Restraing Regulatory Capture? Anglo America, Crisis Politics and Trajectories of Change in Global Financial Governance

A growing number of respected commentators now argue that regulatory capture of public agencies and public policy by leading banks was one of the main causal factors behind the financial crisis of 2007–2009, resulting in a permissive regulatory environment. This regulatory environment placed a faith in banks own internal risk models, contributed to pro-cyclical behaviour and turned a blind eye to excessive risk taking. The article argues that a form of ‘multi-level regulatory capture’ characterized the global financial architecture prior to the crisis. Simultaneously, regulatory capture fed off, but also nourished the financial boom, in a fashion that mirrored the life cycle of the boom itself. Minimizing future financial booms and crises will require continuous, conscious and explicit efforts to restrain financial regulatory capture now and into the future. The article assesses the extent to which this has been achieved in current global financial governance reform efforts and highlights some of the persistent difficulties that will continue to hamper efforts to restrain regulatory capture. The evidence concerning the extent to which regulatory capture is being effectively restrained is somewhat mixed, and where it is happening it is largely unintentional and accidental. Recent reforms have overlooked the political causes of the crisis and have failed to focus explicitly or systematically on regulatory capture.

A burning issue? Governance and anti-incinerator campaigns in Ireland, North and South

The decades of conflict in Northern Ireland created divisions between communities, with few opportunities for cooperation. However, in the 1990s opposition to a proposed cross-border incinerator brought the divided communities together. The 1990s economic boom in the Republic of Ireland generated a waste management crisis as the by-products of rampant consumerism overwhelmed the state's rudimentary waste disposal system. Three Irish anti-incinerator campaigns which have pitted local communities against the Irish state or the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment are examined. Community attempts to gain leverage within the political governance frameworks in operation on both sides of the border are examined and the various ways in which environmental movements respond to the crisis of waste management under different governance regimes are illuminated.

Dispelling the Myth of the Naive Investor during the British Railway Mania, 1845–46

Anecdotal evidence from the British Railway Mania and other historical financial bubbles suggests that many investors during such episodes are naive, thus contributing to the asset price boom. Using extensive investor records, we find that very few investors during the Railway Mania can be categorized as such. Although some interpretations of the Mania suggest that naive investors were expropriated by railway insiders, our evidence is inconsistent with this view as railway insiders contributed substantial amounts of capital, and their investments performed no better than those made by other experienced investors.

Rock hyrax middens: A palaeoenvironmental archive for southern African drylands

Like many of the world's subtropical regions, southern Africa is highly sensitive to changes in the earth's climate system, but a dearth of reliable palaeoenvironmental records means that relatively little is known about how regional environments have been affected over centennial to multi-millennial timescales. To a large extent this sensitivity is a function of the position of these regions at the interface between temperate and tropical circulation systems. The resulting seasonality and irregularity of rainfall have limited the development of suitable archives, such as lakes and wetlands, for the preservation of palaeoenvironmental proxies.

This paper reviews and evaluates the value of rock hyrax middens as novel palaeoenvironmental archives in southern Africa. Considered are (1) the contemporary taxonomy, distribution and ecology of hyraxes, (2) the mechanisms of hyrax midden development, their physical and chemical structure, rates of accumulation and age; and (3) the palaeoenvironmental proxies preserved within hyrax middens, including fossil pollen, stable isotopes and biomarkers. The interpretive constraints and opportunities offered by these various midden characteristics are assessed with a view to demonstrating the potential of these deposits, widespread as they are through arid and semi-arid southern Africa, in providing a more detailed and chronologically resolved view of late Quaternary palaeoenvironments across the subcontinent. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deriving the Railway Mania

This article argues that the promotion boom which occurred in the railway industry during the mid 1840s was amplified by the issue of derivative-like assets, which let investors take highly leveraged positions in the shares of new railway companies. The partially paid shares which the new railway companies issued allowed investors to obtain exposure to an asset by paying only a small initial deposit. The consequence of this arrangement was that investor returns were substantially amplified, and many schemes could be financed simultaneously. However, when investors were required to make further payments it put a negative downward pressure on prices.

Poverty in Ireland in Comparative European Perspective

In this paper we seek to put Irish poverty rates in a comparative European context. We do so in a context whereby the Irish economic boom and EU enlargement have led to increasing reservations being expressed regarding rates deriving from the EU 'at risk of poverty' indicator. Our comparative analysis reports findings for both overall levels of poverty and variation by household reference person characteristics for this indicator and a consistent poverty measure for Ireland, the UK and five smaller European countries spanning a range of welfare regimes. Our findings demonstrate that the distinctiveness of Ireland's situation lies not in the overall levels of poverty per se but in the very high penalties associated with being in a household where the household reference person is a lone parent or excluded from the labour market.

