Controlling Local Government Spending: The Implementation and Impact of Capping Council Taxes

The level of local fiscal autonomy is widely regarded as an important indicator of the state of central-local relations and the capping of council tax increases has proved to be one of the most contentious of all of the constraints placed on local authorities by UK central government. Over the last decade the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales have moved away from capping in favour of a more consensual approach. This decision reflects the difference in scale and nature of their policy communities and appears to have been at least as successful in controlling increases in local taxes as the more directive, top-down strategy favoured by policymakers in England. The current UK government's proposals to promote local referenda rather than ministerial diktat as the means of controlling council tax levels represents a potentially important new but as yet unproven approach.     

Rights and Advocacy in Research with East Timorese Asylum Seekers in Australia

Abstract

This paper aims to derive lessons from a retrospective and comparative analysis of two previously unconnected projects that assessed the well-being of East Timorese asylum seekers residing in Australia. Despite disciplinary differences between psychiatry and social science research, overlapping philosophies and approaches emphasizing human rights and well-being paradigms were adopted. Drawing on these experiences, we explore the unique circumstances of East Timorese asylum seekers in Australia, and the applicability and positive effects of human rights-focused research and related methodologies including researcher-advocacy research amongst minority groups exposed to trauma and ongoing political pressures. Key issues examined include the complexities of adopting multi-method frameworks of investigation; individual and collective benefits in responding to a need for direct intervention, challenges in engaging an alienated community, and the need to frame the research and the intervention in an historical and political context. In addition, the process allowed us to confront some key challenges in the field, especially the relevance of traumatic stress and its treatment in assisting marginalized asylum seekers.     

Science,security and spies

Abstract

The national research and development (R&D) base has in the post-cold war era gained increased importance in order to fill new security demands. There is a broadening of the search for security relevant science and technology involving more organizations and interests, scientific disciplines and nations. The question discussed in this article is if the premises of international, free and open R&D will be(come) compromised? Will we see more scientists, in their normal scientific activities, being accused of spying? The article suggests that such risks are not unrealistic to expect. Spy cases in less democratic countries could have consequences for scientists also in other countries. Outcomes depend on, among other things, the relative strengths of academic freedom and a political Identification Friend and Foe (IFF) component. United Nations and European Union resolutions restricting science education for students from Iran and North Korea in an attempt to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons illustrate a strong IFF component. Difficulties with regard to the implementation of these resolutions and other findings are presented in the final section of the article.     

Public opinion as a dependent variable: A framework for analysis

This paper outlines an approach to examining how public opinion is taken into consideration by political and governmental leaders and reviews recent studies that have followed this approach to evaluate the extent to which public opinion is subject to manipulation by political elites in diverse circumstances. The central idea of this approach is to treat public opinion as a “dependent variable” and to examine the role of the mass media in linking elite initiatives and the public. Instead of starting with polls that presume public opinion is an independent force, we start with elites and presume that they try to manipulate public opinion through the mass media and by other means. First, we look at why the emphasis on the independent nature of public opinion has become so prominent in political science. We argue here that viewing public opinion as a dependent variable is a more promising perspective. Next, we review and evaluate a number of studies that attempt to demonstrate the fruitfulness of our suggested approach. Each of the studies analyzed focuses on the initiatives of political elites and monitors the success of their efforts with targeted groups. These studies demonstrate the conditions that favor elite control as well as the opportunities for citizens to limit such control. In our conclusion, we outline a theory of the role of public opinion in modern mass democracies.     

The ambivalence of populism: threat and corrective for democracy

Two images of populism are well-established: it is either labelled as a pathological political phenomenon, or it is regarded as the most authentic form of political representation. In this article I argue that it is more fruitful to categorize populism as an ambivalence that, depending on the case, may constitute a threat to or a corrective for democracy. Unfolding my argument, I offer a roadmap for the understanding of the diverse and usually conflicting approaches to studying the relation between populism and democracy. In particular, three main approaches are identified and discussed: the liberal, the radical and the minimal. I stress that the latter is the most promising of them for the study of the ambivalent relationship between populism and democracy. In fact, the minimal approach does not imply a specific concept of democracy, and facilitates the undertaking of cross-regional comparisons. This helps to recognize that populism interacts differently with the two dimensions of democracy that Robert Dahl distinguished: while populism might well represent a democratic corrective in terms of inclusiveness, it also might become a democratic threat concerning public contestation.     

