Broadcasting after devolution: policy and critique in the Welsh media landscape 2008–2015

This essay examines the provision of media (especially broadcasting) in Wales and considers recommendations made in key reviews and reports which have sought to bring about change in how the media serve people in a devolved Wales. It provides a critical insight into how these debates have developed since 2008 and reveals how some of the monumental economic, policy, production and technological changes that have affected broadcast and digital media internationally have taken shape in Wales specifically. The chief aim is to identify how a distinctly Welsh media policy agenda is developing in the context of devolution. This research is timely given the growing political pressure from several parts of the UK both for greater accountability of broadcasting to the nations of the UK and also for substantive devolution of powers over broadcasting to their governments. The essay argues that media scholars need to pay further attention to how policy evolves in the context of multi-governmental levels such as those existing in the devolved nations of the United Kingdom.     

An Empirical Assessment of Devolution's Policy Impact

This article evaluates the influence of devolution on perceived and actual policy outcomes at the local level in the United States. Proponents of devolution often argue that the transfer of policymaking authority to a lower level of government allows subnational officials to more effectively address problems on the government's agenda. We provide one of the first empirical evaluations of this implicit assumption of devolution. We utilize data from 100 counties in one state, North Carolina, that were the recipients of additional welfare policymaking authority in 1997 to provide a preliminary assessment of devolution's consequences and policy impact. We then investigate the recipient governments' ability to bring about positive change using three prominent indicators associated with welfare policy. Our findings provide evidence that devolution matters quite significantly to the perception of policymaking effectiveness; however, devolution's actual impact on policy outcomes is mixed.     

Devolution,decentralization and dispersal: Asserting the spatiality of the public sector in Scotland

Through a case study of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), a Non-Departmental Public Body in Scotland, this article considers the arguments associated with changes in public sector location in the UK in the wider context of devolution and decentralization. The policy issues of location and relocation are discussed in light of the wider government interest in modernization, spatial planning and regional development. The case study illustrates an active concern in Scotland with the decentralization of decision-making, and a move to community planning. Notwithstanding the perceived benefits of the government's policy objectives, however, the relocation process, in this instance, has proved to be difficult and protracted in practice, illustrating many of the tensions in a policy which seeks to deliver different and layered policy objectives.     

Tradition,myth and the dilemma of Australian foreign policy

For a middle power with a relatively short history of framing a self determined foreign policy, Australia has actively sought to engage with both its immediate region and the wider world. Elite agreement on this external orientation, however, has by no means entailed consensus on what this orientation might involve in terms of policy. Consequently, two, often conflicting, traditions and their associated myths have informed Australian foreign policy-making. The most enduring tradition shaping foreign policy views Australia as a somewhat isolated bastion of Western civilisation. In this mode Australia's myth is pragmatic, but uncertain and sees Asia as both an opportunity and a potential threat which requires the support and counsel of culturally similar external powers engaged in the region to ensure stability. Against this, an alternative and historically later tradition crafted a foreign policy that advanced Australian independence through engagement with a seemingly monolithic and increasingly prosperous Asia. This paper explores the evolution and limitations of these foreign policy traditions and the myths that sustain them. It further considers what features of these traditions continue to have resonance in a region that has become more fluid and heterogeneous than it was during the Cold War and which requires a foreign policy flexibility that can address this complex and strategically uncertain environment.     

Innovation and precedent in the Kosovo war: the impact of Operation Allied Force on US foreign policy

The 1990s was a period of strategic innovation in US foreign policy. Operation Allied Force in particular represented an important step in the contorted evolution of America's attitude towards the use of force in the post-Cold War period. That operation demonstrated the growing influence of humanitarian concerns and the extent to which America was willing to reconsider Cold War criteria on the prudence and utility of force in support of its foreign policy. In its decision to intervene in Kosovo, the Clinton administration also divided opinion among the military. This, in effect, reduced the premium placed on the counsels of the armed forces and made it easier for the Bush administration subsequently to ignore their advice. Furthermore, having fought the war multilaterally through NATO, Operation Allied Force made America more wary of doing so again. In other words, the intervention set a number of precedents and left a significant legacy for the way in which US foreign policy was pursued in the decade that followed. This legacy is considered in two parts: the first analyses those issues associated with the use of force debate; the second considers how the Kosovo experience affected US attitudes to coalition warfare.     

