“The Role of Judges in the Formation of Public Law: Activism or Autolimitation?

(with G. Anthony).

The Role of Subjectivity and Knowledge Power Struggles in the Formation of Public Policy

There is a growing incentive for sociologists to demonstrate the use value of their research. Research ‘impact’ is a driver of research funding and a measure of academic standing. Academic debate on this issue has intensified since Burawoy’s (2004) call for a ‘public’ sociology. However the academy is no longer the sole or primary producer of knowledge and empirical sociologists need to contend with the ‘huge swathes’ of social data that now exist (Savage and Burrows, 2007). This article furthers these debates by considering power struggles between competing forms of knowledge. Using a case study, it specifically considers the power struggle between normative and empirical knowledge, and how providers of knowledge assert legitimacy for their truth claims. The article concludes that the idea of ‘impact’ and ‘use-value’ are extremely complex and depends in the policy context on knowledge power struggles, and on how policy makers want to view the world. © The Author(s) 2012

Assessing the determinants of public confidence in the police: A case study of a post-conflict community in Northern Ireland

Drawing upon original survey research this article seeks to identify the generative processes that influence perceptions of the police in the context of an inner-city neighbourhood in Northern Ireland that has been affected by increases in crime and disorder in the aftermath of the peace process. Conceptually we draw upon recent research from England and Wales that outlines confidence in the police in terms of instrumental and expressive dimensions. We apply this framework and consider whether it provides a useful template for understanding the post-conflict dynamics of police-community relations in our study area. Contrary to much received wisdom our analysis suggests that instrumental concerns about crime and illegal activity are a more influential predictor of attitudes to the police than expressive concerns with disorder and anti-social behaviour. Consequently our discussion points to the variance in local and national survey data and questions the degree to which the latter can usefully inform our understanding of trends and developments in discrete micro-spaces. Our conclusion outlines the potential policy implications for state policing practice in deprived urban spaces.

‘Papers from ‘A Symposium with Professor Roger Brownsword: Super-stewardship in the Context of Public Health’’

This special issue seeks to engage the term 'stewardship' and the practical and theoretical work around it, both of which are destined to remain items of unfinished business as governance struggles to keep up and connect with its fast moving technological and societal targets. While this special issue is testament to that observation, it also helps to foster much needed scholarly discussion and critique – and to ensure this field is not unwittingly formed and deployed by and as a legitimating support for governance, but rather opened up, elaborated and contested. The articles provide innovative insights and food for thought on the conception and legal-political practice and potential of stewardship and ‘super-stewardship’ in national, supranational and international settings.

An Introduction to 'A Symposium with Professor Roger Brownsword: Super-stewardship in the Context of Public Health'

Introduces the articles in the special issue.

Towards a Pedagogy of Public Criminology

In light of recent debates on ‘public criminology’, this paper chooses to focus on teaching as a way of reaching more publics. The various characteristics of a more public and engaged discipline are discussed and applied specifically to the teaching of criminology, including the relative merits and demerits of reorienting teaching in this way. Following on from this discussion, the paper proceeds to outline some practical ways in which this vision can be realised. Given the many affinities betweenthe Burawoyan concept of public ‘-ologies’ and the scholarship of learning and teaching, an argument is advanced for teaching as one of the first steps towards the practice of a more public criminology.

Beyond Divided Territory::How Changing Understandings of Public Space in Northern Ireland can Facilitate New Identity Dynamics

The sectarian geography of Northern Ireland, whereby the majority of the population live in areas predominated by one religion or the other, is typically assumed to straightforwardly reflect the territorial identities of local residents. This conflation of place and identity neglects the role of place in actively shaping and changing the behaviours occurring within them. The present paper uses new developments in the area of social psychology to examine three case studies of place identity in Northern Ireland and explore the possibilities for change. A large scale survey of the display of flags and emblems across Northern Ireland demonstrates the extent of visible ter-ritorialisation, but also the relationship between understandings of space and the acceptability of these displays. Secondly, analysis of interviews with the Orange Or-der and nationalist residents concerning the Drumcree dispute illustrates how differ-ent constructions of space are used to claim and counterclaim rights to display iden-tity. Finally analysis of media and interview accounts of the St Patrick’s Day event in Belfast illustrate how new understandings of shared space can negate territorial identities and facilitate coexistence in the same place and facilitate good relations.

The link between the learning organisation and curriculum innovation:A comparative study of public and private primary schools in Greece

This article examines the relationship between the learning organisation and the implementation of curriculum innovation within schools. It also compares the extent of innovative activity undertaken by schools in the public and the private sectors. A learning organisation is characterised by long-term goals, participatory decision-making processes, collaboration with external stakeholders, effective mechanisms for the internal communication of knowledge and information, and the use of rewards for its members. These characteristics are expected to promote curriculum innovation, once a number of control factors have been taken into account. The article reports on a study carried out in 197 Greek public and private primary schools in the 1999-2000 school year. Structured interviews with school principals were used as a method of data collection. According to the statistical results, the most important determinants of the innovative activity of a school are the extent of its collaboration with other organisations (i.e. openness to society), and the implementation of development programmes for teachers and parents (i.e. communication of knowledge and information). Contrary to expectations, the existence of long-term goals, the extent of shared decision-making, and the use of teacher rewards had no impact on curriculum innovation. The study also suggests that the private sector, as such, has an additional positive effect on the implementation of curriculum innovation, once a number of human, financial, material, and management resources have been controlled for. The study concludes by making recommendations for future research that would shed more light on unexpected outcomes and would help explore the causal link between variables in the research model.

Global Production, CSR and Human Rights: The Courts of Public Opinion and the Social License to Operate

This paper takes at its starting point the responsibility placed upon corporations by the United Nations’ Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework as elaborated upon by the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to respect human rights. The overt pragmatism and knowledge of the complex business relationships that are embedded in global production led John Ruggie, the author of the Framework, to adopt a structure for the relationship between human rights and business that built on the existing practices of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). His intention was that these practices should be developed to embrace respect for human rights by exhorting corporations to move from “the era of declaratory CSR” to showing a demonstrable policy commitment to respect for human rights. The prime motivation for corporations to do this was, according to Ruggie, because the responsibility to respect was one that would be guarded and judged by the “courts of public opinion” as part of the social expectations imposed upon corporations or to put it another way as a condition of a corporation’s social license to operate.
This article sets out the background context to the Framework and examines the structures that it puts forward. In its third and final section the article looks at how the Framework requires a corporation’s social license to be assembled and how and by whom that social license will be judged. The success or failure of the Framework in persuading corporations to respect human rights is tied to whether “the courts of public opinion” can use their “naming and shaming power” effectively.