Climate Change Mitigation and Intergenerational Justice

Existing climate change mitigation policies are particularly concerned with the reconciliation of two seemingly conflicting aims: environmental protection and economic efficiency. The normative principles underlying these policies meanwhile focus on two central ideas: fair burden-sharing and agents' responsibility. However, both existing policy instruments and their supporting philosophical principles are highly problematic in terms of intergenerational justice and truly effective climate change mitigation. Three competing conceptions for allocating and distributing the burdens of climate change mitigation (cap-and-trade schemes, carbon emission taxes, and personal ecological space quotas) and their compatibility with principles of intra- and intergenerational justice are analysed and evaluated. None of the proposed instruments is able to satisfy the demands of effective mitigation and egalitarian justice on its own, which suggests that existing proposals for the distribution of emission rights and climate change-related costs need to be supported by a thicker account of intergenerational justice.

“Shall we playe the good girles”: Playing Girls, Performing Girlhood on Early Modern Stages

This essay investigates the extent to which girlhood functions as a queer category in two theatrical representations of schoolgirls in early seventeenth-century England. It focuses on the depictions of schoolgirls in the anonymous The Wit of a Woman (1604), written for the all-male stage of the professional theatre, and in Robert White’s masque, Cupid’s Banishment (1617), performed by the young Ladies of Deptford Hall before Queen Anna of Denmark, to examine the intersections of age, gender, sexuality and education in early modern concepts of girlhood. Situating these plays within wider debates about female education and the history of the contested role of performance in the schooling of early modern girls, it argues that they deploy the category of girlhood to demonstrate the subversive potential of educating girls. Yet, this essay proposes, these plays simultaneously reveal the potential agency of young women who manipulate girlhood to claim their distinct sexual, aged and gendered states as girls. It argues that early modern girlhood is a state that might be performed by young women to disrupt normative expectations of feminine behaviour and desire. Placing dramatic representations of schoolgirls and the experiences of schoolgirls on the early modern stage side by side, this essay demonstrates that the schoolroom and performance are sites in which this transgressive potential is realised.

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 Multiple Facets of ETF Investing: A World-Wide Analysis

The global ETF industry provides more complicated investment vehicles than low-cost index trackers. Instead, we find that the real investments of ETFs that do not fully replicate their benchmarks may deviate from their benchmarks to leverage informational advantages (which leads to a surprising stock-selection ability), to benefit from the securities lending market, to support ETF-affiliated banks’ stock prices, and to help affiliated OEFs through cross-trading. These effects are more prevalent in ETFs domiciled in Europe. Market awareness of such additional risk is reflected in ETF outflows. These results have important normative implications for consumer protection and financial stability.

Green Political Theory

Ecologism or green political theory is the most recent of schools of political thinking. On the one hand, it focuses on issues that are extremely old in politics and philosophical inquiry – such as the relationship between the human and nonhuman worlds, the moral status of animals, what is the ‘good life’, and the ethical and political regulation of technological innovation. Yet on the other, it is also characterised as dealing with some specifically contemporary issues such as the economic and political implications of climate change, peak oil, overconsumption, resource competition and conflicts, and rising levels of global and national inequalities. It is also an extremely broad school of political thought covering a wide variety of concerns, contains a number of distinct sub-schools of green thought (here sharing a similarity with other political ideologies) and combines normative and empirical scientific elements in a unique manner making it distinctive from other political ideologies.

Climate Change, national politics and grassroots action: an introduction

Climate change continues to dominate academic work within green/environmental politics. Indeed, there appears to be almost an inverse relationship between the lack of political leadership on tackling climate change and the growth in ever more sophisticated academic analyses of this complex and multifaceted problem. There is an increasing disjunction between the growth in our knowledge and understanding of the ethical, political, economic, sociological, cultural, and psychological aspects of climate change and the lack of political achievement in putting in place clear and binding targets, an agreed decarbonisation roadmap, and associated regulatory and policy instruments with enforcement. This gap might be taken as evidence that we do not need more reports on climate change. To quote that most unlikely of green politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Governor of California: ‘The debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat. And we know that the time for action is now’ (California Energy Commission 2007, p. 1). This special issue focuses on a variety of ways in which climate change is conceptualised in normative political and ethical theory, and addressed in policy and regulations.