Parenthood in Murder‐Suicide News. Idealized Fathers and Murderous Mums

In this article I analyse how parents' lethal violence is presented in Finnish murder‐suicide news reports. I explore how gendered ideas of parenthood and violence affect these constructions. The cases that I am interested in are those with child victims where the perpetrator is either the father or the mother. The theoretical frame of analysis is feminist ethnomethodology, and Membership Categorization Analysis is used as the method. One of the starting‐points is that parenthood is gendered in a way that mothers and fathers have different rights, responsibilities and competences in our culture. In other words, moral orders of fathering and mothering exist. Because of this, women's and men's violent actions towards their own children are understood differently. When a man kills his children and himself he can be portrayed as a caring parent. Instead, in a certain context a woman can be ‘a killer mum’, her act ‘a murder’ and her personality described in the light of the deed. The focus of this article is on gender and family categorization used in murder‐suicide news in Finnish newspapers and the moral orders created in them. I explore the differences by mainly using two case examples: 1) a man who killed his three children and himself, and 2) a woman who killed her husband, two children and herself. The consequences of these newspaper constructions are also considered.     

司法鉴定立法比较之法理研判——以新《刑事诉讼法》与新《民事诉讼法》为视角

2012年修改并通过的《刑事诉讼法》和《民事诉讼法》已于今年1月1日实施。两大新诉讼法对证据制度,包括证据种类、证明标准等内容进行了重大改革。其中,对于司法实践中证据地位凸显的鉴定意见,两大诉讼法也做了调整,包括完善鉴定人出庭制度、专家辅助人制度、鉴定人保护、鉴定人选任等。但因两大诉讼法性质不同,新刑诉法和新民诉法对相关内容做了不同规定,对于其是否符合立法统一性、是否具有合理性、是否与其诉讼性质相一致,有必要从法学理论角度层面予以释明与检视。     

The critique of language and its economy

Abstract

This paper draws upon and develops Paul Rabinow's concept of biosociality to analyse how the field of gambling research, the facts about gambling addiction and the politics of gambling regulation are in the process of transforming one another as the US gambling industry has begun to provide large amounts of funding for scientists and clinicians working on gambling problems. In particular, the paper focuses on the political economy of research that suggests that the negative consequences associated with gambling are not just social problems, but neurobiological ones. The paper introduces the notion of ‘biopolitical capital’ in order to describe how the gambling industry invests in particular kinds of research which are more likely to yield results that can be mobilized to support particular kinds of approaches to dealing with the social and personal problems associated with gambling.     

BALANCING RESEARCH AND ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY BUILDING IN FRONT‐END PROJECT DESIGN: EXPERIENCES FROM DANIDA'S ENRECA PROGRAMME

North–South research capacity building (RCB) partnerships have attracted considerable academic attention during the last two decades, especially with regard to issues related to partnership governance. Less attention has been given to the management aspects of partnership implementation, but in order for partnerships to comply with general governance‐level recommendations, a better understanding is needed of how specific context‐dependent factors influence the development and execution of projects. In this article, we aim to contribute to the understanding of factors influencing the design phase of RCB partnerships and examine how they influence the balance between performing collaborative research and developing general organizational capacity. Data collection was based on a survey (n = 25), and individual interviews and focus group discussions with 17 Danish project managers from the Danish Bilateral Programme for Enhancement of Research Capacity in Developing Countries. Our results lead to rejection of the proposition that RCB projects are either focused on building capacity for research or conducting merit‐based research. Because of the ‘politics’ of the front‐end process, reality is more complex. We identify 11 specific factors influencing front‐end project management related to structure, process and relationship, and we theorize about how these factors influence the choice between research and more general capacity development activities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“David Byrne really does love PowerPoint”: art as research on semiotics and semiotic technology

This article presents a reading of David Byrne's Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, an art work created with MicroSoft's presentation software PowerPoint, as an instance of creative research on semiotics and semiotic technology. It reveals commonalities and differences between Byrne's ideas about PowerPoint and related ideas from linguistics and semiotics, and is intended as a contribution to research on PowerPoint, and on semiotic technologies generally, as well as to efforts aimed at developing criteria for evaluating art as research on semiotics.