Why Protest?

This study examines both behavioral and attitudinal dimensions of public opposition to the siting of a recycling center using inperson surveys and observed measures of behavior. This is a perfect NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) case, as the underlying activity is widely supported while the facility to do it is opposed locally. One finding is that attitudes may differ significantly from behavior. Levels of behavioral opposition are not only lower than attitudinal opposition, but they decline more quickly with distance. A second finding is that behavioral opposition is motivated not only by perceived costs from a facility, but also by perceptions of the fairness of the siting process.     

Rethinking responses towards group-homes: inclusionary legislation,supportive municipal attitudes,and place-based opposition

Little research has been devoted to uncontested human services facilities, nor to the legal frameworks siting proposals are situated in. To address these, this paper examines group-homes that operated in Jerusalem, Israel, between 2002 and 2012, identifies and explores a range of responses group-homes encounter. Results point to only low levels of opposition alongside a relatively equal distribution of group-homes across all areas of the city, including affluent neighbourhoods. Interviews with key stakeholders suggest that these results have been the outcome of a combination of inclusionary national legislation, supportive municipal attitudes and actions, and a proactive approach adopted by service-providers. Through focusing on existing group-homes we find that the characteristics of opposition depend, in part, on the stage of the group-home’s life cycle in which it occurs. Specifically, opposition occurring in the pre- and upon-siting stages resemble typical NIMBY opposition while those occurring post-siting are more place-based. These results point to the importance of examining opposition within the context of inclusionary legislation, municipal attitudes and place-based responses.     

LOCAL POLITICAL PRACTICE IN RESPONSE TO A MANUFACTURING PLANT CLOSURE: HOW GEOGRAPHY COMPLICATES CLASS ANALYSIS

This paper analyzes the responses to two separate closures of a large glass manufacturing plant in Clarksburg, West Virginia, to examine how geography has been integral to the conduct of local political practice in this community. When the plant, by far the local area's largest manufacturing employer, first closed in 1979 the state and local government put together a considerable package of incentives to attract a purchaser for the facility. However, although glass production continued, the plant was again closed in 1987 after a corporate takeover. In response to this second closure the characteristically pro-business Governor of West Virginia initiated an almost $650 million lawsuit against the plant's new owners. The plant's union leaders on the other hand collaborated with city government officials and local business interests to constrain community opposition to the closure. The paper argues that this paradoxical situation, of actors taking up positions contrary to those which an ageographical class analysis would have predicted, was the result precisely of their locality dependence in the face of mobile capital.     

THE PUBLIC LIFE OF ECONOMIC INCENTIVES

Many current proposals for policy reform call for the use of economic incentives. The growing application of economic incentives in a number of policy areas necessitates continuing critical examination of the claims for and the criticisms of their use. Early empirical evidence on the implementation of incentive schemes serves to shed light on the validity of some of the supporting and opposing arguments. By continuing the assessment of the viability of economic incentives, this study reveals that incentive alternatives face obstacles to use stemming from implementation problems, but political and philosophical issues pose greater threats. Nevertheless, the use of incentives can best be defended on political and moral grounds. Political resistance can be overcome and incentives can be employed effectively, if incentive schemes are understood as fostering one form of social interaction in a mixed regime.     

The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Process in Connecticut

The national policy to manage low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) from commercial nuclear power plants and other generators appears to be at a standstill with regard to siting new LLRW disposal facilities in the states. Regional compacts have been established and host stales designated in most compacts, but the NIMBY problem has proved insurmountable. Connecticut has been added to the growing list of states that have experienced siting setbacks and failures. This case study describes and analyzes the Connecticut experience. We show that siting was derailed by a technical-rationality approach that ignored the political dimensions of siting until it was too late, and by the consequent and powerful NIMBY reaction that ensued. We consider the national LLRW policy dimensions of siting failures and suggest possible policy alternatives for siting LLRW disposal facilities.     

Set the junta free: Pre-transitional justice in Myanmar's democratisation

Myanmar is in political deadlock. In part, this is because the opposition has not confronted problems of transitional justice, notably how to deal with members of the military junta who have participated in gross human rights violations. There are therefore few incentives for the ruling generals to consider talking about change. To tackle this problem, the article develops a model of pre-transitional justice that is focused on the critical ‘torturer problem’. It is also informed by recent developments in international criminal law, and by the spread of truth commissions and lustration systems. The integrated reconciliatory model that results is suitable for political negotiation, capable of generating discontinuities with an authoritarian past, and legally and technically feasible. Applying it to Myanmar, the article holds that qualified amnesty is necessary for political reform.     

