Borders,planning and policy transfer: historical transformation of development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley

European Union spatial policies have become a key institutional context in which to study policy transfer processes in European border areas. These policies are, however, only the most recent part of these transformation processes which raises a need for more historically sensitive approaches. An historical perspective is important, since border regions are historical processes with particular path-dependent development trajectories and power structures. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the transformation of European border regions by looking at the policy transfer of regional development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley. The study material consists of strategic development documents produced by the Finnish border municipalities and the municipal-based co-operation organizations from the 1930s to 2013. The examination, based on critical discourse analysis, shows that the transformation process is driven by national trends and the dominant planning discourse. Nevertheless, the particular border setting and local discourse on ‘united Torne Valley’ have also intertwined with political and economic processes during different time periods.     

When regional innovation policies meet policy rationales and evidence: a plea for policy analysis

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how.     

How clothing design and cultural industries refashioned frontier masculinities: a historical geography of Western wear

Gendered subjectivities emerge historically and geographically, not only in situ, within an ‘authentic’ origin period or site, but through later retrospective commodifications and fantastical popular culture depictions. This article traces the masculine identity of the cowboy as commodified and performed through clothing. The cowboy emerged from colonial origins as a model and myth of frontier masculinity: the ‘rugged outdoor type’. But it was then formularized and stylized when subject to popular culture diffusion, and as accompanying clothing design evolved. Through clothing – advertised by metropolitan manufacturers and consumed across America and beyond – an archetypal, sexualized cowboy ‘look’ thus emerged. The author traces a historical geography of cowboy masculinities in clothing design, from early ‘frontier garments for the outdoor man’ to later Western-wear ‘for that long, lean look’. Related constructions of femininity are also considered, after women's Western-wear clothing lines were produced in the 1950s. To illustrate, I draw on archival brochures, catalogs, and advertising materials from the 1920s to 1970s, as well as discuss the material design of the clothes themselves. I focus especially on the Western snap shirt – an apparel item never actually worn on the nineteenth-century colonial frontier, but that became an ‘essential’ element of the cowboy look, and a vehicle for masculine appearance. Western-wear epitomizes how gendered subject positions are visually constituted in relational fashion via bodies, materials, media, and imagined geographies.     

Towards individualising couple finance: women’s housing assets and household decisions in Japan

Individualisation, which is increasingly promoted in European welfare states, tends to be absent from policy discourse as well as housing studies in Japan. It is largely because the ‘family as a unit’ is still a dominant approach in their household finance, social security and taxation systems, which also reflects women’s lack of home ownership. However, recent demographic trends such as falling marriage rates, low fertility and increased female labour participation indicate significant diversification in women’s life-course. Thus, today women making their own financial investment and house purchase have increasingly become popular practice. In this context, a new approach beyond the conventional ‘family as a unit’ may be required in the development of a new social contract. Drawing on data from qualitative research conducted among women in their 30s, this article explores the relationship between financial independence, household decisions and asset holding of partnered women in Japan, which reveals contested dimensions of women’s independence and autonomy in household and family life. Through the lens of home ownership, it considers the importance of promoting individual assets in order to foster gender equality in marriage.     

‘Always like never before’: learning from the lumitopia of Tivoli Gardens

Drawing on a detailed analysis of the historical and current development of lighting in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, this article addresses how this site of extraordinarily diverse illumination exemplifies a carefully orchestrated balance between (1) muted and more vivid forms of lighting, (2) curation of historical styles and promotion of contemporary innovations in illumination and (3) artistic luminaires and those more aligned with popular tastes. Through these themes, we argue that the current strategies towards urban lighting that predominantly promote energy conservation, security, commercial imperatives and place-branding may be supplemented by place-specific design strategies that implement multiplicity, connect past and present, and accommodate diverse desires, dreams and realities. These attributes contribute to the ongoing emergence of what we call a ‘lumitopia’, a space in which an intensified attention to illumination is integral to the particularity of a place or landscape. In the case of Tivoli, this offers a lens to manage nocturnal space so that it becomes more aesthetically complex, inclusive and convivial.     

