The Bush Administration Record in Latin America: Sins of Omission and Commission

The conventional wisdom among analysts and scholars is that at least since September 11, 2001, the United States has tended to neglect its relations with Latin America. As a result of that inattention, other countries from outside the region have been able to make inroads, and there has generally been a regional drift in the direction of election and policy outcomes that do not favor US interests. While this article assumes that conventional understanding of the outcomes in the region, the central argument here is that it is not neglect (or “sins of omission”) that best explains those developments. Rather, it is the actual US policies that have been pursued (“sins of commission”), as well as the effective strategies pursued by Latin American leaders and organizations, which are largely responsible for the situation that confronts President Obama in Latin America. The article focuses on Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia, the three countries that have sometimes been described as the Latin American “axis of evil.”     

The Measure of a Nation

In his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, and in several speeches in subsequent years, Enoch Powell claimed that immigration was an ‘issue of numbers’. Britain could not, he believed, accommodate a significant number of non‐white people without threatening the existence of the nation. I argue that Powell's opposition to immigration, and his numerical framing of it, rested upon his racialised conception of British, or English, nationhood. As he was shunned by political elites, Powell articulated an increasingly populist nationalism. Drawing repeated references to Britain's wartime experiences, Powell claimed that the British, or more often the English, were being attacked by an immigrant enemy without, and betrayed by an establishment enemy within. I conclude with some reflections on the similarities between Powellite nationalism and contemporary discourses about national identity during and since the European Union referendum.     

Imagining the Economic Nation: The Scottish Case

The impending Scottish referendum on independence raises the question: what is a nation? This article addresses this question in terms of ‘economic nationhood’. Tracing the development of the Scottish economy over the last century and a half, it shows how the extraordinarily ‘globalised’ economy of pre‐1913 Scotland slowly evolved into a much more self‐reliant entity. Today, Scotland has a de‐industrialised and substantially de‐globalised economy, with a very large public sector about which key decisions are made in Edinburgh. Scotland has become much more of an economic ‘community of fate’ than ever before in its modern history.     

中国共产党与中华民族的伟大复兴 纪念中国共产党成立90周年

中国共产党走过的90年是为实现中华民族伟大复兴不懈奋斗的90年.党团结带领全国各族人民,完成了新民主主义革命,实现了民族独立和人民解放,建立了人民当家作主的新中国,开启了民族复兴的新纪元.党不失时机地进行社会主义改造,全面建立社会主义制度,取得巨大成就,开创了民族复兴的新道路.十一届三中全会实现了伟大的历史转变,找到了建设中国特色社会主义正确道路,开辟了民族复兴的新前景.     

中华民族精神的文化底蕴与价值评判

民族精神是民族文化的集中体现,民族文化是民族精神的社会反映。反思传统文化,可以得出如下结论:“儒、道、释”学说的有机结合,是构建中华民族精神的文化底蕴。评判民族文化,目的在于创造、发展民族文化,振奋民族精神。     

Impermanent Apologies: on the Dynamics of Timing and Public Knowledge in Political Apology

Political apologies are commonly imagined as gestures of finality and closure: capstone moments that summate public knowledge. One manifestation of these assumptions is the position that apologies should be timed to come only after appropriate investigation into the wrongdoing has been completed. This article takes a different view, for two reasons. First, even apologies that seem based on robust knowledge can come to seem incomplete or inadequate in the light of subsequent learning and knowledge. Second, because apologies are complexly embedded in longer-term processes of activism and response, they can contribute to their own unravelling by encouraging further consideration and inquiry. We develop these arguments by considering two Canadian cases that illustrate these dynamics: apologies that addressed, respectively, the wartime internment of Japanese Canadians and the policy of forcing Indigenous children to attend residential schools.     

The Modernising Antecedents and Historical Origins of One Nation Labour

Launched at the 2012 conference, Ed Miliband's One Nation Labour initiative draws heavily on the party's experience under Neil Kinnock during the late 1980s as well as from Tony Blair's tenure as leader of the opposition between 1994 and 1997. In policy terms, Miliband promised a Labour government would prevent firms from ‘poaching’ trained workers from other businesses and would stop short term predatory behaviour in the economy by offering companies greater protection from takeovers. Both proposals echo those at the heart of Labour's 1989 policy review document, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change. The link between One Nation and Tony Blair's New Labour concerns the discourse with which the party's outlook is articulated. As such, One Nation Labour has not been shaped by current political debates. Rather it reflects the party's ability to learn from previous initiatives, building on their strengths in a reflective fashion.     

One Nation and the Australian far right

One Nation, the Australian anti-immigration political party, was not created by, nor has it ever been controlled by, organized racist groups, but it has had extensive, although mostly informal, ties with them. These have ranged from the promotion of One Nation by racist groups and their leaders to some of their members holding positions within the party. One Nation has never taken action against the involvement in the party of racist groups, both because it needed the support of those groups in establishing the party and because of a convergence of interests. Ultimately, however, these ties have played a major role in the destabilization of One Nation.     

论国德与国运

一个国家、一个朝代的德,是其建立、维系、绵延与垂续的根本存在.以德为本,就是亲民、养民、保民,就是蓄大德以仁爱天下.自古有国有天下者,其兴衰治乱,嗣续绵延,未始不以德为本.惟建大德,立大本,方可绵延世泽,嗣续不已.     

The Morphology of the Labour Party's One Nation Narrative: Story,Plot and Authorship

By applying narrative theory to the party political texts emerging within the UK Labour Party after 2010, which make up the corpus of One Nation discourse, we can grasp the underlying significance of this ideational revision of Labour Party and leftist thought. Through an identification and analysis of the sequence of texts and their constitution as a “story” that interpolates an underlying “plot,” we can see how a revision of Labour's “tale” offers to leadership a new party discourse appropriate to it, mediating—if not reconciling—the problematic duality of narrative authorship by both party and leader.     

La Grande Nation and Agriculture: The Power of French Farmers Demystified

France is considered a strong state, but French governments have always fiercely defended the interests of French farmers in European and global negotiations. Why would a ‘strong state’ be unable to resist farm lobby pressure? Is agriculture an exception to the French ‘strong state’ rule? This article offers a structural model of varying state sensitivity to interest group pressure, and argues that farm lobby pressure cannot fully explain French foreign policy on agriculture, as governments often go against farmers' preferences and as the level of pressure varies more than the continuity of governmental preferences. From an analysis of the negotiations on the CAP and the GATT in the 1960s and in the 1990s it emerges that ideational constraints played a major role in French obstinacy. The defence of French identity as La Grande Nation, necessitating a presence in world agricultural markets, and the defence of a strong Europe under French leadership as a counterweight to the United States, have guided French preferences without regard to the farmers' positions.