Accessing nature: The battle of the Hurunui River

<p>People understand their relationship, and that of broader society, with nature in a diverse range of ways. Yet the expression of such diversity is often constrained in decision making processes, and in western contexts, neoliberalised understandings of nature are often privileged. Feminist political ecology provides a nuanced approach to exploring how meanings of nature are made and remade, and how some meanings come to be dominant. An emergent body of political ecology has begun to draw on radical democratic theory to shed light on how this privilege is created and perpetuated in political processes in ways that channel certain outcomes. In extending this engagement between theories, this research explores how different understandings of nature compete in formal and informal political spaces through the case study of a new water management regime. For more than a decade, debate has raged about whether or not to dam the Hurunui River for irrigation. Such debate about the future of freshwater bodies has characterised politics in the Canterbury region through which the Hurunui flows. Canterbury has seen rapid agricultural intensification that has been enabled by the enclosure of freshwater. However, enclosure has been contested, and this contestation came to a head when, in early 2010, the national government intervened and dramatically reregulated freshwater in the region; elections for the regional council were suspended, access to judicial reconsideration of decisions about the environment were severely narrowed, and processes underway to protect freshwater bodies were interrupted. Promising better environmental democracy, central government, and the appointed officials replacing the elected councillors, endorsed a new freshwater management initiative based on devolved collaboration and consensus building. In response to conflict over the Hurunui River, the catchment was the first area in which this initiative was tested, a process that became the case study for this project. Through a feminist poststructural approach, I conducted and analysed 42 semi-structured interviews with those involved with Hurunui politics, and was a participant observer at 12 meetings of the new collaborative committee for the catchment. I argue that there were multiple processes that worked to channel particular understandings of nature, and facilitate the enclosure of freshwater for economic advantage. This channelling occurred in three key ways. Firstly, reregulation in Canterbury removed many democratic rights, limiting opportunities for participation in water politics. Secondly, the devolved collaborative and consensus based water committee was constrained by targets and discourses that determined that more water needed to be enclosed to serve a neoliberal growth agenda. Thirdly, community was privileged as a scale of democracy. As a result, narrow constructions of community belonging and performance remained unexplored, and these constructions inhibited public debate and limited possibilities to articulate and explore difference. I argue that such everyday experiences of power and constrained agency constitute an important dynamic of nature politics. There were, however, hopeful aspects of the new regime. An emphasis on dialogue led to transformative social learning, particularly about Ngāi Tahu, the Māori iwi (tribe) with traditional authority over the region, and the ways the iwi negotiated and enacted a relational ethics with the river. This study argues that considerations of power must be at the forefront of democratic design and uneven power relations need to be engaged with in such a way that multiple understandings of nature and society can be articulated and seen to be legitimate. Such an approach provides possibilities for political space in which to reimagine environmental futures and contest the dominance of neoliberal natures.</p>

Accessing nature: The battle of the Hurunui River

<p>People understand their relationship, and that of broader society, with nature in a diverse range of ways. Yet the expression of such diversity is often constrained in decision making processes, and in western contexts, neoliberalised understandings of nature are often privileged. Feminist political ecology provides a nuanced approach to exploring how meanings of nature are made and remade, and how some meanings come to be dominant. An emergent body of political ecology has begun to draw on radical democratic theory to shed light on how this privilege is created and perpetuated in political processes in ways that channel certain outcomes. In extending this engagement between theories, this research explores how different understandings of nature compete in formal and informal political spaces through the case study of a new water management regime. For more than a decade, debate has raged about whether or not to dam the Hurunui River for irrigation. Such debate about the future of freshwater bodies has characterised politics in the Canterbury region through which the Hurunui flows. Canterbury has seen rapid agricultural intensification that has been enabled by the enclosure of freshwater. However, enclosure has been contested, and this contestation came to a head when, in early 2010, the national government intervened and dramatically reregulated freshwater in the region; elections for the regional council were suspended, access to judicial reconsideration of decisions about the environment were severely narrowed, and processes underway to protect freshwater bodies were interrupted. Promising better environmental democracy, central government, and the appointed officials replacing the elected councillors, endorsed a new freshwater management initiative based on devolved collaboration and consensus building. In response to conflict over the Hurunui River, the catchment was the first area in which this initiative was tested, a process that became the case study for this project. Through a feminist poststructural approach, I conducted and analysed 42 semi-structured interviews with those involved with Hurunui politics, and was a participant observer at 12 meetings of the new collaborative committee for the catchment. I argue that there were multiple processes that worked to channel particular understandings of nature, and facilitate the enclosure of freshwater for economic advantage. This channelling occurred in three key ways. Firstly, reregulation in Canterbury removed many democratic rights, limiting opportunities for participation in water politics. Secondly, the devolved collaborative and consensus based water committee was constrained by targets and discourses that determined that more water needed to be enclosed to serve a neoliberal growth agenda. Thirdly, community was privileged as a scale of democracy. As a result, narrow constructions of community belonging and performance remained unexplored, and these constructions inhibited public debate and limited possibilities to articulate and explore difference. I argue that such everyday experiences of power and constrained agency constitute an important dynamic of nature politics. There were, however, hopeful aspects of the new regime. An emphasis on dialogue led to transformative social learning, particularly about Ngāi Tahu, the Māori iwi (tribe) with traditional authority over the region, and the ways the iwi negotiated and enacted a relational ethics with the river. This study argues that considerations of power must be at the forefront of democratic design and uneven power relations need to be engaged with in such a way that multiple understandings of nature and society can be articulated and seen to be legitimate. Such an approach provides possibilities for political space in which to reimagine environmental futures and contest the dominance of neoliberal natures.</p>

