British Journal of Politics & International Relations最新文献

This article provides

• A ‘zeitgeist’ analysis of how the Coalition leadership tried to make the most of Britain's ‘big year’ of 2012, particularly in terms of the government's ‘prosperity agenda’;
• Rich empirical data about high profile, government-wide trends in British promotional strategies and practices in the context of austerity;
• Analysis of the consequences of these promotional activities from a number of perspectives, including: GREAT as an alternative to existing promotional structures; strategies for drawing upon national identity in support of economic growth; disciplining techniques for enforcing brand identity; approaches to co-branding corporate and governmental Britain; the metrics used to demonstrate impact.

The GREAT campaign is one of the most ambitious national promotion efforts ever undertaken. Timed to make the most of Britain's raised profile during Olympic year, the aim was to promote trade, investment and tourism under a unified identity emphasising British achievements. However, the campaign raises a number of issues. The first is how and why GREAT emerged as an alternative to established structures for soft power, public diplomacy and marketing in the UK. The second is the ways GREAT engages with collective identity through the nationalisation and commodification of symbolic resources. Third is the practices used to include and exclude specific target groups and stakeholders. Fourth is the interaction between economic and symbolic resources, including public-private collaboration and the evidence used to determine impact and value. These themes contribute to an analysis of GREAT that will be of interest to scholars of politics and IR in the UK and internationally.

• This article provides the first detailed and evidence-based account of the coalition government's approach to transport-related carbon management.
• It exposes the existence of a ‘governance vacuum’ between the statutory target and a very weak devolved implementation system (i.e. ‘fuzzy governance’ and ‘fuzzy accountability’).
• Research in four major city regions reveals a systemic switch from an emphasis on carbon management and reduction towards economic growth and job creation.
• Officials within the policy design and delivery chain emphasise the manner in which the demands of democratic politics tend to frustrate meaningful policy change.
• A general demand by actors at the local level not for the discretions delivered by localism but for a more robust and centrally managed—even statutory—governance framework.

The Climate Change Act 2008 received global acclaim for embedding an ambitious set of targets for the reduction of carbon emissions in legislation. This article explores the policies and institutional frameworks in place to deliver transport-related carbon reductions as part of the subsequent Carbon Plan. A detailed methodology involving institutional mapping, interviews and focus groups combined with a theoretical approach that combines the theory of multi-level governance with the literature on ‘blame avoidance’ serves to reveal a complex system of ‘fuzzy governance’ and ‘fuzzy accountability’. Put simply, it reveals there are no practical sub-national implementation levers for achieving the statutory targets. Apart from symbolic or rhetorical commitments, the emphasis of policy-makers at all levels in the delivery chain has switched from carbon management and reduction to economic growth and job creation. This raises fresh research questions about the pathologies of democratic competition and future responses to the climate change challenge.

This article

• Provides the first systematic analysis of the rise and diffusion of the idea of expansionary fiscal contractions (besides Blyth's book).
• Uses comparative case studies to assess the actual influence of this policy idea during the Great Recession.
• Provides a better understanding of the social construction of the financial crisis.
• Contributes to the growing scholarship on ideational political economy, including works documenting the resilience of the neoliberal paradigm.

This article examines the rise and influence of a powerful economic idea: ‘expansionary fiscal contractions’. The counterintuitive policy belief that severe fiscal adjustments can be expansionary was originally advanced by economists Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano in the early 1990s. Over the years, this idea became dominant in certain epistemic communities, mainly through the literature on lessons from successful consolidations. In the event, the relationship between budget reduction and economic growth turned out to be one of the most contested issues in the aftermath of the financial crash of 2008. This article is divided into three main sections. The first section documents the social diffusion of this singular economic idea, from academia to policy networks. The second reports the ‘battle of ideas’ over fiscal consolidation during the Great Recession. The third section assesses the influence of the idea of expansionary contractions on actual policy choices by examining the politics of austerity in Ireland, Spain and the UK in the period 2008–2012.

This article:

• Examines the meaning of claims for ‘recognition’ and struggles against ‘misrecognition’ by working through aspects of Muslim political agency in contemporary British politics;
• Contributes to research on the political mobilisation of Muslims in Britain by examining how civil society organisations respond to perceived stigmas and project a Muslim civic identity;
• Contributes to research that investigates dilemmas of political agency between the pressure to conform to standards of neutrality and maturity, on the one hand, and creativity and opposition, on the other;
• Demonstrates how minority actors manoeuvre and position themselves in the unsettled environment of contemporary British politics.

It is a common complaint among Muslim civil society organisations that their presence in British politics is misconstrued. An increasing number of activists and groups are concerned to repudiate what they perceive to be the misperception of their political agency as exceptional and difficult to accommodate. Organisations and initiatives thus project and practice civic identities, to demonstrate that they are committed to the ‘common good’. This article explores how a number of organisations positioned themselves in response to experiences of ‘misrecognition’ in the context of the General Election 2010. With this conceptual focus we explore one of the most pertinent characteristics of Muslim political agency in Britain today: how actors respond to perceived pressures, make claims and project identities in opposition to alleged misperceptions or the refusal to acknowledge their desired self-descriptions. The article draws on a set of qualitative interviews with representatives of advocacy organisations that mobilised Muslim constituents in the run-up to the General Election 2010.

• The study of gender, sexuality—and, in particular, queer theory—is central to the social sciences and humanities.
• Our analysis of citation practices shows that queer theorist Judith Butler is one of the most cited social theorists of all time.
• Yet political science remains distinctly untroubled by queer theory, and gender and sexuality are frequently treated as marginal (not central) concerns.
• We argue that queer theory has much to offer political science, not only by highlighting the importance of sexuality and the body but also in analysing ‘power’ and in politicising ‘the political’ itself.
• We suggest that the ‘queering’ of political science is long overdue, not least through politicising processes of knowledge-production in the discipline.

