Pedagogy and deliberative democracy: insights from recent experiments in the United Kingdom

A growing body of research suggests the existence of a disconnection between citizens, politicians and representative politics in advanced industrial democracies. This has led to a literature on the emergence of post-democratic or post-representative politics that connects to a parallel seam of scholarship on the capacity of deliberative democratic innovations to ‘close the gap’. This latter body of work has delivered major insights in terms of democratic design in ways that traverse ‘politics as theory’ and ‘politics as practice’. And yet the main argument of this article is that this seam of scholarship has generally failed to explore the existence of numerous pedagogical relationships that exist within the very fibre of deliberative processes. As such, the core contribution of this article focuses around the explication of a ‘pedagogical pyramid’ that applies a micro-political lens to deliberative processes. This theoretical contribution is empirically assessed with reference to a recent project that sought to test different citizen assembly pilots around plans for English regional devolution. The proposition being tested is that a better understanding of relational pedagogy within innovations is vital, not just to increase levels of knowledge, but also to build the capacity, confidence and contribution of democratically active citizens.     

Tilting Towards the Cosmopolitan Axis? Political Change in England and the 2017 General Election

The general election of June 2017 revealed a continued tilting of the political axis in England that has been long in the making. This was not a Brexit ‘realignment’—in that the vote is better seen as a symptom of a longer‐term divide that is emerging between citizens residing in locations strongly connected to global growth and those who are not. In this analysis, we explore constituency‐level patterns of voting in England between 2005 and 2017. Over this period, Labour's vote share has tended to rise in urban areas (that is, major cities), with younger and more diverse and more educated populations often working in ‘cosmopolitan’ industries, whereas the Conservative vote has tended to increase in less densely populated towns and rural areas, with older and less diverse populations. Significantly, Labour has also increased its vote in constituencies with a higher share of ‘precariat’ and emerging service workers—somewhat at odds with characterisation of a party that has lost the ‘left behind’. To the extent that changes in electoral support for the Conservatives and Labour are linked to the Brexit vote, the relationship far predates the referendum vote and should be expected to continue to reshape British politics in future.     

Building capacity in indigenous governance: Comparing the Australian and American experiences

This paper compares key aspects of governance structures for Indigenous populations in the United States and Australia. The paper focuses on policy coordination and administration, in particular the nodes of decision-making in the two countries in relation to government contracting and accountability. The U.S. approach to funding Indigenous organizations stems from the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Act and its subsequent expansions. Through the development of contracting into permanent compacting via block grants, this approach builds established nodes of Indigenous government and facilitates whole-of-government coherence at the level of the American Indian tribe. The U.S. approach seems correlated with better performance and may lighten bureaucratic loads over the long term. The Australian model, on the other hand, seeks to create whole-of-government coherence through top-down financial accountability in a way that hampers the development of Indigenous political capacity. The paper traces the development of these practices through time and illustrates how they contribute to the fragmentation rather than growth of Indigenous political capacities. It suggests ways the Australian model could be improved even in the absence of fundamental reform by drawing on the contracting-to-compacting framework of longstanding U.S. practices.     

Rebel masculinities of star/director/text: James Dean,Nicholas Ray,and Rebel Without a Cause

Director Nicholas Ray is arguably most familiar to cinema culture as the American test case for la politique des auteurs, the influential mode of film criticism formulated at the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma after World War II. Ray was elevated to the status of film ‘author’ for a consistency of vision and style associated with rebellion. Yet, he was known in the film industry as an ‘actor's director,’ both for his background in theater and for bringing Lee Strasberg's ‘The Method’ to Hollywood after it had gained considerable cachet at the Actors Studio in New York since the 1930s. Although Ray was relatively unknown among the movie-going public, his films were (and still remain) recognizable for their male stars, including James Dean, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart. In this essay, I look at his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955 Rebel Without a Cause, 1955. Film. Directed by Nicholas Ray. USA: Warner Bros. [Google Scholar]), to argue that Ray's reputation as a rebel auteur was as much the product of highbrow auteurist film criticism as the mass cultural persona of ‘rebel male hero’ that the film's star James Dean cultivated. As an actor, Dean was promoted at the vanguard of an innovative and experimental new performance style. Further, his star-performance text reveals a construction of masculinity that the film asks us to view as socially rebellious, which is retroactively linked to Ray. Both the film and the popular press form Dean's image constituted by his self-fashioned sense of authenticity, his non-normative sexuality, his highly publicized death, and the identification with an alternative family structure his role invites.     

ALTERNATIVE ARRANGEMENTS FOR COST EFFECTIVE POLLUTION ABATEMENT: THE NEED FOR IMPLEMENTATION ANALYSIS

After examining policies and proposals designed to achieve cost-effective pollution abatement, the authors argue that design of economically elegant solutions to pollution control problems needs implementation analysis if the policies are to be successfully carried out. They review some institutional obstacles to implementation and conclude that these impediments should not prevent adoption.     

Swiss taxation of trusts currently and in the future

At the International Trust & Tax Planning Summit Conference,held from 30 October to 1 November 2006 in Coral Gables, Florida,Frédéric Vuilleumier considered the Swiss taxregime in a paper entitled ‘Inbound Guide: What ShouldYou Do When Assumptions Change?’ In this article, theSwiss direct tax system was discussed and the distinction madebetween federal and cantonal taxation, tax residence in Switzerlandand the question of jurisdiction under Swiss private internationallaw and the application of Swiss civil law where Swiss courtshave jurisdiction and the applicable law in matrimonial matters.The article is part of that paper and concentrates on the taxtreatment of trusts in Switzerland, the current position andthe impact of the draft circular to accommodate the then expectedaccession of Switzerland to the Hague Convention.     

The Tasmanian Electoral Roll Trial in the 2002 ATSIC Elections

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) elections since 1990 have used the Commonwealth Electoral Roll (CER) as a large under-specified list of potential voters. Dissatisfaction with this arrangement within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community led to a trial roll of Indigenous electors being drawn up for the 2002 ATSIC elections in that State. This paper recounts a number of contexts in which this trial was developed. It also recounts the experience of the trial itself, which did not work out as successfully as those who had promoted it had hoped. Finally it looks at lessons from the trial and options for the future.