THE RETURN OF THE SOCIAL

This article is concerned with the social exclusion agenda in contemporary French cultural policy, exploring the relevance of aspects of postcolonial theory to an understanding of that agenda. The tensions involved in recent attempts to evolve policies addressing interculturalism, integration and “emergent” cultures (such as hip‐hop) while also staying true to the French republican tradition of universalism are illuminated by France’s problematic relationship with its colonial past. They are also shown to be related to a wider movement of post‐industrial, postmodern experimentation with aesthetic forms, from video and computer art to street arts, free parties and electronic dance music.     

The New Republicanism Without Religion?

The past decades have witnessed a harvest of new books and articles exploring the modern republican tradition and its relevance for contemporary political theory. Members of this movement present the tradition as an alternative to both political liberalism and communitarianism and offer its unique conception of liberty (“freedom from domination”) as a distinct third option beyond the “positive” and “negative” varieties famously identified by Isaiah Berlin. Yet in recovering this view of liberty, civic republicans have neglected the essential role that religion plays in the modern republican tradition. This omission represents not only a serious deviation from the tradition, but, what is more, it fundamentally weakens civic republicanism’s capacity for theorizing and achieving political liberty at the level of institutional life. In the modern republican tradition, religion has been understood to undergird republican liberty both in terms of shaping the morals, customs, and habits of citizens and in providing normative authority for the value of liberty over domination. In this essay, I offer a counter-narration of the modern republican tradition that gives religion its due and challenges civic republicans to recognize the central role that religion has played, and should continue to play, in theorizing and promoting republican liberty.     

Masculine hegemony,the state and the incorporation of gender equity discourse: The case of Australian sport

Although the impact of affirmative action, equal opportunity and gender equity programs on the lives of Australian women have been explored in a number of areas, state interventions related to sport have received scant attention from public policy analysts. This paper examines how the Australian Sports Commission has framed its gender equity policy in the mutually reinforcing hegemonic discourses of masculinity and corporate managerialism. It is argued that the Commission's articulation of gender equity policy in terms of ‘market‐oriented individualism’ is both constituted by, and constitutive of, the shift from a ‘patriarchal‐welfare state’ to a ‘patriarchal‐managerial state’ in Australia. The paper also provides an example of the tensions between bureaucratic and feminist discourses in the state sphere.     

Gentrification Interrupted in Salford,UK: From New Deal to “Limbo‐Land” in a Contemporary Urban Periphery

This paper examines two potential lacunae in understanding low‐income residents’ experiences of contemporary state‐led gentrification via a study of neighbourhood restructuring in Salford, UK, 2004–2014. The first is the localised politics preparing the ground for neighbourhood “redevelopment” and housing demolition. The second is the blighted social landscape which emerges with the subsequent stalling of this project. A focus on “before” and “after” is adopted in order to disrupt the linear policy and “effects” temporalities that much qualitative gentrification research tends to inhabit. We see how state‐led neighbourhood restructuring does not simply displace, but carries residents from “empowerment” to abandonment and transfers them from active struggle into devitalised limbo. As such, the paper demarcates challenges and opportunities for resident mobilisation inherent in a vacillating urban renewal programme, powerful in its inception but which has since “hit the buffers” (Lees 2014, Antipode 46(4):921–947) in light of global and municipal fiscal crises.     

Parity is about 'race': French republican citizenship and the French Caribbean

This article considers both the racialised and the gendered nature of citizenship in France, combining a reading of the construction of French citizenship and its exclusive nature with a discussion of the implications of the parity debate for other social categories besides gender. A historicised consideration of the French concept of citizenship is followed by a brief account of the place of the French Caribbean and its population in the Republic, emphasising the role played by the republican tradition in the exclusion of both French West Indians and French women. The article argues that gender parity leads to the discussion of other categories of difference, such as 'race', and demonstrates the need for more engaged debate of this issue.     

