Lesson-Drawing from New Zealand and Covid-19: The Need for Anticipatory Policy Making

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen most governments worldwide having to think on their feet rather than implementing detailed and well-rehearsed plans. This is notwithstanding the fact that a pandemic was bound to happen, sooner or later (and will happen again). The effectiveness of national responses has varied enormously. Globally, New Zealand has been perceived as setting the gold standard in ‘curve crushing’, and for a short period achieved Covid-free status. For this achievement, much credit is due to the New Zealand government, especially to Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. However, post-lockdown the New Zealand government has encountered a number of Covid policy implementation problems (many of which could have been anticipated). Nevertheless, Covid-19 might still turn out to have been a seismic shock to existing policy processes and policy frames (such as austerity). If so, there are grounds for hope that in the future, governments and voters might be less short-term in their outlook. Perhaps anticipatory, rather than reactive policy making, might become more fashionable?     

The Economy Effect: Conceptual Innovation and Benefit Corporations

What kind of thing is the economy, and how might we act to change it? This article draws on the work of Timothy Mitchell and J. K. Gibson-Graham to suggest that the economy may be fruitfully understood as a structural effect, or an appearance of difference maintained through the repetition of acts and practices. It then employs Reinhart Koselleck’s theory of conceptual change to argue that the economy effect may be altered through efforts aimed at conceptual innovation. If the economy effect is maintained through repeated acts and practices that delineate the distinction between the economy and everything else, then conceptual innovation with respect to those concepts that inform these acts and practices could alter the manner in which this distinction is produced. The benefit (or public interest) corporation serves as an example of how such efforts at conceptual innovation might produce change in the structural effect that we call “the economy.”     

Changing your political mind: The impact of a metaphor on citizens’ representations and preferences for federalism

Federalism is often presented through metaphors, but little is known about the impact of such metaphors. Two experiments were conducted in Belgium presenting federalism as Tetris – with control and treatment groups – in order to grasp the influence of this metaphor. The first experiment reveals that being exposed to text with the Tetris metaphor influences respondents’ representations of federalism towards a more institutional representation and towards more regional autonomy. The second experiment confirms the importance of the text, and more specifically of the metaphor, if political knowledge is taken into account. Respondents with a lower level of political knowledge are those who are influenced by the metaphor, whereas respondents with a higher level are not. Therefore, framing the future of Belgian federalism using the metaphor of Tetris does matter: it affects both individuals’ representations of the federalization process and, consequently, their preferences vis-à-vis the institutional future of the country.     

gendering markets,gendering food: women,law and markets in the New York City food system, 1800–1840

This paper is a response to scholars who have called for exploring and interrogating new strategies of data collection and new approaches to more traditional methods, such as interviewing in the context of the internet. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory, ‘reflexive email interviewing’ is proposed as a method for feminist research. The method is illustrated using a recent case study of email interviews with self-identified women who are members of World Pulse, an online community that aims to unite and amplify women’s voices worldwide. Through this case study, issues of power and resistance in the researcher/researched relationship and of participant reflexivity are interrogated. Lastly, criteria for reflexive email interviewing are proposed, including 1) strategies to interrogate and disrupt power hierarchies within the research process, 2) researcher reflexivity as a continuous part of the research process, and 3) continued invitations for participants to directly reflect on and respond to the research process. Reflexive questions are offered for researchers to use during research design and in each phase of their research process to ensure reflexivity is achieved.     

Progress notes: Scenes of Subjection’s “actualization” dialectic

This essay explores Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection’s actualization dialectic, its delicate balancing of identity and difference, as specifically mobilized through the study’s expository presentation of the event/non-event of Emancipation. It also examines Hartman’s relationship to Marx as it relates to the applicability of Marxian categories to think about New World slavery.     

Brexit: The EU Policy‐Making State Hits the Populist Buffers

There seems to be an emerging conventional wisdom that the Brexit vote resulted from specific domestic factors in Britain, such as divisions within the ruling Conservative party, the rise of UKIP, strong reaction to increased immigration, all set against the backdrop of globalisation and its adverse effects. The end result was a populist revolt. The argument presented here is somewhat different. Whilst accepting that the above factors were certainly very important, it is argued that it is important to examine the key role of the EU itself in the creation of the current crisis within the EU. The construction of an EU policy‐making state has run far ahead of what voters at the national level want, leading to a central paradox within the EU, namely that the European elite which runs the EU has introduced some very beneficial public policies, yet that elite has become increasingly out of touch with its peoples.