecuadorean and Bolivian debates about how to combine relational ontologies and liberalism has opened a fertile domain for re-imagining the I and We of citizenship.     

Charlottesville Paradox: The ‘Liberalizing’ Alt-Right, ‘Authoritarian’ Left,and Politics of Dialogue

In the aftermath of the 2017 Charlottesville tragedy, the prevailing narrative is a Manichean division between ‘white supremacists’ and ‘anti-racists’. We suggest a more complicated, nuanced reality. While the so-called ‘Alt-Right’ includes those pursuing an atavistic political end of racial and ethnic separation, it is also characterised by pluralism and a strategy of nonviolent dialogue and social change, features associated with classic liberalism. The ‘Left,’ consistent with its historic mission, opposes the Alt-Right’s racial/ethnic prejudice; but, a highly visible movement goes farther, embracing an authoritarianism that would forcibly exclude these voices from the public sphere. This authoritarian element has influenced institutions historically committed to free expression and dialogue, notably universities and the ACLU. We discuss these paradoxes by analysing the discourse and actions of each movement, drawing from our study of hundreds of posts and articles on Alt-Right websites and our online exchanges on a leading site (AltRight.com). We consider related news reports and scholarly research, concluding with the case for dialogue.     

The housing system of the former Soviet Union: Why do the soviets need housing markets?

Abstract

The administrative‐command system that had been in full force in the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1990 had its own logic and internal consistency. It is now common knowledge that this economic system has flaws that led to a deepening secular decline over the past three decades. Because of ideological reasons, and an inadequate economic understanding of the capacity of their system to be liberalized, many reformers sought a third way between central planning and markets. The consensus today is that there is no third way. Among the former Soviet republics, Russia has just embarked on market‐oriented reforms and is facing a difficult and unstable transition because central planning mechanisms have ceased to function, but markets are not yet in place. This transition is particularly problematic for housing, which is a very severely distorted economic sector.

The international evidence on market economies that has accumulated over the past 20 years shows that, when housing sector distortions exist, they are predominantly found on the supply side. In socialist economies, however, housing is part of the compensation provided by enterprises and other employers. As a result housing suffers from demand‐side distortions in addition to the supply‐side problems caused by the absence of land markets, vague property rights, and burdensome urban regulations. The housing sector is already so large and distorted in these highly urban economies that overall economic reforms cannot succeed without housing reforms. In addition to presenting an overview of Soviet housing, this paper provides comparative evidence indicating that, among all the distorted socialist housing systems, Russia's probably is the most impaired. The basic elements of a market‐oriented strategy to improve housing are briefly presented.