Reengineering the Child Support Scheme: An Australian Perspective on the British Government's Proposals

After years of problems with the Child Support Scheme in Britain, the Government has decided to attempt reform again, less than four years after a previous major change was implemented in 2003. The author evaluates these reform proposals, drawing upon his experience in leading a recent major review of child support policy in Australia. While many of the reform measures offer a sensible way forward for child support policy, Britain risks going backwards in terms of community acceptance of the child support obligation. The Government needs to consider the likely impact of its policy settings on private agreements about child support. Ways are proposed both to protect the Treasury and to promote the wellbeing of children by adopting different policy settings that ensure the resident parent has an incentive to bargain for the level of child support required by the new formula. The new formula itself is evaluated in the light of the international research on the costs of children. Ways are also suggested for developing a co-ordinated approach across government to the provision of support services for parents who do not live together.     

The Writer's Refusal and Law's Malady

In this piece I want to (re)pose the relation of writing to law and politics, by interrogating the sense of a writing which is simultaneously an unwriting or undoing of legal and political discourse through Maurice Blanchot's involvement in the movement against the French colonial war in Algeria and, in particular, his framing of the Declaration of the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War in 1960. The piece analyses how the sense of the event of the Declaration continues to call us to acknowledge a 'disastrous responsibility' to a non-community beyond the time of law and politics.     

Natural Disasters and Political Participation: Evidence from the 2002 and 2013 Floods in Germany

How do natural disasters affect electoral participation? The existing social science literature offers contradictory predictions. A considerable body of research in sociology and psychology suggests that traumatic events can inspire pro-social behaviour, which might increase turnout. Yet, political science has long held that even minor changes to participation costs of low benefit activities can lead to considerable drops in civic engagement. Consequently, natural disasters should reduce electoral participation. We show how these distinct views can be jointly analysed within the Riker–Ordeshook model of voting. This paper then reports results on the impact of the 2002 and 2013 floods in Germany on turnout in federal and state elections in Saxony and Bavaria, conducted few weeks after the floods. Analysing community level turnout data, and drawing on a difference-in-differences framework, we find that flood exposure has a consistent negative effect on turnout. This indicates that the increase in the costs of voting outweighed any increase in political engagement in our case and stands in contrast to findings from developing contexts, where flood management was convincingly linked to electoral participation.     

How to write international history: Reflections on Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie

Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie (The History of Norwegian Foreign Policy), (6 vols., Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1992–97), NOK 298 per volume. Vol.1: Narve Bjørgo, Øystein Rian and Alf Kaartvedt, Selvstendighet og union. Fra middelalderen til 1905 (1995), pp.416. Vol.2: Roald Berg, Norge på egen hånd 1905–1920 (1995), pp.401. Vol.3: Odd‐Bjørn Fure, Mellomkrigstid 1920–1940 (1996), pp.434. Vol.4: Jakob Sverdrup, Inn i storpolitikken 1940–1949 (1996), pp.389. Vol.5: Knut Einar Eriksen and Helge Pharo, Kald krig og internasjonalisering 1949–1965 (autumn 1997), Vol.6: Rolf Tamnes, Oljealder 1965–1995 (autumn 1997).