National identity and the limits of constructivism in international relations theory: a case study of the Suez Canal

Constructivism in most of its variants emphasises the creation of circumstances and the social construction of reality. In international relations theory (IR), it also emphasises the establishment of international regimes. The Suez Canal and its governing regime, established at a high point of European nationalism and imperialism in the nineteenth century, are explored as a test case. I argue that, while the early history of the Canal is illuminated by a constructivist approach, maintenance of the regime to govern it involved military intervention and debt restructuring. Military force, balance of power considerations and economic interests all have to be invoked to explain the later history of the Canal, that is, factors usually stressed by the realist school. A combination of realist and constructivist approaches is recommended. The paper is also critical of certain constructivist concepts of national identity.     

Studying Immigrant Policy One Law at a Time

This article shows that, in the study of immigrant integration policy in the U.S. states, it is critical to report data and coding decisions for individual laws. This analysis uses an updated and public database of law‐level decisions, which includes 2,703 legislative actions recorded by the National Conference of State Legislatures from 2005 to 2016. These data are used to estimate models of aggregate state policy activity in a variety of ways: as a single continuum of policy balance versus separate models of welcoming and hostile, lumping all policy subareas together versus analyzing a specific subarea, and lumping all years together in one cross section versus panel analysis. The results in these models differ enough to indicate that reporting codes for individual‐level laws is absolutely essential so that each researcher easily can construct the measure that fits his or her theoretical framework best.     

‘What They Need is Management’: American NGOs,the Second Seven Year Plan and Economic Development in Iran, 1954–1963

Following the August 1953 coup d'etat, the government of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in Iran embarked upon an economic development program. While financial backing for the program came from the Anglo-American oil companies running Iran's oil industry, Iran's semi-independent Plan Organization and its administrator Abu'l-?asan Ebtehāj turned to American non-governmental organizations for administrative expertise, in order to turn Iran's oil power into economic improvements and a basis for the regime's lasting stability. The work of these organizations was hampered by internal disagreements and divisions, discontent among Iranians over the foreign infiltration of their development program, and skepticism from the US government regarding the capacity of Iran to accomplish an integrated development effort on such a scale. Such feelings were influenced by cultural prejudices and perceptions of Iranians as corrupt and incompetent. Ultimately American non-government organizations were pushed out by the shah who seized control over Iran's development during the 1963 White Revolution. The course of Iran's Second Seven Year Plan illustrate how Western technical and administrative ‘know-how’ were tied to the efforts harnessing new oil wealth, and how the relationship between American and Iranian developmentalists was undone by politics, prejudice and opposing view of how progress could come from petroleum.     

Final Strategy: The Post-War Grand Strategic Designs of Henry L. Stimson

Few men arguably shaped the trajectory of American foreign policy in the twentieth century as durably and profoundly as Henry L. Stimson. After all, Stimson was not only directly involved in many consequential decisions dealing with highly important matters of war and peace, but was also a major influence in the United States’ more proactive involvement in extra-territorial affairs. For Stimson, it was simply wishful thinking to presume that the United States could forever disengage itself from far-reaching occurrences in other parts of the globe. Accordingly, he thought it just as critical to anticipate international problems as it was to successfully resolve them afterwards, with the result that he became an ardent and early proponent of a much more sophisticated global strategy after the Second World War. In that context, however, most historians have primarily focused on Stimson's role in the development and use of the atomic bomb against Imperial Japan, though arguably less on his more sweeping grand strategic designs. Consequently, the present article will attempt to offer a more comprehensive analysis of Stimson's grand strategic designs, particularly as they related to his vision and reflections on the necessary ingredients of a more peaceful, stable and secure interstate system.     

‘Mucho malo for fascisti’: Languages and Transnational Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War

This article explores the linguistic experiences of transnational soldiers, using the Spanish Civil War as a case study. It argues that communication difficulties provoked by linguistic diversity within the Republican war effort and particularly within the International Brigades, caused the high command to move from a utopian, internationalist policy to a more pragmatic approach. The article evaluates the role played by language intermediaries in this evolving policy and in the wider Republican war effort. Finally, it argues that soldiers grassroots experiences of language contact forged new linguistic forms which underlined a strong sense of shared purpose and identity.