‘Does Sex Matter to Democracy?’– A Comment

Two aspects of the relation between sexual difference and democracy are discussed: (i) the construction in classic contract theory of the 'natural' difference between the sexes as a relation of superiority and subordination; (ii) the peculiarities and paradoxes of women's standing as citizens as the 'different' sex. This is illustrated by the examples of motherhood - women have been seen as having a distinctive political duty as mothers, but motherhood is also seen as the antithesis of citizenship - by the difficulties surrounding women and consent, and by the questions raised by contemporary feminists about the meaning of ('normal') 'sex'.     

Presidential address: From the Great Society to continuous improvement government: Shifting from “does it work?” to “what would make it better?”

In the 1960s, various social programs were started (like Head Start) or dramatically expanded (like AFDC). Loosely, this period of expansion is called the Great Society. Too many Great Society social programs, unfortunately, have been disappointments—at least when compared to the high hopes of the '60s. Even if they “work,” most of us wish that they worked much better. Some people take such statements to mean that the Great Society's social programs should be defunded. Most Great Society programs, however, are surely here to stay, for they serve important social functions. How many of us really think there could be an America without a social safety net? It is now time to do the difficult and unglamorous work of systematic program improvement. Instead of testing program efficacy over and over again, we should engage in ongoing and evidence‐based efforts to increase program effectiveness (in both large and small ways). © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

From ‘There is No Alternative’ to ‘Maybe There are Alternatives’: five Challenges to Economic Orthodoxy after the Crash

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, politicians famously told the public and themselves that ‘there is no alternative’ to a neoliberal economic paradigm. Fast‐forward to 2019 and there is, instead, the sense that ‘maybe there are alternatives’. However, when many observers and commentators look back to the 2008 crisis, they see a general continuity with what went before. In order to gain a better understanding of this ‘interregnum’, we map five sets of ideas and practices that challenge the policies, ideas, and conventions of pre‐crash orthodoxy. In doing so, we argue that there has been a fundamental transformation in legitimate public discourse about the economy since 2008: ideas and practices that were previously unimaginable or illegitimate in mainstream economic debate are now commonplace. Although this does not represent a ‘paradigm shift’, it represents significant political change that is important to understand and interrogate on its own terms.     

From ‘Judicial Mind’ to ‘Democratic Soul’: Law and Politics on the Bureaucratic Frontline

This article considers the relationship between law and democratic politics as manifest in the practice of ‘street‐level bureaucracy’. By glancing back to debates about citizenship and public administration between the two world wars, it sets contemporary concerns about the political constitution in broader context. In doing so, it discloses a fundamental division between conceptions of the state derived from Roman jurisprudence on the one hand, and ancient Athenian political practice on the other. It finds in the tragic dilemmas posed for street‐level bureaucrats—by the competing claims on their values—a test of individual moral agency and of democracy as the management of diversity. It concludes that what is at stake in our estimation of street‐level bureaucracy is not so much the purity of the ‘judicial mind’ as the complexity of the ‘democratic soul’ and the ‘connected society’.     

From ‘Tiger’ to ‘PIIGS’: Ireland and the use of heuristics in comparative political economy

This article analyses the consequences of the narrative construction of the group of countries that has been grouped as ‘PIIGS’ (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) for their sovereign debt risk rating. Acronyms for groups of countries can provide a useful shorthand to capture emergent similarities in economic profile and prospects. But they can also lead to misleading narratives, since the grounds for use of these terms as heuristic devices are usually not well elaborated. This article examines the process whereby the ‘PIIGS’ group came into being, traces how Ireland became a member of this grouping, and assesses the merits of classifying these countries together. The contention is that the repetition of the acronym in public debate did indeed shape the behaviour of market actors toward these countries. It is argued that this involved a co‐constituting process: similarities in market treatment drives PIIGS usage, which in turn promotes further similarities in market treatment. Evidence is found of Granger causality, such that increased media usage of the term ‘PIIGS’ is followed by increased changes in Irish bond yields. This demonstrates the constitutive role of perceptions and discourse in interpreting the significance of economic fundamentals. The use of acronyms as heuristics has potentially far‐reaching consequences in the financial markets.     

Debating the ‘Stalemate’: A Response to Dr Dixon

This article responds to the critique of our work offered by Paul Dixon in this issue of Political Quarterly. We correct the numerous inaccuracies and straightforward errors in his work, which, in our view, distort and misrepresent our arguments.