From poverty to trust: Political implications of the anti-poverty campaign in China

Despite the rapid decrease in poverty across the developing world, there have been few attempts to analyze the implication of poverty alleviation on regime legitimacy. Bridging the literature on poverty alleviation and political trust, this analysis examines the mechanisms through which poverty reduction affects trust in local elected and appointed officials. Using an original survey on the Target Poverty Alleviation campaign in China and causal mediation analyses, we find that beneficiary status is positively associated with political trust. The perception of anti-poverty governance quality, rather than economic evaluation, is the mediator through which beneficiary status affects political trust. Moreover, the intensified non-formalistic elite-mass linkage developed in the poverty alleviation campaign enhances political trust through the improvement of perception of governance quality. These findings have implications for mechanisms through which poverty reduction affects political trust and the type of political linkage that sustains regime legitimacy.

The Backbone of Credit: The Institutional Foundations of Colonial America’s Economy of Credit and Collateral

This chapter begins by looking at the role of the common pleas courts in colonial credit relations, followed by an examination of the early history of title recording. Historical sources reveal that in most colonies, the adoption of local public title recording was driven both by concerns over convenience and by concerns about fraudulent conveyances — that is, problems arising from a lack of transparency in the purchase and mortgage markets. Most colonies offered a simple solution: mortgages and deeds could be recorded at the sessions of the common pleas courts. Public authentication of deeds and title recording streamlined the existing English conveyancing practices and allowed for the recording of all forms of property serving as collateral, including, most consequentially, slaves. The chapter also demonstrates how the process of securing property rights made some of the colonial legislatures stronger and more deeply intertwined with local institutions than they were before. Creating and empowering local administrations required the colonial legislatures to assert their authority, at times in the face of countervailing assertions of power by crown-appointed officials.

National administration

This chapter explores the notion of a ‘national administration’ in Egypt, from the Early Dynastic Period to the Late Period, by discussing a range of textual sources and other written forms known in tombs and temples. These studies suggest that from the beginning of writing in Egypt around 3000 bc, some form of administrative structure is visible. The supply of food and other resources for the royal palace seems to have been the main concern of the administration in most periods of ancient Egyptian history. In the Fourth Dynasty the vizier became the head of the administration. He controlled legal matters, the scribal offices and was, in the Old Kingdom, also often in charge of the pyramid building. In the New Kingdom the office was divided into two, one vizier had an office in Memphis and other one in Thebes. Other important offices at the royal court were officials in charge of the treasury, those with the granaries and officials in charge of royal domains. The Old Kingdom administration seems to be a rather loose system where the king appointed officials when needed. The Middle and New Kingdom administration shows more fixed structures.

Surveying the Australian General Public's Attitudes towards Personal Data on Facebook

<p>During March of 2018, a Cambridge Analytica-employed contractor reportedly gained unauthorised access to personal data stored on Facebook servers (Lapaire, 2018). Using a ‘scraping program’, Aleksandr Kogan obtained the personal data of approximately 87-million Facebook users (Lapaire, 2018; Lotrea, 2018). This data was later lawfully sold to Cambridge Analytica and used to create detailed profiles of Facebook users’ identities. Zuboff (2015) states the instigator for legislative change rectifying deficiencies allowing such happenings is the general public’s understanding of commodifying identity as threatening to privacy. The United States of America and the European Parliament heard requisite testimonies by Mark Zuckerberg regarding these events, but Australia did not. The alternate attitudes towards personal data on Facebook within Australia gave merit to the current study’s likewise investigation. A 25-item attitudinal questionnaire was administered via a Qualtrics survey to a snowball sampling of 65 participants. Via exploratory factor analysis the remaining 19-items which comprised the tool labelled the ‘Commodi-5’ was deemed valid for use with participants and similar populations. Additionally, the tool was deemed appropriately reliable via Cronbach’s reliability coefficient. Significance testing of the recorded data demonstrated participants desired the legislative change which Zuboff (2015) describes; however, legislative change has not yet occurred in Australia. This study proposes this may be because the attitudes possessed by the Australian general public are not uniform to those possessed by appointed officials. The implications of which should be the focus of future research.</p>

