Is there a need for a new cultural policy strategy in the Nordic welfare state?

Cultural policies have existed as a structural element of the Nordic welfare states from the very beginning. Today these policies are being re‐evaluated, and there are some indications that they may be gradually dismantled. Local cultural politicians in municipalities (cultural boards) and professionals (e.g. cultural secretaries) have become uncertain and anxious about their future role and legitimacy.

This new situation is addressed and analysed by using the ideas of Goffman's on‐and off‐stage representations, and Foucault's governmentality. Important background factors in the development of cultural policies both in the past, present and future are identified and used to explain the present unclear situation as a reflection of an existing cultural hierarchy or hegemony (see Gramsci). This paper also discusses the role of cultural professionals and local cultural politicians in the implementation of the Nordic cultural policies with references to examples from Finland and Sweden.     

Does Morality Policy Exist? Testing a Basic Assumption

Does morality policy exist? A growing body of scholarship has examined the ways that the politics of so‐called “morality policy” (e.g., abortion regulation, same‐sex marriage policy, and capital punishment) differ from the politics of other types of policy. In this literature, morality policies are assumed to be distinctive in that they generate conflicts of basic moral values, do not lend themselves to compromise, and are widely salient and technically simple. Using an email survey of morality policy scholars and a telephone survey of just over seven hundred Illinois residents in 2005, we test this assumption. We find that citizen responses about these policies vary along three of these four characteristics, just as morality policy scholars predicted. Thus, morality policies do exist, as assumed by these scholars. Our analysis also suggests some potentially fruitful avenues for future research on morality policy and other policy typologies.     

From Corporatism to Public Utilities: Workplace Pensions in the 21st Century

For many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, workplace pensions have been an important mechanism for supplementing state‐sponsored social security. Notwithstanding significant differences between developed economies in the significance attached to workplace pensions, provision has been typically encouraged through preferential tax policies on benefits and compensation packages. If relevant for the baby‐boom generation, it is doubtful that these arrangements will be as important for future generations. As state‐sponsored social security has been discounted in terms of promised value and entitlement, traditional workplace pensions have been closing and replaced by retirement saving instruments that are neither as lucrative nor as dependable. Retrenchment in workplace pensions has prompted governments to consider and, in some cases, develop different types of retirement savings institutions. This paper charts the decline of traditional workplace pensions, the apparent inadequacy of alternatives such as money‐purchase (defined contribution) schemes, and the rise of what are referred to as ‘public utilities’: government sponsored savings institutions designed to compensate for the decline (in coverage and promised value) of workplace pensions albeit at a more modest level than that associated with traditional defined benefit schemes. Reference is made to the experience of the USA, the UK, and Australia with passing comments of related developments in Germany and continental Europe. It is argued that the rise of public utilities in this domain is indicative of the transformation of corporate capitalism over the past 25 years and the realisation that the costs of neoliberalism may be so significant that governments have to take responsibility, once again, for underwriting retirement welfare.     

Russia’s energy relations with China: passing the strategic threshold?

This article examines Russian energy policies toward China over the past decade as reluctant engagement changed into a priority energy partnership. From 2008 to 2016 Russian and Chinese companies signed several major oil and gas agreements, a period in which Moscow reassessed China as a future energy consumer and lifted bilateral cooperation to a new level. The article utilizes the strategic partnership concept as an analytical framework and finds traditional realist concepts and hedging inadequate for this particular case. The study illuminates Russian geopolitical considerations and acceptance of vulnerability, which combined make long-term Russian energy policies more China dependent. Officially, Russia seeks diversification among Asian energy buyers, but its focus has increasingly been on China. Western sanctions imposed in 2014 for Russia’s role in Ukraine accelerated this trend. Moscow’s energy policies toward Beijing with its pipelines and long-term agreements are permanent arrangements that resemble strategic partnership policies. China is eager to increase energy relations with Russian companies, but Beijing also ensures that it does not become too dependent on one supplier. Russian concern over its increased dependence on China in the East is deemed secondary to expanding Russia’s customer base beyond the still-dominant European market.     

Why the Pakistan army is here to stay: prospects for civilian governance

This article explores the prospects for civilian governance over Pakistan's military in the policy‐relevant future. After reviewing the Pakistan army's past interference in the country's judicial and political affairs, it turns to the ongoing political maneuvering of the current Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, despite Pakistan's ostensible democratic dispensation. The article dilates on the impact of US engagement on the robustness of the Pakistan army's dominance and questions the newfound US commitment to promoting democratization and civilian control. The article argues that while conventional wisdom places the onus disproportionately upon the military's penchant for interventionism, the army has intervened only with the active assistance of civilian institutions, which are subsequently further eroded with every military takeover. It concludes with a consideration of whether or not genuine civilian control would result in a significant change in Pakistan's foreign and domestic policies, particularly Pakistan's well‐known utilization of Islamist militants in India and Afghanistan.     

