British Steel And Government Since Privatization: Policy 'Framing' and the Transformation of Policy Networks

Privatization has its own distinctive dynamics, resulting particularly from the institutional restructuring which tends to transform policy networks and communities. This happens principally for two reasons. Firstly, the crucial balance of resource dependencies is changed irrevocably, and established policy communities break down. Secondly, the separation between the principal actors tends to produce a 're-framing' of major policy issues. Here, Schön and Rein's (1994) concept of issue 'framing' offers a useful metaphor for how actors give a coherent organization to a complex reality by selecting for attention a few salient features. At the same time, they argue also that the nature of 'objective' reality might be found in the world's tendency to resist our interpretations, leading to a discovery of the limitations of particular frames. The case of British Steel offers a good example of the dynamics of this process. In the days of state ownership, the British Steel Corporation and government generally shared similar 'frames' on major issues. Since privatization, however, the two actors have tended to adopt separate 'frames' and have become more independent of each other. Multi-arena politics, such as Europeanization, can drive them still further apart. Nevertheless, in recent years British Steel has come to appreciate some of the limitations of its own frame, and has sought to reconstruct its relationship with government. There is an imbalance in the resource dependencies, however, which precludes the reconstruction of a policy community     

Women and sport: A lost ideal

In their analyses of capitalism and patriarchy, socialists and feminists have tended not to view sport as a legitimate area for sustained study. Socialists have often been content to view sport as a peripheral and unimportant feature of a world order dominated by capitalist social relations and economic contradictions, or have viewed sport as essentially a cultural reflection of the material sphere.Similarly, feminists have focussed their attention on the primary loci of work, family and sexuality, thereby unconsciously reinforcing the patriarchal concept of sport as masculine. In this analysis we briefly outline women's involvement in the recent Olympics and assess competing strategies for overcoming women's subordination in the arena of sport.     

The calculus of dissent: Party discipline in the British Labour government, 1974–1979

The strength of political parties is taken to be one central difference between the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. We analyze defection from party line voting within the British Labour Party in the House of Commons between 1974 and 1979 to suggest that this dichotomy is overdrawn. In fact, the analysis shows that the dynamics of legislative behavior are quite similar in the two systems, notwithstanding the significant institutional differences between a separation of powers system and the West-minster model. Members of Parliament, like American Congressmen, balance the demands of their constituents, activists within their local party, and party leadership, as well as wage intraparty battles over the direction of policy.     

The governance of shale gas production in South Africa

The proper governance of shale gas mining in the Karoo region of South Africa is important. With an estimated 390 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale gas, large economic gains are possible. This may dramatically change the South African energy sector; in the United States, similar explorations have led to what pundits term the ‘shale gas revolution’. The development and production of shale gas hold economic advantages, but also potential environmental costs, thus the regulation of fracking activities is an important consideration as the development of shale gas in the Karoo progresses. This study reviews the regulations imposed in other countries as well as the current regulatory framework of South Africa. This article analyses these regulations in terms of the content of fracking fluid, seismic activity and the pricing regime. Effective regulation will be key to maximise a positive impact, should shale gas development continue.     

Turnout Across Democracies

World democracies widely differ in legislative, executive, and legal institutions. Different institutional environments induce different mappings from electoral outcomes to the distribution of power. We explore how these mappings affect voters' participation in an election. We show that the effect of such institutional differences on turnout depends on the distribution of voters' preferences. We uncover a novel contest effect: Given the preferences distribution, turnout increases and then decreases when we move from a more proportional to a less proportional power‐sharing system; turnout is maximized for an intermediate degree of power sharing. Moreover, we generalize the competition effect, common to models of endogenous turnout: Given the institutional environment, turnout increases in the ex ante preferences evenness, and more so when the overall system has lower power sharing. These results are robust to a wide range of modeling approaches, including ethical voter models, voter mobilization models, and rational voter models.     

Crime and punishment: an expressive voting view

Incarceration rates in many countries (the US and Australia among them) have risen spectacularly over the last twenty years and are only partially explicable by increases in crime rates. Moreover, in some countries where crime rates have shown a comparable time-path, incarceration rates have not shown the same spectacular increase. The aim of this paper is to explore the politics of punishment. The claim is that the US and Australian experiences are best understood in terms of political considerations; and that this fact lends some support to the “expressive” as distinct from the “interest” approach to electoral behaviour.