Contractualism, Democracy and Ethics

Contractualism, as concept and practice, may be defined in different ways (Yeatman 1995, 1998). In this article I am concerned with contracting out or outsourcing as it is otherwise known. That is, I focus upon the process whereby functions undertaken formerly by government are now performed by private or voluntary organisations in a contractual relationship with public service departments and agencies. Whereas departments and agencies once provided a full panoply of services directly, government purchasers now select providers by tendering competitively for an expanding range of employment, education, health, social welfare and local government services. Contractualism, then, involves the recon-figuation of public service provision to favour quasi-commercial rather than bureaucratic forms.     

Public affairs and power

This paper argues that Western democracies will have to renegotiate their constitutional and psychological relationship with their intelligence agencies. This follows from the changing role of the intelligence services after the end of the Cold War and recent events surrounding the beginning of the Gulf War. The paper examines the impact of spies and the public affairs function in a world of failed and failing states and concludes that, however uncomfortable, public affairs should not deny its relationship to power. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

The Judge as 'Political Advisor': Behind the Scenes at the National Industrial Relations Court

The recent opening under the 30-year rule of official papers concerning the Industrial Relations Act 1971 makes it possible to reappraise the conventional view of this short-lived statute and also more general implications of the process of policy making at a time of acute political crisis. The papers shed new light on the relationship between the government and the judiciary, in particular the President of the National Industrial Relations Court, Sir John Donaldson. They provide empirical evidence of how the judicial and political arms of government dealt with social and industrial upheavals and they prompt reflections on the nature of the separation of powers in the United Kingdom's constitutional arrangements. It is argued that, in examining the nature and extent of judicial independence, constitutional law scholars have hitherto concentrated on executive influence on the judiciary and tended to ignore the extent to which judges may secretly influence politicians.     

Governance and civil society

As part of the ECPA's regular contribution to the Journal, Tom Spencer reviews the new fashionability of governance and examines its confused interface with civil society. He invites participation in the ECPA civil society project, reviews some recent relevant literature and appeals for a coherent current bibliography in this politically urgent field. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Event and Victimization

This article contributes to recent existentialist interventions in critical criminology (see Lippens and Crewe 2009) and offers the existential concept of ‘event’ as a guiding image for critical victimology. Whereas existential criminologists have examined crime and wrongdoing, very little attention has been given to victimization. I utilize the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Claude Romano to offer a critique of existing approaches to victimization within mainstream criminology and develop an evential analytic to understand the event of victimization. This paper brings together existential philosophy and victimology to offer an alternative approach to victimization. I engage with the ‘problem of number’ in conventional victimology and offer a critique of quantitative approaches to victimization based on the unsubstitutability and singularity of existence. Through a discussion of selfhood and embodiment from an evential standpoint, this paper moves beyond existing victimological approaches to identity. I also consider the relationship between victimization and trauma. In the final section of the paper I carve out an alternative research agenda through a discussion of bearing witness and events of victimization.