Trends in economic vulnerability in the Republic of Ireland

In this paper we evaluate trends in levels of economic vulnerability in Ireland during the period 1994-2001. We also document changes in the consequences of such vulnerability for social exclusion and in the social demographic factors with which it is associated. Over time there was a sharp decline in economic vulnerability. Furthermore, the degree of differentiation between the vulnerable and non-vulnerable classes in relation to both economic exclusion and social exclusion, more broadly conceived, remained relatively constant. Ireland is characterised by levels of socio-economic inequality that place it at the more unequal end of the European spectrum. However, the dramatic reductions in levels of vulnerability across the socio-economic spectrum demonstrate that the fruits of the economic boom have been distributed relatively widely.

Protecting the most vulnerable in an economic crisis: a participatory study of civil society organisations in the Republic of Ireland

This paper advances knowledge of how civil society organisations (CSOs) negotiate the shift from boom-time public expenditure to governmental austerity. The study focuses on the Republic of Ireland, where CSOs occupied an important role in providing a voice for ‘vulnerable’citizens in corporatism for over a decade. The global financial crisis and subsequent austerity measures caused the country’s model of corporatist-style ‘social partnership’ to collapse. The article connects CSOs’ adaptation to austerity measures when protecting the ‘people behind the cuts’ to broader questions about co-optation of civil society through state-led policymaking
institutions.

Trends in Economic Stress and the Great Recession in Ireland: An Analysis of the CSO Survey in Income and Living Conditions (SILC)

Since 2008, Ireland has experienced the most severe economic and labour market crisis since the foundation of the State. These economic and labour market changes have had a stark impact on the standard of living across the Irish population. The rapid deterioration in the labour market, the rising level of household indebtedness and stringent austerity measures to plug the public finance deficit have had a widespread impact yet there is debate about where the heaviest burden has fallen and where the economic stress has been felt most. The paper analyses data from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions for the period 2004 to 2011. The aim of the paper is to develop and test a measure of economic stress, which will capture some of the aspects of the rapid change in economic fortunes on Irish households that are not picked up by income alone. This includes tapping into features of the recession such as debt problems, unsustainable housing costs, and other difficulties associated with managing on reduced household income in a period of uncertainty. In testing such a measure we examine trends over time from boom to bust in the Irish economy and consider how economic stress is distributed across different socio-economic groups. The paper explores the distribution and level of economic stress across income class groups, social classes and the life-course and tests the thesis of ‘middle class squeeze’.

Housing booms and media coverage

This article analyses news media coverage of the housing market. Building on theories of media influence where word of mouth is the final mechanism of opinion change but media initiate discourse, I examine the relationship between news media and the recent UK house price boom. Over 30 000 articles on the UK housing market from the period 1993 to 2008 are analysed, and it is found that media Granger-caused real house price changes, suggesting the media may have influenced opinions on the housing market. However, media sentiment on the housing market did not change with the secular increase in house prices in the 2000s, suggesting that the media did not contribute to the UK’s housing boom and may have helped constrain it.

The Changing Context for Planning Education in the UK and the Prospects for Research-Led, Practice-Engaged Teaching

The UK’s Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) celebrates its centenary in 2014, marking 100 years of close relationships between university-based Planning Schools and a professional body focussed on planning practice. During this period, the context for university education and the very idea of planning has changed dramatically contributing to a continual renegotiation of the relationships between the planning profession and the educational institutions it accredits. These changes have been particularly acute in the last ten years where a number of factors have forced a rapid change in the nature of planning education in the UK. This has included a boom and then slump in the number of planning students linked to the national economic situation, a reorganisation of many planning schools and their merger with cognate disciplines such as geography and an increased focus of research output, rather than professional engagement the key institutional indicator of success. This last factor adds a particularly new dimension to the profession-university relationship, which could potentially lead to either a straining of tensions or a synergy through research-led teaching that could significantly benefit both.

This paper will briefly review the evolution of UK planning schools and the co-evolution of the main ideas informing planning education. It will then describe the current profile of UK planning schools, based on an extensive national survey conducted on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute. The paper will then critically review the main challenges and opportunities facing UK Planning Schools in the context of changes in both planning practice and higher education. It will then move on to the concept of research-led teaching, drawing on current practice in the UK and review how well this concept serves students and the idea of developing reflective planning practitioners. Finally, the paper will seek to draw broad lessons from the experience of the UK and reflect on the type of planning education that can best serve planning professions in a variety of international contexts in the future.

