Putting on the Brakes or Pressing on the Gas? Media Attention and the Speed of Policymaking

Media attention is fundamental to the policy process and policy change in punctuated equilibrium theory. In this literature, media attention is usually conceptualized as fomenting or contributing to shifts in attention, positive feedback, and large‐scale policy change. This article extends how we understand the role of the media and punctuated equilibrium by arguing that media coverage can also contribute to negative feedback and stability in the political system. Media attention should also slow down the speed of policymaking and the momentum for policy change as new policy participants and problem definitions enter the debate. Using event history analysis, this article tests the effects of media coverage on the length of time it takes legislation, once introduced, to become law for public laws from the 109th U.S. Congress (2005–06). Findings provide support for media attention “putting the brakes” on policymaking. Controlling for other factors, the speed of bill passage slows down as media attention increases. This effect decays over time for high levels of media coverage.     

Thought and action? Perspectives on Mazzini and Garibaldi on the bicentenaries of their births

Abstract

The introduction provides a context for the six papers that were presented at two different symposia marking the birth bicentenaries of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. The papers, revised for publication, address specific contributions made by these two founding figures of the modern Italian nation to the history of the Risorgimento, the ideologies of republicanism, democracy and nationality. The papers also make room for a discussion of their contrasting political modes, and look at their politics before and after Italy's political unification in 1860–61. The comparative approach highlights differences and similarities between Mazzini's and Garibaldi's political strategies and illuminates the choices available to those who wanted to unify the peninsula. The broad themes around which these papers are organized restore to these two figures the broad cosmopolitan dimensions that made the Risorgimento a movement of global impact.     

Sources and Pseudo‐sources on the foundation of the Valamo Monastery

The article discusses the understanding of the road as a collective duty and institutionalized public space in late medieval Finland and the Swedish realm, as presented in the legislation of King Magnus Erikssons' law (landslag) of the late 1340s. After an introduction on the nature of past scholarship on the history of roads in Europe and Finland, the theoretical framework on the production and social implications of space on historical roads is discussed. The spatial understanding of the road in late medieval Finland is then studied in the context of medieval normative legislation, of which the main interest here is on King Magnus Eriksson's law, which was the major medieval law code valid in Finland. In the code, issues concerning roads and their maintenance are distributed to various sections of the law, but the main body of the legislation is set in Bygningabalken and Edsöresbalken. The analysis shows that, in the bygningabalken, the road and facilities attached to it such as bridges were rather exclusively discussed in the context of common duty, where the word common seems to be inherently understood as something obliged and insisted by the crown. In the edsöresbalken instead, the spatial dimensions of the road were brought forward in the context of the sworn peace of the realm, where the judicial space produced by the traveller was considered as a product of the road and the actual motives of travelling of the individual using it. The analysis of the respective chapters and decrees of the code shows that, from the point of normative legislation, the road was not only a recognizable space of its own but also constituted a judicial condition capable of producing distinctive social implications for those involved in the maintenance and use of roads in medieval Finland.     

“The producers on the one side,and the capitalists on the other”: Labor Reform,Slavery, and the Career of a Transatlantic Radical

Abstract

Through exploring the neglected career of John Campbell, an Irish-born Chartist refugee who ascended to a leadership role in the antebellum American labor movement, this article seeks to shed light on how revolutionary upheaval in Europe, debates over immigration, and sectional conflict affected working-class politics. Focusing on the period 1848 to 1851, and tracing Campbell's rapid evolution from a radical opponent of slavery to an ardent supporter of black subjugation, I argue that labor historians need to pay closer attention to shifting local and national contexts to understand the racial politics of labor agitators. Yet even as Campbell's views changed, his commitment to a producerist vision remained constant; by 1851 he had simply added people of African descent to a list of “idle” nonproducers who lived off the labor of workingmen. His proslavery twist on producer ideology suggests historians of antebellum social relations may need to go beyond interrogating the racial dimensions of artisan republicanism to gain a fuller understanding of the variety of working-class attitudes to race.     

What's on the Case-List? Legal Texts and Felonies Rediscovered

In this article light will be thrown upon so-called case-lists, a medieval source material based upon abstracts of the Norwegian Christian Laws. I have chosen to focus on one aspect in particular: the case-lists also present medieval legislation otherwise lost for posterity, and we therefore catch a glimpse of unknown felonies centred on taboos concerning food, sex and heathen practice; for instance, in a "kinky" combination so far unheard of: men having sex with women who ate horsemeat were liable to a fine of 40 marks. Following an outline of the case-lists, and remarks on methodological problems posed by these sources, the felonies will be presented and placed in a historical context. Finally, I will address the question of provenance of the case-lists.     

