Pathways to impact in local government: the mini-Stern review as evidence in policy making in the Leeds City Region

Although in recent years great emphasis has been placed on global agreements and national commitments on climate change, ultimately action on mitigation and adaptation must take place at the local level. Many local authorities have to face questions of whether they should develop policies on climate change, and if so, on what evidence should policies be designed and delivered. This paper describes how academic research on the economics of low carbon cities (the ‘mini-Stern review’) helped create such an evidence base for the Leeds City Region and its constituent local authorities. We describe how the response to the evidence and the pathways to impact were different in the individual local authorities and what this means for our understanding of evidence in local policy making. In terms of Weiss’ (Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Advances in political science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991) classification, the study was mainly useful as an argument and idea rather than being used instrumentally. We find that the policy and political context in each authority determines to a large extent whether such an academic study is useable as evidence. The contents and timing of the study need to align with existing policy and/or political agendas: is climate change on the agenda at all, with what priority and how is it framed. We find confirmation of a relationship between the policy problem type and the role of evidence as argument, idea or data. The mini-Stern study itself was just one contribution to wide-ranging processes of informing, convincing, pressurising, etc., not just within the different councils but also within the wider communities. Other contextual factors include composition, agenda and activities of local civil society and the local business community. Finally, it depends on the expertise of policy officers in the councils what use is made of evidence. Making policy takes (much) time, translation and negotiation across levels and sectors. Policy work describes how policy officers bring their diverse forms of knowledge to bear on policy questions; how this work is done is something that is learned from practice rather than from the study.     

Comfortably inhabiting reality: justifying and denouncing arguments in a development dispute in the post-industrial gentrified inner-city

This article seeks to understand the ‘critical capacities’ of actors involved in public disputes by focussing on one such case in Melbourne, Australia. The dispute centred on a non-government school's proposal to develop classrooms in a heritage listed building on public land sublet from a charitable foundation. Following local council's rejection of the original proposal, the school successfully appealed to the Victorian Planning Minister. After introducing a critical pragmatic analytic framework, five accounts of the dispute given by key actors are examined, uncovering similarities in the arguments used by each. Then, in the same accounts, analysis identifies differences in how the pro- and anti-development groups justified their own and denounced their opponents' positions. Both groups recognised formal rules as the best means for preserving equal citizens' access to public space, yet the pro-development group justified their argument by reference to local community benefit, in contrast with the anti-development group, who adopted an abstract argument concerning the privatisation of public space. Understood as mobilising different ‘models of justice’, the groups are regarded as appealing to a ‘real’ order, an implicit politicised hierarchy that situates winners in relation to losers. In effect, the pro-development group justified its position by representing it as congruent with, rather than disrupting, the real order encompassing the situation. In conclusion, the paper discusses the usefulness of the critical pragmatic analytic framework for understanding governmental power relations and assemblages, as actors demonstrate their critical capacities in contexts where erstwhile formal equality obscures the presence of hierarchical order.     

Evaluating recent trends in peacebuilding research

Peacebuilding is a complex and multidimensional exercise thatencompasses tasks ranging from the disarming of warring factionsto the rebuilding of political, economic, judicial and civilsociety institutions. It utilizes a variety of actors, ideally,in the construction of a culture of peace to replace a structureof violence. Ever since Johan Galtung coined the term ‘peacebuilding’back in the 1970s, there have been very few attempts to fleshout the essence of this concept. It is only recently, beginningwith Boutros Boutros-Ghali's use of the term in his An Agendafor Peace and continuing with the efforts by the UN and regionalbodies to develop sustainable approaches to reconstructing war-tornsocieties that greater attention has been given to this idea.This article critically analyzes broad trends that can be discernedfrom the literature, in rethinking peacebuilding and in bridgingthe chasm between the concept and practices undertaken in itsname.     

Equal Civil Partnerships,Discrimination and the Indulgence of Time: R (on the application of Steinfeld and Keidan) v Secretary of State for International Development

In R (on the application of Steinfeld and Keidan) v Secretary of State for International Development the Supreme Court unanimously declared that the ban on different‐sex civil partnerships was incompatible with Articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In a strikingly robust and, at times, acerbic manner, the Court systematically dismantled the Secretary of State's request for tolerance of a discriminatory and unsustainable legal position. The decision represents a clear victory for those campaigning for reform and the issuing of a declaration of incompatibility by the Court is likely to have influenced the later announcement by Prime Minister Theresa May in October 2018 that different‐sex civil partnerships will ultimately be introduced in England and Wales.     

How Strong is the Evidence for the Existence of Poverty Traps? A Multicountry Assessment

Introducing this special collection on asset dynamics and poverty traps, this article assesses evidence on these issues across eight panel data sets in six countries generally not previously considered in this perspective. It examines the importance of assets in relation to chronic poverty and uses parametric and non-parametric methods to test for dynamic asset-based poverty traps. The article finds that chronically poor households have lower levels of assets than others, though does not find evidence of the non-convexities which would imply a multiple dynamic poverty trap. From this base the article introduces the remainder of the articles in this collection which set out many promising approaches to further develop and improve methods and approaches for looking at poverty traps in future.     

How the WTO Matters to Industry: The Case of Scotch Whisky

Although the World Trade Organization (WTO) has spawned a considerable academic literature, as yet research on this organization has rarely been problematized around clear theories of the relationship between law, economics, and politics. Building upon institutionalist premises and concepts drawn from political sociology and industrial economics, this article suggests a means of filling this gap by grasping the "political work" involved in the regulation of specific industries. Illustrated through the case of Scotch whisky, a focus is developed on how the WTO matters to contemporary industry. This reveals that the most powerful actors in industries such as Scotch have developed resources which legitimize their simultaneous engagement in a range of decision-making arenas. These include, but are not necessarily dominated by, the WTO.     

The Formation of High-Tech University Spinouts: The Role of Joint Ventures and Venture Capital Investors

We explore the joint venture route to commercializing university owned intellectual property. We present comparisons between two spinouts formed as joint ventures between universities and industrial partners and two spinouts where this was not the case. The research employs a resource-based framework, with new high tech spinout firms (or firms in gestation) facing severe resource and capability constraints. We show that spinouts typically lack the financial means and managerial expertise to acquire the resources and develop the capabilities they need in order to fully exploit the commercial potential of their technologies. We argue that creating a spinout company as a joint venture with an industrial partner, may be a means of overcoming some of the potential problems associated with managing resource weaknesses and inadequate capabilities that may be difficult to achieve as a free-standing spin-out company with or without venture capital backing.