Ecological modernisation,industry policy and the Australian automotive industry, 2007–13

Ecological modernisation (EM), in theory and practice, has increasingly become central to contemporary state environmental reform agendas. EM's allure lies in its central tenet that the contemporary institutions of capitalism can be ecologically adapted to achieve ‘win–win’ economic and environmental outcomes. How government policy can best accomplish this aim is contested, however, with weak and strong EM approaches advocating different roles for the state in facilitating ecological restructuring. The latter approaches argue that for EM processes to be successful, state intervention via ecological industrial policy is required. This article makes a unique contribution to the industry policy and EM debate by assessing the manner in which EM was conceptualised and implemented within the Australian government's automotive industry policy between 2007 and 2013. This analysis raises issues about the institutional capacity of states to pursue either weak or strong forms of EM.

生态现代化在理论上和实践上日益成为当代国家环境改革的中心议题。环境现代化所以诱人在于其核心原则：当代资本主义体制生态上可以取得经济、环境的双赢结果。不过政府政策如何实现这一目标确是挑战,生态现代化有强、弱二途,政府在促进生态重构时扮演不同的角色。按强势思路,要想生态现代化成功,需要国家通过生态产业政策进行干预。本文对2007至2013年澳大利亚政府的汽车产业政策形成和实施的方式做了评估,希望以此对产业政策以及生态现代化的辩论有所助益。本文还提出了国家实施强、弱生态现代化的体制能力的问题。     

The New South Wales Labor Party's 1927 Rules: A case study of democracy and oligarchy within political parties

Scholars have long recognised a propensity towards oligarchy within political parties. I explore this tendency through an examination of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party's 1927 Rules. These reforms are important because, by significantly decentralising power within the party, they demonstrate how the inclination towards oligarchy can be resisted. The adoption of the 1927 Rules, however, also coincided with the increasing centralisation of power in the hands of NSW Labor leader Jack Lang and his allies. This occurred largely in spite of the new rules, not because of them. It was able to happen, however, because the reforms sustained a crucial democratic flaw in the party constitution in that they continued to give excessive power to the leaders of affiliated trade unions.

学者们很早就注意到政党内的寡头化倾向。本文通过对新南威尔士1927年规则的研究,探讨了这种倾向。改革之所以重要,就在于它在党内分散了权力,在于改革表明了寡头化的倾向可以得到遏制。不过,1927规则通过的同时,权力也越发向新南威尔士工党首领杰克郎及其支持者的手里集中。1927规则没能阻止集权,而不是导致了集权。集权之所以发生,是因为改革在党章中保留了一个至关重要的民主弊端,即给予相关工会领导人过大的权力。     

Leonardo Bruni and the Poetics of Sovereignty

Abstract

Leonardo Bruni’s well-known oration, the Laudatio Florentinae urbis, has long stood at the center of discussions on the emergence of the modern republican state. Recent historiographical trends have emphasized the degree to which Bruni’s oration represents a propagandistic attempt both to portray Florence as a territorial power of Northern Italy keen to impose its sovereign authority on neighboring polities and as a republic intent on fashioning an image of itself as a popular sovereignty. It is in this second element of Bruni’s oration that we can discover his rhetorical purposes: he needed to give a distorted image of Florence as enjoying “popular” rule precisely because Florence was in fact moving in the opposite direction towards a more oligarchic concentration of political authority. The essay investigates the changes contemplated in revisions to Florence’s juridical codes at precisely the time of the oration’s composition, suggesting that when these two sources are juxtaposed, Bruni’s oration appears as a strongly ideological literary work the rhetorical gestures of which camouflage the actual historical and legal developments of Florence’s political life in the early fifteenth century.     

Provisioning an Early City: Spatial Equilibrium in the Agricultural Economy at Angkor,Cambodia

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - A dominant view in economic anthropology is that farmers must overcome decreasing marginal returns in the process of intensification. However, it is...     

Demographic Disequilibrium in Early Twentieth Century Thailand: Falling Mortality, Rising Fertility, or Both?

Estimates of Thai crude birth and death rates date from 1920 when the former was around 20 per thousand higher than the latter, implying natural increase of 2 percent per annum. Such disequilibrium cannot have been the norm over the long term historical past, when population growth must have been comparatively slow. This paper explores the bases for likely past relative equilibrium between Siamese birth and death rates, then seeks to explain the disequilibrium apparent by 1920. Classic demographic transition theory postulates initially high birth and death rates, this equilibrium eventually being broken by falling mortality. In Thailand, however, there is likely to have been both significant mortality decline and appreciable fertility increase after 1850, as the virtual elimination of indigenous warfare, rapid growth of the export rice economy and the demise of slavery and corvée labour created a new domestic environment. Characterized by more dispersed, often frontier, settlement, this environment was unprecedentedly sedate and settled, afforded ordinary households a previously unknown level of control over their resources of labour, and generated optimism about prospects for the next generation.     

Delivering Integrated Rural Development: Insights from Northern Ireland

This article explores progress being made in the sphere of integrated rural development in Northern Ireland, based on the experiences of 15 LEADER II local action groups. Research suggests that the local action groups experienced difficulties in developing integrative and multi-dimensional approaches to rural development during the initial stages of strategy formulation. In addition there appears to have been an emphasis on delivering the products of rural development with little importance attached to supporting processes such as capacity building and animation. However, as the programme progressed, this article examines the potential added value of LEADER II in Northern Ireland as demonstrated by the enhanced scope for cross-sector dialogue and local collaboration rooted in partnership based activity.