Free and Fair? Rhodesians Reflect on the Elections of 1979 and 1980

The elections of April 1979 and February 1980 were the first in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's history to permit universal adult suffrage, allowing for black majority rule. In the first election, Bishop Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC) won an overwhelming victory, while in the second, British-supervised election, Muzorewa's party was soundly defeated and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won over 60% of the vote. By interviewing present and former white Rhodesians, located via Facebook and the print magazine Rhodesians Worldwide, who were witnesses to these two critical elections, this study aims to shed light on which of them was more representative of the will of the people of Zimbabwe, at least in the eyes of the country's white minority.     

Righting the course? Humanitarian intervention,the war on terror and the future of Afghanistan

The US‐led post 9/11 ‘intervention’ in Afghanistan was, by definition, not a humanitarian intervention. The intervention in Afghanistan was defined as an act of self‐defence by the US and it was one of the first steps in the ‘war on terror’ by the US and its allies: it had no intention or clear strategies for long‐term stabilization, state‐building or development. The US‐led international coalition failed to ‘find’ Al‐Qaeda in the short term and new arguments had to be made to justify continued international presence. The initial agenda was quickly blurred by a mismatch of intentions including those of long‐term stabilization and state‐building. The ideas developed through the Bonn Agreement (2001–5) and continued through the Afghanistan Compact (2006–10) have focused on building a centrally governed state (sometimes defined as democratic) that has a monopoly on the use of force. Their shortcomings are already well‐documented: the urgency of the Bonn Conference and of the adoption of the Bonn Agreement ostensibly meant trading expediency and stability for accountability and a clean slate, which is not to say that there were no good intentions at Bonn from stakeholders, but that Afghans and the international community put power‐sharing before progress. The choices made at Bonn may have contributed to the culture of impunity and the entrenched poverty that is gripping Afghanistan today. This article responds to the claims that state‐building and all that goes with it are not the responsibility of the ‘international community’ by addressing the accountability and humanitarian paradoxes. The question remains, however, about who should be responsible for reform and politically accountable in the aftermath of non‐humanitarian (and indeed even humanitarian) interventions?     

On the Content of the Concept “Geographical Environment” and the Influence of the Environment on Society

The author traces the evolution of the environmentalist concept through Marxist philosophy and analyzes the influence on the geographical environment on society. He adduces a number of examples to demonstrate the significance of the environmental factor in various historical contexts. For another discussion on the same subject, the reader is referred to Ian M. Matley, “The Marxist approach to the geographical environment,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 56, No. I, March 1966, pp. 97–111.     

Seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century commentators on the chemical composition of the brain

Abstract

The period between 1600 and 1800 was one of great change in the history of science, generally, and in the history of chemistry, specifically. It opened with Francis Bacon's visionary recognition of the benefits to mankind that would accrue from the expansion of scientia and closed with the overthrow of the phlogiston hypothesis. New chemical knowledge resulted from the efforts of the alchemists, especially the Paracelsians, and of the phlogistic philosophers, some of it recorded by writers of magic books (Thorndike, 1958; Camporesi, 1989). The authors of these works reflected ‘the general mentality… imbued with magic, occult beliefs, unreal suggestions, ‘voices’, and ‘rumours’, … ‘errors’ and ‘prejudices’.‘ In respect to brain chemistry there appeared, beside the fantastic, elements of fact that characterise this period as embracing the ‘pre‐history’ of neurochemistry.     

Local and “Global” Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast

During the Middle Woodland period, from 200 BC to AD 600, southeastern societies erected monuments, interacted widely, and produced some of the most striking material culture of the pre-Columbian era, but these developments are often overshadowed by the contemporaneous florescence of Hopewell culture in Ohio. I argue that the demonstrable material links between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Midwest demand that we cease to analyze these regional archaeological records in isolation and adopt multiscalar perspectives on the social fields that emerged from and impacted local Middle Woodland societies. In synthesizing recent research on Middle Woodland settlement, monumentality, interaction, and social organization, I make explicit comparisons between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Ohio Hopewell, revealing both commonalities and contrasts. New methodological approaches in the Southeast, including geophysical survey techniques, Bayesian chronological modeling, and high-resolution provenance analyses, promise to further elucidate site-specific histories and intersite connectivity. By implementing theoretical frameworks that simultaneously consider these local and global dimensions of Middle Woodland sociality, we may establish the southeastern Middle Woodland period as an archaeological context capable of elucidating the deep history of the Eastern Woodlands as well as long-standing issues surrounding middle-range societies.     

