Libertarian Paternalism as a Tool to Explore Strategic Sub-Regional Planning in England?

Across Europe, a series of revisions and realignments are currently taking place in sub-national governance structures. In England, this involves the creation of a new scalar construct through the dismantling of the regional tier and the creation of new sub-regional institutions. Through focusing on the move towards subsidiarity, this article considers the extent to which libertarian paternalism—or “don't do anything unless you have to”—and the adoption of some of these key principles by the UK government—can help to illuminate and explain such contemporary processes of restructuring and rescaling of governance. In turn, the article considers (i) the form, process and outcomes of planning practices within this restructuring; and (ii) the implications arising in respect of the democratic accountability and strategic efficiency of the new arrangements, and the interests that are being privileged therein.     

Julia Gillard's Citizens' Assembly Proposal for Australia: A Deliberative Democratic Analysis

Many governments have embraced the rhetoric of inclusive citizen engagement. Greater public involvement promises to strengthen democratic institutions and improve the quality of policy decisions and services. How do these aspirations sit alongside the reality of Australian federal politics? This article investigates the responses of elite policy actors to the Gillard government's proposal to conduct a citizens’ assembly on climate change in 2010. Drawing on over 200 media articles, the authors identify a series of procedural, institutional and political objections raised by elite commentators against the citizens’ assembly proposal. Many of these objections have little basis in the experience of deliberative designs in practice. Some, however, reflect the challenge of realising inclusive, deliberative governance in highly politicised contexts.

很多政府对公民广泛参与的说辞爱不释手。更大程度上的公共参与有助于强化民主体制,改善政策及服务的质量。这种渴望与澳大利亚联邦政治的现实相处如何呢？本文考察了政策精英对杰拉德政府倡议在2010年召开的气候变化公民大会的反应。本文浏览了200多篇媒体文章,发现了这些人从程序、体制、政治等等方面反对公民大会的倡议。不少反对意见在精心设计的实践经验中并没多少基础。但有些却反映了高度政治化的语境中正在实现的广泛参与所构成的挑战。     

Fighting the Risorgimento: foreign volunteers in southern Italy (1860–63)

Abstract

Between 1860 and 1863 hundreds of men from all over Europe volunteered for service in the wars of southern ‘brigands’ on behalf of the exiled King Francis II of Naples. In an attempt to correct the often biased interpretation of this involvement (that was attributed simply to a thirst for adventure, romanticism or even psychological disorder) that coloured the accounts by Italian patriots, this essay suggests the need for fresh consideration. It develops three lines of inquiry that focus respectively on the strong impact of Italian Unification on conservative and Catholic opinion and the ways in which these sources portrayed the struggles of the southern insurgents, the clumsy efforts made by the Neapolitan government-in-exile to recruit volunteers and organize armed expeditions against the former kingdom, and the so-called ‘white international’ in which the warriors of the counter-revolution were depicted as combatants in conflicts that were both civil wars and at the same time episodes in a much longer international ideological struggle. In this context, the significance of foreign involvement in defence of the Neapolitan Bourbons takes on a significance that goes far beyond its poor military outcome.     

Suburban Identity in Paul Maitland's Paintings of Cheyne Walk

The aim of this article is to consider the extent to which Paul Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk addressed the problem of establishing suburban identity at the end of the nineteenth century. The emergence of the modern suburb during this period presented a particular problem with regard to how this form of urban living might be defined, understood and experienced. As part of a group of artists that could loosely by described as British Impressionists, Maitland was among the first to engage in a close study of this subject. This article situates Maitland's visual project within its wider cultural context, comparing his work with that of associated artists also interested in the suburban subject and in Cheyne Walk in particular and with a range of contemporary texts that addressed the complex problem of Chelsea's place identity, including guidebooks, letters, novels and the work of local historians. Drawing on the methodology of cultural and historical geography, this article highlights the extent to which place identity changes through time and how its formulation is based upon the economic and social structures of those who ‘live’ the place. Adopting and elaborating a range of visual signifiers associated with the modern suburb, including both its rural and working aspect, Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk provide a valuable and subtle insight into how this new urban space was being conceptualized at the end of the nineteenth century.     

Social Notes: Oscar Wilde,Francis Bacon,and the Medium of Aphorism

This paper reads Oscar Wilde's aphoristic style in terms of the note-taking practices he develops as an undergraduate at Oxford. It treats his use of small, mobile pieces of language as a strategy for dealing with methodological uncertainty in a time of curricular upheaval. His trademark style is perhaps best understood as a form of social notation, whereby pieces of information behave as actors seeking sociality and recombination, rather than placement in systematic arrangements. One significant unpublished source – the ‘Notebook on Philosophy’ – discloses Wilde's engagement with a surprising aphoristic precursor, Francis Bacon, who deploys the form for similar purposes. In modelling a form of non-teleological informational assembly, Wilde's notebooks also body forth the utopian social life he conceives in his later critical writings.     

Defending ‘the Principle of Representation’: Andrew Bisset,The English Civil War,and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England

Abstract

Victorian attitudes to the past were varied and in some cases irreconcilable. Newer standards of expertise and objectivity coexisted with older approaches, and the idea that history should be used for present purposes remained intact. Throughout the Victorian age there were circumstances in which history was a polemical tool, designed to give one set of interpretations or values or policies an advantage over its rivals. This article explores the work of a relatively neglected figure in Victorian historiography – the reform-minded historian and lawyer Andrew Bisset (1803–1891) – whose primary goal was to illustrate and advance what he called ‘the principle of representation’. He discussed people and events of the past to this end, offending reviewers along the way because of his obvious political agenda, but also developing a rigorous source-based style, usefully evaluating for his readers the work of Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, and helping to shape Victorian opinion about, in particular, the political and religious crises of seventeenth-century Britain. Like others, Bisset believed that the disputes of that period had relevance to the public controversies of his own day. This article is designed to contribute to ongoing debates about the Victorians’ relationship with the past.