Scandinavian social democracy: Achievements and problems

The performance of the Scandinavian Social Democratic parties is assessed in a comparative Western European perspective. The Social Democrats’ achievement of the status of ‘natural parties of government’ is shown to have been matched by welfare policy outcomes markedly superior to most other advanced nations. It is also argued that the long period of Social Democratic dominance in Scandinavia has provided the organised working class with an important position in the power structure and an influence in formulating the prevailing ‘image of society’. Finally, the political problems threatening continued Social Democratic ascendancy are briefly examined.     

SOE's ‘Prosper’ Disaster of 1943

International economic issues have become a foremost government concern since the start of the global financial crisis, leaving economic security increasingly linked to more traditional concepts of national interest and politico-military security. This prioritization has been reflected in the recent requirements of the United Kingdom's intelligence and security actors. Yet, scholarly research has neglected the relationship between intelligence, international economics, and contemporary security policy. Taking current requirements as a catalyst, this article draws on contemporary British history to explore when intelligence can be used to protect economic security and when intelligence actors can best use economic measures to achieve broader politico-military goals. The use of secret intelligence in the economic sphere does, however, have certain limitations and it should therefore only be employed when necessary.     

Worlds,Families, Regimes: Country Clusters in European and OECD Area Public Policy

This article focuses on the notion that the policies and politics of states and nations constitute distinct worlds or clusters. We begin by examining the concept of clustering as it has emerged in the literature on policy regimes and families of nations. We then address a series of empirical questions: whether distinct worlds persist in an era of policy convergence and globalisation, whether policy antecedents cluster in the same ways as policy outcomes and whether the enlargement of the EU has led to an increase in the number of worlds constituting the wider European polity. Our main conclusions are that country clustering is, if anything, more pronounced than in the past, that it is, in large part, structurally determined and that the EU now contains a quite distinct post-Communist family of nations.     

Gender,Migration and Multiple Livelihoods: Cases from Eastern and Southern Africa

Focussing on Kenya, Lesotho and South Africa, this study examines the social impact in migrant-labour source areas of dramatically reduced employment prospects in urban areas. It considers the implications for rural livelihoods and the role which gender relations play in making possible, or impeding, people's ability to construct diversified livelihoods. When livelihoods change, gendered rights, responsibilities and power must be renegotiated. Husbands and wives may acknowledge interdependencies and negotiate, or they may disengage. Marriages may break down, or women become reluctant to marry at all, as the material basis of the household is undermined. These outcomes do not represent social breakdown, but residential instability is likely to become more common.     

Terrorism and the media

The linguistic turn in political science is an important step toward more sophisticated political knowledge. Greater awareness of political language implies attention to words such as reason. Reason is central to modern political discourse because of its historical and cultural importance and because of the contemporary dominance of the rational choice paradigm. Reason the concept therefore justifies closer scrutiny of reason the word. The meaning of reason is constructed as a variable. Standing by itself, reason seems relatively shapeless and empty; dictionary definitions are circular and tautological, although some subtle nuances derive from the network of reason's root words. Most of the variance in the meaning of reason is determined by other words that surround it, with a significant portion of reason's meaning being defined by its context. Anterior meaning shifters, nominal referents, spatiotemporal modifiers, and textual narrative all surround reason and fix it in a large lattice. The meaning of reason in use varies continuously. From this perspective, it becomes clear how reason functions as an important rhetorical trope in political discourse. Its plasticity and flexibility help reason stimulate and evoke variable mental images and responses in different settings and situations, all the more important because these go largely unnoticed. The example of reason of state shows reason's rhetorical power and privilege, its normative dimension, its persuasiveness, and its consequences. Seen in this light, a weak version of reason of state is preferable to a strong one. Pluralistic reason opens new paths for democratic thought and political action.     

Where is Latisha’s Law? Black Invisibility in the Social Construction of Victimhood

Laws named after specific crime victims have become increasingly common. These laws are part of a broader effort to downgrade the status and rehabilitative needs of offenders and to hear the voices and trumpet the legitimate concerns of victims—often as a means of justifying punitive crime control policies. Beyond the substantive merit of individual statutes, collectively these named laws provide a clear image of which victims warrant protection and memorialization: Victims who are vulnerable in some way, who are pursued by predatory criminals into their otherwise safe domains, and—above all—who are White. In this regard, an analysis of 51 named laws from 1990 to 2016 reveals that the vast majority of them (86.3%) honor White victims. In asking the question, “Where is Latisha’s Law?,” we seek to illuminate the virtual invisibility of African American victims and the implicit social construction of which lives matter more in American society.     

The sociological imagination revisited: lessons from <Emphasis Type="Italic">America’s Safest City</Emphasis>

In America’s Safest City, Simon Singer embraces the sociological imagination to situate juveniles’ personal troubles within the context of middle-class affluence and modernity. In so doing, he departs from the standard research paradigm that seeks to explain delinquency by using secondary data sets that contain limited measures of theoretical constructs identified by reigning perspectives. Singer’s decision has resulted in a rich analysis that is replete with criminological lessons about the nature of delinquency. Four such lessons are presented here, which include: (1) a lower-class bias has clouded thinking about crime; (2) the reaction to crime differs across classes; (3) parents matter in producing adolescence-limited antisocial youths; and (4) suburban delinquency may be a precursor to white-collar crime.     

Maintaining the Legal Status of People with Intellectual Disabilities as Parents: The ADA and the CRPD

People with intellectual disabilities face proceedings to terminate their parental rights with disturbing regularity, with protecting the interests of offspring the primary justification. Although protecting children from harm is surely critical, these termination proceedings involve problematic assumptions about how fitness to parent is understood, how parenting is legally constructed, and what nondiscrimination requires for parents with intellectual disabilities. Using Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a model, it suggests two alternatives to the all‐or‐nothing termination processes in place today that might better realize the enjoyment of legal capacity as parents on an equal basis with others for people with intellectual disabilities: limited terminations analogous to limited guardianships and supported parenting along the lines of supported decision making proposed in the CRPD.     

The Price of Civil Rights: Black Lives,White Funding,and Movement Capture

What influence do funders have on the development of civil rights legal mobilization? Fundraising is critical to the creation, operation, and survival of rights organizations. Yet, despite the importance of funding, there is little systematic attention in the law and social movements and cause lawyering literatures on the relationship between funders and grantees. This article recovers a forgotten history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) campaign to protect black lives from lynchings and mob violence in the early twentieth century. I argue that funders engaged in a process of movement capture whereby they used their financial leverage to redirect the NAACP's agenda away from the issue of racial violence to a focus on education at a critical juncture in the civil rights movement. The findings in this article suggest that activists tread carefully as the interaction between funders and social movement organizations often creates gaps between what activists want and what funders think movements should do.