The Diaries of Daisy Smith: The Experience of Citizenship for an Exempted Family in Mid‐Twentieth Century Queensland

There has been limited sustained analysis of the lived reality of citizenship amongst Indigenous Australians exempted from protectionist legislation last century. Through examining the diaries of Daisy Smith, this paper explores how her household, exempted from such legislation in Queensland, experienced citizenship during the 1940s and early 1950s. The diaries show that Daisy Smith and her family exercised civil, political and social rights of citizenship, enjoyed meaningful lives and had a sense of belonging to the Australian nation. However, they also show that Daisy Smith constantly worked hard to uphold the conditions of exemption and protect her family's exempted Aboriginal status. These conditions required the Smith family to deny and relinquish all connection with their Indigenous heritage and embrace the dominant Anglo‐Celtic culture or risk losing exemption. In this way, their inclusion in the Australian nation and enjoyment of citizenship rights were conditional upon them being manifestly normative Anglo‐Celtic citizens. Their experience of citizenship was by its nature restrictive and coercive.     

The Impact of District Magnitude on Campaign Fundraising

The number of legislators elected in a single district influences many aspects of state legislative elections. However, there is a dearth of research on how district magnitude influences campaign fundraising. We theorize that the greater competition for funds in multimember districts results in candidates raising less money and encourages them to be more entrepreneurial in their fundraising efforts. Specifically, we expect multimember district candidates to raise contributions from more diverse sets of interests than candidates in single‐member districts, raise more funds out of state, and create more unique financial constituencies. Using data on candidates for Maryland's House of Delegates in 2006 and 2010, we find support for our hypotheses.     

Experts Judging Experts: The Role of Expertise in Reviewing Agency Decision Making

What role does judicial subject matter expertise play in the review of agency decisions? Using a data set of decisions in which the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) is reviewed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, we investigate this question and find that greater subject matter expertise does make it more likely that a judge will vote to reverse an agency decision.     

The Disempowerment of Empowerment: How Stakeholding Clogs Up Rural Decision-making

In the context of a growth in both participatory democracy and responsible participation, rural decision-making in England has become increasingly complex over the past 30 years, fuelled by national polices relating to regionalism, citizenship and relocalisation. A survey of ‘agents of rural governance’ (ARGs) in the county of Gloucestershire, England, charts their recent growth, reasons for formation and perceived jurisdiction as well as examining complexities of decision-making relating to partnerships, networks and finance. The survey suggests that policies designed to ‘empower’ rural people can be seen to have clogged up rural decision-making processes sufficiently to have, effectively, disempowered many of them. The paper identifies and exemplifies six different types of ‘clogging up’ that impact upon rural decision-making: crowding, knotting, clouding, meandering, subverting and impoverishing. Whilst governmental proposals have been introduced in an attempt to rationalise this decision-making complexity, particularly through the Haskins Review and the English National Rural Strategy, other policy strands have conspired to make such decision-making essentially laissez faire.     

Early Adolescent Social Anxiety: Differential Associations for Fathers’ and Mothers’ Psychologically Controlling and Autonomy-Supportive Parenting

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Although psychologically controlling and autonomy-supportive parenting are important indicators of social anxiety during early adolescence, less research has...     

A New Dominant Trade Species Emerges: Is Bilateralism a Threat?

Over the past decade, government trade and finance ministrieshave increasingly turned toward negotiating bilateral and regionaltrading arrangements, and away from negotiations in multilateralforums like the WTO. There are several reasons for this shift,including changes in the global political environment and negotiatingobstacles encountered by the multinational business communityat the multilateral level. This shift appears to be an embeddedphenomenon. Positive and negative aspects of preferential tradingarrangements (PTAs) are in evidence. Trade creation-trade diversioneconomic analysis suggests the results may be net global welfareenhancing, although such analysis does not readily assess distributionaleffects. The global economy is enjoying a period of sustained—andwidely distributed—economic growth, suggesting that thePTA phenomenon is not an immediate economic threat. On the negativeside, the PTAs lead to administrative complexity, and may besomewhat destabilizing as businesses are encouraged to relocate.Some countries may suffer if left out, but this risk is amelioratedby the wide availability of potential negotiating partners.The PTA negotiating environment strongly favors powerful economicactors like the United States and European Union, which arelargely dictating terms to developing (and developed) countries.Developing countries, particularly the less economically powerful,are losing autonomous decision-making authority. The consequencesof this are difficult to quantify, and may raise questions betterattuned to moral philosophers than economists. The WTO continueson its way, relegated to a less central status. A return tothe WTO might reinvigorate the role of less powerful actors,but such return does not appear an immediate prospect. The PTAphenomenon, on balance, does not appear aggressively threatening.We may, however, be underestimating the positive role of multilateralism.     

The Impact of District Magnitude on Voter Drop‐Off and Roll‐Off in American Elections

This study demonstrates that multimember districts (MMDs) complicate ballots, reduce voter information, and increase incentives for strategic voting in ways that reduce voter participation. Using data from three states that elect members of at least one legislative chamber from both single‐member districts (SMDs) and MMDs, we test hypotheses about the impact on MMDs on ballot drop‐off (selecting fewer candidates for an office than permissible) and roll‐off (not voting in down‐ballot races). We find support for both sets of hypotheses, with the strongest results related to ballot drop‐off. The results have broad implications for voter participation, representation, and election administration in the many states and localities that use MMDs to elect public officials.