Normative Justifications for Liberal Nationalism: Justice,Democracy and National Identity

The essay examines a prominent normative defence of nationalism, which links shared nationality with the attainment of the goods of liberal justice and democratic governance. The essay first considers the argument that liberal values, and especially the value of social justice, will best be promoted in states whose members share a common nationality. In its strong form, this argument is vulnerable to counter‐instances. A weaker version, which claims that in states divided in terms of national identities, social justice may be precarious over the long term, is more plausible. The second part of the essay argues that there is a close relationship between democracy and shared national identity. This section spells out precisely how a common national identity is helpful both for representative institutions to function properly and for widespread participation on the part of ordinary citizens.     

Justifying Multiculturalism: Social Justice,Diversity and National Identity in Australia and New Zealand

Multiculturalism has been criticised for emphasising cultural recognition over resource redistribution for minority cultural and ethnic groups. Moreover, critics argue that cultural diversity fails to provide enough common ground upon which to sustain civic nationalism. This paper examines the development of multiculturalist and biculturalist policies in Australia and New Zealand, and argues that these have in fact been justified in terms of a negotiated balance between two civic values: the value of diverse cultural expression, and social justice understood in egalitarian terms. The tension between these values has shaped the debate around multiculturalism in both cases. Both the social justice and value of cultural diversity arguments are deployed to reinforce conceptions of national identity in Australia and New Zealand.     

Rethinking Bureaucrats in the Policy Process: Criminal Justice Agents and the National Crime Agenda

Policy scholars have noted that bureaucrats can play an important role in defining policy alternatives. Few studies, however, examine the extent of their involvement in this process. This study contributes to public policy scholarship by offering a framework for understanding the strength of bureaucratic involvement in the process of defining problems and policy alternatives. Using witness data from congressional hearings on crime between 1947 and 1998, I find that federal, state, and local criminal justice bureaucrats have come to occupy a central role in the process of defining policy alternatives. In addition, I find that the centrality of criminal justice actors comes at the expense of interest groups, community organizations, and citizens/victims. Implications for criminal justice policy and understanding bureaucratic involvement in the policy process are discussed.     

Assembling Justice Spaces: The Scalar Politics of Environmental Justice in North-east England

Abstract:  In contrast to the US environmental justice movement, which has been successful in building a networked environmentalism that recognises—and has impacted upon—national patterns of distributional (in)equalities, campaigns in the UK have rarely developed beyond the local or articulated a coherent programme of action that links to wider socio-spatial justice issues or effects real changes in the regulatory or political environment. Our purpose in this paper is to extend research which explores the spatial politics of mobilisation, by attending to the multi-scalar dynamics embedded in the enactment of environmental justice (EJ) in north-east England. It is an approach that is indebted to recent work on the scalar politics of EJ, and also to the network ideas associated with actor-network theory (ANT)-inspired research on human–nature relations. Our account provides preliminary reflections on the potential for an "assemblage" perspective which draws together people, texts, machines, animals, devices and discourses in relations that collectively constitute—and scale—EJ. To conclude, and building upon this approach, we suggest future research avenues that we believe present a promising agenda for critical engagement with the production, scaling and politics of environmental (in)justice.     

Law,Culture and Access to Justice under the Palestinian National Authority

It has been widely claimed that the Palestinian National Authority has failed to provide adequate access to the law for many Palestinians. Whilst impediments to legal access are often treated as a technical questions of procedure, or as an issue of the cultural appropriateness of legal regimes, this article takes a third approach, which stresses political and historical factors. In order to understand obstacles to legal access it is necessary to discover the ways in which legal practices are understood, used and abandoned in particular contexts. Through an examination of labour disputes, the article argues that in the context of the West Bank, legal claims have no absolute moral value, but are attractive for the substantive claims that can be made through them, opening up legal avenues for political manipulation. In this context, legal entitlements are distributed according to political resources, rather than legal procedures. The article concludes by arguing that promotion of effective access to legal processes in the West Bank should not be seen as a short‐cut to a stable political regime, since accountable legal processes require a centralized, strong and stable coercive support, based in a measure of organizational cohesion and territorial sovereignty.