Bush,Obama and a faith‐based US foreign policy

In a calculated move to appeal to his core constituency during his first term, President George W. Bush launched domestic and international faith‐based initiatives designed to leverage public finance for religious groupings to carry out social and welfare functions formerly performed by government or secular organizations. In December 2002 the Center for Faith‐Based and Community Initiatives (CFBCI) was extended to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Center's intention was to ‘create a level playing field’ for faith‐based and community groups to compete for foreign assistance funding. These presidential initiatives are problematic, however, calling into question the first amendment—the separation of church and state. Upon taking office Barack Obama set up the Office of Faith‐based and Neighborhood Partnerships, promising a greater emphasis on community/neighbourhood programs. The CFBCI remains a fixture in USAID and Obama shows as much enthusiasm for the initiative as his predecessor. Faith‐based international relations and political science scholars have sought to build on these initiatives and call for a greater role for faith in US foreign policy. On the eve of the 2012 presidential election, this article considers the claims for a faith‐based foreign policy by examining the construction of a faith‐based discourse by academics and successive presidents. Using faith‐based initiatives and USAID as a case–study, the article discusses criticisms of the policy and focuses on the role of a conservative evangelical organization, Samaritan's Purse, to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of faith‐based approaches. The article argues that advocates of faith‐based foreign policy, in seeking special privileges for ecumenical religious actors, overlook their declining international significance and the opportunities afforded to less tolerant but more populist religious actors which have the potential seriously to harm US foreign policy objectives.     

Regional Devolution and Regional Economic Success: Myths and Illusions about Power

The proposition that regional devolution in and of itself will lead to economic success has become deeply embedded in beliefs and policy discourses about the determinants of regional prosperity, and in turn has led to political demands for such devolution. In this paper I seek critically to examine such claims, using the case of the north‐east of England as the setting for this examination. The paper begins with some introductory comments on concepts of power, regions, the reorganization of the state and of multi‐level governance, and governmentality, which help in understanding the issues surrounding regional devolution. I then examine the ways in which north‐east England was politically and socially constructed as a particular type of region, with specific problems, in the 1930s — a move that has had lasting significance up until the present day. Moving on some six decades, I then examine contemporary claims about the relationship between regional devolution and regional economic success, which find fertile ground in the north‐east precisely due to its long history of representation as a region with a unified regional interest. I then reflect on the processes of regional planning, regional strategies and regional devolution, and their relationship to regional economic regeneration. A brief conclusion follows, emphasizing that questions remain about the efficacy of the new governmentality and about who would be its main beneficiaries in the region. The extent to which devolution would actually involve transferring power to the region and the capacity of networked forms of power within the region to counter the structural power of capital and shape central state policies remains unclear.     

In what sense ‘spaces of neoliberalism’? The new localism,the new politics of scale,and town twinning

This paper draws on a study of town twinning in Britain since 1945 to engage with narratives of ‘the new localism’ and ‘the new politics of scale’. It argues that town twinning is often used in technical assistance programmes such as the UK Government's Know How Fund and various schemes of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum. ‘Fast policy’ is a concept that can be usefully applied to these programmes and the broader field of interurban networking, urban policy mobility, and policy transfer. Town twinning plays an active yet overlooked role in fast policy. The paper also argues that town twinning is part of a longer history of bottom-up localism that includes the political arguments of John Stuart Mill, at least two moments of twentieth-century municipal internationalism, the municipal foreign policy movement of the 1980s, and the community development movement of the last three decades. This longer history suggests sources of localism other than statecraft, and problematises the conceptualisation of power and periodisation of history found in regulation theories of devolution.     

Capital's Metropolis: Chicago and the Transformation of American Housing Policy

The US economic recovery of the 1990s accelerated amidst privatization, selective devolution and the reinvention of the public sector itself. Simultaneously, mortgage finance and assisted housing policy were recast in terms of market processes, individual responsibility and private home-ownership, even as gentrification enjoyed a dramatic resurgence. The intersection of these seemingly unrelated processes signifies an important transformation of the American inner city. Nowhere are these connections more explicit than in Chicago, where newly devolved and flexible policy infrastructures are built on the ashes of prominent experiments of previous generations. In this paper we use Chicago as a context to explore the linkages between reinvestment, housing finance and the reinvention of assisted housing. We analyse local and federal developments in assisted housing policy and develop a multivariate analysis of mortgage loans in Chicago's neighbourhoods during the 1990s expansion. New constructions of scale in assisted housing, exemplifed by Chicago's Lake Parc Place and the federal HOPE VI programme, constitute a centripetal devolution mediated by the relationship between public policy and local private market forces. National changes in housing finance have altered historical processes of redlining, disinvestment, and gentrification. Mortgage capital, traditionally responsible for the creation or exacerbation of rent gaps, now lubricates the flow of capital into the gentrifying frontier of the inner city. The intensified market discipline of housing policy, based partly on theories incubated in Chicago, suggests a new regime of neighbourhood change in the American inner city.     