Surveying the Australian General Public's Attitudes towards Personal Data on Facebook

<p>During March of 2018, a Cambridge Analytica-employed contractor reportedly gained unauthorised access to personal data stored on Facebook servers (Lapaire, 2018). Using a ‘scraping program’, Aleksandr Kogan obtained the personal data of approximately 87-million Facebook users (Lapaire, 2018; Lotrea, 2018). This data was later lawfully sold to Cambridge Analytica and used to create detailed profiles of Facebook users’ identities. Zuboff (2015) states the instigator for legislative change rectifying deficiencies allowing such happenings is the general public’s understanding of commodifying identity as threatening to privacy. The United States of America and the European Parliament heard requisite testimonies by Mark Zuckerberg regarding these events, but Australia did not. The alternate attitudes towards personal data on Facebook within Australia gave merit to the current study’s likewise investigation. A 25-item attitudinal questionnaire was administered via a Qualtrics survey to a snowball sampling of 65 participants. Via exploratory factor analysis the remaining 19-items which comprised the tool labelled the ‘Commodi-5’ was deemed valid for use with participants and similar populations. Additionally, the tool was deemed appropriately reliable via Cronbach’s reliability coefficient. Significance testing of the recorded data demonstrated participants desired the legislative change which Zuboff (2015) describes; however, legislative change has not yet occurred in Australia. This study proposes this may be because the attitudes possessed by the Australian general public are not uniform to those possessed by appointed officials. The implications of which should be the focus of future research.</p>

Chronicling Our Legacy of Leadership

This paper is a culmination of research by the task force established to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS). It presents a capsule history of the founding of NCOBPS and then profiles of the founders of the organization. The profiles focus on the founders’ educational backgrounds, careers, and contributions to NCOBPS leadership, to the profession in terms of scholarship and service, and to the Black community and the nation with respect to their work in civil rights and community organizations, the bureaucracy, and as elected and appointed officials. The purpose is to provide not only a distilled and concise record, but also a framework from which to develop future research.

Monumental Decisions: How Direct Democracy Shapes Attitudes in the Conflict over Confederate Memorials

ABSTRACTAmericans are engaged in a heated, sometimes violent, debate over the fate of Confederate monuments. As communities decide whether to remove these monuments, elected and appointed officials typically have had the final say. What if instead of allowing elected officials to make such decisions, voters had the power? Would this affect how the public feels about the outcome, win or lose? We used a survey experiment to examine whether the mode of decision making affects public attitudes, testing the effects of a decision made by public referendum versus by a city council. We found that respondents view decisions made by referendum to be fairer and more legitimate and allow multiple perspectives to be heard. These results hold even for respondents who oppose the referendum’s outcome. Our results speak to the potential of direct democracy to enhance public acceptance of decisions, particularly when the public is divided.

La déconcentration administrative

Establishing a modern state in Europe has brought about the appearance of a system of introducing state on all of its territory. The reason this has come about is the need for government decisions to be applied in an equal way to everyone. This can only be ensured if officials, whom the government appoints and who are responsible for implementing and following government policy, effectively transfer them from government official level onto local and regional level. Central administration generally singularly carries out tasks of a national character the implementation of which pursuant to law cannot be placed onto a regional level. However, the state also must have officials at a local level who will implement real powers when making decisions (based on delegating powers), in order to take care of local needs and circumstances. «Deconcentration» precisely represents that. Therefore, we are dealing with services which include appointed officials who are subject to central body authority and who locally represent the government and ministries. In France and in general, we differentiate among three categories of administration: central administration, peripheral administration (decentralized or deconcentrated), independent specialized administration which are nevertheless still linked to one of the relevant ministries which supervise the bodies which are under government control. Deconcentration French style enriches the inter-department dimension, locally present in the person named prefect who represents government president and ministers and who is in charge of managing territory, maintaining dialogue with local representatives of executive powers and modernization of administration. Given the administrative map of France which includes thirty thousand municipalities, about a hundred departments and twenty regions (13 since 2015), deconcentration is based on the following : regional prefect implements national policy and policy of (European) community establishes strategic goals, allocates resources, evaluates state activity. The department prefect is responsible for operative activity and administering public policies. The vice-prefect initiates and joins partners in so-called «life centers» (towns and villages) within a department framework.