Money talks: banknote iconography and symbolic constructions of Scotland

ABSTRACT. It has become common for scholars of nations and nationalism to use banknotes, coins and postage stamps as passing examples of everyday objects expressive of nationalism. Until recently, however, it has been less common for these objects to form the focus of empirical enquiries that substantiate their contribution to the creation and transmission of national symbolism. This article addresses this lacuna through an empirical investigation of over 300 years of Scottish banknote iconography. In their symbolic content, banknotes are shown to be amenable to the service of both national and non‐national political agendas. To explain this phenomenon, we advance three interrelated arguments. First, we contend that variations in banknote iconography reflect the different political contexts in which notes were produced and the distinctive loyalties and customer constituencies of the banks that issue them. Second, we argue that changes in banknote imagery reflect changes in the scale of their circulation. Third, we argue that Scottish banknotes have always included iconography that constructs the image of the bank and advertises its reliability, often through association with national images. The article concludes by addressing Scotland's place in wider understandings of the iconographic power of banknotes.     

The politics of civil society in confronting HIV/AIDS

Civil society organizations have been at the forefront of the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, the contributions and the models of action they offer have remained marginalized by most governments and international organizations. This article looks at the initiatives of civil society actors. It discusses some of the political reasons and rationale behind the less than enthusiastic support for these initiatives from governments and large aid agencies. Two reasons are suggested: many politicians fear providing support and credibility to civil society organizations that might then build upon their success to question and challenge development failures; and the threat perceived by national and international bureaucrats to their own assumed expertise and solutions to the pandemic. In some cases, civil society organizations have been co-opted to fill gaps that governments themselves can not or will not address. However, even here, governments assume the credit for 'successes' in controlling HIV/AIDS.     

East is East,and West is West? Currency iconography as nation-branding in the wider Europe

This article considers European banknote iconography as an indicator of national branding choices from the early twentieth century up to the present. Systematic quantitative content analysis demonstrates that the values and ontologies expressed on Central/East European banknotes have historically tracked closely with the trends visible on their West European counterparts. This pattern is evident not just since the end of the Cold War, but indeed right from the founding of the modern Central/East European states about a century ago. Even during the Cold War, it did not take long for the trends on Western banknotes to appear on Central/East European banknotes as well. Thus, contrary to the conventional assumption of a deep-rooted normative gulf separating the national identity discourses of so-called “New” and “Old” Europe, the article underscores the fact of intense, longstanding normative cross-pollination between them.     

林语堂在《语丝》时期的思想倾向

林语堂1923年从欧美留学回国后,即以《语丝》为阵地发表了三十多篇文章,开始崭露头角。受鲁迅和语丝派的影响,林语堂的思想越来越激进,他关心和支持政治运动,同情和歌颂学生运动,同时对军阀、政客、官僚进行无情的抨击,对中国传统文化尤其是中国国民性给予深刻的解剖和有力的批判,显示了林语堂强烈的社会关怀和要求改变现状的革新进步倾向。《语丝》时期是林语堂思想最激进的一个阶段。     

Borders and banknotes: the national perspective

Replacing a banknotes series is meaningful for politicians and the general public even today, while most transactions are executed through virtual means. The choice of images carried on banknotes represents the limits of the State's sovereign border and becomes a means of banal nationalism. Moreover, by utilising scopic regimes, the hegemony portrays the cultural and political borders: historical figures from the country's past on one side, and an imagined or physical border, expressed through the illustrations on the back. This paper addresses the latter and examines the case of the State of Israel. The analysis of sites and landscapes that appear on national banknotes can decipher the construction process of a ‘territorial identity’ which, along with struggles for maintaining identity, provides the basis of the nation‐state. Using Williams's typology of selective tradition, we argue that Israeli banknotes demonstrate a mixture of residual and new cultural content.     

Professional Politicians as the Subjects of Moral Panic

The media, the public and politicians themselves often express a fear that Australian political life is increasingly dominated by ‘professional politicians’, who are seen as careerist, lacking in commitment and disconnected from the reality of ordinary lives. The article analyses the meanings given to the term ‘professional politicians’ and their relationship to other definitions and characteristics of professionalism. It also uses the concept of moral panic to analyse the concerns expressed about ‘professional politicians’. This concept, first formulated in 1972 in Cohen's study of alleged youth violence in a small town in the United Kingdom, is most often associated with studies of social deviance. This article demonstrates how, in a later period, it can be extended to apply to politicians, a group traditionally more often identified as a perpetrator of moral panics than the subject of them.     

