What determines the value of life? a meta‐analysis

A large literature has developed in which labor market contracts are used to estimate the value of a statistical life (VSL). Reported estimates of the VSL vary substantially, from less than $100,000 to more than $25 million. This research uses meta‐analysis to quantitatively assess the VSL literature. Results from existing studies are pooled to identify the systematic relationships between VSL estimates and each study's particular features, such as the sample composition and research methods. This meta‐analysis suggests that a VSL range of approximately $1.5 million to $2.5 million (in 1998 dollars) is what can be reasonably inferred from past labor‐market studies when “best practice” assumptions are invoked. This range is considerably below many previous qualitative reviews of this literature. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Was ``V' for Victory or Votes? A Public Choice Analysis of World War II Federal Spending

Several studies on the New Deal have found that politicalfactors played a significant role in determining 1930s federalspending. This suggests that federal spending was not capturedby special interest groups and self-interested politiciansrecently, but rather, that it has been affected by thesefactors since the ``era of big government'' began. We examinethe military emergency of the 1940s to determine whetherfederal spending during this crisis was similarly affected bypolitics.     

A genealogy of EU discourses and practices of deliberative governance: Beyond states and markets?

The article offers a genealogy of ‘deliberative governance’ in the EU—an important contemporary discourse and practice of ‘throughput legitimacy’ within that setting. It focuses on three key episodes: the late 1990s ‘Governance’ reports of the European Commission's in‐house think‐tank, the Forward Studies Unit (FSU); the Commission's 2001 White Paper on Governance; and the EU's ‘Open Method of Coordination’, which emerged in the 1990s and was widely studied in the early and mid‐2000s. The genealogy serves to highlight the particular intellectual lineages and political contingencies associated with such a discourse and in so doing points to its exclusive potential in both theory and practice. In particular, the article argues that it excludes, on the one hand, those championing the enduring sociological and normative importance of the nation state and an associated representative majoritarianism and, on the other hand, those (excessively) critical of a functionalist, neoliberal, market‐making status quo.     

Opting Out of Political Discussions

Methodological limitations have hindered our ability to understand the conditions that make individuals seek or avoid political discussions. We introduce a methodological approach to assess communication preferences in contexts where these choices are difficult to measure. We conduct three experiments to examine how the characteristics of the people in a discussion, as well as its topic, influence an individual’s “price” to participate. Participants indicated how much they would need to be compensated to participate in a short discussion about a randomly assigned topic (political or nonpolitical) under different group compositions (co-partisans, out-partisans, or a mixed group). We find that individuals demanded significantly more compensation to engage in a discussion with out-partisans than with co-partisans, for both political and non-political topics.     

Elderly British men: homohysteria and orthodox masculinities

Abstract

There is limited research about homosociality and physical tactility between men in the early to middle decades of the twentieth century. This research utilizes 27 in-depth interviews with heterosexual British men aged between 65 and 91 in order to explore their masculinity and homosociality, then and today. Participants were interviewed about (1) their recollections of masculinity and same-sex friendships aged 18; (2) their awareness of, and attitudes towards, homosexuality at this age; and (3) their current views regarding today’s heterosexual male’s gendered behaviours, inclusive of their kissing, cuddling and loving other men. Results show that men born between 1924 and 1951 lived in absence of, or desire for, homosocial affection. Even today they look upon the display of inclusive masculinities by today’s male youth with disdain. We suggest that their antipathy towards homosociality is reflective of elevated cultural homophobia and homohysteria of their youths.     

Internecine strife in trade union organisations: status,competition and the effect of industry rationalisation and neo-liberalism

Internal conflict in trade unions has been the subject of considerable academic interest. Often described as intra-union tensions, the basic divergence in priorities and concerns between union officialdom and their members on the shop floor has inspired a multiplicity of pioneering workplace studies and theoretical frameworks. However, while these hierarchical divisions in trade union organisations have received concerted attention, another manifestation of intra-union discord remains relatively under-explored. Inter-sectional or ‘horizontal’ conflict can be described as two sets of workers from different trade groups within the same union which are embroiled in competition or rivalry, usually in the same workplace. Although the loosely associated concept of sectionalism was identified as a re-emerging trend in British trade unionism in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been little attempt to document how conflict can occur between two sections of workers working side-by-side. This article will present a case of horizontal conflict from the British dock industry and consider under what circumstances and pressures the phenomenon is likely to occur. The two sections featured historically had an uneasy relationship and rationalisation of the industry, allied with the neoliberal restructuring of the British economy in the 1980s, exacerbated this. In these contexts, workers began to exhibit greater levels of group self-interest which amplified inter-sectional tensions further.     

Contested landscapes: the global political economy of climate-smart agriculture

Analysing key initiatives in the area of climate-smart agriculture and the politics which surround them, this paper identifies the dominant discourses shaping the debate through a discussion of discursive sites of power and by mapping the emerging ‘regime complex’ of institutional power that operates at the interface of the climate and agrifood system. This is connected to forms of material power that derive from control over production, finance and technology in the neoliberal food regime by transnational capital. Such an analysis has important implications for which solutions are promoted as part of climate-smart agriculture and which actors are likely to benefit from the flows of technology, finance and institutional support that are mobilised in the struggle to define a viable global agrifood system in a warming world.     

Civil society: Bringing the family back in

This article explores the complex and contradictory positioning of the family within civil society literature. In some accounts, the family is seen as the cornerstone of civil society. In others, the family is positioned firmly outside – even antithetical to – civil society. This paradox arises from the ways in which civil society is variously defined through a series of binary oppositions – in relation to each of which the family sits uneasily. And while feminist critiques have tried to bring women back into view, they too tend to marginalize the family. In addition, the normative nature of these oppositions has meant that while civil society tends to be seen as the property of the political ‘left’, the family is often associated with the political ‘right’. The article argues that we need to move beyond oppositional definitions of civil society and assumptions about the family if we are to understand the multiple ways in which the family is implicated as not only the ‘reproducer’ of particular resources and dispositions but as a principal source and focus of civil society engagement and activism.     

Coalition from the Inside Out: Women of Color Feminism and Politico-Ethical Coalition Politics

This article turns to 1980s US women of color feminism to develop a notion of politico-ethical coalition politics as an alternative to contemporary articulations of activist coalition politics that obscure the high-stakes politics of coalescing across hostile race, class, gender, sex, and sexuality divides. Rethinking political joining outside of notions of ontological spectacle and ethical community, women of color feminists such as Bernice Reagon, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa encourage a uniquely political conception of coalition that resists appeals to political indeterminacy while still anticipating the power struggles and danger inherent to working in coalition. This understanding of coalition, I argue, is best thought of as politico-ethical insofar as the political commitment to undermining interlocking oppressive forces grounding such efforts is overtly self-reflexive, thereby encouraging an ethical sensibility characterized by love, existential transformation, and a reconceptualization of identity and consciousness in coalitional terms.