The Political Economy of Swift's Satires and other Prose Works

Jonathan Swift wrote perceptively about the emerging commercial society<br/>in Britain in the early eighteenth century. His particular focus was on the<br/>financial revolution and its implications for economic and political stability<br/>as well as for shifts of power between the landed and commercial<br/>classes. Following his return to Ireland Swift���s focus shifted to the developmental<br/>problems of his native country. In several pamphlets he advocated<br/>consumption of domestic products, challenged existing political<br/>structures and made trenchant criticisms of absenteeism and other dysfunctional<br/>aspects of the land tenure system. Swift���s politico-economic<br/>concerns are fully reflected in his best known work, Gulliver���s Travels but<br/>his most pointed criticism of the emerging commercial system is contained<br/>in A Modest Proposal. Written in the form of an economic pamphlet, A<br/>Modest Proposal is ostensibly designed to address the problem of poverty<br/>in Ireland. In addition to its implicit criticism of economic policy in Ireland,<br/>the pamphlet challenges the separation of economics and morality as<br/>evidenced in the writings of William Petty and Bernard Mandeville. Swift<br/>parodies Petty���s political arithmetic but it is suggested here that he also<br/>had in his sights the consequentialist reasoning present in the work of<br/>both authors but explicitly so in Mandeville.<br/>Keywords: financial revolution, public debt, paper credit, rationality, political<br/>arithmetic, consequentialism, Petty (William), Mandeville (Bernard)

Combinations of Prompt and Target Response Modalities and Their Impact on Emergent Relations and Teaching Efficiency.

In the present study, native Spanish speakers were taught a small English vocabulary (Spanish-to-English intraverbals). Four different training conditions were created by combining textual and echoic prompts with written and vocal target responses. The efficiency of each training condition was examined by analysing emergent relations (i.e., tacts) and the total number of sessions required to reach mastery under each training condition. All combinations of prompt-response modalities generated increases in correct responding on tests for emergent relations but when target responses were written, mastery criterion was reached faster. Results are discussed in terms of efficiency for emergent relations and recommendations for future directions are provided.

The Dark Side of Nudging: The Ethics, Political Economy, and Law of Libertarian Paternalism

Libertarian paternalism, as advanced by Cass Sunstein, is seriously flawed, but not primarily for the reasons that most commentators suggest. Libertarian paternalism and its attendant regulatory implications are too libertarian, not too paternalistic, and as a result are in considerable tension with ���thick��� conceptions of human dignity. We make four arguments. The first is that there is no justification for a presumption in favor of nudging as a default regulatory strategy, as Sunstein asserts. It is ordinarily less effective than mandates; such mandates rarely offend personal autonomy; and the central reliance on cognitive failures in the nudging program is more likely to offend human dignity than the mandates it seeks to replace. Secondly, we argue that nudging as a regulatory strategy fits both overtly and covertly, often insidiously, into a more general libertarian program of political economy. Thirdly, while we are on the whole more concerned to reject the libertarian than the paternalistic elements of this philosophy, Sunstein���s work, both in Why Nudge?, and earlier, fails to appreciate how nudging may be manipulative if not designed with more care than he acknowledges. Lastly, because of these characteristics, nudging might even be subject to legal challenges that would give us the worst of all possible regulatory worlds: a weak regulatory intervention that is liable to be challenged in the courts by well-resourced interest groups. In such a scenario, and contrary to the ���common sense��� ethos contended for in Why Nudge?, nudges might not even clear the excessively low bar of doing something rather than nothing. Those seeking to pursue progressive politics, under law, should reject nudging in favor of regulation that is more congruent with principles of legality, more transparent, more effective, more democratic, and allows us more fully to act as moral agents. Such a system may have a place for (some) nudging, but not one that departs significantly from how labeling, warnings and the like already function, and nothing that compares with Sunstein���s apparent ambitions for his new movement.<br/>

Review of Mark F. Chingono. The State, Violence and Development. The Political Economy of War in Mozambique, 1975���1992.

Book review of: Mark F. Chingono. The State, Violence and Development. The Political Economy of War in Mozambique, 1975���1992. Avebury (Aldershot, Brookfield USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney), 1996. 291 pp. Foreword by Keith Hart. Tables. Appendix. Selected Bibliography. Index. ��42.00. $71.95. Cloth.

A Triumph of Voluntarism? Industrial Relations and Strikes in Northern Ireland During World War Two

Flanders (1974) considered the Second World War to be the great social triumph and vindication of voluntarism in British industrial relations. This paper considers the experience of one region, Northern Ireland, functioning in a unique social and political context and considers the experience of its wartime industrial relations system. The political framework, trade union growth and representation, collective bargaining, strike activity including the major munitions strike of 1944 which may have provoked Defence Regulations Order 1AA, labour management and Joint Production Committees are all examined. The paper gives qualified support to Flanders��� conclusion.

Political economy - from nation building to stagnation

<br/><br/>

Placing political economy: organising opposition to free trade before the abolition of the Corn Laws

The unfurling of global capitalism ��� and its attendant effects ��� has long been fertile intellectual terrain for geographers. But whilst studies of the processes and mechanisms of globalisation undoubtedly assume a talismanic importance in the discipline, geographers, with few exceptions, have left examinations of early economic liberalism to historians. One such critically important episode in the evolution of the liberal economic project was the repeal of the so-called 'Corn Laws' in 1846. Whilst the precise impact of the Manchester-based Anti-Corn Law League (ACLL) continues to be a matter of conjecture, Eric Sheppard has asserted that their particular take on political economy managed to assume a 'truth-like status' and worldwide universality. But the ACLL's campaign represents only one, albeit decisive, stage in the long intellectual and practical struggle between 'protectionists' and the disciples of free trade. Studies of the non-'Manchester' components have tended to focus squarely upon national politics. This paper examines a pivotal attempt in 1838 by Lord Melbourne's Government to experiment with the effective elimination of import duties on fresh fruit. Unlike most agricultural commodities, table fruit was produced in a tightly defined area, thus allowing the Government's experiment to play out, in theory, without national political fallout. Whilst the Government's clandestine actions left little time for a concerted opposition to develop, Kentish fruit growers soon organised. A formidable lobby was forged that drew wide local support yet also evolved beyond the original 'epistemic community'. Whilst the coalition failed in their efforts to reintroduce protective duties, their actions allow us to see how protectionist ideologies and policies were vivified through practices at many different spatial scales and to better understand the complex spatiality of protectionist takes on political economy. Their campaign also changed ��� at least in the short term ��� the course of British mercantile policy.