Bridging the Gap: Hong Kong Senior Civil Servants and the 1966 Riots

The 1966 Hong Kong riots were the trigger for wide-ranging changes in relationships between the government and the public which shaped the political future of the colony. However, it is not immediately clear why a relatively small-scale disturbance which was quickly contained should have had such a considerable impact. The explanation, it is argued, lies in a confluence of factors. The riots were the first to be specifically concerned with events in Hong Kong rather than in China and therefore required attention to local causes; urban councillors were demanding more electoral representation and devolution of government functions to the Council; the Commission of Inquiry into the riots held public meetings raising political awareness; and reforming senior civil servants saw the riots as an opportunity for change. Because there was antipathy within government towards elections and to any devolution of functions, the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry were given priority, resulting in administrative rather than public policy or electoral solutions, a decision which retarded the development of democracy.     

‘The Best-Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men’? Proposals,Planning, Defeat,and Legacy,of Devolution in the 1970s*

The question of whether devolved assemblies should be established for Scotland and Wales dominated considerable parliamentary time in the 1970s and became a key pillar of the Labour government's legislative agenda after the two 1974 general elections. The main building blocks of the government's devolution proposals for Scotland and Wales were in place from 1975 with the publication of the white paper, Our Changing Democracy, which outlined proposals for a primary lawmaking assembly for Scotland and a Scottish executive, operating under a ‘conferred powers model of devolution’. For Wales, the assembly was to be a body corporate (with no split between executive and assembly) exercising only executive functions and able only to pass secondary legislation. With some important modifications (including crucially the requirement for a referendum, which was then further amended to require a Yes tally equating to 40% of the electorates in both nations), these proposals were eventually incorporated into law as the Scotland and Wales Acts 1978. While the political debates surrounding devolution in this period are well known, less attention has been paid to the practical plans undertaken by the civil service for devolution to become a reality. Considerable time was spent drawing up, from an early stage, detailed preparations for devolution, particularly in Scotland. In Wales, planning was more tentative, yet, none the less, was taken seriously by the Welsh Office. These plans never materialised in the way envisaged, with neither Welsh nor Scottish devolution able to pass the referendum thresholds put in place. However, as this article also demonstrates, both the Scotland and Wales Acts had a constitutional legacy when devolution became reality under New Labour in the late 1990s.     

Hegemony,liberalism and global order: what space for would‐be great powers?

This article, and the four that follow, consider some of the ways in which China, Russia, India and Brazil have responded both to US hegemony and to the changing character of international society. This article sets out some of the major analytical questions that emerge when thinking about the foreign policy options of these countries and some of the principal conceptual and theoretical categories within which those questions may be usefully framed. The first section examines the reasons for taking these countries as a group. The second section provides a brief overview of two of the most common theoretical perspectives from which the systemic pressures on these countries have been understood. The third considers their actual and potential strategies and options under five headings: their status as regional powers; their behaviour within and towards international institutions; their relations with the United States; collaboration among them and evidence for the possible emergence of balancing behaviour; and the links between economic development and foreign policy.     

Choosing between America and Europe: a new context for British foreign policy

Power in Britain has changed hands from a prime minister who sought to balance intense UK‐US consultation on foreign policy with the ambition to be ‘at the heart of Europe’ to one whose approach towards both the United States and the European Union has yet to be tested. It is an appropriate moment, there fore, to assess how these two contextual poles of British foreign policy‐making have changed over recent years and what this might mean for UK foreign policy choices. The premise of this article is that the days are now largely over when the UK can or should start out by trying to build an Anglo‐US position on a foreign policy challenge before trying to tie in the European and transatlantic positions. The UK is now a central player in the development of increasingly activist European foreign policies, whether these can later be coordinated effectively with the United States or not. A strong, bilateral relationship continues to serve the interests of both sides on multiple levels, but this relationship does not sit upon the same foundations as during the Cold War. There are now significant underlying factors, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 in the US and July 7 2005 in the UK, that pull the US away from Europe and the UK, while pushing the UK towards Europe as the first port of call in developing foreign policy strategies. It is also notable that, today, UK positions on most global issues and foreign policy challenges tend to conform more closely to the dominant EU line than to the United States. On balance, the UK might think about European integration more from a US than from a European perspective, but it now thinks about global problems more from a European than from a US or transatlantic perspective.     

