Are Canadians Stealth Democrats? An American Idea Comes North

In an influential 2002 study, John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse make the provocative argument that high numbers of Americans seek “stealth democracy,” that is, processes that discover the will of the people without requiring substantial citizen effort. This article applies the concept in a Canadian province and argues that the stealth democracy measure represents an ambiguous amalgam of attitudes that are only loosely related to one another, and which do not appear to represent a single, underlying concept. We draw on 2011 Saskatchewan Election Study data and find that Saskatchewan responses to the stealth democracy items generally parallel the responses gathered in previous studies conducted in the United States, Finland, Britain, and Australia. We move beyond these studies by examining the components of the stealth democracy index. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of stealth democracy be rebuilt to better distinguish among attitudes toward democracy, politics, and governing.     

Archaeological geophysics of a Bronze Age agricultural landscape: the AROURA Project,central mainland Greece

Between 2010 and 2012, the AROURA project conducted magnetometric prospection in the ancient polder around the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1300–1190 b.c.) fortress of Glas, mainland Greece. As had been hypothesized, the anomalies detected were consistent with a system of agricultural fields. This system appears to have been irrigated and drained through previously identified hydraulic mechanisms in and around the polder. Comparison of soil profiles of anomalies with those of background areas, including their magnetic susceptibilities, corroborated magnetometric data. Anomalies were traced from sampled to unsampled areas through corresponding reclassified satellite bandwidths. Constituent sediments of features discovered were dated to the Late Bronze Age through AMS radiocarbon and OSL analyses. The results validated the use of extensive geophysics to detect and investigate ancient agricultural landscapes.     

The Clanking of Medieval Chains: Extra-Judicial Banishment in the British Empire

Banishment in English law was circumscribed by the Magna Carta and habeas corpus and prohibited except by legal procedure. The Transportation Act of 1718 legalised exile and enshrined convictism in law. The case of Bancoult (No.2), 2008, which considered the banishment of the Ilois of Chagos Island in the 1960s, brought consideration of banishment into the twentieth century and opened the royal prerogative to modern scrutiny. What becomes clear from this case is that banishment relied on royal prerogative without resort to legal process and was surprisingly routine throughout the British Empire. This article considers the implications of this case and some of the wider history of banishment in the empire.