Designing the nation. Banknotes, banal nationalism and alternative conceptions of the state

This paper explores the relationship between national iconography, banal nationalism and conceptions of the state. It begins by reviewing scholarship on visual culture associated with official products of the state: namely, stamps and money. This reveals a preoccupation with content analysis and a tendency to assume state control over the symbolic content of money (and stamps) without clarifying the nature of design processes, the nature of state involvement in these processes, or how ‘the state’ is being conceptualized. The paper addresses these lacunae, beginning with an examination of approaches to banknote design and clarification of the role of the state in these processes. This analysis reveals that non-state actors and institutions are frequently responsible for this key mechanism of official iconographic representation and this, in turn, supports calls for a reassessment of the concept of the state. After outlining an alternative conception of the state, as an idea that produces ‘state effects’ rather than an empirical entity separate from society, the value of this concept is illustrated by showing how it can explain banknote production in the stateless nation of Scotland. The revelation that commercial banks can be co-constitutive of state effects – things like banknotes, national institutions, iconography and identity – challenges presumptions of a discrete state that controls its own representation and the regulation of society.     

Currency Issues and Financial Crises: The Excessive Issuance of Banknotes and Price Fluctuations during the “New Policies” Period in the Late Qing

In the New Policies period of the late Qing, the central government’s power had declined due to an expansion of power at the local-government level. After gaining the right to independently fundraise during the Self-Strengthening Movement, local governments also obtained the privilege of issuing currency. Following a downward trend in China’s fiscal power, the issuance of banknotes by local government had become a noticeable problem. The influence of foreign banks in China, meanwhile, was continuing to expand, the increasing number of countries involved as well as the growing number of banks being just two examples. Because the central government lacked strong supervision, the rate of issuance of banknotes by foreign banks thus gradually increased, leading to growing prices. In addition, this dispersion of financial power further boosted inflation. Since the Qing government focused on reforming its approaches to finance and strengthening its central role during the New Policies, reorganizing its banknote policy was its primary agenda. However, to a large extent, the policy was guided by the idea that monetary policy should be subordinate to financial needs. Thus, the very limited effect of the Qing government’s banknote-reorganization policy also marked the regime’s failure to bring about the modernization of China.     

Flexible urban governance. The case of Copenhagen's recent waterfront development

In this paper, the most recent wave of Copenhagen's waterfront development is analyzed and interpreted in the context of broader economic tendencies and political strategies. Recent events illuminate relationships among politicians, bureaucrats and capital to regulate an accumulation process that is highly intertwined with international, national as well as urban interests. Beginning in the late 1980s, the national state, the local state and the port authority, undertook a number of planning and policy initiatives to create a process for transforming Copenhagen's waterfront. When contradictions from the logic of profit maximization became apparent and threatened to de‐rail long term economic growth, a new ad hoc and ‘flexible’ process of urban governance was established to get development back on track. Senior politicians created a so‐called ‘Vision Group’ that functioned as a ‘meta‐steering’ committee providing direction to local development by identifying a development approach that attempted to resolve, at least temporarily, tensions among global market tendencies and the interests of the main actors. In this way, the Vision Group achieved its political purpose to create a shared vision and a discourse for the development of the waterfront. The new strategy was effective at various scales of governance, but circumvented local planning practices.     

Politicians,Parties, and the Persistence of Weak States: Lessons from the Philippines

Under what conditions will politicians strengthen state capabilities through bureaucratic reform? This article presents a principal–agent model of state capacity that shows that unless competition to influence policy is largely confined to a single dimension, politicians have no incentive or ‘political will’ to adopt bureaucratic reform. The validity of this model is tested using the experience of the Philippines in the period 1946–72. It is found that politically relevant groups in the Philippines were competing to influence policy over issues of social welfare, economic nationalism and control over public spending, and that groups' demands over these issues failed to align along a single dominant dimension. Consistent with expectations derived from the principal–agent model, there were numerous calls for and attempts to improve bureaucratic performance, but the calls went unheeded and the attempts failed miserably. The study highlights a lesson of potential use to countries currently undergoing democratization. It argues that state capacity is not a function of insulating the state from societal forces, but rather of clarifying lines of authority and accountability in the hierarchy of principal–agent relationships between society, politicians and bureaucrats.     