Round barrows and the harmonious landscape: placing Early Bronze Age burial monuments in south-east England

The distribution and siting of barrows within the landscape of south-east England is considered, and it is observed that clustering occurs on certain geological units and in specific topographical positions. A socio-economic explanation for the distribution of those in Sussex is possible, and the concentrations can even be considered in terms of territorial units. However, distribution across the south-east is nodal, and the clusters present on the South Downs are not matched on the North Downs, and it is necessary to consider other explanations. A cosmological approach provides a fresh insight into the siting of barrows and helps explain siting within cemeteries as well as within the wider landscape.     

Limits to Radical Intervention: Agricultural Taxation in West Bengal

Agricultural taxation policy formulation under the Left Front government in West Bengal indicates landed interests are now powerful enough to resist enhanced taxation. As the most radical government in India abandoned proposed agricultural tax increases in the face of landowner opposition, and felt obliged to lower land taxes instead, India is not likely to increase land revenue for economic development. This effective landowner veto power over taxation policy indicates significant agrarian reform is not forthcoming in India, and the trend is towards greater subsidies for surplus-producing farmers. The research was conducted through interviews with the policy formulators in West Bengal.     

The Culture of Fasting in Early Stuart Parliaments*

The fasts, proposed and observed by parliament in the first half of the 17th century, have always been defined as opportunities for propaganda. This article focuses, instead, on their cultural and religious meanings: why MPs believed that the act of fasting itself was important and what they hoped it would achieve. It argues that fasts were proposed for two reasons: to forge unity between parliament and the king at a time of growing division, with the aim of making parliamentary sessions more productive and successful, and to provide more direct resolution to the nation's problems by invoking divine intervention. Fast motions commanded widespread support across parliament because they were rooted in the dominant theory of causation – divine providence – and reflected the gradual conventionalisation of fasting in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. However, this consensus seemed to wane in the early 1640s as divisions between Charles I and some of his most vocal MPs widened, while the fast day observed on 17 November 1640 was used by some MPs to express their opposition to Charles's religious policy, especially regarding the siting of the communion table/altar and the position from where the service was to be read. The article concludes by reflecting on how a study of parliamentary fasting can contribute to wider debates on commensality and abstinence.     

毛泽东"共同富裕"思想解读

早在建国之初,毛泽东就已明确提出了共同富裕的概念,并积极地探索具体的实现道路与模式。从农业合作社到人民公社的发展与演变真实地反映了他的富裕观和价值取向。一方面他以生产关系的升级来努力寻求现实中的平等发展与同等富裕,另一方面他又把经济的富裕与革命精神、道德建设对立起来,从而陷入取舍两难的矛盾之中。     

Some Afterthoughts on Culture and Explanation in Historical Inquiry

I argue here that the articles in this forum contain basic agreements. All three reject naturalism, reductionism, and monism while retaining causality as an explanatory category, and all three emphasize the role of time and argue for a view in which culture is regarded as both structured and contingent.
The differences among the explanatory proposals of Hall, Biernacki, and Kane are as important as the similarities: while Hall favors a Weberian approach, Biernacki argues for a primarily pragmatic explanation of culture, and Kane for a primarily semiotic explanation. I argue that all three positions face immanent problems in elucidating the exact nature of cultural explanation. While Hall leaves the problem of "extrinsic" ideal-typical explanation unsolved, Biernacki simply presupposes the superiority of pragmatic over other types of cultural explanation, and Kane does the same for semiotic explanation. Hints at cultural explanation in the form of narrative remain underargued and are built on old ideas of an opposition between "analysis" and "narrative." This is also the case with the latest plea for "analytic narratves." I conclude that a renewed reflection on this opposition is called for in order to come to grips with cultural explanation and to get beyond the old stereotypes regarding the relationship between historical and social-scientific approaches to the past.     

THE MAXIMUM CAPTURE OR “SPHERE OF INFLUENCE” LOCATION PROBLEM: HOTELLING REVISITED ON A NETWORK*

ABSTRACT. The problem of the ice cream vendor on the beach is extended to the siting of multiple entering servers into the midst of existing servers which are already in place at multiple sites on a network. The network of population nodes, joining arcs, and eligible sites for servers provides the underlying matrix of the problem. The goal of the single firm which is siting the multiple entering servers is the capture of the maximum population from existing servers. This combinatorial problem can be described as a linear integer program for which solutions can easily be derived. Computational experience and insights derived therefrom are reported.     

‘Continuous abuse’ or ‘a unanimous blessing’? Reassessing the Conservative Party’s stance on the 1951 Festival of Britain

The 1951 Festival of Britain has long been seen as both a key turning point in the country’s post-war history and an event which was delivered, by Clement Attlee’s Labour Government, in the face of formidable political (and media) opposition. This article considers the Festival’s status as a pivotal moment in modern British history but focuses primarily on the Conservative Party’s approach to the project. In doing so, its draws on previously neglected evidence to suggest that successive works on the subject have greatly exaggerated the extent to which the festivities were the subject of partisan campaigning and political contention.     

