Think global,talk local: getting the party political message across in the age of the internet

This paper seeks to test the view that the Internet will provide politicians and political parties with a means of directly communicating with electors, so circumnavigating the perceived bias of the mass media, and explores how the political use of the Internet will impact on campaigning, particularly at the local/personal level. The evidence surveyed shows that political use of the Internet is, despite the hype, still in its infancy, but that more extensive use will lead to changes in the style and mode of political communications. The Internet will eventually enable politicians and parties to address a mass audience in qualitative new ways, tailoring their message and information dissemination to individual and local concerns. But this will bring all the consequences of direct communication, such as increased workloads and the danger of atomising the political process. Politicians and parties may hanker for the days when the traditional mass media intervened in the process of political communications. This paper is an edited version of the one presented to 'On Message: A Conference on Political Communication and Marketing sponsored by the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group, Loughborough University, September 2000. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Accountability in the Regulatory State

Accountability has long been both a key theme and a key problem in constitutional scholarship. The centrality of the accountability debates in contemporary political and legal discourse is a product of the difficulty of balancing the autonomy given to those exercising public power with appropriate control. The traditional mechanisms of accountability to Parliament and to the courts are problematic because in a complex administrative state, characterized by widespread delegation of discretion to actors located far from the centre of government, the conception of centralized responsibility upon which traditional accountability mechanisms are based is often fictional. The problems of accountability have been made manifest by the transformations wrought on public administration by the new public management (NPM) revolution which have further fragmented the public sector. In this article it is argued that if public lawyers are to be reconciled to these changes then it will be through recognizing the potential for additional or extended mechanisms of accountability in supplementing or displacing traditional accountability functions. The article identifies and develops two such extended accountability models: interdependence and redundancy     

Public Sector Reform in Central Asia and the Caucasus

Many developing countries are constantly seeking to reform their public services as part of a wider agenda which supports moves to a market economy and better governance arrangements. Some have embraced public management reforms as the template for their activities with limited success. This paper considers existing research on the impact of public sector reform in developing countries and offers an alternative approach, through case studies of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan, based on two keys elements: an agenda which attempts to shift developing countries to an outcomes based accountability approach operationalized through a “quality of life” framework; and, peer‐to‐peer learning.     

Equality and family values: conflict or harmony?

Abstract

This paper provides a critical commentary on the claim advanced by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift in their book Family Values: The Ethics of Parent–Child Relationships that there is an ineliminable conflict between relationship goods and fair equality of opportunity. I argue there need be no conflict between family values and equality of opportunity in a suitably non-hierarchical society. I also argue that the idea that equality of opportunity might be served by abolishing the family is mistaken. Egalitarian justice does not provide an obstacle to the realization of family values.     

Implementing Environmental Sustainability in Local Government: The Impacts of Framing,Agency Culture,and Structure in US Cities and Counties

This article focuses on the organizational factors of environmental sustainability implementation in local government. We investigate the interactions, as well as direct and indirect impacts, of the framing of environmental sustainability and organizational culture and structure on implementation outcomes. We use a survey of 217 city/county planners and managers in 146 randomly selected American mid-sized cities and counties. The survey was specifically designed to tease out organizational features and their impacts. We model these impacts using structural equation modeling. We find that horizontally and vertically integrated organizational structure supports two essential dimensions of organizational culture: innovation adoption and consensus building. These cultural traits positively impact the framing of environmental sustainability at the core of organizations’ logic, which in turn significantly supports implementation outcomes. These findings provide important insights into city/county managers seeking to promote sustainability, and provide a base for future studies of the organizational factors of implementation.     

Contested meanings,myths and hyperimages of the apocalypse: the Bakhtin Circle and the politicisation of catastrophism

This article considers the depoliticising effects of current images and myths of apocalyptic visions, such that the world faces a catastrophe whether this emerges from environmental degradation, mass migration, terrorism, or global financial collapse. In our digital media age, apocalyptic images are now also captured through the raw footage of actual disaster events. In the article we call such footage, “hyperimages”. The power of the hyperimage is not, as Baudrillard once said, that reality is “just like the movies”, rather, hyperimages demonstrate that the image captured and shown to others is all too real because they depict actual everyday disasters. Importantly, such is the power of hyperimages that they are often employed by the political right to help them construct a hegemonic project aiming to win state power and to influence state policies. Drawing on the Bakhtin Circle, however, we show that hyperimages are also mediated and circulated through a multitude of social groups and voices in society, which contain seeds of radical heteroglossic alternatives to that of the right. Following this, the article then examines how responses to apocalyptic hyperimages can be politicised in a progressive direction.     