Irony as discipline: Self-help and gender in the knowledge economy:Self-help and gender in the knowledge economy

In this article, we explore the role of self-help literature within the knowledge economy. We point to the recent growth of ironic humour within such texts, and examine how this operates to construct gendered and embodied subjectivities that position women according to a masculine gaze. Drawing on empirical data from self-help books for career women published between 1997 and 2007, we analyse the styles of embodiment that these texts promote. We find that career women are encouraged to maintain a stance of constant attention to themselves and their bodily presentations, a position that is in line with wider cultural features of contemporary knowledge economy working. We note that ironic humour is deployed in ways that subtly reinforce existing gender relations within contemporary organizations. Our article contributes to debates on subjectivity within the knowledge economy; while scholars have pointed to an increasing normative emphasis on embodied performances, we provide insights into the mechanisms by which this occurs, with a specific focus upon the growing genre of self-help literature and its recent shift to ironic humour.

Incubation or Induction? Gendered Identity Work in the Context of Technology Business Incubation

While there is a substantial body of literature exploring the influence of business incubation upon early stage firms, this debate remains almost entirely gender blind. This article challenges this assumption by adopting a feminist perspective to reveal business incubation as a gendered process shaping the identity work undertaken by women seeking legitimacy as technology venturers. In so doing, we critically evaluate prevailing normative analyses of the business incubation process and entrepreneurial legitimation. To illustrate this argument, we draw upon empirical evidence which reveals technology incubation as a legitimating induction process encouraging women to reproduce masculinized representations of the normative technology entrepreneur.

Queer Spaces, Sexual Violence and the Desire for Safety

Queer politics and spaces have historically been associated with ideals of sexual liberation. They are conceptualised as spaces where sex, and its intersections with intimacy, friendship and love can be explored outside of normative frameworks which value monogamous reproductive heterosexuality at the expense of other non-normative sexual expressions. In recent years, however, autonomous queer spaces such as the global Queeruption gatherings and other queer community spaces in Australia have become increasingly concerned with the presence and danger of sexual violence in queer communities. Almost without exception, this danger has been responded to through the creation of ‘safe(r) spaces’ policies, generally consisting of a set of guidelines and proscribed behaviours which individuals must agree to in order to participate in or attend the event or space. The guidelines themselves tend to privilege of sexual politics of affirmative verbal consent, insisting that such consent should be sought prior to any physical or sexual contact, inferring that a failure to do so is ethically unacceptable within. This chapter reflects on the attempts to construct queer communities as ‘safer spaces,’ arguing that the concepts of consent and safety are inadequate to develop a queer response to sexual violence. Such a response, it argues, must be based on the openness to possibilities and refusal of sexual restrictions and regulations that have always been central elements of queer theory and politics.

Unveiling Fairness for the Consumer:The Law, Economics and Justice of Expanded Arbitration

In recent years, the US Supreme Court has rather controversially extended the ambit of the Federal Arbitration Act to extend arbitration’s reach into, inter alia¸ consumer matters, with the consequence that consumers are often (and unbeknownst to them) denied remedies which would otherwise be available. Such denied remedies include recourse to class action proceedings, effective denial of punitive damages, access to discovery and the ability to resolve the matter in a convenient forum.

The court’s extension of arbitration’s ambit is controversial. Attempts to overturn this extension have been made in Congress, but to no avail. In contrast to American law, European consumer law looks at pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate directed at consumers with extreme suspicion, and does so on the grounds of fairness. In contrast, some argue that pre-dispute agreements in consumer (and employment) matters are consumer welfare enhancing: they decrease the costs of doing business, which is then passed on to the consumer. This Article examines these latter claims from both an economic and normative perspective.

The economic analysis of these arguments shows that their assumptions do not hold. Rather than being productive of consumer surplus, the use of arbitration is likely to have the opposite effect. The industries from which the recent Supreme Court cases originated not only do not exhibit the industrial structure assumed by the proponents of expanded arbitration, but are also industries which exhibit features that facilitate consumer welfare reducing collusion.

