Fear and loathing in Kansas City: Political harassment and the making of moderates in America's abortion wars (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The pro‐life movement regularly employs tactics of political harassment in its campaign against abortion. As the murder of the controversial abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, demonstrated last year, such tactics often betray a potential for violence. This paper explores how the militant tactics of the pro‐life movement in the 1990s have contributed to the formation of a ‘new’ political identity in Kansas politics: that of the moderate Republican. But for those that seek to counter‐mobilize against the Christian right, the political stakes remain high.     

Images of regulation: Travel agent legislation and the deregulation debate

During the last two years travel agents have changed from being relatively unregulated (outside New South Wales) to regulated in terms of licensing and compensation fund membership requirements. Why has this happened during a period when political debate has centred on deregulation? It is a premise of this paper that arguments in favour of deregulation rest on an image of the State as a prison for private entre‐preneurship; and arguments in favour of regulation rest on an image of the State as a protector of the consumer and public interest Both images are superficial and belie the nature of State‐capital‐consumer relationships and ideologies. Underlying each are rationalist assumptions which suggest that the State and industry are static, ahistorical objects; that governments have unambiguous intentions; and that regulation and deregulation are always successful. Each of these assumptions is questioned. By focusing on a history of travel agency regulations, this paper endeavours to uncover that which these images obscure in the deregulation debate.     

Britische Politiker als Liebhaber der Wissenschaft (ca. 1850–1914) — Zur Ideologie des Amateurismus

The various scholarly and scientific endeavours — comprising both arts and sciences —, which British statesmen persued in their leisure time, transcend the mere biographical aspect. In the light of the slow, yet steady professionalisation of educational and political institutions, many of them modernised or newly created in order to achieve what came to be called “National Efficiency”, the literary and scientific pastimes of men, like Gladstone, Morley, Salisbury, Balfour or Haldane, seemed soon to become somewhat obsolete. Yet, it is argued, that the often professedly amateurish activities did not merely display the traditional hobby attitude to the sciences, so characteristic of the wealthy aristocrat, but in some cases revealed a good understanding of the scientific and educational needs of society, leading up to their active advancement. The British amateurs, it would seem, were pleading for providing a balanced higher education and training, rather than going for the technical excellence of the political rival Imperial Germany, which dazzled and, at the same time, intimidated some of them.