Formation of beach‐ridge plains: an appreciation of the contribution by Jack L. Davies

A robust debate among coastal geomorphologists as to the processes by which beach‐ridge plains around Australia have formed was initiated by a former President of the Institute of Australian Geographers. This review gives special consideration to the work of Jack L. Davies, whose academic contributions to coastal geomorphology in Australia have not always been appropriately acknowledged when explaining how similar plains have evolved elsewhere in the world. Davies recognised that relatively steep storm waves caused erosion (cut) on beaches, whereas less steep long‐period swell waves returned sand (fill). He considered the beach berm to be the nucleus on which a beach ridge formed, which could subsequently develop into a foredune, in contrast to cobble ridges that were deposited during storms. Offshore conditions regulate supply of sand to the shoreline, partly through effects on wave refraction, with higher rates of supply where the nearshore is shallow. It was apparent to Davies that the elevation of successive ridges might, but not necessarily, provide evidence of past changes of sea level, despite adornment by variable amounts of windblown dune sand. Morphodynamic understanding of long‐term coastal evolution, based on radiocarbon dating chronologies, has demonstrated that Australian coastal plains formed over the past ~6,000 years when sea level has been close to its present level, in contrast to several documented locations in the northern hemisphere where the sea has been rising for the past few millennia. Particularly insightful were observations by Davies that ridge formation could be influenced by a range of factors including changes in sea level, storminess, or sediment supply. These factors acting singly or in combination seem likely to change in the future. Understanding such responses remains a high priority and can be addressed by new technologies, such as light detection and ranging, optically stimulated luminescence dating, ground‐penetrating radar, and computer simulation.     

Buzz Kill: State Adoption of DUI Interlock Laws, 2005–11

Most states have adopted significant measures to reduce the incidence of driving under the influence (DUI) but a DUI death occurs about every 53 minutes; a significant portion of these accidents are the result of recidivist DUI drivers. A relatively new and novel way states can reduce DUI deaths from repeat offenders is to require offenders to install an interlock device on their vehicle, but not all states have adopted this measure. We explore whether the Policy Typology and Policy Diffusion Frameworks can help us understand the politics behind why some states have adopted interlock policies while others have not. Employing over‐time data from the American states our results suggest that the adoption of interlock laws is best explained by internal factors to the state and the adoption of interlock laws by neighboring states. In addition, the adoption of interlock laws is a form of incremental policymaking—states with existing DUI laws are more likely to adopt interlock policies. We conclude that interlock policies diffuse in a manner similar to other regulatory policies and that interlock policies should be categorized as protective regulatory policies rather than social regulatory policies.     

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.     

Innovative strategies of political regionalization: the case of North Rhine‐Westphalia

This article deals with two innovative public policy instruments instituted in North Rhine‐Westphalia (Germany) over the last two decades: the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park and the regionalization of structural policies. Both instruments are characterized by the introduction of a greater flexibility, decentralization and new forms of organization as well as the integration of sectoral policies within the public sector. Paradoxically, these regionalized public policies have not been bottom‐up but rather top‐down. Their institution reflects the state's determination to show its ability to effect change despite the fact that overall structural changes in the economic and the political subsystems have severely curtailed public sector powers. The state demonstrates that aptitude by initiating diverse and case‐specific forms of restructuring the political apparatus. The article looks into the specific features of both policy instruments and tries to position the empirical evidence within the current debate on the shift in importance between various planning levels in Europe.     

Rentiers and Autocrats, Monarchs and Democrats, State and Society: the Middle East Between Globalization, Human 'Agency', and Europe

The key concerns in work on the politics of the Middle East in the past decade have been economic and political liberalization/democratization (or the absence thereof) and security, both domestic and international, along with a continued focus on the Arab‐Israeli conflict. There has been an increasing recognition that these issues are strongly interrelated. Europe cannot avoid concerns over economic and political stability in the region affecting its own interests. Together with economic reasons for engagement with the region, this has brought about a desire to see economic and political reform take place. The Euro‐Mediter‐ranean Partnership Initiative (EMPI) is one result of this. The background against which these policies, concerns and hopes are evolving is ‘globalization’, both of the discourse of ‘democracy’ and in the growing hold of liberal market economics internationally. Recent research on the politics and political economy of the region, and on EMPI, however, shows that a combination of political‐economic and related political‐cultural factors, along with the Arab‐Israeli conflict, continue to hamper political and economic reform in the Middle East, and that European policy as currently conceived is unlikely to affect this greatly. Yet such recent work also shows that aspects of globalization are changing the environment in which Middle Eastern regimes are having to function, while at the same time offering civil society new tools. Middle Eastern societies do, to varying extents, possess the necessary ‘spaces’ and traditions for human ‘agency’ to escape the constraints of domestic and international ‘structures’ and evolve new political cultures‐including democratic ones. Existing judicial or legislative institutions may acquire volition of their own and reinforce this process. There is nothing in ‘Islam’ that necessarily obstructs such possibilities. And supposedly ’obsolete‘ monarchies might yet be among the most successful types of regime in coping with such change.     

