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.     

The Domestication of Violence: Forging a Collective Memory of the Holocaust in Britain, 1945-6

Stone engages with his subject on two levels, the theoretical and the empirical. On the theoretical side, he argues for the meaningfulness of the term 'collective memory' by showing how the response to the Holocaust in Britain served certain communal needs. 'Collective memory' here is the way in which a group produces narratives of the past which enable it to perpetuate itself, to take account of the past without disturbing its own self-definition. On the empirical level, Stone shows that this response was one which domesticated the horror of what had occurred in order to make its narration bearable. The process was by no means a deliberate whitewashing of the murders; it demonstrates how, in the construction of collective memory, the most painful episodes are unconsciously written out or integrated into more uplifting stories. For example, the murder of the Jews of Europe was frequently tied into a narrative of catastrophe and redemption in which the Zionist cause signalled the Jews' ultimate triumph over adversity. Looking at well-known texts and figures such as James Parkes, as well as lesser-known ones, Stone shows that 'collective memory' is a useful term for understanding the way in which texts and rituals combine to construct (whether consciously or otherwise) a certain understanding of the past. In the case of the British response to the Holocaust in the immediate post-war period, this meant a failure to recognize the full enormity of what had taken place, and the incorporation of the murders into culturally familiar narratives.     

Voluntary Narrative Disclosures by Local Governments: A Comparative Analysis of the Textual Complexity of Mayoral and Chairpersons' Letters in Annual Reports

Research on local government annual reports has been limited, particularly in relation to report narratives. This study aims to determine whether characteristics of narratives vary between the reports of local governments and listed companies. After considering the nature of the potential report audiences it was predicted that, if writers consider their audience, local government report narratives would be easier to read, less likely to be obfuscated, and use fewer passive sentences than those in corporate reports. The results suggest that mayoral letters exhibit higher reading ease and are less likely to be obfuscated than their corporate counterparts but they are also shorter and contain more passive constructions, making conclusions about readability and understandability ambiguous. This research acquaints readers with important aspects to consider when preparing or evaluating narrative reports.     

Murder on the Tokyo Subway: Nerve Centres,Religion and Violence

Abstract

The 1995 Tokyo subway attack by the Japanese religious movement Aum Shinrikyō represents one of the most dramatic examples of violence by a religious movement in modern times. Initially urban-based but with a rural communal presence, Aum believed that it had a mission to transform the world and fight in an imminent apocalyptic war between good and evil, and it engaged in numerous conflicts with the secular world it despised. While emphasising the significance of religious visions in Aum's activities this article examines the degree to which Aum's associations with the city of Tokyo also featured as an element in its violence.     

The Ambiguity of Love: Beauvoir,Honneth and Arendt on the Relation Between Recognition,Power and Violence

The paper sketches out an account of ambiguous and agonistic love by drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Axel Honneth and Hannah Arendt. To begin with, I reconstruct the ambiguity of love within the conceptual framework of a paradigm of recognition. I argue further that the social relation of love, understood as an intertwine between dependence and independence, entails a power dynamic. Insofar as the dynamic actualises as “power in concert” or “power with”, namely as mutual empowerment, love unfolds as free love. Finally, I show how agonistic love is damaged by turning into violent domination.     

The National Context of Wicked Problems: Comparing Policies on Gun Violence in the US,Canada, and Australia

Scholars and practitioners have always been dogged by problems that are so complex that no practical solution appears to be possible. These have been referred to in the academic literature as “wicked” problems. However, it is possible that a problem’s “wickedness” depends in part on its context and on the vantage point of the observer, meaning that at least some aspects of wickedness can be thought of as being relative rather than absolute. In this article, the complex policy problem of gun control is examined across multiple national contexts to show how a problem that is perceived as being wicked in one jurisdiction can be seen as manageable in another.     

西方公共政策叙事研究:述评与展望

受西方社会科学"叙事转向"的影响,公共政策叙事研究经历了从萌芽到兴盛的演进历程,发展出了包括叙事式政策框架在内的一系列理论.全面梳理和系统阐释政策叙事的基本内涵、微观结构与动态过程、影响因素、结果变量、作用机理等内容,回顾政策叙事研究的沿革脉络,探讨政策叙事研究的缘起、关键议题与核心,发现政策叙事在揭开公共政策过程"迷纱"、推动政策学习、促进政策扩散等方面具有重要作用.未来公共政策叙事研究需要拓展不同政策领域中的研究,深化公共政策中共识性研究,加强政策叙事与政府治理关系的研究,以及推动中国情境下的本土化研究.     