Suburban citizenship? The rise of targeting and the eclipse of social rights in Toronto

The decline of ‘universal’, welfarist forms of social citizenship and the rise of selective or targeted social policy is generally considered to be a recent phenomenon, and a constituent element of neo-liberal citizenship and state forms (Brodie ), or ‘advanced liberal’ technologies of government (Rose ). This paper documents how targeted policies were in fact being defined at the height of Keynesian welfarism, in the newly consolidating post-war suburbs of Toronto. I suggest an alternative account of the genesis of these practices, which sees the spatiality of the post-war metropolis as key. The analysis considers how the mutual consolidation of these social and material spaces, and of hegemonic suburban political practices enabled the articulation of a suburban style of citizenship, which was both intensely familial and entrepreneurial in form. Through a case study in recreation policy in the Toronto region, this paper demonstrates how selective, targeted and residual approaches to service delivery evolved in suburban municipalities in the immediate post-war period, and were only generalized across the city more recently through the restructuring of a municipal amalgamation. It documents how these approaches have relied on radically different assumptions about citizenship that were dependent on the articulation of suburban life, literally built around the private family in private space. Thus this paper also documents ways in which these approaches to social policy, increasingly dominant across a range of policy areas and at a variety of spatial scales, construct gendered and racialized identities and problematize non-nuclear family forms.     

Hegel: An introduction,Second Edition

This article explores J.G.A. Pocock's insight that “traces” of civic republican discourse survived within the dominant liberal paradigm of modern political thought. It does so by tracking classical republican themes in the works of American pragmatist John Dewey and English pluralist Harold Laski. The main contribution of the article is to show that the 1920s pluralist theory of the state can be interpreted as a reformulation of the classical republican critique of modern liberal conceptions of state sovereignty. In particular, I suggest that Laski can be viewed as a kind of republican pluralist inspired by Aristotle and Harrington as well as by American pragmatism, itself a late outgrowth of the republican tradition in US history.     

Bringing republican ideas back home. The Dewey–Laski connection

This article explores J.G.A. Pocock’s insight that “traces” of civic republican discourse survived within the dominant liberal paradigm of modern political thought. It does so by tracking classical republican themes in the works of American pragmatist John Dewey and English pluralist Harold Laski. The main contribution of the article is to show that the 1920s pluralist theory of the state can be interpreted as a reformulation of the classical republican critique of modern liberal conceptions of state sovereignty. In particular, I suggest that Laski can be viewed as a kind of republican pluralist inspired by Aristotle and Harrington as well as by American pragmatism, itself a late outgrowth of the republican tradition in US history.     

Urban Governance Under Neoliberalism: New Labour and the Restructuring of State‐Space

Abstract: In the UK there has been a proliferation of agencies at differing regulatory scales as part of the rescaling and restructuring of the state by New Labour, following the neoliberal policies of previous Conservative governments. This raises questions concerning the extent to which New Labour's urban state restructuring is embedded within neoliberalism, and the local tensions and contradictions arising from emergent New Labour urban state restructuring. This paper examines these questions through the analysis of key policy features of New Labour, and the in‐depth exploration of two programmes that are reshaping urban governance arrangements, namely Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes. We conclude that New Labour's restructuring is best understood in terms of the extended reproduction (roll‐out) of neoliberalism. While these “new institutional fixes” are only weakly established and exhibit internal contradictions and tensions, these have not led to a broader contestation of neoliberalism.     

Gatekeepers of the Urban Commons? Vigilant Citizenship and Neoliberal Space in Multiethnic Paris

This article draws from ethnographic research on a recently built park in one of Paris' predominately West African and Maghrebi districts. It demonstrates how urban design is used to “build‐in” neoliberal subjectivities to the city. This design approach appropriates a tradition of street democracy held by neighborhood associations and redirects their disproportionately middle class, French membership into managerial roles traditionally held by municipal agencies. This neoliberal political subjectivity, which I term vigilant citizenship, makes monitoring and controlling the social composition of the urban commons a form of civic engagement for middle class urbanites. In Paris, this vigilance is fueled by anxieties over the presence of West African and Maghrebi youth in public spaces. Activists do not passively adopt this neoliberal role; they strike a delicate balance as gatekeepers, weighing inclusion against an expectation to maintain a “successful” public space conforming to a republican model of citizenship.     

