Explaining the 'health check' of the Common Agricultural Policy: budgetary politics, globalisation and paradigm change revisited

Three potential explanations of past reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) can be identified in the literature: a budget constraint, pressure from General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) negotiations or commitments and a paradigm shift emphasising agriculture’s provision of public goods. This discussion on the driving forces of CAP reform links to broader theoretical questions on the role of budgetary politics, globalisation of public policy and paradigm shift in explaining policy change. In this article, the Health Check reforms of 2007/2008 are assessed. They were probably more ambitious than first supposed, although it was a watered-down package agreed by ministers in November 2008. We conclude that the Health Check was not primarily driven by budget concerns or by the supposed switch from the state-assisted to the multifunctional policy paradigm. The European Commission’s wish to adopt an offensive negotiating stance in the closing phases of the Doha Round was a more likely explanatory factor. The shape and purpose of the CAP post-2013 is contested with divergent views among the Member States.

The expenses scandal and the politics of electoral reform

The scandal over MPs' expenses that erupted in 2009 was followed by a surge in discussion of electoral reform. A range of reforms to Westminster's existing electoral system are now high on the political agenda. This article examines the extent and the nature of the scandal's impact on the electoral reform debate and draws out comparative implications for the sorts of conditions that can force politicians to accept electoral reforms that they do not want. It finds that the expenses scandal significantly changed debate about some electoral reform topics, but not about others. It proposes three factors likely to increase the impact of scandal in sparking reform: that the scandal is seen as harming ordinary people in their daily lives; that reforms can readily be understood as likely to mitigate the sources of scandal; and that those reforms do not seriously harm politicians' own perceived interests.

Politics and the Paul's Cross sermons, 1558-1642

A study of England's most important pulpit of the Reformation period with a detailed discussion of the rhetorical and interpretative strategies used by preachers on politically sensitive subjects and occasions.

Frontiers and borderlands in Imperial perspectives: exploring Rome’s Egyptian frontier

Archaeological research has addressed imperial frontiers for more than a century. Romanists, in particular, have engaged in exploring frontiers from economic, militaristic, political, and (more recently) social vantages. This article suggests that we also consider the dialogue between space and social perception to understand imperial borderland developments. In addition to formulating new theoretical approaches to frontiers, this contribution represents the first comprehensive overview of both the documentary sources and the archaeological material found in Egypt's Great Oasis during the Roman period (ca. 30 B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E.). A holistic analysis of these sources reveals that Egypt's Great Oasis, which consisted of two separate but linked oases, served as a conceptual, physical, and human buffer zone for the Roman empire. This buffer zone protected the "ordered" Nile Valley inhabitants from the "chaotic" desert nomads, who lived just beyond the oases. This conclusion suggests that nomads required specific imperial frontier policies and that these policies may have been ideological as well as economic and militaristic.

Resilience planning, economic change and the politics of post-recession development in London and Hong Kong

For much of the 1990s and 2000s, the emphasis of urban policy in many global cities was on managing and mitigating the social and environmental effects of rapid economic growth. The credit crunch of 2008 and the subsequent recession have undermined some of the core assumptions on which such policies were based. It is in this context that the concept of resilience planning has taken on a new significance. Drawing on contemporary research in London and Hong Kong, the paper shows how resilience and recovery planning has become a key area of political debate. It examines what is meant by conservative and radical interpretations of resilience and how conservative views have come to dominate ‘recovery’ thinking, with élite groups unwilling to accept the limits to the neo-liberal orthodoxies that helped to precipitate the economic crisis. The paper explores the implications of such thinking for the politics of urban development.