Compared to What? Changes in Interest Group Resources and the Proposal and Adoption of State Teacher Policy

What is the relationship between changes in interest group resources and the proposal and adoption of state policy? Using a dataset of proposed and enacted teacher policies across five legislative cycles in all 50 states and measures of interest group relative and absolute resource strength, I estimate a series of within-state fixed effects models that gain identification from changes in interest group resources and teacher policy over time. I find that legislatures propose more unfavorable and fewer favorable policies toward teachers' unions in states where teachers' union opposition interest groups are expending more election (but not lobbying) resources over time. Further, I find that more unfavorable and fewer favorable policies are adopted in states where teachers' union opposition groups are growing in election resource strength. Expanding on prior empirical work, this study suggests that interest group resources matter for policy change and highlights the importance of capturing interest group resource dynamics over time.     

Advancing culture’s role in sustainable development: social change through cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the potential for cultural policy to shape sustainable development in the context of expectations arising from research and policy work on development. We use, as the basis of a critique, the categorisation of the relationship between culture and sustainable development proposed by a major study funded by the European Union, being emblematical of how researchers and policymakers understand this relationship. The critique highlights a need for multiscalar social change, towards revaluing relations with the natural world, and reforming social relations between producers and consumers. This paper locates cultural policy as an arm of governance, with the capacity to lead social change across several interdependent pathways (revaluing technological change; fostering an aesthetic appreciation and environmental ethical consciousness; and pro-social behaviour) alongside the development of more sophisticated governance frameworks. The paper further proposes that through (re)education, cultural policy can and should play a more active role in shaping social change.     

The Role of Engineer-in-Chief and the Introduction of Foreign Hydraulic Dredging Technology and River Conservancy into China, 1890s–1930s

This paper discusses studies of the development of river conservancy in modern China, and the role of engineers-in-chief in river improvement planning on rivers such as the Hai-ho (Haihe) and the Whangpoo (Huangpu). It discusses the introduction of foreign hydraulic dredging technology and management into two major Chinese ports. It then analyses the process by which two agencies of the Chinese government absorbed and adjusted this technology to suit local circumstances in the treaty ports of Tianjin and Shanghai beginning in the 1890s. Without prior experience in river conservancy, the conservancy boards adopted a range of foreign technologies. This allowed them to develop into major institutions that facilitated increasing trade flows between China and the rest of the world. Of particular significance in this process of technological change was the role of the expatriate engineers-in-chief who were employed as chief executive officers of both agencies. They were responsible for establishing the operations of the agencies, accommodating an increasing range of responsibilities such as financial and human resource management, and training Chinese engineers and managers for senior positions until they were ready to replace the expatriate engineers-in-chief after the 1930s.     

Quantifying woodland resource usage and selection from Neolithic to post Mediaeval times in the Irish Midlands

The antiquity and context (site or feature type) are the two principal factors that act as a framework for interpreting charcoal and wood data from archaeological sites in the recreation of past woodland environments. This research addresses these parameters through the analysis of over 18,000 charcoal fragments from 57 archaeological excavations carried out along a 61?km road scheme in the midland region of Ireland. Observations on spatial vegetation dynamics and woodland resource patterns are also reported on. The data were analysed through percentage frequency and multivariate analyses. The results reveal woodland resource usage in terms of wood types selected for use as fuel or as structural wood as well as patterns of change and variability in taxonomic composition in relation to site types, feature types and time periods. Selection was found to be low in prehistoric times and in particular at burnt mound sites/fulachta fiadh but became increasingly important as time progressed. This has important implications when charcoal from archaeological settings is used in environmental reconstructions.     

Formation of beach‐ridge plains: an appreciation of the contribution by Jack L. Davies

A robust debate among coastal geomorphologists as to the processes by which beach‐ridge plains around Australia have formed was initiated by a former President of the Institute of Australian Geographers. This review gives special consideration to the work of Jack L. Davies, whose academic contributions to coastal geomorphology in Australia have not always been appropriately acknowledged when explaining how similar plains have evolved elsewhere in the world. Davies recognised that relatively steep storm waves caused erosion (cut) on beaches, whereas less steep long‐period swell waves returned sand (fill). He considered the beach berm to be the nucleus on which a beach ridge formed, which could subsequently develop into a foredune, in contrast to cobble ridges that were deposited during storms. Offshore conditions regulate supply of sand to the shoreline, partly through effects on wave refraction, with higher rates of supply where the nearshore is shallow. It was apparent to Davies that the elevation of successive ridges might, but not necessarily, provide evidence of past changes of sea level, despite adornment by variable amounts of windblown dune sand. Morphodynamic understanding of long‐term coastal evolution, based on radiocarbon dating chronologies, has demonstrated that Australian coastal plains formed over the past ~6,000 years when sea level has been close to its present level, in contrast to several documented locations in the northern hemisphere where the sea has been rising for the past few millennia. Particularly insightful were observations by Davies that ridge formation could be influenced by a range of factors including changes in sea level, storminess, or sediment supply. These factors acting singly or in combination seem likely to change in the future. Understanding such responses remains a high priority and can be addressed by new technologies, such as light detection and ranging, optically stimulated luminescence dating, ground‐penetrating radar, and computer simulation.     