Structural change and the single market programme: The case of the UK automotive component industry

This paper examines the Single Market Programme's (SMP) effects on restructuring in the UK automotive component industry. The SMP is found to have failed to remove impediments to restructuring, because of areas the programme did not address and because of an inertia to restructuring caused by existing structures and strategies in the multinational dominated industry. However, restructuring is found to be driven by Japanese car transplants, whose initial location decisions are strongly linked to the influence of the programme. The probability that the Japanese will benefit most from the programme has serious consequences for the distribution of effects of the SMP, raising important issues for policy‐makers and the component industries of the EU and UK.     

The foundations of modern political thought

This paper aims at setting Montesquieu's 1729 sojourn in the Dutch Republic within its specific Dutch context whilst reconsidering the impact this short period may have exerted on his work. Based on a wide variety of Dutch, English and French sources, the article offers a study of Montesquieu's Dutch networks and contacts, a comparative Franco-Dutch approach to taxation and fiscal policy and an insight into the history of the stadholderate under William IV. The main argument made in the paper is two-fold: first, that the Dutch Republic was a mirror Montesquieu held up to the French monarchy, allowing him to put a number of ideas of government to the test; secondly that, owing to the fluctuating nature of Dutch political events between 1729 and 1748, the Dutch model remained somewhat elusive in Montesquieu's broader understanding of the paradigm of republican regimes.     

Divided loyalties: Sovereignty,politics and public service in the Rhineland under French occupation, 1792–1801

In April 1792 the French Legislative Assembly declared war on the Habsburg Emperor Francis II. Within three years the forces of the Republic conquered the German‐speaking region to the west of the Rhine. Native public officials in the occupied areas faced the dilemma of whether or not to ‘collaborate’ with the invader. They confronted incompatible demands on their loyalties from the exiled Rhenish governments, the French, and the Rhineland's one‐and‐a‐half million inhabitants. The continuation of the revolutionary wars, and failure to reach an international settlement, placed public officials in the occupied areas in a state of limbo. Lacking any legal framework as a point of reference for their actions, and buffeted by the changing fortunes of war abroad and ideological conflict at home, Rhenish communities and the local officials who became their representatives were instead forced to rely on their own resources and strengths. Public officials in particular lived with the possibility of a return of the old regime and the threat of future investigation into their actions under occupation. These fears were only removed with the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 and subsequent legal annexation of the left bank of the Rhine to the French Republic. Later attempts at assimilating the ‘New Frenchmen’ into the fabric of the Napoleonic state were nevertheless obstructed by continuing ties that bound former public officials to the German powers across the Rhine. The sovereign state's demand for an exclusive monopoly on the loyalty of all its subjects conflicted fundamentally with the Rhenish tradition of employment in the civil and military services of the major German dynasties and other European powers.     

The emergence of french research policy: Methodological and historiographical problems (1945–1970) 1

French research policy has been of interest to historians for quite some time. However, the very notion has become so evident for us that its history is told as an heroic one of the state's progressive awareness of the importance of the scientific field.

Nevertheless, this historiographical tradition appears misleading. The stress put on the search for ancestors obscures many issues. This paper accordingly tries to reconstruct a quite different picture underlining the heterogeneity of the meaning of research policy.

The aim is to give a different status to the notion in the context of post‐war France. Science policy should cease to be considered as an evident entity and be seen as an object which organizes and stimulates reflection around the development of science.

After suggesting important themes needed to tackle anew research policy, this study of the major characteristics of the French case ends with a brief account of the progressive definition of the object “research policy”. Focusing on a kind of historical geography of the use and practices of this object, it stresses discontinuities, oppositions and compromises, and also the important work needed to achieve political legitimacy.     

Households in place: socio-spatial (dis)advantage in energy-carbon restructuring

This paper advances a households-in-place perspective to understanding socio-spatial disadvantage in energy-carbon restructuring. This reflects evidence that the costs and benefits of low carbon restructuring will not be distributed evenly or fairly between people and places. Some households and localities will benefit from decarbonization but others will be disproportionately affected by rising energy costs and job loss. In this paper we use the example of England to explore different dimensions of advantage and disadvantage in low carbon restructuring and how they might be reinforced or mediated by intervention by governments, NGOs and citizens. The paper makes a distinctive contribution by linking different sites and policy areas in the distributional politics of decarbonization from the perspective of individuals and households. Emphasis is placed on understanding just energy-carbon transitions from a households-in-place perspective. The analytical framework is exemplified through case studies of the coming to ground of different strands of energy-carbon restructuring in England.     