The normative analysis addresses the fairness concerns. It is explicitly based upon John Rawls’ notion of “justice as fairness,” which can provide a lens to evaluate social institutions. This Rawlsian analysis considers the use of extended arbitration in consumer matters in the light of the earlier economic results. It suggests that the asymmetries present in the contractual allocation of rights serve as prima facie evidence that such arbitration–induced exclusions are prima facie unjust/unfair. However, as asymmetry is only a prima facie test, a generalized criticism of the arbitration exclusions (of the sort found in Congress and underlying the European regime) is overbroad.

Queering the Family: Attitudes towards Lesbian and Gay Relationships and Families in Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland Life andTimes (NILT) Survey has asked questions on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues since 1998. To date survey data have focused primarily on issues relating to prejudice, discrimination and tolerance. In 2012 a range of questions focussing more specifically on LGBT1 issues was included. This collected information on knowledge and perceptions of the LGBT population; personal prejudice; attitudes on equality issues; the visibility of LGBT people and family-related issues.

This update provides an overview of some of the information emerging from this data. It discusses attitudes towards same-sex relations and notable changes over time. Given recent political debate the primary focus of this paper is on attitudes relating to ‘queer’ marriage, family and parenting. We use the term ‘queer’ here to refer to ‘the diverse family structures formed by those with non-normative gender behaviours or sexual orientations’ (Bernstein and Reimann, 2001: 3). As previous updates have noted, there have been significant legislative and policy changes in this area (Jarman, 2010) and this continues with ongoing discussions regarding the development of a Sexual Orientation Strategy for Northern Ireland (Gray et al, 2013).

Sustainable Technoscientific Development and the Innovator Citizen

Sustainable development could provide a critical foil for individual
and especially collective reflection on the normative
direction, ends and means employed by societies, particularly
around the economy, its technology and resource-intensive
orientation and configuration with ecosystems. However,
although sustainable development is a constitutional objective
of the EU, its implementation in strategies and policies reveals
a much narrower meaning. By framing sustainable development
as ecological modernisation on the basis of technoscientific
innovation, and by imagining citizens as entrepreneurs in a
knowledge-based European economy, openings for democratic
experimentation and social innovation are limited and even
forestalled. In addition, the disruptive and transformational
potential of citizenship is stymied. Still, sustainable development
has resonance within citizenship and human rights
discourses that provide important resources for the fashioning
of common understanding. These are valuable supplements to
the repertoire of European citizenship that could help to embed
sustainable development in the social fabric and generate
alternative imaginaries and futures of a sustainable Europe.

Political Liberalism, Free Speech and Public Reason

In this paper, I critically assess John Rawls' repeated claim that the duty of civility is only a moral duty and should not be enforced by law. In the first part of the paper, I examine and reject the view that Rawls' position may be due to the practical difficulties that the legal enforcement of the duty of civility might entail. I thus claim that Rawls' position must be driven by deeper normative reasons grounded in a conception of free speech. In the second part of the paper, I therefore examine various arguments for free speech and critically assess whether they are consistent with Rawls' political liberalism. I first focus on the arguments from truth and self-fulfilment. Both arguments, I argue, rely on comprehensive doctrines and therefore cannot provide a freestanding political justification for free speech. Freedom of speech, I claim, can be justified instead on the basis of Rawls' political conception of the person and of the two moral powers. However, Rawls' wide view of public reason already allows scope for the kind of free speech necessary for the exercise of the two moral powers and therefore cannot explain Rawls' opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. Such opposition, I claim, can only be explained on the basis of a defence of unconstrained freedom of speech grounded in the ideas of democracy and political legitimacy. Yet, I conclude, while public reason and the duty of civility are essential to political liberalism, unconstrained freedom of speech is not. Rawls and political liberals could therefore renounce unconstrained freedom of speech, and endorse the legal enforcement of the duty of civility, while remaining faithful to political liberalism.

Politics without the Vernacular: Liberal Culturalism and the Language Policy of the European Union

Will Kymlicka's liberal culturalism presents a tension between the idea that linguistic diversity in multilingual polities should be protected and the claim that democratic debate across linguistic boundaries is unfeasible. In this article, I resolve that tension by arguing that trans-lingual democratic deliberation in multilingual polities is necessary to legitimise those measures aimed at the protection of linguistic diversity. I conclude that my account provides a coherent normative response to the challenges faced by the European Union (EU) in the field of language policy and that an EU-wide deliberative forum is not as unfeasible as Kymlicka suggests.