Contingent Borders, Ambiguous Ethics: Migrants in (International) Political Theory

The article engages a critical analysis of liberal theory in the context of transnational migration. Normative arguments provided by liberal-cosmopolitan and liberal-communitarian authors are contrasted. While sympathetic to such approaches, we argue that traditional liberal theory has attempted to downplay the contingency and resultant ambiguity of many of its moral precepts. Historically contingent borders underpin neat universal categories like "citizen" and "refugee," which fail to reflect the diverse and contested experiences of migration. But such ambiguities need not undermine liberal approaches. Indeed, a proper engagement with the problematic and uncertain realities of migration can provide a spur to a more thoroughgoing ethical praxis. We draw on the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty to outline an approach to migration that remains open to the contingent construction of terms like "migrant,""refugee," and "asylum-seeker." By extending Rorty's concept of sentimental education, we provide an imaginative and politically challenging set of agendas for the ethics of migration.     

Power, Morality, and Foreign Policy

Despite the vast amounts of rhetoric one hears in the United States on the role of morality in international politics, the nation lacks a coherent position on the appropriate application of morality to foreign policy. History reflects two prominent and contrasting views on the subject. The first is that morality is irrelevant to national foreign policy; the second applies common principles of individual morality—compassion, generosity, forgiveness, benevolence, and tolerance—to interactions between states. Though elements of each are evident in the Bush administration's foreign policy, the limits on them restrict the efficacy of either. As the application of morality to foreign policy becomes both more necessary and more difficult, prudence and decency—more than self-righteousness or power—should provide the primary inspiration for American foreign policy.     

Spanning Organizational Boundaries in Emergency Management

Multiagency emergency management coordination requires stakeholders to span organizational boundaries and facilitate collaboration among other agencies within temporary supraorganizations. Multiagency coordination is important in emergency management as disasters often require the collaboration of multiple agencies into temporary supraorganizations. However, little is known about the boundary spanning activities that influence this collaboration. Based on 39 semistructured interviews with senior emergency management practitioners spanning organizational boundaries, this paper proposes a typology of boundary spanning activities for emergency management. Embracing these activities may address some of the challenges associated with the collaboration of multiple agencies in a disaster.     

Bridging the gap: An attempt to reconcile strategic planning and very local community-based planning in rural England

This paper reviews briefly the emergence of holistic governance at the strategic and very local levels in rural England before reporting a programme of action research designed to address the need to develop an effective ‘bridge’ between planning activity at those two levels. Attention is focused particularly upon the recent wave of parish and market town plans on the one hand and local strategic partnerships and community strategies on the other. Taking cognisance of relevant contextual literature relating to representative and participative democracy and to top-down and bottom-up planning, it draws conclusions about the challenge of developing a synergistic relationship between strategic and very local planning and about the prospects for reconciling some of the tensions pointed up in those theoretical debates.     

Culture,equality and polemic

Abstract

The Black-Scholes-Merton formula has been put to widespread use by options traders because it provides a means of calculating the theoretically ‘correct’ price of stock options. Traders can therefore see whether the market price of stock options undervalues or overvalues them compared with their hypothetical Black-Scholes-Merton price, before choosing to buy or sell options accordingly. As a consequence of this close relationship between options pricing theory and options pricing practice, a strong performativity loop was activated, whereby market prices quickly converged on the hypothetical Black-Scholes-Merton prices following the dissemination of the formula. The theory has therefore had significant real-world effects, but how should we characterize the initial instinct to derive the theory from a philosophy of science perspective? The two books under review suggest that a Kuhnian reading of the advancement of scientific knowledge might well be the most appropriate. But, on closer inspection, it becomes clear that the publication of the Black-Scholes-Merton formula should not be seen as a Kuhnian moment with paradigm-shaping attributes. It is shown that, at most, the formula acts as an important exemplar which, via its use in the training of options pricing theorists and options pricing practitioners, reinforces the entrenchment of finance theory within the orthodox economics worldview.     

On Developing an Inter-Agency Trust Scale for Assessing Governance Networks in the Public Sector

ABSTRACT

This article presents the development and validation of a psychometric scale for assessing public sector inter-agency trust. The instrument is grounded in contemporary trust theory and methodologically adapted from a measure developed for private sector alliances. Tested using four discrete studies of governance networks, each addressing transboundary environmental issues such as climate change and fisheries, the scale exhibits reasonably valid psychometric properties while also enabling visualized analysis of networked trust distributions. Based on this work, we outline further research needs with a view to stimulating greater trust research in governance networks and facilitating more collaborative and innovative policy outcomes in the public sector.