The gradual transformation of a weak but enduring regime: contemporary French prostitution policy in transition (1946–2016)

Historically, states have tended to opt for one of three prostitution policy regimes: prohibition, regulation or the abolition of state regulation with a view to providing social support to the individuals involved. This is the approach France has espoused since 1960. Nevertheless, while the state has remained committed to abolitionism, the policies and laws adopted in the name of French abolitionism have varied considerably. This coexistence of stability and change challenges current assumptions of how policy regimes behave and evolve. This is because internal policy change suggests that the regime is weak, and weak regimes that experience strong political challenges are assumed to wither away or collapse. Consequently, this article presents the historical case study of contemporary French prostitution policy, and seeks to explain how and why this policy regime has changed the way it has since World War II. It describes the three phases that have contributed to the evolution of policy in this area, from sex workers’ rights protests in the mid 1970s, to the introduction of a demand-side ban on prostitution in 2016. In doing so, it explains how strong commitment to policy ideas can help sustain an otherwise weak or ineffective policy regime.     

From the ‘new localism’ to the ‘new regionalism’? The implications of regional development agencies for city–regional relations

Throughout the last three decades efforts to regenerate British cities have been based around the construction of new institutional alliances and policy networks supported by a series of urban-based initiatives. Successive Conservative governments premised their intervention on the assumption that cities (and particular parts therein) were the most appropriate geographical level around which to organise policy intervention. In pursuing this city-based agenda, the policies were themselves instrumental in constituting the city as an object of policy: a problem in need of a solution. The aim of this paper, however, is not to explore how certain spaces or scales become constructed through, for example, government policy, political practices or state restructuring. Rather the paper augments work conducted on the socially constructed nature of ‘cities’ and ‘regions’. It explores for regeneration policy and politics the implications of the tendential shift away from a model of ‘new localism’ towards an alternative model of ‘new regionalism’. The origins of the central element of New Labour's emergent regional project — the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) — are established before the paper moves on to examine the likely political relationships between the local state, drawing upon the example of Manchester, and the regional state, drawing upon North West England, under the new institutional arrangements.     

The paradox of contemporary linguistic nationalism: the case of Luxembourg

Through a case study of the mobilisation around the Luxembourgish language in the 1970s and 1980s, this article investigates the paradox of contemporary linguistic nationalism, resulting from a hiatus between the continued influence of the classic nation‐state model and the new constraints linked to a changed socio‐historical context. Based on an analysis of actors' discourses, parliamentary debates and legislative documents, the investigation retraces the social, political and economic dynamics as well as the cognitive mechanisms leading to a change in the social perception of the Luxembourgish language. It shows how the contemporary context implies specific constraints and difficulties for mechanisms of the invention of tradition, but that at the same time the traditional nation‐state model, where one nation equates with one state and one language continues to function as a reference. Through the Luxembourgish case is raised the more general question of the relation between linguistic nationalism, modernity and change in a contemporary context.     

Saving nature or performing sovereignty? Ecuador's initiative to ‘keep oil in the ground’ (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The Yasuní‐ITT proposal by the government of Ecuador to “keep the oil in the ground” in the untouched, highly biodiverse Ishpingo‐Tambococha‐Tiputini sector of Yasuni National Park in exchange for compensatory 3.6 billion dollars from the international community, has been interpreted and analyzed by academics and the media alike as a radical environmental intervention. In this article I argue that the ITT initiative it less of a radical environmental plan, and more of a performative articulation of post‐IMF nationalism. I problematize the notion that the ITT initiative heralds a shift to a radical new environmental paradigm, and argue that it should be understood primarily as a critique of Ecuador's experience with foreign debt and neoliberal restructuring.