Fording differences? Conditions mitigating water insecurity in the Niger River Basin

River basins are an extremely important source of freshwater for Africa and the impact of climate change on these communities constitutes an important question worth studying. Among these basins, the Niger River Basin is an ideal candidate for meso-level theory testing of climate change-induced political violence because of its importance as one of the largest sources of freshwater in Africa, its high vulnerability to climate change, and its location in a politically unstable region. This paper utilizes the benefits of GIS to test whether effects of water insecurity on the various incidences of political violence are conditional on economic, geographic, and social means of connectivity. Our analysis uses the density of secondary road networks, the geographic distance to the Niger River, and a shared co-ethnicity with one's head-of-state to evaluate the impact of hydrological stress and its subsequent risk for political violence across nine West African countries from 1997 to 2012. Using climatological data and an econometric de-trending method, we measure the separate, substantive impact that individualized changes in precipitation trend and precipitation variability have for the incidence of ACLED's political violence events, conditional on local economic, geographic, and social factors. Our results reveal a complicated web of circumstances under which certain forms of political violence are more/less likely to be observed. The implications of this analysis serve as a call for a closer inspection of the micro-channels by which climate stress impacts heterogeneous communities in the developing world.     

Paving the way for new regional industrial paths: actors and modes of change in Scania’s games industry

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarly work has enhanced our understanding of how new path development activities are enabled or constrained by ‘regional environments’, made up of pre-existing industrial structures, knowledge organizations, support structures and institutional configurations. This paper moves beyond overly static views on regional environments. We develop a dynamic perspective by analysing conceptually and empirically how a constraining environment can be transformed into one that enables the development of new growth paths. The paper offers a typology of various modes of change, including layering, adaptation and novel application that are used by key actors to ‘manipulate’ the regional support structures to facilitate new regional industrial path development. The conceptual framework is applied to a case study of the digital games industry in the region of Scania, southern Sweden. Our findings suggest that the creation of a more enabling environment for the growth of the digital games industry has been the outcome of multi-scalar processes and combinations of various modes of change employed by a few key individuals operating in the newly emerging path.     

‘Culture’, ‘sustainable development’ and cultural policy: a contrarian view

Abstract

This essay offers a critical analysis of the ‘culture and sustainable development’ discourse, notably among cultural activists and in actually existing cultural policy. It interrogates the utility of the narrative, seeks to uncover the semantic manoeuvres it employs and challenges the conventional wisdom it represents. The essay first explores the itinerary of the ductile notion of ‘sustainability’, the ways in which it has been stretched far beyond the original intent of those who coined the term, and identifies the conceptual discontents that this semantic multiplication has entailed. It hypothesizes that precisely because the term ‘sustainable’ and its derivatives are so acceptable and malleable at the same time, they have been easy to yoke to the bandwagon of the many-faceted and totalizing process that is ‘development’, allowing many different actors to project their interests, hopes, and aspirations under this composite banner. The essay then analyses the campaign to make culture ‘the fourth pillar of sustainability’ under the banner of the movement called ‘Agenda 21 for Culture’. It concludes with a plea for a return to the original ecological focus of the term ‘sustainability’ – notably as regards climate change – and outlines some cultural policy responses such a focus can and should generate.     

Buddhism,Democracy and Power in the 1932 Thai Revolution

The People’s Party toppled the Siamese absolute monarchy and introduced constitutional democracy in Thailand in June 1932. Scholars have generally denied that the revolution had any popular resonance, but this article shows that in Buddhism, the country’s premier cultural form, democratic rhetoric in the 1930s resonated among young monks marginalised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. A group of young monks within the Mahanikai, or Great Order, rebelled against the palace-established Thammayut order that exercised the most power in institutional Buddhism. A “thin” or formal democracy established in 1932 – one displaying the main trappings of a regime of popular sovereignty but purposefully limited in scope by the People’s Party – thus inspired an assertion of a “thick” democracy, or democracy as a much older social value that governed both the Sangha internally and its relations with local communities, which the Mahanikai activists claimed was the core of original Buddhism.