Shifting Winds: Explaining Variation in State Policies to Promote Small‐Scale Wind Energy

States have increasingly taken leading roles in U.S. environmental policymaking over the past two decades. As laboratories of democracy, states have developed different levels and mixes of policies to address climate change, nonpoint source pollution, alternative energy, and other challenging environmental issues. Policy scholars have sought to explain variation in state environmental policy through two primary theoretical lenses: internal determinants and regional diffusion. While our understanding of state environmental policy adoption has grown to identify which variables are most important, less is known about how these variables interact in particular states to influence policy adoption. This study examines the interactions of variables from both theories to explain how state policies for small‐scale wind energy promotion were adopted in three U.S. states. Our results highlight the nuanced role of citizen ideology, which may be important in contexts at either end of the ideological spectrum but less important in the middle—where economic development is more critical. Results also indicate that interstate competition may be over environmental as well as economic leadership. Interestingly, strength of the wind resource is not necessarily correlated with policy adoption for small‐scale wind energy promotion.     

The return of economic nationalism to East Central Europe: Right‐wing intellectual milieus and anti‐liberal resentment

This article emphasises the non‐economic goals of economic nationalism and in particular its often overlooked political goals. Drawing parallels between economic nationalisms in Central Europe and East Asia, it focuses on Poland and Hungary and asks why did these countries turn to economic nationalism. The article traces this turn to ideational foundations developed by right‐wing intellectuals over the last two decades, arguing that right‐wing intellectuals believed that liberalism has failed what they conceived of its most important (political) purpose, the need of a radical break with the communist past. Based on a study of the writings and careers of leading Polish and Hungarian right‐wing intellectuals, the article draws attention to the nature of the perceived threat to the nation. It contributes to the sociology of nationalism an analysis of how such a threat emerges and translates into a guiding idea of illiberal economic policies.     

Mirages and miracles of European small and medium enterprise development

A small‐scale industry ‘renaissance’ has characterized recent academic literature on industrialization and development policies. This comes as a reaction to the manifest difficulties facing mass production economies and to the sometimes spectacular performance of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly in Europe. The causes of the above success, together with the accompanying theorizations — such as the flexible specialization approach — are manifold and contradictory. Furthermore, theories on the present and future of SMEs vary as regards both optimism and policy implications — supra‐national, national or regional. Recent EU policies towards SMEs present an amalgam of instruments which, albeit often economically effective, constitute chiefly a political gesture.     

Paying for water: water pricing and equity in England and Wales

Over the past three decades, the business of water supply in England and Wales has been gradually transforming from the supply of a service to citizens, to the sale of a commodity to customers. The paper provides a genealogy of concepts of efficiency and equity in water regulation over the past thirty years, prior to evaluating the implications for water consumers of one aspect of this process – the shift away from policies prioritizing inter- and intra-regional equalization (implying a principle of social equity) towards policies prioritizing economic efficiency (implying a principle of economic equity) in water charging. In closing, alternatives to the current arrangements for domestic consumers are proposed.     

Exploring the Frontier of Livelihoods Research

This article discusses the value of livelihoods studies and examines the obstacles which have prevented it from making a greater contribution to understanding the lives of poor people over the past decade. After examining the roots of the livelihoods approach, two major challenges are explored: the conceptualization of the problem of access, and how to achieve a better understanding of the mutual link between livelihood opportunities and decision‐making. The article concludes that access to livelihood opportunities is governed by social relations, institutions and organizations, and that power is an important (and sometimes overlooked) explanatory variable. In discussing the issue of access to livelihood opportunities, the authors note the occurrence of both strategic and unintentional behaviour and the importance of structural factors; they discuss concepts of styles and pathways, which try to cater for structural components and regularities; and they propose livelihood trajectories as an appropriate methodology for examining these issues. In this way, the article also sets the agenda for future livelihoods research.     