Mountbatten,the royal family,and British influence in post-independence India and Burma

One of the unexplored themes in the career of Mountbatten is why more use was not made of his services in similar contexts in the years after his Indian viceroyalty and governor-generalship. This article examines his influence in private and unofficial capacities in his dealings with post-independence India and Burma in the 1960s and early 1970s. In India it considers Mountbatten's efforts on behalf of the Indian princes when Indira Gandhi's government threatened their privy purses and privileges. In Burma it discusses Mountbatten's attempts to persuade Burma to return to the Commonwealth and his influence over General Ne Win, Burma's military ruler. Mountbatten was unsuccessful in both cases. By contrast in Burma, Princess Alexandra was better placed to represent British interests, suggesting perhaps that we should look more closely at the role of members of the royal family in promoting Britain's foreign policy.     

A place apart? The interventions of John P. Mackintosh and Bernard Crick on Northern Ireland

This article considers the significance of the scholarly and practical engagement with the Northern Ireland problem on the part of the Scottish politician and academic John P. Mackintosh, and the academic and controversialist Bernard Crick. It is argued that they were among the few scholars and public figures outside of Northern Ireland for whom the crisis represented an opportunity to explore more searchingly issues with broader significance for the UK as a whole, particularly devolution, and for relations within and between the islands of Britain and Ireland. For both men, Northern Ireland brought into sharp focus questions of sovereignty and identity, and of constitutional reform in the UK.     

National identity,devolution and secession in Canada,Britain and Spain*

ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it examines whether devolution fosters the rise of dual identities – regional and national. Second, it considers whether devolution encourages secession or, on the contrary, it stands as a successful strategy in accommodating intra‐state national diversity. The article is divided into three parts. First it examines the changing attitudes towards Quebec's demands for recognition adopted by the Canadian government from the 1960s to the present. It starts by analysing the rise of Quebec nationalism in the 1960s and the efforts of the Canadian government to accommodate its demands within the federation. It then moves on to consider the radically new conception of Canadian unity and identity embraced by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and its immediate impact upon Quebec. The paper argues that Trudeau's ‘nation‐building’ strategy represented a retreat from the pro‐accommodation policies set in place to respond to the findings of the 1963 Royal Commission on Biculturalism & Bilingualism (known as the B&B Commission). Trudeau's definition of Canada as a bilingual and multicultural nation whose ten provinces should receive equal treatment alienated a significant number of Quebeckers. After Trudeau, various attempts were made to accommodate Quebec's demand to be recognised as a ‘distinct society’– Meech Lake Accord, Charlottetown Agreement. Their failure strengthened Quebec separatists, who obtained 49.4 per cent of the vote in the 1995 Referendum. Hence, initial attempts to accommodate Quebec in the 1960s were replaced by a recurrent confrontation between Canada's and Quebec's separate nation‐building strategies. Second, the article explores whether devolution fosters the emergence of dual identities – regional and national – within a single nation‐state. At this point, recent data on regional and national identity in Canada are presented and compared with data measuring similar variables in Spain and Britain. The three modern liberal democracies considered here include territorially circumscribed national minorities – nations without states ( Guibernau 1999 ) – endowed with a strong sense of identity based upon the belief in a common ethnic origin and a sense of shared ethnohistory – Quebec, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Scotland. Third, the article examines whether devolution feeds separatism by assessing support levels for current devolution arrangements in Canada, Spain and Britain. The article concludes by examining the reasons which might contribute to replacing separatist demands with a desire for greater devolution.     

