Setting the Record Straight: Frame Contestation as an Advocacy Tactic

Policy scholars recognize that most policy arenas are characterized by competition among interests advancing different problem frames with conflicting problem definitions and/or solutions. At the same time, there is little research that empirically analyzes the dynamics of such framing contests. Using a case study of energy policy advocacy by the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund across three decades, I examine the tactics that interest groups employ when faced with agenda conflict. Contrary to what most policy research suggests, I find that interest groups do not avoid public clashes with their competitors; rather, they often willingly engage in confrontational framing techniques. I call this activity frame contestation , and it involves attempts at discrediting opponents’ factual claims, policy ideas, and/or group character. The study reveals interesting differences between groups in the specific types of frame contestation employed. In particular, the use of character frames that attack an opponents’ reputation appears to be linked to group ideology and orientation toward the business community. These findings enhance our understanding of advocacy group decision making and focus our attention on the role of frame contestation in agenda setting and policymaking outcomes.     

‘Nuclear Sword of the Moslem World’?: the United States,Britain, Pakistan,and the ‘Islamic Bomb’, 1977–80

There exists today considerable fear of nuclear proliferation across the ‘Islamic world.’ Despite this, an issue that - in part - set the tone for contemporary debates has largely gone under-examined in the scholarly literature. The emergence of the ‘Islamic bomb’ idea in the late 1970s created a meme that remains with us today. Analysing the roots of this meme allows us to examine its creation and the attitudes of governments towards this alleged emergent nuclear-proliferation threat. This analysis demonstrates that while the media portrayed the ‘Islamic world’ as violent, undifferentiated, and determined to gain nuclear capability, the US and British governments assessed matters evidentially and came to the conclusion that the ‘Islamic bomb’ represented a propaganda problem rather than an imminent nuclear-proliferation concern. Attitudes towards the ‘Islamic bomb’ highlight media and governmental attitudes towards the changing power balances in the Middle East and South Asia during a turbulent and troubled period.     

Teaching energy geographies via videography

In our digital age of information acquisition, multimedia information streams are constant, constantly changing and often contain multiple messages about topics important to everyday life, such as energy geographies. Recognizing that college students are prime consumers of digital information, it seems that crafting of academic engagement for and with students that is in touch with the knowledge networks they utilize and will continue to be part of today and into the future is important. Engaging students in the production of videos about important topics, such as energy geographies, aids them in becoming critical producers of knowledge.     

Hijacking the Narrative: The First World Forum on Natural Capital, #natcap13, and Radical Dissent

The first World Forum on Natural Capital (WFNC) was an important moment in the production of “valued” nature. It brought together bankers, CEOs, and business elites to promote financialized environmental accounting as a solution to ecosystem degradation. Anti‐capitalist activists, however, opposed the further intrusion of economic logic to environmental decision‐making and resisted its progression. While WFNC organizers were able to advance the concept of “natural capital” through traditional (print and web 1.0) media, they struggled to control the social media narrative. Digital activists were able to challenge the official narrative on Twitter and compel organizers to address the associated social and environmental justice concerns. As such, social media produced the conditions for both abstracting nature into value‐bearing commodities and, simultaneously, resisting such abstraction. Drawing on theories of counterpublic organization, public spheres of deliberation, and agonistic confrontation, this paper explores the discursive co‐production of nature in a new digitally mediated world.     

Corporate Branding and Collegiate Coats of Arms as Logos: Marked Ceramics and the University of Cambridge

Corporate branding and logos are typically conceived of as mid-twentieth-century phenomena. This study provides a greater time depth to these concepts, by considering ceramics used by the colleges of the University of Cambridge between the late eighteenth century and the current day. It also considers corporate branding and logos in terms of well-established institutions, which were already deeply associated with pre-existing symbols such as coats of arms. As well as being functional items collegiate ceramic tablewares fulfilled a range of symbolic functions, including both reinforcing overall group identity as well as internal status divisions.     

Accumulation by difference-making: an anthropocene story,starring witches

Abstract

What do witches have to do with the Anthropocene? More than one might think. In this article we undertake an in-depth book review of Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch to demonstrate how the rise of a division between the productive and reproductive realm, engendered in part through the witch hunts, is a founding condition of the Anthropocene.     

Reviews Australian

Francis G. Castles, The Working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890–1980, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.128. $11.95 (paper)

B. Costar and D. Woodward (eds), Country to National: Australian Rural Politics, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.150. $24.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper)

Jim Moss, Sound of Trumpets: History of the Labour Movement in South Australia, Adelaide, Wakefield Press, 1985, pp.454. $20.00 (paper).

