Famine and land in Ireland and India 1845-1880: James Caird and the political economy of hunger

The perception of Ireland and India as ‘zones of famine’ led many nineteenth-century observers to draw analogies between these two troublesome parts of the British empire. This article investigates this parallel through the career of James Caird (1816–92), and specifically his interventions in the latter stages of both the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50, and the Indian famines of 1876–9. Caird is best remembered as the joint author of the controversial dissenting minute in the Indian famine commission report of 1880; this article locates the roots of his stance in his previous engagements with Irish policy. Caird's interventions are used to track the trajectory of an evolving ‘Peelite’ position on famine relief, agricultural reconstruction, and land reform between the 1840s and 1880s. Despite some divergences, strong continuities exist between the two interventions – not least concern for the promotion of agricultural entrepreneurship, for actively assisting economic development in ‘backward’ economies, and an acknowledgement of state responsibility for preserving life as an end in itself. Above all in both cases it involved a critique of a laissez-faire dogmatism – whether manifest in the ‘Trevelyanism’ of 1846–50 or the Lytton–Temple system of 1876–9.

The State, Compartmentalization and the Turn to Local Community: A Critique of the Political Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre condemns modern politics, specifically liberalism and the institutions of the liberal state, as irredeemably fallen. His core argument is that the liberal state encourages a disempowering ‘compartmentalization’ of people’s everyday roles and activities that undermines the intersubjective conditions of human flourishing. MacIntyre’s alternative is an Aristotelian politics centred on the notion of “practice.” Defined by justice and solidarity, this politics can only be realized, he claims, within local communities which oppose and resist the dictates of the administrative state and capitalist market. Here it is argued that MacIntyre’s notion of “practice” represents a compelling ethical-political ideal. However, the belief that this ideal is best realized within local communities is rejected. In privileging local community, MacIntyre relies on a reductive view of modern states and overlooks the institutional conditions of a just polity. Against this, it is argued that a politics of human flourishing cannot succeed without an emancipatory transformation of large-scale, trans-communal institutions, in particular the state.

Devolution and the political representation of business interests in the UK

The devolution of political power in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the developing regional agenda in England are widely read as a significant reconfiguration of the institutions and scales of economic governance. The process is furthest developed in Scotland while Wales and Northern Ireland, in their own distinct ways, provide intermediate cases. Devolution is least developed in England where regional political identities are generally weak and the historical legacy of regional institutions is limited.