Norm destruction, norm resilience

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-435
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Balabanova ◽  
Alex Balch

Abstract Principles of refugee protection in Europe are said to have come under great pressure with the populist and nationalist backlash to the ‘migrant crisis’, often traced to illiberal regimes in post-communist countries. This paper tests these claims by comparatively analysing media coverage in the UK and Hungary, establishing the extent to which specific norms were challenged or upheld in April and September 2015. It develops a new methodology connecting ethical justifications for migration controls with the ‘normative terrain’ of refugee protection. The findings complicate existing assumptions about differences between conservative and progressive-leaning publications, and also the divide and direction of travel between Old/New and East/West in the European context. The article challenges the narrative of the ‘illiberal wind’ and advances understanding of the relationship between political culture and media systems in Europe, and the toxic nature of media coverage in relation to the survival of the normative regime around refugees.

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Whitty

AbstractRisk and human rights discourses have become dominant features of the UK criminal justice arena. However, there has been little critical scrutiny of the ways in which these discourses relate to each other. In this article, I focus on different accounts of the case of Anthony Rice, a 48-year old ex-offender who committed a murder in August 2005 whilst under the joint supervision of English probation and police services. Drawing upon official reviews by the Inspectorate of Probation and the UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights, as well as media coverage, I use the Rice case to problematise some common assumptions about the relationship between risk and human rights.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Bajomi-Lázár

Media scholars looking into the relationship between political and media systems in the former communist countries have mainly worked on the assumption that parties seek control over the media in order to suppress critical voices and to gain favourable coverage so that they can influence voting behaviour, but have barely explored political actors’ other possible motivations. Meanwhile, political scientists studying the region’s countries have often focused on parties’ relationship to the state and the resources that they extracted from state institutions such as ministries and municipalities but largely ignored the relationship between parties and the media. This article, written as part of the project Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, attempts to link these two traditions of research. Introducing the concept of the party colonisation of the media, it looks into what benefits other than suppressing criticism and gaining favourable coverage parties may gain from controlling the media. It uses the example of Hungary to illustrate how the party colonisation of the media works. It also intends to assess how different patterns of media colonisation affect media freedom.


Author(s):  
Gordon Joyes ◽  
Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

This chapter outlines the European context of lifelong learning and educational cooperation across member states and the relationship of eportfolios to current development. It focuses specifically on the priority given to portfolio developments in higher education in the UK through reports and policy documents and particularly through the extensive funding distributed via the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education and Further Education Funding Councils (JISC). A model is presented that was developed by analyzing current practice and a matrix for identifying eportfolio developments in relation to purposes and learning processes, useful also for mapping key areas for future work.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candida Yates

This article deploys a new psycho-political approach to examine the relationship between female political leadership and the emotionalisation of political culture by focusing on the case study of the media coverage of the former UK Prime Minister Theresa May. The article argues that the emotional turn in political culture is a gendered phenomenon because it reinforces deeper fears and fantasies about irrational femininity and the inherent instability of female political leadership and women in the public sphere.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Bevan ◽  
Peter John ◽  
Will Jennings

In the United Kingdom, the transmission between policy promises and statutes is assumed to be both rapid and efficient because of the tradition of party discipline, relative stability of government, absence of coalitions, and the limited powers of legislative revision in the second chamber. Even in the United Kingdom, the transmission is not perfect since legislative priorities and outputs are susceptible to changes in public opinion or media coverage, unanticipated events in the external world, backbench rebellions, changes in the political parties, and the practical constraints of administering policies or programmes. This paper investigates the strength of the connection between executive priorities and legislative outputs measured by the Speech from the Throne and Acts of Parliament from 1911 to 2008. These are categorized according to the policy content coding system of the UK Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org.uk). Time series cross-sectional analyses show that there is transmission of the policy agenda from the speech to acts. However, the relationship differs by party, strengthening over time for Conservative governments and declining over time for Labour and other governments.


1994 ◽  
Vol 72 (03) ◽  
pp. 426-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Kitchen ◽  
I D Walker ◽  
T A L Woods ◽  
F E Preston

SummaryWhen the International Normalised Ratio (INR) is used for control of oral anticoagulant therapy the same result should be obtained irrespective of the laboratory reagent used. However, in the UK National External Quality Assessment Scheme (NEQAS) for Blood Coagulation INRs determined using different reagents have been significantly different.For 18 NEQAS samples Manchester Reagent (MR) was associated with significantly lower INRs than those obtained using Diagen Activated (DA, p = 0.0004) or Instrumentation Laboratory PT-Fib HS (IL, p = 0.0001). Mean INRs for this group were 3.15, 3.61, and 3.65 for MR, DA, and IL respectively. For 61 fresh samples from warfarin-ised patients with INRs of greater than 3.0 the relationship between thromboplastins in respect of INR was similar to that observed for NEQAS data. Thus INRs obtained with MR were significantly lower than with DA or IL (p <0.0001). Mean INRs for this group were 4.01, 4.40, and 4.59 for MR, DA, and IL respectively.We conclude that the differences between INRs measured with the thromboplastins studied here are sufficiently great to influence patient management through warfarin dosage schedules, particularly in the upper therapeutic range of INR. There is clearly a need to address the issues responsible for the observed discrepancies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Evans

This paper considers the relationship between social science and the food industry, and it suggests that collaboration can be intellectually productive and morally rewarding. It explores the middle ground that exists between paid consultancy models of collaboration on the one hand and a principled stance of nonengagement on the other. Drawing on recent experiences of researching with a major food retailer in the UK, I discuss the ways in which collaborating with retailers can open up opportunities for accessing data that might not otherwise be available to social scientists. Additionally, I put forward the argument that researchers with an interest in the sustainability—ecological or otherwise—of food systems, especially those of a critical persuasion, ought to be empirically engaging with food businesses. I suggest that this is important in terms of generating better understandings of the objectionable arrangements that they seek to critique, and in terms of opening up conduits through which to affect positive changes. Cutting across these points is the claim that while resistance to commercial engagement might be misguided, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge the power-geometries of collaboration and to find ways of leveling and/or leveraging them. To conclude, I suggest that universities have an important institutional role to play in defining the terms of engagement as well as maintaining the boundaries between scholarship and consultancy—a line that can otherwise become quite fuzzy when the worlds of commerce and academic research collide.


This volume addresses the relationship between archaeologists and the dead, through the many dimensions of their relationships: in the field (through practical and legal issues), in the lab (through their analysis and interpretation), and in their written, visual and exhibitionary practice--disseminated to a variety of academic and public audiences. Written from a variety of perspectives, its authors address the experience, effect, ethical considerations, and cultural politics of working with mortuary archaeology. Whilst some papers reflect institutional or organizational approaches, others are more personal in their view: creating exciting and frank insights into contemporary issues that have hitherto often remained "unspoken" among the discipline. Reframing funerary archaeologists as "death-workers" of a kind, the contributors reflect on their own experience to provide both guidance and inspiration to future practitioners, arguing strongly that we have a central role to play in engaging the public with themes of mortality and commemoration, through the lens of the past. Spurred by the recent debates in the UK, papers from Scandinavia, Austria, Italy, the US, and the mid-Atlantic, frame these issues within a much wider international context that highlights the importance of cultural and historical context in which this work takes place.


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