Imperial Realism: Post-War IR Theory and Decolonisation

The paper reviews the record of realism in IR theory in relation to the process of decolonisation. It argues that despite being traditionally set against imperial adventures and opposed to the kind of idealism in which they are usually coated, realism was remarkably silent about decolonisation, at a time when most commentators thought that the emergence of newly independent countries was a more portentous event than even the cold war. It explains this silence by the structure of the post-war debate on decolonisation, largely monopolised by modernisation theorists and often confined to the precincts of international organisations, but also by the fact that IR theory had built-in arguments against the unlimited extension of sovereignty that allowed its practitioners to advocate a pragmatic support for imperial powers and reproducing classical tropes of imperial thought.     

The Political Transfer of English Parliamentary Rules in the French Assemblies (1789–1848)

France has often been perceived as the most resilient country to political transfers from abroad. This view does not withstand close scrutiny and political realities tell a different story. This article argues for a reinterpretation of the role of political transfers in modern French political life (since 1789). Through the study of the introduction of rules inspired by the British parliamentary system, this article seeks to show that transfers did take place and gave rise to controversy. The July Monarchy represents the best example. There was an effective transfer but the resistance to this transfer was also very effective. This resistance shows the structural specificity of the French parliamentary system. Political transfers are thus double edged: it is simultaneously an import into a system and a way of reorganizing the system that modifies the nature of the transfer (in this instance the ‘recipes’ of the British parliament).

Résumé La France a souvent été vue comme le pays du refus de toute importation politique venue de l'étranger. Mais, une telle idée appartient plus au monde des représentations (que les Français ont abondamment nourri) qu'au domaine de la réalité politique. Cet article plaide pour une réévaluation du rôle tenu par les transferts politiques dans la vie politique française moderne (à partir de 1789). A travers l'étude de l'introduction de règles inspirées du modèle parlementaire britannique, l'article tente de démontrer que les transferts ont été à la fois effectifs et sujets à de très fortes controverses. La période de la monarchie de Juillet, de ce point de vue, offre un exemple remarquable. Le transfert eut bien lieu (la publicité des votes principalement) mais la résistance opposée à ce transfert fut elle aussi très efficace. Cette résistance est un révélateur des spécificités structurelles du parlementarisme français. Un transfert politique se révèle donc ici ambivalent: il est à la fois un phénomène d'importation à l'intérieur d'un système d'accueil (ici, la monarchie de Juillet) et une forme de recomposition de ce système qui vient modifier à son tour la nature initiale du transfert (ici, les ‘recettes’ du parlementarisme britannique).     

The Stone Tidal Fish Weirs of the Molène Archipelago,Iroise Sea,Brittany, Western France: a long‐term tradition with early megalithic origins

This reports on a project that combined evidence gleaned from aerial photographs, place‐names, interviews, topography, LIDAR data, and sonar bathymetry to locate stone tidal fish weirs in the Molène Archipelago. The results were verified by diver and pedestrian visual surveys. Models of Holocene sea‐level change allowed a group of possibly Late Mesolithic–Early Neolithic weirs to be recognized, with a second group broadly dated to the later Neolithic–Early Bronze Age. The construction of these long megalithic structures is compared to the funerary monuments for which the Molène Archipelago is well known, in terms of technique, cost, and societal organization.     

Design paths of federal intergovernmental cooperation

Actors rarely approach institutional design choices with a blank slate but are influenced by design choices made at earlier stages. How does institutional design evolve over time and are there specific paths to deepening cooperation? We investigate the institutional design paths of subnational cooperation that are chosen to address increasingly complex and interconnected policy problems. We theorize that besides the substantive problem, earlier choices matter to explain what institutional design mechanism is chosen; that is, the design of existing institutions between two subnational governance units, called substates, influences the design of subsequent institutions. Using a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model, we show that the design paths of subnational cooperation in the Swiss water governance sector correlate with earlier design choices. Our results indicate that not all cooperation is self-reinforcing and path-dependent, but they show which specific design choices are more likely to follow each other in repeated formal federal intergovernmental cooperation.     

Slash and Trash: Dendroarchaeological and Ecological Inferences from a Twentieth-Century Logging Camp in Western New Mexico

Logging related sites and features are relatively common in forested areas of the western United States. Such sites are typically investigated through site mapping and artifact recording, and if possible, oral history. We present the results of a dendroarchaeological investigation of a small-scale unauthorized logging site in western New Mexico, US. The results provide information on the economic and social forces that created the site, as well as the scale of activities conducted there. We suggest that individuals quickly responded to improved lumber market conditions and changes in public land administration to exploit what had been an economically marginal timber stand.     

Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory-building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy-induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed-methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal-typical trajectories of policy change.