Intellectuals and politics

ABSTRACT. By imagining their audiences, intellectuals invented and constructed the collective identities of nations and transnational communities like Europe or humankind. Four ideal types of intellectuals are outlined by describing them in their relation to politics: the intellectual as cosmopolitan ascetic; the intellectual as enlightened legislator; the intellectual as revolutionary; and the intellectual as the voice of a traumatic memory. These ideal types change over time in response to their focus of attention and their mode of communication. Because of changes in their media (from handwritten to printed books) and changes in their written language (from Latin to French and Italian, and further to vernacular languages), intellectuals were able to change views on past, present and future times. Today, they are involved in (civic) resistance but rarely in politics per se. By renewing the tension of the sacred and profane – the so‐called axial‐age revolution – contemporary intellectuals in Eastern Europe are decoupled from direct political power.     

Capacity Building toward Resilience: How Communities Recover,Learn, and Change in the Aftermath of Extreme Events

When faced with natural disasters, communities respond in diverse ways, with processes that reflect the extent of damage experienced by the community, their resource availability, and stakeholder needs. Local‐level processes drive decisions about mitigating future flood risks, such as if, how, and where to rebuild, as well as changes in zoning practices and public outreach programs. Because of their potentially recurring nature, floods offer an opportunity for communities to learn from and adapt to these experiences with the goal of increasing resiliency through deliberation, modification of former policies, and adoption of new policies. By following the response to the September 2013 floods in seven Colorado communities, this study investigates if, how, and why communities successfully learn from extreme events and change their local government policies to increase resilience and decrease vulnerability to future floods. We find that greater openness of post‐flood decision process is associated with more in‐depth deliberation, learning, and more substantive and frequent policy change.     

Ageing in remote and cyclone‐prone communities: geography,policy, and disaster relief

Focusing on the experience of independent‐living older adults, this study explored how those in regional Australian coastal communities have coped with repeated natural disasters. Using an exploratory, mixed‐method, and phenomenological approach, an array of non‐probability snowballing techniques was used to seek participation from residents aged 65 years or more, and from emergency services officers, disaster managers, and community health care providers located in regional communities affected by Cyclone Larry (2006) and Cyclone Yasi (2011). The research found that post‐disaster political decisions have had a negative long‐term impact on local economies, causing outmigration by those seeking employment, and resulting in many elderly residents facing a future without family support. As government policies encourage ageing‐in‐place by providing subsidised in situ care, increasingly older adults are remaining in exposed vulnerable locations, reliant on authorities for their survival both day‐to‐day and during an emergency. Findings also uncovered inconsistent disaster management policies between neighbouring local government councils and an unrealistic reliance on in situ care organisations by disaster managers during preparation and recovery stages of a natural hazard. These results highlight the need for those charged with emergency management to reassess both the future natural hazard adaptive capacities of ageing regional communities and policy responses to such challenges.     

A theatre of machines: Automata circuses and digital bread in the smart city of Toronto

In this paper, the policies, projects, and promises of “smart” initiatives at the City of Toronto are evaluated, as they manifest through a technological convergence between local government services and an increased focus on citizen services through data-driven mediums. Through direct participant observation and formal interviews, a robust understanding of the internal institutional dynamics, the perspectives citizens in the “smart city,” and the operational disconnects in governance, policy, and practice has been gained. Our case study on the City of Toronto provides an account of how and from where these smart motivations for increasing a data-driven engagement with the public have arisen over the past several years. In doing so, we identify key characteristics that both enable and hinder the existing smart city in the forms of access to open data, the use of increased computational methods, and the engagement of public services through digital space as requirements for the future of participatory governance. We argue that instituting appropriate policies and engaging citizens to co-design and participate in the planning processes are essential to ensuring an inclusive, modern, and open smart city.     

Fuelling Social Inclusion? Neo‐extractivism,State–Society Relations and Biofuel Policies in Latin America's Southern Cone

Scholarship on neo‐extractivism agrees that this ‘post‐neoliberal’ model of development is founded on an inherent contradiction between the commitment to continue natural resource extraction and the need to legitimize these activities by using their revenues for poverty reduction. Using the cases of the national biofuel policies of the ‘post‐neoliberal’ governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this article enquires why and how these policies emerged, how they were implemented, and how the resulting national experiences exemplify the inherent contradictions embedded in neo‐extractivist policies. Adopting a strategic‐relational approach to analyse state–society interaction, it is argued that the scope of progressive policies is conditioned to a large extent by pre‐existing social structures, institutions and state–society interactions. The article shows how progressive reforms intersect with the prevailing interests of agribusiness and state actors and are recast and used for different ends as these interact with powerful actors such as the multinational soybean complex and agrarian movements. It is suggested that the prevailing over‐emphasis in the neo‐extractivist literature on the politics of domination and contestation overlooks the multiple and complex rural responses of the different progressive governments. It also obscures the possibilities to explore the ruptures and continuities of these countries’ governments with previous models, and therefore fails to recognize state advances.