Research on and by ‘the Other’. Focusing on the Researcher's Encounter with the Lule Sami in a Historically Changing Context

Abstract

A century and half ago, the encounter between the researcher and those (s)he researched were described and seen from the vantage point of the researcher. ‘The others’ participated in the encounters, but were seldom asked for advice regarding the approach or to provide their own perspectives. But this has changed. Originally playing the passive role of the objects of research, today the Sami and Kven of northern Norway have taken on the role of the active participant. These changes are apparent when examining research on the Lule Sami in Norway over the last 150 years. Several dimensions must be considered. First, the researcher and their research must be placed and understood within the contemporary ideological context, implying that the situation of the researcher will reflect the social and political conditions of the time. Analysis of research from the Lule Sami area demonstrates how the researcher's perspective on the Sami people and culture has changed over time, how the Sami role in history, and thus cultural diversity, has been revealed in greater detail, and how the Sami part of the population has increasingly participated by taking on the role of the researcher. Finally, the encounter is analysed in an international context, which shows how the local and national changes are also part of an international development.     

‘Whose name's on the awning?’ Gender,entrepreneurship and the American diner

While, in recent years, women-owned businesses have become increasingly common, entrepreneurship itself remains a deeply gendered institution, and one that is constructed through everyday practice rooted in space and place. The purpose of the present study is to explore the woman-owned diner as a distinct environment in and through which configurations of gender and entrepreneurship are mutually constituted, socially enacted, and spatially defined. Drawing upon a case study of a present-day diner in Worcester, Massachusetts, I trace the life narratives of two working-class women through their emergence as entrepreneurs in the diner industry. I reflect upon the distinctive space of the woman-owned diner as it is produced through the interaction between the gendered body-subjects of women owners, the social meaning of ‘feeding work’, and the spatial character of the diner institution. Through the gendered social practice of diner ownership, these two women have overcome substantial social, economic and geographic obstacles to their independence and worked to bridge the divide between the value of public and private work. Building on existing scholarship in the field, this study demonstrates the potential for women's agency through everyday practice as business owners, to create new spaces and alternative means of practicing both gender and entrepreneurship.     

Spatial Strategic Planning in the Stockholm Region—Discourses on the Space-economy and Growth Factors

This article analyses strategic spatial planning for city regions. The analysis uses a strategic development plan for a region as an example and is intended to contribute to discussion about the role of politics and the state in economic structures and processes. The objective was to define the types of discourses in the Stockholm plan. Norman Fairclough's (Analysing Discourse, New York, Routledge, 2003) methodological framework for analysing texts in social research was an important source of the study design. The analysis focused on assumptions in the text and the compatibility of these with different concepts of dynamic development and economic growth in city regions. These concepts were city as clusters, city as interconnection, city as milieu and city as symbol. Outcomes of the analysis showed that the strategic development plan for the Stockholm region stresses large-scale international economic activities and specialized cluster activities, but it marginalizes other activities. In the context of city regions comprising a multiplicity of actors and activities, such a one-sided approach may hinder broad economic development. A more nuanced representation of the urban economy in strategic planning is called for.     

Playing outside the box – on LEGO toys and the changing world of construction play

This article deals with three major instances in the history of the LEGO Company. First, it investigates the transference from wood to plastics as the main material used in creating LEGO toys, and also the innovations in plastic molding machines that influenced the interlocking mechanism of the LEGO bricks. Second, this article deals with a rather unfortunate episode from the LEGO history, namely, the period between the late 1990s and the early twenty‐first century when the LEGO Company felt the need to extend its brand image through diversifying its product range. Unfortunately, this led to a confusing, rather than a strong brand image and resulted in heavy financial losses in 2003 and 2004. Third, this article looks into recent attempts by the LEGO Company to bring the fans into the company in order to revive the LEGO brand and its products. This part focuses on Mindstorms 2.0 and Mindstorms NXT, especially, in order to illustrate the increase in user involvement in LEGO product development.