基于GIS技术的旅游景区度假村选址评价研究——以广东南昆山七仙湖为例

旅游景区度假村的选址与布局是景区建设的重要内容之一。本文以广东南昆山为例,对影响度假村选址的各个因子进行了分析,选取坡度、坡向、景观和交通作为七仙湖环湖地区建造度假村的四大评价因子,并赋予权重。利用ArcGIS软件平台中的ArcMap、ArcScene等组件,借助多种空间分析模块,并通过模拟地形和视角,对5个样区建造度假村适宜性进行定量比较,最后确定3号样区较其他样区在坡度、景观空阔度以及交通条件方面有明显优势,适宜建造度假村,以此验证了将GIS技术应用于度假村选址的可行性,并为旅游开发提供了经济依据。     

Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the Presentation of the Henrician Reformation in his Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth

Abstract

It was no coincidence that Charles I commissioned a study of the life and reign of Henry VIII in the 1630s as he proceeded with controversial anti-Calvinist religious reforms in the face of Puritan opposition and suspicion that he was a closet Catholic. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's willingness to undertake the laborious scholarly task is initially more surprising but can be explained by his commitment to the eradication of religious conflict and his realization that it would enable him to disseminate his own rationalist, reunionist and Erastian views on religious belief, the organization of religion and the location of religious authority.     

The Arab Opposition Molehill

Arab Islamic oppositions have proven largely ineffectual in molding regime outcomes since the liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s, although many continue to overestimate their potential for propelling reform. This article argues that a keen sense of the past is necessary when evaluating whether or not an opposition matters for political reform. Section I introduces noted scholar Juan Linz's notion of “semi‐opposition”—limited and “semi‐free” opposition groups that may sustain authoritarian regimes as much as repression. Using interviews and English and Arabic sources, Section II demonstrates historical correspondences between semi‐opposition and the Jordanian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) organizations concerning origins and support, ideology and approach to politics, regime tolerance and political environment, and political behavior. Section III develops Linz's hypothesis on the links between semi‐opposition and authoritarian persistence by examining how the MB marginalizes and raises the costs of dissent for other opposition groups and actors. The MB is briefly contrasted with the Algerian Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) opposition party of 1989–1992 in Section IV . Decidedly not a semi‐opposition, the FIS proved far more transformative than either the Jordanian or Egyptian MB, inducing centrifugal politics and the collapse of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) state that governed Algeria from 1962.     

Partisan Probing and Democratic Decisionmaking Rethinking the Nimby Syndrome

In this paper, I focus on Minnesota's unsuccessful attempt to site a hazardous waste stabilization and containment facility, but argue that this should not be seen as another siting failure due to irrational and self-interested citizens who subverted a well-conceived and essential disposal facility, Through a detailed comparison of citizen and elite claims about the facility, I show that many of the sources of disagreement between citizens and siting officials involve value trade-offs rather than technical issues, and contend that state officials' views on these matters should not take precedence. Through "partisan probing," citizens actually contribute to effective policymaking rather than detract from it.     

Conservatism,Aesthetic and Active: Reflections on Roger Scruton and Pierre Manent

Roger Scruton and Pierre Manent provide us much to admire, as authors and as men, and much to ponder. They can be seen as collaborators in the defense of the nation-state against the empty universalism of “human rights,” and, more generally, in exposing the boundless arrogance and blindness of modern rationalism insofar as it denies its inheritance from premodern sources. This defense of the nation-state and critique of secular rationalism are of vital interest to moral and political conservatives, and Scruton, for his part, has explicitly taken on the cause and the label of conservatism. But conservatives face an imposing and, I propose here, critically instructive obstacle in appropriating the teachings of these two contemporary giants. For, as soon as we begin to examine the foundations of their respective projects, Scruton's and Manent's approaches appear to be, not only quite different (and therefore, one might hope, complementary) but in an important sense directly opposed to one another. This opposition appears most directly in their respective estimates of the realm of politics: one would exaggerate little in saying that, for Manent, politics is everything, whereas Scruton wishes to constrict the reach of politics to the minimum. Thus, Scruton embraces the title “conservative” but understands it apolitically, whereas Manent declines to identify himself as conservative but fully embraces a political task essential to conservatism. Conservatives must confront this disconcerting opposition and see what can be learned from it.     

Beyond NIMBY

Using survey data, this study tests competing hypotheses about the nature of opposition to a hazardous waste incinerator. Using a multivariate model, we challenge some of the basic assumptions of the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) label typically used to characterize opposition. We find little evidence for components of the NIMBY label such as concern about property values and aesthetics, but find instead that opposition is related primarily to trust in government, fear of health consequences, and other ideological or demographic factors. We conclude with a discussion urging facility proponents to gain a better understanding of the nature of opposition and of the complexities of public opinion.