Julianne Schultz, Steel City Blues: the human cost of industrial crisis, Ringwood, Penguin, 1985, pp.282. $7.95 (paper)

Jane Ross, The Myth of the Digger, Sydney, Hale & Iremonger, 1985, pp.251. $14.95 (paper)

Pat O'Malley, Law, Capitalism and Democracy: A Sociology of the Australian Legal Order, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1983, pp.204. $12.95 (paper)

A. Patience and J. Scott (eds), Australian Federalism: Future Tense, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp.217. $14.99 (paper)

Trevor Barr, The Electronic Estate: New Communications Media in Australia, Ringwood, Penguin, 1985, pp.271. $8.95 (paper)

Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought 1890–1960, St Lucia. University of Queensland Press, 1984, pp.328. $40.00 (cloth)

Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits, London, Pan Books, 1985, pp.380. £3.95 (paper)

Ian Clark, Limited Nuclear War, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1982, pp.266 £9.95 (paper)

Peter Pringle and William Arkin, SIOP: Nuclear War from the Inside, London, Sphere Books, 1983, pp.225. £2.95 (paper)

R.F. Miller and F. Feher (eds), Khruschev and the Communist World, London, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.237. $31.95 (cloth)

N. Nugent and D. Lowe, The Left in France, London, Macmillan, 1982, pp.275. $18.95 (paper)

C. O'Faircheallaigh, Mining and Development: Foreign‐financed Mines in Australia, Ireland, Papua New Guinea and Zambia, Sydney and London, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.302. $33.95 (cloth)

D. C. Pitt and B. C. Smith (eds), The Computer Revolution in Public Administration, Brighton, Wheatsheaf Books, 1984, pp.214. £6.95 (paper)

R. L. Wettenhall, Architects of Departmental Systems: Five Profiles, Canberra, CCAE, Canberra Series in Administrative Studies, Occasional Paper 3, 1984, pp.60 (no price given).

Ian McAllister & Richard Rose, The Nationwide Competition for Votes: The 1983 British Election, London and Dover, Francis Pinter, 1984, pp.257. £12.00 (cloth)

F. Feher, A. Heller, G. Markus, Dictatorship Over Needs: An Analysis of Soviet Societies, Oxford, Blackwell, 1984, pp.299. $14.95 (paper)

Lea Campos Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed, European University Institute — Series C:I, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1984, pp.xii + 248. DM88.00 (cloth)

Conal Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance, and the History of Ideas, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp.xiii + 303. US$36.00 (cloth)

J. M. Barbalet, Marx's Construction of Social Theory, London, Routledge & Regan Paul, 1983, pp. 228. $25.95 (cloth)

Dag Anckar and Erkki Berndtson (eds), Essays on Democratic Theory, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1984, pp.166, US$10 (paper); and Ilkka Heiskanen and Sakari Hanninen (eds), Exploring the Basis of Politics, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1983, pp.132, US$10 (paper).

Brian W. Head, Ideology and Social Science: Destutt de Tracy and French Liberalism (International Archives of the History of Ideas: 112), Boston & Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985, pp.229. US$45.00 (cloth)

Z.A. Pelczynski (ed.), The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel's Political Philosophy, London, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 300. £8.95 (paper)

Michael J. Shapiro (ed.), Language and Politics, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp.261. $17.95 (paper)

James M. Enelow & Melvin J. Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting : An Introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 238. $59.50 (cloth), $21.00 (paper)

Jocelyn Clarke and Kate White, Women in Australian Politics, Sydney, Fontana Books, 1983, pp.216. $8.95 (paper)

Marian Sawer and Marian Simms, A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.235. $11.95 (paper)

Marian Simms (ed.), Australian Women and the Political System, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1984, pp.222. $11.95 (paper)

Race Mathews, David Bennett — a Memoir, Melbourne, Australian Fabian Society (Pamphlet 44), 1985, pp. v + 59. $3.00 (paper)     

A united states of Australasia?

Australia and New Zealand have always been close, and the adoption of the Closer Economic Relations Agreement has brought them closer. In the context of public debate in Australia about constitutional reform it is appropriate to discuss the possibility of political union between the two countries. This article looks at some of the processes and politics involved with five scenarios under which union might or might not take place. They are: New Zealand as one or more Australian states; the Canadian model; an Australasian Parliament like the European Parliament; the abolition of the Australian states; and the secession of the Australian states.