Penal Populism and the Public Thermostat: Crime,Public Punitiveness,and Public Policy

This article makes the case that feedback processes in democratic politics—between crime rates, public opinion, and public policy—can account for the growth of penal populism in Britain. It argues that the public recognize and respond to rising (and falling) levels of crime, and that in turn public support for being tough on crime is translated into patterns of imprisonment. This contributes to debates over the crime–opinion–policy connection, unpacking the dynamic processes by which these relationships unfold at the aggregate level. This uses the most extensive data set ever assembled on aggregate opinion on crime in Britain to construct a new over‐time measure of punitive attitudes. The analysis first tests the thermostatic responsiveness of punitive attitudes to changes in recorded crime rates as well as self‐reported victimization, and then examines the degree to which changes in mass opinion impact on criminal justice policy.     

Homicides committed by youth assailants: a retrospective study

The pediatric population has received considerable attention in the forensic community; the youth assailant of homicide, however, is understudied. The authors retrospectively reviewed all cases referred to the Forensic Pathology Section of the Medical University of South Carolina between January 1991 and May 2006. Cases included in the study were homicides in which 1 or more assailants were 19 years of age or younger. The cases were examined as to the cause and manner of death, victim age, gender, race, incident location, weapon used, assailant-victim relationship, assailant age, gender, race, motive, and postmortem toxicology results. Assailant information was obtained from forensic records at Medical University of South Carolina, police department records, and online search engines of South Carolina State newspaper archives confirmed by law enforcement reports. The youth assailants were predominantly black men, 15 to 19 years of age (range, 4-19 years). Most victims were black male acquaintances, and the motive was most often an argument. The most common cause of death was cerebral laceration because of a gunshot wound. The incident occurred in the home in 41% of cases, followed by the street in 31%. Victim toxicology was frequently positive for cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol.     

The privacy commissioner of Canada: Multiple roles,diverse expectations and structural dilemmas

Abstract: The contemporary roles of the privacy commissioner of Canada are multiple: he can be an ombudsman, auditor, consultant, educator, policy adviser, regulator and judge. Yet, Canadian privacy legislation provides quite poor guidance as to how he should perform and balance these roles and tends to put emphasis on complaints‐resolution, a function that is less useful in promoting general compliance with the privacy principles. The analysis of the experience of privacy protection agencies, however, suggests that the most important powers are those that are general rather than specific, and proactive rather than reactive. The implementation of privacy protection law is as much an educational effort as a regulatory one, as much can be achieved in anticipation of policy and system development if privacy protection is built in at the outset. The successful implementation of privacy protection policy involves a considerable degree of learning and mutual adjustment and readjustment. It is not characterized by a top‐down process of command, control and sanction. The privacy commissioner is one among many actors involved in privacy protection policy in Canada, and his success is dependent on the recognition that he has many policy instruments at his disposal, besides the law, to encourage higher standards for the treatment of personal information by Canadian organizations. Sommaire: Le Commissaire à la protection de la vie privée du Canada joue à l'heure actuelle des rôles multiples: il peut être ombudsman, vérificateur, consultant, éducateur, conseiller en politique, responsable de la réglementation et juge. Et pourtant, les lois canadiennes relatives à la protection de la vie privée n'offrent que de médiocres directives quant à la manière dont il devrait s'acquitter de ces différents rôles et les équilibrer. Elles ont tendance à mettre I'accent sur la résolution des plaintes, fonction qui est moins utile pour promouvoir I'observation des principes du respect de la vie privée. L'analyse de l'expérience des organismes de protection de la vie privée laisse entendre cependant que les plus importants pouvoirs sont ceux qui sont généraux plutôt que spécifiques, et proactifs plutôt que réactionnels. La mise en aeuvre de lois sur la protection de la vie privée représente un effort autant éducatif que réglementaire, car de bons résultats peuvent être atteints si la protection de la vie privée fait dès le depart partie intégrante de l'élaboration de politiques et de systèmes. La mise en ceuvre réussie d'une politique de protection de la vie privée comporte un important degré d'apprentissage et d'ajustement et de réajustement mutuels. Elle n'est pas caractérisée par un processus pyramidal descendant de commande, de contrôle et de sanction. Le Commissaire à la protection de la vie privée est l'un des nombreux acteurs de la politique de protection de la vie privée au Canada. Son succès repose sur le fait qu'il dispose de nombreux instruments de politique, en plus de la loi, pour encourager les organismes canadiens qui traitent les renseignements personnels à adopter des normes très éelevées.