网络化治理的叙事重构、中国适用性及理论拓展

通过对以往治理叙事的修正和完善,网络化治理在限定适用性、建构主义定位、融合价值与工具两重性等方面完成自身的叙事重构,提升了理论建构的自洽性。基于结构—行动—问题的分析框架来看,网络化治理具有一定的中国适用性。辩证地看,由于没有将执政党作为独立变量提取出来以及建构强国家—弱社会的分析框架,网络化治理还存在基于中国治理情境的解释局限。党政主导型网络化治理是基于中国治理经验背景下对网络化治理进行的拓展性解释和理论建构,其中,中心—耦合型关系是党政主导型网络化治理的关系形态。     

Dangerous Disconnect: Voter Backlash,Elite Misperception,and the Costs of Violence as an Electoral Tactic

Political Behavior - Why do politicians use violence as an electoral tactic, and how does it affect voting behavior? Theories of election-related violence focus on the electoral benefits such...     

公共利益、公共交易和公共政策——由“定海古城被毁事件”谈开去

从公共政策和公共利益的关系出发,讨论“定海古城被毁”事件,认为公共政策并不必然地反映公共利益。“定海古城被毁”事件实际上可能是一起代表部分政府官员利益的政府部门利益通过公共政策的方式以政府利益和人民利益的不正当名义严重侵害公共利益的事件。由此,提出保证公共政策有效地维护、增进公共利益的公共交易机制。     

The Gender of Transitional Justice: Law, Sexual Violence and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Recent efforts to develop and implement progressive models oftransitional justice have been significantly influenced by majordevelopments in the law concerning sexual violence in armedconflict. In particular, the International Criminal Tribunalfor the former Yugoslavia has pioneered accountability for sexualviolence against women in armed conflict. This article takesthe ICTY as a case study of how gender can structure the accountabilitymechanisms of transitional justice. The article analyses howlegal norms and practices instantiate and reiterate, ratherthan transform, existing hierarchical gender relations. It considersthe existing models of sexual violence as a criminal harm underinternational law, and then examines gendered patterns of legalpractice in ICTY prosecutions. To address this engendering oftransitional justice, the article produces a new model of theharm of sexual violence in conflict, suggests the developmentof a new international offence of sexual violence and generatesdifferent strategies for international prosecutions of sexualviolence.     

Video Games and Violence: Legislating on the ‘Politics of Confusion’

This article explores the way that politicians and legislators have responded to concerns over the link between videogames and violence in the UK, particularly in terms of ensuring that inappropriate content remains inaccessible to minors. It explores the recent changes to the regulatory framework centred on videogames, arguing that the move to a universal statutory framework has implications that are more symbolic than real‐policy is still underpinned by the ‘precautionary principle’ and the framework remains equally likely to be undermined by the actions of parents who ignore ratings and purchase age‐inappropriate games for their children. Perhaps predictably, the political establishment has been unwilling to engage with this parental neglect, attributing it to ‘ignorance’ and ‘the need for a simplification of the ratings system’. This paper argues that such responses are essentially a smokescreen used by governments which are understandably unwilling to take prosecutions into the home and retail space.     

Saving Strong Neighborhoods From the Destruction of Mortgage Foreclosures: The Impact of Community-Based Efforts in Detroit,Michigan

Mortgage foreclosures hit Detroit, Michigan hard between 2005 and 2014, especially in what we define as strong neighborhoods; there, more than one third of homes experienced foreclosure. Before the crisis hit, these selected tracts had largely intact physical environments and higher owner occupancy, household income and property value than the citywide median. In some of them residents worked intensely to abate the neighborhood effects of mortgage foreclosures. This study examines those efforts’ effectiveness. We selected neighborhoods with the most extensive efforts, as measured, for instance, by creation of community-based plans and applications for grants, and we conducted interviews and field observations to examine those efforts. To assess strengthening of neighborhood housing markets, we applied a modified adjusted interrupted time-series approach to evaluate changes in prices as one measure of neighborhood change. We found that strong resident initiative supported by community development organizations and external assistance led to increased neighborhood housing prices, compared with comparable neighborhoods. However, when initiative, context, and support were weaker, community-based efforts could not prevent considerable decline.     

Shadow peacebuilders and diplomatic counterinsurgencies: informal networks,knowledge production and the art of policy-shaping

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of informal networks in producing strategic knowledge and influencing policy responses to the 2011 post-election crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The analytical focus is on networks of shadow peacebuilders, defined as actors who are often not visible to the public and who promote a mix of altruistic and personal interests of their broader network by generating strategic narratives and influencing peacebuilding policy. As this article shows, shadow peacebuilders engage in diplomatic counterinsurgencies waged by means of diplomacy, politics, public relations and legal means. Strategic narratives are instrumental in legitimizing diplomatic counterinsurgency, inducing internal cohesion within the network and delegitimizing alternative narratives and policy solutions. Yet the production of strategic knowledge by shadow peacebuilders has its limitations. When the gap between strategic narrative and actions becomes too big, the network risks fragmentation and defeat by other networks that promote alternative strategic narratives and paths of action in the battle over control of peacebuilding policy.