Flexible framing: Analysing innovative austerity talk from a cultural perspective

This article examines how local policy elites conceptualize and communicate potential innovations to overcome the fiscal crisis. Four austerity frames based on cultural theory are developed: an individualist, hierarchist, egalitarian and fatalist frame. Two expectations are tested by tracing frame usage in austerity speeches by the leadership in Birmingham, Cologne and Rotterdam. First, the modest contribution of the individualist frame in NPM‐sceptic Cologne is confirmed, but no evidence is found of individualist dominance in NPM‐minded Birmingham. Second, it is shown that leaders in Birmingham and Rotterdam combine elements of multiple frames so as to create a new promising narrative which opens up routes towards innovation. The importance of ‘frame flexibility’ is stressed to deal with the complexities of coping with the fiscal crisis in ways that are logical (given available views) and innovative (exploring alternative views), and highlight the importance of further developing understandings of such (municipal) coping.     

Commercialising smallholder agricultural production in Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Many smallholder farmers in Lao People’s Democratic Republic are transitioning from subsistence to commercial production. This article employs the Agriculture Innovation System (AIS) framework to report on empirical findings from six case studies of Lao smallholder production. It identifies the actors, organisations, and institutions involved in systemic commercialisation of subsistence farming and articulates patterns of interactions that contribute to the relative success of the transition. Of the factors identified in the case studies, the most important enablers of commercial production and adoption of innovative technologies were technical and financial assistance, access to markets, and the formation of farmer associations/organisations.     

Judgment and Calculation in the Selection of Sentence

Formal sentencing guidelines, which are increasingly seen as the best means of eliminating unwarranted disparity, have undoubted merits. Well-crafted guidelines can promote more transparent and coherent sentencing practices. Their primary goal will usually be to ensure that similarly situated offenders convicted of similar offences receive broadly similar penalties. This, in turn, should increase public confidence in the criminal justice system. Judicially-developed guidance has its own advantages. A judgment, unlike a statute or a formal guideline, must persuade its audience as to the merits of the decision reached. Appeal court sentencing judgments must (or ideally should) engage in some degree of moral reasoning so as to explain why a particular offence or offender deserves the penalty that is being imposed or upheld. Adjudication of this nature plays an important role in stimulating debate and deliberation about the purposes of punishment, the appropriate use of particular sentencing options, the relevance of various offence- and offender-related factors and other fundamental questions about which opinions will inevitably change over time. Although they may have distinct epistemic properties and different objectives, formal guidelines and judicially-developed principles have their own unique merits. We should therefore aim for a system that incorporates the best qualities of both. In practice, this means that guidelines should be so constructed as to leave space for judicial deliberation about fundamental principles and current practice. In this way, guideline creators and courts can continue to learn from each other.     

Perceptions of Neighbourhood Safety and Policy Response: A Qualitative Approach

Safety perceptions of residents are often analysed through surveys and compared with factual crime developments. Using the Dutch city of Rotterdam as an urban context of improved crime levels, this article provides a critique on standardised surveys in the research of safety perceptions and its presupposed connection to factual crime. Contrasting survey results from the Rotterdam Safety Index with qualitative data from 64 in-depth interviews in four districts, the qualitative narrative contradicts findings from the survey and implies more nuanced and diversified policy responses to safety issues. Because of the tendency of surveys to connect safety perceptions to factual crime, their unsuitability to catch subtle perceptions and their inability to expose new viewpoints, we argue for de-quantification: a lesser dependency on—but not a repeal of—survey data in this area, supplemented by a periodic qualitative approach in the research of crime and safety information (qualitative monitoring).     

Handout or Hand‐up: Ongoing Tensions in the Long History of Government Response to Drought in Australia

In 2014 the Coalition government announced a 320 million dollar package for drought‐hit farmers. In describing this initiative as a “hand‐up” not a “hand out” Prime Minister Tony Abbott encapsulated more than 150 years of tension over whether government drought response should be unconditional limited relief or conditional longer‐term assistance. This paper considers the long history of drought assistance in Australia as seen through government legislation, year books, newspapers and personal papers. It argues that despite changing political and social circumstances, contradictions in the approach to government drought response, as well as in public and personal reactions to those policies, have remained remarkably consistent. We further suggest that lack of consensus over the inherent nature of drought is not sufficient to explain the dilemma.