Leveraging city officials’ professional and social Identities to facilitate affordable housing

Housing affordability is an acute problem in many developed economies. It is rooted, inter alia, in a conflict of interests across levels of government. Policies that seek to increase the supply of housing and lower their purchase price are popular among the general electorate, yet local governments deploy urban planning regulations to restrict densification and development of affordable housing within their jurisdictions. Moves to address this conflict would benefit from unpacking city officials' policy preferences and their variation. This paper compares the positions of local-government politicians vs. those of unelected bureaucrats in Israeli cities, drawing on survey and interview data. Our findings confirm the conflicts of interest between levels of government even within Israel's unitary, centralized context. However, we show that career bureaucrats, given their relative freedom from electoral pressures and commitment to professional values, are more amenable to citizens' and central government's shared interest in densification and affordable housing. We also highlight city officials' place of residence—within vs. outside the city—and their social identification with citizens and residents as antecedents of their urban-planning preferences. We draw on these findings to delineate directions for more effective central–local government collaboration in seeking affordable housing solutions.     

The Evolving Spheres of International Justice

Recent discussions about globalization and increasing global inequalities of wealth have reawakened interest in the possibility of a just international order. The unequal distribution of wealth remains central to discussions of global justice but it is not the sole consideration. Additional issues are raised by the democratic deficit in international relations, the growing importance of cross-border harm, the need for cooperation to protect the environment and the treatment of non-human species. These different spheres of justice prompt the question of whether states can act as agents of reform, encouraged by the more progressive forces in global civil society. A related issue is whether the interplay between the states-system and global civil society will lead to more cosmopolitan forms of national and international law. Answers to these questions require new advances in normative and empirical inquiry.     

Citizens of Empire: Education and Teacher Exchanges in Canada and the Commonwealth, 1910–40

This article examines how one group of actors actively infused education, citizenship and Canada’s international relationships with a sense of empire in the first third of the twentieth century. Making use of archival and published sources from collections in Canada and Britain, it focuses in particular on imperial citizenship teaching in Canadian schools, a number of education conferences held in the United Kingdom and the exchanges of elementary and high school teachers and school inspectors between commonwealth countries. In this period, politicians and bureaucrats in Canada and other dominions actively connected their education systems to an imperial network at the very moment that others were striving to attain more economic and political autonomy from the British government. Education came to occupy a significant cultural space alongside the trade agreements and constitutional changes that slowly recalibrated the nature of the British imperial system in the interwar period. Imperial education projects were an important feature of the cultural politics of a fading empire, but they were driven by actors in both the imperial centre and the self-governing dominions. This article argues that between 1910 and 1940 teachers and politicians in Canada drew on an international support network, actively fostered new ideas of citizenship, and strove to assert the country’s belonging in the British Empire.     

中国银行与南京国民政府早期关系

中国银行从民国初年成立后即发挥着中央银行的重要作用,1928年南京国民政府对中国银行的第一次改组,使得中国银行由国家银行转制为国际汇兑专业银行,1935年的第二次改组后又使得中国银行成为国民党“四行二局”金融统制体系的重要组成部分。这两次改组对中国银行的性质和地位的变化产生了决定性的影响,也比较突出地体现了旧中国金融业与中央政府关系的演变过程。     

蒋介石的反“台独”立场述论

二战结束以后尤其是偏安台湾一隅的四分之一世纪里,蒋介石始终坚持反台独立场,不仅对岛内外台独组织及其活动坚决取缔,严厉打击,而且对日本政府及右翼政客支持台独的行径进行了谴责,对其策动台湾当局独立的建议予以拒绝。这是台独势力在此期间未能坐大和两个中国、一中一台图谋未能得逞的重要原因之一。     

Japan's Political Leadership Deficit

Analysts have long pondered the question: 'Who rules in Japan?'. Prime Ministers who have exercised strong leadership have been the exception rather than the rule. Despite the widespread acknowledgment that Japan's political leadership deficit undermines the ability of the government to act swiftly in a crisis and to exercise international leadership in trade and foreign policy, a systematic explanation for Japan's weak political executive is yet to be advanced. While historical and cultural factors cannot be ignored, more relevant in a contemporary context are institutional factors that restrict the power of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. A parliamentary Cabinet system is not incompatible with strong leadership but, in Japan's case, the inability of the political executive to exercise indisputable authority, or indeed, merely to exercise the legitimate prerogatives of Prime Ministerial and Cabinet Office, is directly attributable to the constraints imposed by a collection of informal power structures within the ruling conservative party and by an autonomous central bureaucracy, all of which have held power away from the political executive. Various institutional remedies are currently being pursued to enhance the leadership of the executive branch. They are part of a deliberately engineered shift in power from non-elected bureaucrats to elected politicians. The reforms will also help to diminish the influence of ruling party factions over personnel selections to executive office and the ascendancy of internal policy cliques within party policymaking.     

