New Governance,Green Planning and Sustainability: Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together1

Bridgman and Davis (2000:91) have argued that ‘ideally government will have a well developed and widely distributed policy framework, setting out economic, social and environmental objectives’. This article compares and evaluates two such frameworks or plans, Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, in terms of their potential to promote sustainability. It argues that they are very different exercises in new governance, aimed at reconnecting with community priorities and at redirecting macro‐policy setting away from a preoccupation with economic priorities, respectively. Nevertheless, both plans have the capacity to ‘green’ state planning, in Tasmania in terms of more purposeful benchmarks, and in Victoria in terms of enhanced sustainability emphasis in the macro‐policy setting. The article encounters tensions in its review of the plans between deliberation and planning, policy empowerment and policy progress, and policy institutionalisation and politicisation as means of achieving policy change. It finds that whilst Tasmania and Victoria are re‐engaged states that are reinventing state policy, as yet they are failing to meet the governance challenges of sustainability.     

Pedagogy of individual choice and female inmate reentry in the U.S. Southwest

Much of the mental health, substance use, and educational programming within a particular women's prison in the southwestern United States promotes individual choice and agency. Incarcerated women from rural areas are told that their ability to succeed outside of prison is primarily dependent upon their personal choices. Comparably little attention is given to preparing women for their upcoming release or to overcoming structural barriers that could undermine successful reentry within rural communities. As a result, these returning citizens, many of whom grapple with mental illness and alcohol or drug dependence, blame themselves for their inability to surmount these barriers. In this qualitative research, we draw upon the perspectives of 99 incarcerated women to clarify how ideologies of individual choice promulgated in reentry pedagogy clash with contextual factors within rural communities to derail the reentry process. We also consider community reentry from Amartya Sen's capabilities framework and discuss how this model could inform needed interventions.     

Another Opportunity Lost? Victorian Labor's Enactment of Sustainability, 1999–2010

‘Sustainability’ provides the dominant frame for environmental policy debate, even though there is considerable debate to as to what sustainability is, why is it needed, and how can it be progressed. From 1999 through to 2010, Victoria was governed by Australian Labor Party (ALP) led governments that, at times, actively pursued the goal of sustainable development. This culminated in the stated ambition for Victoria to be ‘world leaders in environmental sustainability debate and practice’. This paper explores the way in which sustainability was enacted by Victorian Labor while in government. The evidence indicates that the potential of Victorian Labor's vision was never realized, and that it failed to significantly reform the neoliberal policy settings it inherited.     

Introduction: A Sense of Place

In his book No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (1985), Joshua Meyrowitz analyzes the ways in which electronic media of the twentieth century have broken down the "once strong relationship between physical place and social 'place,'" engendering greater social mobility and blurring distinctions based on social class, gender, race, and age (ix).     

Pain tolerance: Economic voting in the Czech Republic

Several theoretical explanations have been proposed to explain the mixed evidence of economic voting in post-communist countries. Using aggregate-level data, this article relaxes the assumption of parameter constancy and employs rolling regression analysis to track fluctuations in parameters over time. The results contradict the existing theories of economic voting in postcommunist countries. As an alternative explanation, the article suggest that voters have a level of pain tolerance below which the economy will not play a role in evaluations of the government; voters will use economic indicators to punish and reward incumbent government only if the economic indicators exceed their pain tolerance. For example, in the Czech Republic, voters will not start punishing the incumbent party until inflation climbs above 13.44%. However, Czech voters are less tolerant of unemployment and will punish the incumbent when unemployment exceeds 8.82%.     

Protecting the Botanic Garden: Seward,Darwin, and Coalbrookdale

In late 1787, both Anna Seward and her mentor Erasmus Darwin wrote letters to friends about Coalbrookdale,1 a mining town located along the Severn River in Shropshire, the county adjoining Seward's and Darwin's Staffordshire.     

Children's Welfare and Short-term Migration from Rural India

Few papers in the literature provide quantitative analysis of the difficult circumstances faced by children of short-term labour migrants. This article uses new survey data from rural northwest India to study both children who migrate and those left behind. It finds that, unlike in other contexts, children who migrate rarely work when they accompany adult migrants. Additionally, this article reports a robust, previously unquantified negative relationship between children's migration and educational outcomes and investments. It calls for further research about externalities of migration for children and suggests that the expansion of a large public employment programme might help these children.