Climate change and adaptive capacity in fisheries management: the case of Norway

Climate variability and change drive changes in marine ecosystems, such as growth in and geographic distribution of living marine resources. Mitigating measures in response to anthropogenic climate change are insufficient, and more attention must be directed toward adaptation to climate change. In the management of living marine resources, successful management will rest on the capacity of management regimes to be adaptive and flexible. This article addresses the management of living marine resources, and how management regimes cope with change and bolster the resilience of ecosystems. Experiences from the Norwegian management regime for living marine resources are used to illustrate how an existing regime can respond to change. We conclude that management regimes with sufficient capacity, in terms of robust science, regulatory frameworks that contribute to reduced fishing effort and maintenance of sustainable stock levels, and enforcement capability, are more likely to respond adequately to the challenges posed by climate change than those that do not.     

Listening to the Government: How Information Shapes Responsibility Attributions

Assigning credit and blame in systems of multilevel government, such as federal states, requires information. This paper examines how voters respond to information about policy outcomes when attributing responsibility to multiple levels of government in a European context. Using an experimental design, we show that the responsibility attributions of British voters are affected by perceptual biases, notably their feelings about the government and the European Union (EU). But interestingly, we also find that voters, regardless of their predispositions, are only responsive to information they receive from their national government, whereas they ignore information provided by EU officials. These findings have implications not only for our understanding of attribution in systems of multiple levels of government, but also for how voters use information selectively depending on the credibility of the source.     

This other and other others

This paper offers an alternative understanding of the relationship between feminist ethics, time and otherness. Rather than suggesting a feminist ethics should simply be for ‘the other’, or that feminist ethics is always futural (dedicated to that which is not yet), the paper suggests that ethics involves responding to the particular other in a present that carries traces of the past, as well as opening up the future. It is through responding to particular others (where particularity is not understood as a characteristic of another, but as a mode of encounter) that we face and face up to ‘other others’. The relationship between ‘this other’ and ‘other others’ suggests an intimacy between the particular and the collective, between the face-to-face of an encounter and political economies, and between feminist ethics and politics. Indeed, the paper concludes by suggesting that the ethical and political imperatives of feminism are aligned precisely given that collectivity is an effect of the work that has to be done to get closer to this other and, with her, other others. This other and other others collect together in the making of a feminist ‘we’. Such a ‘we’ can be embraced only through a willingness to struggle with and for others who are faced in the present (a facing that is indebted to a past that cannot be left behind), and an openness to the future, as the promise and hope of what we might yet become.     

Inclusion and Public Policy: Evidence from Sweden’s Introduction of Noncitizen Suffrage

The largest disenfranchised group in modern democracies is international migrants who lack citizenship of their country of residence. Despite that noncitizen suffrage has been introduced in some countries and has been the subject of vigorous public debate in many others, there have been no systematic attempts to investigate its policy consequences. Drawing on standard models of political competition, I argue that there will be a selection bias inherent in estimating the impact of noncitizen suffrage on public policy and analyze data that are uniquely suitable to deal with this methodological problem, namely data on exogenous changes in the composition of the electorates of Swedish municipalities generated by the introduction of noncitizen suffrage. According to the results, the effect of enfranchising noncitizens on public policy was large, causing spending on education and social and family services to increase substantially in municipalities where noncitizens made up a nonnegligible share of the electorate.     

Controlling Immigration through Language and Country Knowledge Requirements

This article examines why some states in Western Europe have adopted integration-from-abroad requirements, which include tests and language courses administered as a condition for immigration. After considering the significance and empirical differences of pre-entry integration programmes, it argues that mandatory language and country knowledge training from abroad primarily represent a deliberate and increasingly effective instrument for immigration control – specifically family unification and formation. The article first roots the political opportunity for pre-entry integration in supranational EU Directives on Family Reunification and Status of Third Country Nationals. Second, it looks at the Dutch Civic Integration from Abroad exam as a crucial case to show how mode of preparation, exempt categories, and policy language link the immigration test to migration control objectives. It concludes that this new instrument in immigration policy-making reveals strategic thinking by policy-makers to use positive, politically acceptable language of integration and inclusion to achieve potentially objectionable and discriminatory outcomes of exclusion.     

Elder Mistreatment Victims during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Administrative Data from San Francisco Adult Protective Services

This study examined elder mistreatment victims’ experiences at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on their COVID-19 awareness and unmet needs. San Francisco Adult Protective Services (APS) caseworkers conducted phone interviews with clients or collaterals (client’s family, trusted other, or service provider) to inquire about clients’ awareness of COVID-19 and unmet needs. Nine-hundred-and-thirty-four (71%) of 1,313 APS’ past clients or their collaterals were interviewed, with 741 (79%) responding positively to COVID-19-awareness questions, and 697 (75%) having no unmet needs. Binary logistic regression with Firth adjusted maximum likelihood estimation method revealed that older persons (p?<?.05), self-neglectors (p?<?.05), and victims of neglect (p?<?.05) were less aware of COVID-19. Unmet needs varied by mistreatment type. Victims of isolation were more likely to have medical needs (p?<?.05), while victims of emotional abuse were more likely to report loneliness (p?<?.001). Case notes reflected clients who were well-prepared for the pandemic, versus those who required additional assistance to follow preventative measures of the COVID-19 pandemic to stay home. Although the majority of San Francisco APS’ past clients experienced no unmet needs at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prolonged length and intensity of the pandemic could have exacerbated this vulnerable group’s situation. Collaboration between service providers is key in assisting victims experiencing unmet needs to live safely in a public health crisis, especially underserved victims of specific ethnic backgrounds.

     

Exploring board formation and evolution of board composition in academic spin-offs

An in-depth analysis of 11 cases is used to provide insight into the neglected area of the dynamics of boards in academic spin-offs. Drawing on stage-based, resource dependence, and social network theories, we explore board formation and changes in board composition occurring in Norwegian and US spin-offs. We find that these theories are important complements to earlier research on boards in technology-based new ventures. The process of board formation is mainly driven by social networks of the founders. Although we find differences in the initial board compositions in Norwegian and US spin-offs, there is convergence over time in subsequent board changes, which are mainly driven by the social networks of the board chair. Additions of key board members are associated with the progress of a spin-off developing from one stage to another. Several avenues for future research and implications are discussed.     

Utopias Re-imagined: A Reply to Panizza

This article is a reply to Panizza's recent article, 'Unarmed Utopia Revisited: The Resurgence of Left-of-Centre Politics in Latin America'. It contests the claims that there are no alternatives to market economies and liberal democracy in contemporary Latin America. It does this by disentangling the conceptual assumptions that underlie the analysis presented, which, it argues, construct a loaded dice that makes the conclusions of the arguments seemingly inevitable and objective. It also explores the internal contradictions within the alternative presented. This analysis is developed through the use of critical social theory and with reference to the 'movements from below' engaged in the struggle to re-imagine and reconstruct utopias. This involves bringing to the heart of analysis a theoretical orientation in which structures become a series of concrete social relations, not objects, and power is mediated at a variety of spatial levels. It necessitates a conceptualisation of politics, structure and the agents and nature of structural change that expand the boundaries of traditional political science categories. Such conceptual expansion and theoretical repositioning make visible, and politically central, the movements from below normally categorised as marginal in political analysis.