Class, Factionalism, and the Radical Retreat: Black Laborers and the Republican Party in South Carolina, 1865-1900

a chapter-length piece in a collection which I've co-edited and written the introduction for, which examines class and other tensions in the ranks of the Republican party during and after Reconstruction in South Carolina, with a focus on the confrontation between insurgent former slaves and Party moderates over the social content of the RP programme.

Religious Political Parties and the Limits of Political Liberalism

Political parties have only recently become a subject of investigation in political theory. In this paper I analyse religious political parties in the context of John Rawls’s political liberalism. Rawlsian political liberalism, I argue, overly constrains the scope of democratic political contestation and especially for the kind of contestation channelled by parties. This restriction imposed upon political contestation risks undermining democracy and the development of the kind of democratic ethos that political liberalism cherishes. In this paper I therefore aim to provide a broader and more inclusive understanding of ‘reasonable’ political contestation, able to accommodate those parties (including religious ones) that political liberalism, as customarily understood, would exclude from the democratic realm. More specifically, I first embrace Muirhead and Rosenblum’s (Perspectives on Politics 4: 99–108 2006) idea that parties are ‘bilingual’ links between state and civil society and I draw its normative implications for party politics. Subsequently, I assess whether Rawls’s political liberalism is sufficiently inclusive to allow the presence of parties conveying religious and other comprehensive values. Due to Rawls’s thick conceptions of reasonableness and public reason, I argue, political liberalism risks seriously limiting the number and kinds of comprehensive values which may be channelled by political parties into the public political realm, and this may render it particularly inhospitable to religious political parties. Nevertheless, I claim, Rawls’s theory does offer some scope for reinterpreting the concepts of reasonableness and public reason in a thinner and less restrictive sense and this may render it more inclusive towards religious partisanship.

The limits of democracy: Ireland 1778-1848

A survey of the use of the term democracy in Irish politics in the late eighteenth and early ninetenth centuries

Intra-operative decision making by ophthalmic surgeons

Research on surgical decision making and risk management usually focuses on peri-operative care, despite the magnitude and frequency of intra-operative risks. The aim of this study was to examine ophthalmic surgeons' intra-operative decisions and risk management strategies in order to explore differences in cognitive processes.

Identity, Unity, and the Limits of Democracy

Can the demos be uncoupled from the ethnos? Can there be a democratic politics of state‐boundaries, or are borders a condition of the possibility of democratic politics rather than a possible subject for those politics? The author argues for the decoupling strategy and affirms the possibility of a democratic politics about borders, anchoring the discussion in the politics of Northern Ireland. The argument turns on the analysis of public reasoning. It is argued first that culturalist accounts of self‐determination are misconceived and that political institutions, and not cultural identity, make collective self‐determination possible. Second, that the demos is constituted by acts of mutual recognition required by the practice of public reasoning, and that this practice cannot be confined with state‐boundaries. Taken together this allows us to conceive of the unity of a people as constituted by practices of public reason, given effect by institutions whose configuration is never finally fixed.

Stormont is planning to remove democracy

Expert editorial opinion on proposed planning reform in Northern Ireland

Delaying Truth Recovery for Missing Persons

The fate of missing persons is a central issue in post-conflict societies facing truth recovery and human rights dilemmas. Despite widespread public sympathy towards relatives, societies emerging from conflict often defer the recovery of missing for decades. More paradoxically, in post-1974 Cyprus, the official authorities delayed unilateral exhumations of victims buried within cemeteries in their own jurisdiction. Analysis of official post-1974 discourse reveals a Greek-Cypriot consensus to emphasise the issue as one of Turkish aggression, thus downplaying in-group responsibilities and the legacy of intra-communal violence. We compare the experience of Cyprus with other post-conflict societies such as Spain, Northern Ireland, and Mozambique and explore the linkages between institutions and beliefs about transitional justice. We argue that elite consensus initiates and facilitates the transition to democracy but often leads to the institutionalization of groups opposing truth recovery even for in-group members.

Magma Evolution in the Primitive, Intra-oceanic Tonga Arc: Petrogenesis of Basaltic Andesites at Tofua Volcano

Tofua volcano is situated midway along the Tonga oceanic arc and has undergone two phases of ignimbrite-forming activity. The eruptive products are almost entirely basaltic andesites (52 center dot 5-57 wt % SiO2) with the exception of a volumetrically minor pre-caldera dacite. The suite displays a strong tholeiitic trend with K2O <1 wt %. Phenocryst assemblages typically comprise plagioclase + clinopyroxene +/- orthopyroxene with microlites of Ti-magnetite. Olivine (Fo(83-88)) is rare and believed to be dominantly antecrystic. An increase in the extent and frequency of reverse zoning in phenocrysts, sieve-textured plagioclase and the occurrence of antecrystic phases in post-caldera lavas record a shift to dynamic conditions, allowing the interaction of magma batches that were previously distinct. Pyroxene thermobarometry suggests crystallization at 950-1200 degrees C and 0 center dot 8-1 center dot 8 kbar. Volatile measurements of glassy melt inclusions indicate a maximum H2O content of 4 center dot 16 wt % H2O, and CO2-H2O saturation curves indicate that crystallization occurred at two levels, at depths of 4-5 center dot 5 km and 1 center dot 5-2 center dot 5 km. Major and trace element models suggest that the compositions of the majority of the samples represent a differentiation trend whereby the dacite was produced by 65% fractional crystallization of the most primitive basaltic andesite. Trace element models suggest that the sub-arc mantle source is the residuum of depleted Indian mid-ocean ridge basalt mantle (IDMM-1% melt), whereas radiogenic isotope data imply addition of 0 center dot 2% average Tongan sediment melt and a fluid component derived from the subducted altered Pacific oceanic crust. A horizontal array on the U-Th equiline diagram and Ra excesses of up to 500% suggest fluid addition to the mantle wedge within the last few thousand years. Time-integrated (Ra-226/Th-230) vs Sr/Th and Ba/Th fractionation models imply differentiation timescales of up to 4500 years for the dacitic magma compositions at Tofua.