Prospects for a Distinctly Scottish Planning in a Post-sovereign Age

Debates on the sovereignty of the State and the role of (sub-national) regions have moved on quickly in recent years spurred on by interest in the implications of globalization and (more recently) devolution. Reductionist perspectives on the 'death of State sovereignty' have given way to more balanced understandings that emphasize bottom-up and top-down influences upon State restructuring. Yet the impacts of a changing sovereignty upon policy areas are still largely unknown. This paper seeks to add to these debates and cast some light on potential influences upon and autonomy of the Scottish Parliament vis-à-vis land use planning. The paper argues that despite expectations of policy divergence from academics and practitioners the Scottish Parliament has taken a modest approach to land use planning which mirrors that in the rest of the UK. Yet, the reasons for this are only partly explained by the 'death of the State' theses. Significantly, there is evidence of an expectation of reduced sovereignty which has had an impact upon the anticipation of change. In addition, party political loyalty, ideology, the mechanics of the devolution settlement and the fragmented nature of sovereignty have driven the agenda for planning under the Scottish Parliament all of which point towards a further convergence.     

George W. Bush, Idealist

There is much anger and confused grumbling these days outside the United States—and in Europe in particular—about the character of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Perceived American unilateralism is raising hackles and questions. This article contends that current trends in US foreign policy can be better understood by realizing that many senior Bush administration officials are not 'realists', at least as that philosophy of world politics is classically understood. Many of the resulting views—that, for example, threats to security often originate in ideology rather than material strength—are demonstrably correct and even hopeful in their faith in long-term historical trends. But there may be no getting around the essential contradictions required of US foreign policy in an age when America is the leading power, when a new global community of trading democracies is emerging, and yet when a number of distinctly old-style threats to the peace remain very much in evidence. Washington could do more to smooth the edges of those contradictions in order to point up the idealism and hopefulness of US policy.     

Between Kant and Machiavelli: EU foreign policy priorities in the 2010s

The entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty invites and enables Europe to develop elements of a common foreign policy. Europe should resist the tendency of listing all issues calling for attention, and be aware that it will have to address three agendas, not just one. The first agenda is the Kantian one of universal causes. While it remains essential to European identity, it presents Europe with limited opportunities for success in the 2010s as could be seen at the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen. The ‘Alliance’ agenda remains essential on the security front and would benefit from a transatlantic effort at rejuvenation on the economic one. Last but not least, the ‘Machiavellian’ agenda reflects what most countries would define as their ‘normal’ foreign policy. It calls for Europe to influence key aspects of the world order in the absence of universal causes or common values. While Europe's ‘Machiavellian’ experience is limited to trade policy, developing a capacity to address this third agenda in a manner that places its common interests first and reinforces its identity will be Europe's central foreign policy challenge in the 2010s. A key part of the Machiavellian agenda presently revolves around relations with Ukraine, Turkey and the Russian Federation, three countries essential to Europe's energy security that are unlikely to change their foreign policy stance faced with EU soft power. Stressing that foreign policy is about ‘us’ and ‘them’, the article looks at what could be a genuine European foreign policy vis‐à‐vis each of these interdependent countries, beginning with energy and a more self‐interested approach to enlargement. The European public space is political in nature, as majority voting and mutual recognition imply that citizens accept ‘foreigners’ as legitimate legislators. At a time when the European integration process has become more hesitant and the political dimension of European integration tends to be derided or assumed away, admitting Turkey or Ukraine as members would change Europe more than it would change these countries. Foreign policy cannot be reduced to making Europe itself the prize of the relationship. What objectives Europe sets for itself in its dealing with Ukraine, Turkey and Russia will test whether it is ready for a fully‐fledged foreign policy or whether the invocation of ‘Europe’ is merely a convenient instrument for entities other than ‘Europe’.     

A forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East: US democracy promotion and the ‘war on terror’

Following the 11 September terrorist attacks, a belief has emerged that one of the root causes of Islamic extremism lies in the repressive nature of the regimes that populate the Middle East. Thus the spread of democracy has become a major component of the Bush administration's ‘war on terror’ Previously dismissed as Wilsonian idealism, the promotion of democracy is now considered a strategic necessity to address the threat posed by terrorism. Despite the significant role democracy promotion has played in the present foreign policy of the United States, the focus has tended to be on the more controversial policies of preventive warfare and coalitions of the willing. The purpose of this article is to help rectify this imbalance by examining the role the promotion of democracy plays within the current administration's foreign policy in the Middle East. It considers the logic behind America's ‘forward strategy of freedom’ in the Middle East as well as the likelihood of this strategy succeeding.