The UK Politics of Overseas Voting

The enfranchisement of non‐resident citizens has always been controversial in the UK, where for historical reasons, voting rights are not as closely associated with citizenship as elsewhere. The introduction of ‘overseas’ voting in the 1980s by the Conservatives was contested by Labour as a form of ‘international gerrymandering’ since expatriates were widely assumed to be disproportionately wealthy and therefore more likely to vote Tory. Expatriate campaigners have been increasingly vocal in denouncing the ‘electoral injustice’ of the ‘fifteen‐year rule’ which disenfranchises them after fifteen years abroad, and the exclusion of so many from the EU referendum highlighted their cause. A recent private member's bill proposing ‘votes for life’ for UK expatriates aimed to meet their demands to abolish the time restriction, now considered anachronistic. But their arguments were hijacked by historically embedded attitudes and disputes driven by party politics, ending in a dramatic and bewildering filibuster which this paper elucidates.     

Book note

The Quality of Life. By Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp.xi + 453. £45. ISBN 0 19 828395 4     

Closed Distribution Networks and E-commerce: Antitrust Issues

Closed distribution networks (ie exclusive or selective distribution networks) have to integrate the development of the internet, particularly in sectors such as fine fragrances or new cars sales. Producers (ie Chanel or Volkswagen) cannot ignore that their products are potentially available on the web. Considering the relationships between producers and their off-line dealers, the question is to know if these dealers could be authorized to resell the products on their own website. In each sector, producers have to adapt their distribution contracts for e-commerce. In a previous paper (published in the Journal of Information, Law and Technology , 2000, No 2) we conclude that electronic points of sales must respect criteria used for physical points of sales, but with some adaptations. The major issue for producers is to build legally secured contracts in order to manage both off-line and on-line distribution networks. But the adaptation of traditional distribution contracts cannot ignore the antitrust framework, especially in the European context, since the new Block Exemption Regulation No 2790/99 on Vertical Restraints has been published. Producers' strategies within the European Union must take into account potential competition restraints implied by their contract policy. When drafting their contracts for e-commerce opportunities, producers have to deal with the legal standing of their networks within the European antitrust law. In this paper, our purpose is to analyze implications of the on-line distribution strategy that could be drawn up by a producer from the European competition law viewpoint. We determine opportunities and constraints presented by the Guidelines from a producer's point of view, and we examine whether European competition law does offer any interesting 'room for manoeuvre' for producers who develop closed distribution networks. We also identify what kind of elements could lead to a withdrawal of the benefit of the Block Exemption Regulation No 2790/99; we show that this withdrawal could arise from a market share evaluation, or from the disproportion between competition restraints (stemming from the distribution contract clauses) and the necessity of an economic progress within the European Commission (EC).     

Capitalist Natures in Five Orientations

How do nonhuman individuals and communities come to bear capitalist value or not in contemporary social relations? The “or not” of the question is crucial. This is because our analytical approach, drawing from feminist and postcolonial theorizing, is one that keeps us focused on value’s necessary others, that is, the bodies/communities designated as waste or even superfluous. Our aim is to attend to the role that difference and hierarchies play in the production of value. Accordingly, we present a typology of five orientations – relational, patterned positions – nature can take in relation to capitalist social relations: officially valued, the reserve army, the underground, outcast surplus and threat. What our typology suggests is that to accumulate capital, capitalism needs the diverse materials and creative forces of natures ordered in a variety of positions within society, not just as commodities. No such position is without violence and exploitation. To add some specificity to our initial analysis, we consider how these nonhuman orientations are produced in part through law. We focus on the law because it comprises a prime tool for achieving social order and because the law is a crucial site in which difference is produced and the designations of valued and unvalued are formalized and consolidated.