From sustainable development to carbon control: eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development

The management of carbon emissions holds some prospect for challenging sustainable development as the organising principle of socio-environmental regulation. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon polity as an ideological state project, and examines its potential ramifications for the regulation of economy–environment relations at the urban and regional scale. Carbon control would seem to introduce a new set of values into state regulation and this might open up possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban and regional development in a manner not possible under sustainable development. But low-carbon restructuring also portends intensified uneven development, new forms of state control and a socially uneven reworking of state–society relations. In order to explore these issues we start by setting out a framework for conceptualising environmental regulation based around the idea of eco-state restructuring. This idea is introduced to capture the conflicts, power struggles and strategic selectivities involved as governments seek to reconcile environmental protection with multiple other pressures and demands. Overall the paper seeks to make a distinctive contribution to theoretical work on state environmental regulation and the emerging spatial dimensions of climate policy.     

The Islamic State,the Kurdistan Region and the future of Iraq: assessing UK policy options

The fall of Mosul in June of 2014 was followed in July by the establishment of a self‐proclaimed Caliphate by the Islamic State of Abu Bakr al‐Baghdadi. Since then, the Islamic State has continued to expand its operations, persistently pushing into Sunni‐dominated parts of Iraq and Syria, nearly defeating the Kurds of Iraq, and moving against the Kurds of Syria, in Kobani, as well as army units of the Syrian state. By doing so, it has maintained an astonishingly high tempo of operations and has shown itself capable, agile and resilient. It has also proved itself to be adept at utilizing social media outlets, and in pursuing brutal tactics against civilians and prisoners that have been aimed at shocking adversaries—potential or actual—and observers both in the region and beyond. The rise of the Islamic State poses a challenge not only to the security of Iraq and Syria, but to the state system of the Middle East. Western powers have been drawn into a conflict in a limited fashion—through air strikes and advising ground forces; the UK, while engaging slightly later than other countries against the Islamic State, has followed this pattern, though targeting Islamic State forces solely in Iraq. This article considers the nature and scale of the threat posed by the Islamic State, and assesses three possible areas of further policy engagement that they UK may, or may have to, follow.     

Uncontrolled urban housing in interwar Greece: the rise of the city in urban and national politics

The case of urban housing in interwar Greece was unique. After the end of the war in Asia Minor in 1922 almost 1.3 million Greek Orthodox refugees transferred from Turkey to Greece in the first obligatory exchange of populations in world history. Until that time accommodation and property were the privilege of the rich and there was no consideration for public housing as welfare to cater for the needs of low-income people. This paper explores how the impact of uncontrolled housing in the urban centres of interwar Greece led to the emergence of the town in urban and national politics. It will investigate how the uncontrolled housing defined different spatial configurations and reflected various forms of power relations. It will examine how the need for housing of the masses of refugees led to the collapse of the limited infrastructure and had a catalytic effect on town planning. It will also analyse how urban issues were raised on the political agenda and the way that cities produced electoral behaviours that changed the political map of the country.     

A special responsibility to protect: the UK,Australia and the rise of Islamic State

In the summer of 2014 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged as a threat to the Iraqi people. This article asks whether the UK and Australia had a ‘special’ responsibility to protect (R2P) those being threatened. It focuses on two middle‐ranking powers (as opposed to the US) in order to highlight the significance of special responsibilities that flow only from the principle of reparation rather than capability. The article contends that despite casting their response in terms of a general responsibility, the UK and Australia did indeed bear a special responsibility based on this principle. Rather than making the argument that the 2003 coalition that invaded Iraq created ISIS, it is argued that it is the vulnerable position in which Iraqis were placed as a consequence of the invasion that grounds the UK and Australia's special responsibility to protect. The article addresses the claim that the UK and Australia were not culpable because they did not act negligently or recklessly in 2003 by drawing on Tony Honoré's concept of ‘outcome responsibility’. The finding of a special responsibility is significant because it is often thought of as being more demanding than a general responsibility. In this context, the article further argues that the response of these two states falls short of reasonable moral expectations. This does not mean the UK and Australia should be doing more militarily. R2P does not begin and end with military action. Rather the article argues that the special responsibility to protect can be discharged through humanitarian aid and a more generous asylum policy.     

Urbanisation,crisis and urban policy in Greece

Urbanization trends in Greece since the 1950s are reviewed, with particular reference to the problems that arose in the 1970s. The authors examine the two major attempts at state intervention in urban planning during this period. They conclude with an overview of possible policy interventions that could resolve some of the problems related to urbanization.     

Green politics and environmental ethics: A defence of human welfare ecology

A major strand of environmentalist thought identifies the supposedly anthropocentric foundations of Western attitudes to nature as a fundamental cause of the environmental crisis. On the basis of this analysis they suggest that the development and widespread acceptance of a ‘biocentric’ or ‘ecocentric’ ethos is a primary requirement for the ultimate development of an ecologically benign society. This view can be questioned for a number of reasons. The causal significance of anthropocentrism is not as clear as had been supposed, attempts to formulate such an ethos have failed on logical or ethical grounds, and it is possible to put forward a fully developed environmentalist position which remains anthropocentric. What has been called ‘human welfare ecology’ has the potential to provide a more coherent, developed and politic eco‐political theory than attempts to base such a theory on a ‘biocentric’ or ‘ecocentric’ ethos.     

From work to welfare: the response of the Peruvian state to the feminization of emergency work

This paper explores the ways in which the convergence of economic crises and gendered processes of globalization have created a new role for states and new scenarios for women's paid work. It focuses specifically on one of these scenarios—the emergence of state-backed employment programmes in the 1980s and early 1990s and examines the feminization of such programmes in Latin America. Through a detailed case study of emergency work in Peru the paper analyses the relationship between feminization and the state. Specifically, the paper interrogates the contradictory conceptualizations of work embodied in such state-backed initiatives. The example of the APRA government of Peru and its nation-wide employment programme (PAIT: Programme of Support and Temporary Income 1985–1990) is used to illustrate the ways in which states have responded to processes of feminization. The paper highlights the relationship between feminization and a shift in state rhetoric. Through empirical archive and interview based research¹ it examines the implications of APRA's move from a rhetoric of providing work for men to one that emphasized welfare aid for women.