There is something queer (by which we mean strange) going on in the scholarly practice of political science. Why are political science scholars continuing to disregard issues of gender and sexuality—and in particular queer theory—in their lecture theatres, seminar rooms, textbooks, and journal articles? Such everyday issues around common human experience are considered by other social scientists to be central to the practice and theory of social relations. In this article we discuss how these commonplace issues are being written out of (or, more accurately, have never been written in to) contemporary political science. First, we present and discuss our findings on citation practice in order to evidence the queerness of what does and does not get cited in political science scholarship. We then go on to critique this practice before suggesting a broader agenda for the analysis of the political based on a queer theoretical approach.

• This is the first discursive study of the EDL's publicly available articles and gives an important insight into their ideology.
• The study problematises the EDL's claim to be an anti-racist human rights organisation and analyses EDL discourse as racial discourse, demonstrating that the apparent gulf between the group's ideological Islamophobia and their violent and intimidating street protests is largely illusory.
• Understanding Islamophobia as culturally racist and the EDL as a culturally racist organisation is important to deconstructing their claim that Islamophobia is a rational reaction to deviant Muslim presence in the UK.
• The key contribution is not only a deeper understanding of the group and why they have been so successful in mobilising a section of the public to demonstrate against Islam, but also how this discourse fits in to the larger public debate on Islam and Muslims in the UK.

The English Defence League (EDL) emerged in 2009 and quickly became a major ‘anti-Islamist’ street protest movement, able to attract thousands to its national demonstrations. Despite the violence and anti-Muslim rhetoric associated with its protests, the group claims to be an anti-racist human rights organisation dedicated to protecting liberal freedoms. This article employs a critical methodology to address these claims, analysing EDL literature alongside strategies identified as typical of racist discourse construction. The representations, narratives and rhetorical strategies used by the group support the analysis of EDL Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism that constructs opposing ‘British’ and ‘Muslim’ subjects and functions to maintain traditional ethno-cultural dominance of the former over the latter.

• Through an analysis of recent foreign policy discourse, in particular the UK approach to stabilisation, the article identifies distinctive similarities and continuities in the patterns of ethically-minded foreign policy, employed by the 1997–2010 Labour government and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition.
• The article makes a fresh engagement with the concept of Good International Citizenship, arguing for a much more overt engagement, by policymakers, with the concept, to help address some of the shortcomings associated with both Labour and the Coalition's attempts to incorporate ethical obligations into British foreign policy.

This article examines the interaction between the idea of Good International Citizenship and the recent evolution of UK foreign and security policy. Good International Citizenship centres on the mediation of ethical commitments to national interest, to the promotion international order, and to the wellbeing of vulnerable non-citizen populations. Whilst ethical commitments to non-citizens have become overt components of British foreign policy, recent UK governments have struggled to reconcile these with commitments to the national interest and a stable international order. The article argues that the more direct affirmation of Good International Citizenship as a narrative and ethos of practice for UK foreign policy might help further the increasingly open discussion on the ethics and UK foreign policy. As a framework for dialogue and public debate, the concept provides a means by which ethical commitments in the traditionally closed world of foreign policy might be opened up to wider critical scrutiny.

This article

• Highlights how G20 ‘endorsement’ promotes and enhances the legitimacy of specialist technical agencies and organisations
• Provides a case study highlighting the impact of G20 endorsement on the OECD's international tax transparency agenda
• Develops a mid-level theory of G20 endorsement in order to analyse this emerging form of authority in global governance

The G20 Leaders' Forum has been touted as ‘The world's premier forum for promoting global cooperation’, yet beyond this rhetoric the track record of the G20 is varied leading critics to claim sit is little more than a ‘toothless talkshop’. We argue that such sweeping generalisations are difficult to sustain in the light of evidence from some issue arenas in which the G20 has been active. This article draws on the extant literature on the ‘Gs’ and network governance in an attempt to theorise and explain the G20's endorsement function, or its capacity to promote and legitimise the work of specialised organisations and networks. We build on the extant literature using a semi-inductive method focusing on the G20's endorsement of the OECD's international tax transparency agenda to develop a mid-level framework for analysing this important source of authority in global governance.

This article

• Applies the theoretical framework of ‘individualisation’ to political parties and policy participation.
• Suggests a new model of policy development in social democratic parties where increased prominence is given to ordinary citizens and supporters.
• Presents illustrative case studies of new forms of policy participation, including community consultations and online forums in the UK Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party.
• Assesses the implications of individualisation on political parties as sites for policy-making, participation and representation.

This article examines the changing nature of the connection between citizens, party members and elites in the creation of party policy through the theoretical prism of individualisation. Using qualitative case studies of recent policy-making initiatives in the Australian Labor Party and the UK Labour Party, the article develops a new model of policy transferal that is not built upon the mass-party model of parliamentary politics, but rather upon organisational evolutions such as community consultations, online participation and supporters' networks. These evolutions, or reforms, typically emphasise the individuality of policy-making and accountability, promote new technologies for facilitating decision-making, and attempt to engage with a new style of politically active citizen. Each of these developments carries implications for how political parties facilitate participation, accountability and responsiveness in modern forms of representative democracy.

This article

• Restates the differences in focus between the original article and the Response, which justifies the choice of 1974 as the starting date for analysis.
• Accepts the more nuanced analysis of the voting convergence of the ASEAN states.
• Restates the considerations leading to the decision to include all the UNGA resolutions in the period chosen as the basis of the analysis, rather than a filtered selection.
• Argues that these two articles provide hypotheses for further qualitative as well as quantitative analysis of the factors determining the voting behaviour of Pacific Asian states.