Democracy and national destinies on Taiwan

In the case of Taiwan, experts have debated whether passionate national loyalties (Taiwanese or Chinese) facilitated or stymied democratization. This paper argues that nationalism facilitated political change in Taiwan. In fact, democratization during the 1980s and the 1990s was spurred in part by the pursuit of two conflicting national destinies. The Chinese Nationalist Party legitimized reform as the end of a century‐long process for the reconstruction of the Chinese nation. To many Nationalists, particularly those born on the mainland, Taiwan was the fulfilment of Sun Yat‐sen's vision of China known as the Three Principles of the People. At the same time, many opponents of the regime saw successful reform as one step towards the realization of a Taiwanese nation. Dominated by those who identified themselves as Taiwanese, generally those of Chinese descent whose ancestors had lived on Taiwan prior to 1945, these activists hoped to take power through the ballot box, then implement a series of policies to strengthen an island‐wide identity.     

‘The Sustenance of Salisbury’ in the era of Decolonization: The Portuguese Politics of Neutrality and the Rhodesian Oil Embargo, 1965–7

This article investigates Denmark's international legal status during the Second World War. In exploring this theme it brings together two emergent research perspectives on twentieth-century international political history: (1) a growing interest in small states as actors and active interpreters of international political events in times of crisis and war; and (2) a focus on international law as an independent and so far underexplored research theme. From this double perspective the article highlights and analyses the unprecedented and unparalleled character of the legal relationship between Denmark and Germany after the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940. In doing so it places particular focus on how this situation was viewed and conceptualised by Danish politicians and legal experts. Thus it explores the complex entanglement of politics and law that characterised Danish attempts to bring about and consolidate the particular peaceful and ‘normal’ relationship with Germany as well as efforts to change this relationship and make Denmark a belligerent state. By analysing the four concepts of neutrality, non-belligerence, peaceful occupation, and war the article shows how these legal concepts served as political instruments that were pushed forward by competing and changing understandings of Denmark's international position and interests during the war. But it also shows how these legal conceptualisations were fundamentally structured by the general international legal and political developments of the war (the deterioration of neutrality and the emergence of long-term military occupation and guerrilla warfare throughout Europe). And it demonstrates how they gradually took on a life of their own and came to frame and shape perceptions of Denmark's international position - both among Danish politicians and bureaucrats during the Second World War and among historians to this day.     

The politics of decentralizing national parks management in the Philippines

International donors and state bureaucrats in the developing world have promoted decentralization reform as the primary means to achieve equitable, efficient and sustainable natural resource management. Relatively few studies, however, consider the power interests at stake. Why do state agencies decentralize power, what political patterns unfold, and how do outcomes affect the responses of resource users? This paper explores decentralization reform by investigating the political processes behind the Philippine state's decisions to transfer authority over national parks management to local government units. Drawing on a case of devolved management at Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, Palawan Island, we examine how political motives situated at different institutional scales affect the broader process of decentralization, the structure of management institutions, and overall livelihood security. We demonstrate how power struggles between the Philippine state and City Government of Palawan over the right to manage the national park have impacted the livelihood support offered by community-based conservation. We conclude that decentralization may offer empowering results when upper-level policies and political networks tie into sufficiently organized institutions at the local level.     

明治前期日本思想界的政治改革论争

日本明治前期,围绕建立新的政治体制问题,思想界展开了政治改革论争。论争焦点主要集中在政治改革步骤和政治改革方向两方面。一些当政者和大多数思想家主张以稳健的方式逐步推进政治体制改革,少数思想家则主张实行较为激进的改革。最终渐进改革思想占据了上风。对于政治改革方向,既有主张更加民主化的政治改革,也有主张既不能摹仿欧美民主政治体制,也不能回到传统的专制体制,而只能建立符合日本国情的君主立宪体制,还有主张回到皇权至上的传统专制政治体制。