Liberal Justifications for Local Government in Britain: The Triumph of Expediency over Ethics

It is shown in this article how theories justifying local government in Britain are largely based on the expedience of providing administrative efficiency or stable democracy for the central state rather than ethical grounds that justify local government as an independent entity in its own right. The article critically reviews the development of theories justifying local government within Britain and argues that it is possible on the basis of Mill's arguments within On Liberty to establish a strong ethical justification for local government. It is shown how Mill did not develop this line of thought but established substantive arguments concerning the value of local government for securing a stable liberal democracy and how successive mainstream theorists have modified but not substantially departed from this approach.     

Intervention and Statebuilding Beyond the Human: From the ‘Black Box’ to the ‘Great Outdoors’

This article analyses intervention and statebuilding as shifting towards a posthuman discursive regime. It seeks to explore how the shift to ‘bottom-up’ or post-liberal approaches has evolved into a focus upon epistemological barriers to intervention and an appreciation of complexity. It attempts to describe a process of reflection upon intervention as a policy practice, whereby the need to focus on local context and relations – in order to take problems seriously – begins to further undermine confidence in the Western episteme. In other words, the bottom-up approach, rather than resolving the crisis of policy practices of intervention, seems to further intensify it. It is argued that the way out of this crisis seems to be found in the rejection of the aspiration to know from a position of a ‘problem-solving’ external authority and instead to learn from the opportunities opened up through the practices of intervention. However, what is learnt does not seem to be able to fit into traditional modes and categories of expertise.     

Cognitive development,epistemic doubt,and identity formation in adolescence

This study was undertaken to evaluate the part that nascent skeptical doubt plays in shaping the course of adolescent social-cognitive development. It is argued that the intellectual changes that accompany the acquisition of formal operational competence set in motion a series of developments that seriously undermine the typical adolescent's previous sense of epistemic certainty. An epistemic model is proposed, leading to the hypothesis that, in response to such doubts, young persons adopt one of several contrasting interpretive strategies, each of which dictates much about their subsequent solutions to the problems of identity formation and commitment. To evaluate these hypotheses, 96 high school aged young people were classified as being either concrete or formal operational. Those subjects who were clearly classifiable (N=70) were administered Adams' Objective Measure of Ego identity Status and the Epistemic Doubt Interview, which permits identification of realistic, defendedly realistic, dogmatic/skeptical, and rational epistemic stances. A relationship between cognitive and epistemic development was found. Only formal operational subjects appreciated the generic nature of the doubt undermining their epistemic certainty. Predictions regarding the anticipated relation between epistemic stance and ego identity status were supported, revealing that only postrealist epistemic stances were routinely associated with membership in the moratorium or achieved identity statuses. The results are taken as strong support for the claim that epistemic doubt plays a central role in shaping the course of adolescent social-cognitive development.This research was partially supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship awarded to the first author.Obtained Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of British Columbia. Research interests are focused upon the areas of overlap among cognitive, epistemic, and moral development, and the identity formation process through the adolescent years.Obtained Ph.D. in psychology from The University of California at Berkeley. His research interests include epistemic and social-cognitive development in children and adolescents, and young children's developing theories of mind.     

The Liberal Justification for Local Government: Values and Administrative Expediency

There are several important justifications for autonomous units of local government, derived from the writings of J. S. Mill and later theories concerning the value of pluralism. These arguments fail to show that local government is a morally necessary, as opposed to expedient, adjunct to liberal-democratic government. The paper develops from J. S. Mill's ideas on liberty a more substantive justification for local government based on the principle that local government can be a means for ensuring that the determination of collective decisions are made solely by those people affected by the decision.     

Normative Power and the Liberal Peace: A Rejoinder to John O'Brennan

This rejoinder to John O'Brennan reasserts the case that the EU enlargement process has a depoliticising effect, which weakens the connections between Western Balkan states and their societies. It suggests that O'Brennan's response is more apologia than analysis; evading issues raised by asymmetrical relations of power between the EU and Western Balkans states. Here the EU is idealised, with the ascribed status of a “normative actor” projecting power merely through “soft power” mechanisms. The points raised in rejoinder seek to clarify that the more “muscular” use of conditionality and direct management of policy reforms inevitably limit the possibilities for public and political debate and consensus-making. Moreover, they distance political elites from their societies. In particular, the use of political conditionality is highlighted, to demonstrate that whether “hard” powers of imposition or “soft” powers of conditionality are used matters less to those on the receiving end of external imposition than to the EU itself, which has attempted to distance itself from its use of executive powers in the region.     

Medicalized Metamorphosis: Biological Rehabilitation of Criminal Offenders

Critical Criminology - Convicted offenders who consent to medical treatment may secure a preferable sentence. They make these decisions within a hybrid medico-legal system that often views...