Connecting social and environmental policy in Australia: Collateral gains or collateral damage?

Climate change research relating to “co‐benefits” suggests that the facilitation of social‐welfare outcomes through environmental policy offers a powerful means of incentivising climate change action. Concerns about social‐welfare, however, are often used to undermine climate change policies, typically through political claims that low‐to‐middle‐income households should not shoulder the costs of greater policy alignment between social and environmental objectives. Integrating the social into the environmental can therefore, on the one hand, lead to “co‐benefits” as each agenda promotes the other in political discourse, or alternatively to collateral damage if the policy objectives are framed as incompatible. This article explores both scenarios through two case studies of energy policy in Australia. The findings show that social‐welfare concerns can be a powerful discursive tool with the potential to facilitate political consensus, but also that this potential is not being fully realised, primarily because environmental concerns suffer when attempts are made to integrate the two areas discursively.     

Citizenship without states: rehabilitating citizenship discourse among the anarchist left

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it seeks to give expression to the trends of an important debate that has not been formally articulated among anarchist theorists, namely whether or not the concept ‘citizenship’ can be meaningfully salvaged and repurposed. While many anarchist theorists have gestured at such a debate, the dimensions of this discourse have not been clarified. Secondly, in identifying the features of this debate, this paper seeks to show that citizenship can be meaningfully rehabilitated by the anarchist left. And finally, this essay seeks to provide some preliminary reasons why anarchist theories of citizenship may provide a fruitful partnership with theorists of citizenship today, especially those engaging in critical citizenship studies.     

On the “Exporting” of Morality: Its Relation to Political Conservatism and Epistemic Motivation

A new phenomenon, moral exporting (ME), is introduced to capture active attempts to promote certain views of morality to others. It was hypothesized that political conservatives would be more likely to exhibit ME, due in part to strong epistemic concerns for certainty that may become attached to the moral domain. Related items from the 1988 and 2006 General Social Surveys were analyzed, and new scales were developed to better assess ME and specific moral-related epistemic concerns (moral absolutism). In a second study, these scales were administered to a large college student sample along with measures of political ideology and need for closure (NFC). Results generally showed that political conservatism was strongly related to the new ME factor. Further analysis determined that both moral absolutism (MA) and NFC accounted for significant portions of this relationship, but that the specific epistemic construct (MA) was a more proximal mediator. Discussion centers on further distinguishing ME and MA from related constructs, as well as on future research and applications.     

How the WTO Matters to Industry: The Case of Scotch Whisky

Although the World Trade Organization (WTO) has spawned a considerable academic literature, as yet research on this organization has rarely been problematized around clear theories of the relationship between law, economics, and politics. Building upon institutionalist premises and concepts drawn from political sociology and industrial economics, this article suggests a means of filling this gap by grasping the "political work" involved in the regulation of specific industries. Illustrated through the case of Scotch whisky, a focus is developed on how the WTO matters to contemporary industry. This reveals that the most powerful actors in industries such as Scotch have developed resources which legitimize their simultaneous engagement in a range of decision-making arenas. These include, but are not necessarily dominated by, the WTO.     

Leader Survival,Revolutions, and the Nature of Government Finance

Leaders face multiple threats to their political survival. In addition to surviving the threats to tenure from within the existing political systems, which is modeled using Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues' (2003) selectorate theory, leaders risk being deposed through revolutions and coups. To ameliorate the threat of revolution, leaders can either increase public goods provisions to buy off potential revolutionaries or contract the provision of those public goods, such as freedom of assembly, transparency, and free press, which enable revolutionaries to coordinate. Which response a leader chooses depends upon existing institutions and the structure of government finances. These factors also affect the likelihood and direction of institutional change. Tests of leader survival indicate that revolutionary threats increase the likelihood of deposition for nondemocratic leaders. Leaders with access to resources such as foreign aid or natural resource rents are best equipped to survive these threats and avoid the occurrence of these threats in the first place.     

The Tiruttoṇṭar Tiruvantāti of Nampi Āṇṭār Nampi

This paper presents an English translation from the original Tamil of the canonical Saivite hagiographical work, the Tiruttoṇṭar Tiruvantāti of Nampi Āṇṭār Nampi. The date of this work is disputed, but it was probably composed at some point between 870 and 1118 CE. This classical Tamil poem gives in summary form the lives of the sixty three Saivite saints of the sixth to ninth centuries known as the Nāyaṉmār, or Tiruttoṇṭar (“holy servants”, sc. of the Lord Siva). The paper also includes an Introduction, setting out the context of the poem and its place in the Saivite literary tradition from which the Saiva Siddhanta philosophy subsequently developed, and Notes which explain the mythological and other references which the poem contains.