Parker Morris and the economies of the Fordist house

The Parker Morris report of 1961 attempted, through the application of scientific principles, to define the minimum living space standards needed to accommodate household activities. But while early modernist research into ideas of existenzminimum were the work of avant-garde architects and thinkers, this report was commissioned by the British State. This normalization of scientific enquiry into space can be considered not only a response to new conditions in the mass production of housing – economies of scale, prefabrication, system-building and modular coordination – but also to the post-war boom in consumer goods. The domestic interior was assigned a key role as a privileged site of mass consumption as the production and micro-management of space in Britain became integral to the development of a planned national economy underpinned by Fordist principles. The apparently placeless and scale-less diagrams executed by Gordon Cullen to illustrate Parker Morris emblematize these relationships. Walls dissolve as space flows from inside to outside in a homogenized and ephemeral landscape whose limits are perhaps only the boundaries of the nation state and the circuits of capital.

Economic Stress and the Great Recession in Ireland: Polarization, Individualization or ‘Middle Class Squeeze’?

Following an unprecedented boom, since 2008 Ireland has experienced a severe economic crisis. Considerable debate persists as to where the heaviest burden of the recession has fallen. Conventional measures of income poverty and inequality have a limited capacity to answer this question. Our analysis, which focuses on economic stress and the mediating role of material deprivation, provides no evidence for individualization or class polarization. Instead we find that while economic stress level are highly stratified in income class and social class terms in both boom and bust periods, the changing impact of class is contingent on life course stage. The affluent income class remained largely insulated from the experience of economic stress. However, it saw its relative advantage overthe income poor class decline at the earlier stage of the life-course. At the other end of the hierarchy, the income poor experienced a relative improvement in their situation in the early life course phases. The precarious income class experienced some improvement in its situation at the earlier life course stages while the outcomes for the middle classes remain unchanged. In the mid-life course stages the precarious and lower middle classes experienced disproportionate increase in their stress levels while at the later life-cycle stage it is the combined middle classes that lost out. Additional effects over time relating to social class are restricted to the deteriorating situation of the petit bourgeoisie at the middle stage of the life-course. The pattern is clearly a good deal more complex that suggested by conventional notions of ‘middle class squeeze’ and points to the distinctive challenges relating to welfare and taxation policy faced by governments in the Great Recession.

Belfast's Traditional Music Scene: A Narrative of Change and Development

Today Belfast is home to a vibrant traditional music scene. There have never been more sessions, concerts, classes or lectures devoted to traditional music in the north's biggest city. A complex system of promoters, performers and listeners has emerged in a city that is growing in confidence as it moves away from the dark days of the Troubles. But how does this system function? While Dowling (2014) has examined the development of traditional music-making in Belfast as it shifted from a pre-conflict to conflict ridden environment, little research has been carried out into the reasons behind the boom in traditional music-making in a post-conflict setting.

This paper examines the impact upon the traditional music scene of the first wave of students to arrive in Belfast after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. These musicians, such as Donal O'Connor, Ruadhrai O'Kane and Aidan Walsh have had a lasting impact upon the lives of musicians native to Belfast, helping to bring traditional music to new venues and audiences.

The work of Belfast-based music schools with varying remits, such as Belfast Trad., and the Andersonstown School of Traditional and Contemporary Music, is also examined for the purpose of illustrating how both adults and young people are being educated about their musical heritage.

Influence of tropical easterlies in southern Africa's winter rainfall zone during the Holocene

South Africa's southwestern Cape occupies a critical transition zone between Southern Hemisphere temperate (winter) and tropical (summer) moisture-bearing systems. In the recent geological past, it has been proposed that the relative influence of these systems may have changed substantially, but little reliable evidence regarding regional hydroclimates and rainfall seasonality exists to refine or substantiate the understanding of long-term dynamics. In this paper we present a mid-to late Holocene multi-proxy record of environmental change from a rock hyrax midden from Katbakkies Pass, located along the modern boundary between the winter and summer rainfall zones. Derived from stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes, fossil pollen and microcharcoal, these data provide a high resolution record of changes in humidity, and insight into changes in rainfall seasonality. Whereas previous work concluded that the site had generally experienced only subtle environmental change during the Holocene, our records indicate that significant, abrupt changes have occurred in the region over the last 7000 years. Contrary to expectations based on the site's location, these data indicate that the primary determinant of changes in humidity is summer rather than winter rainfall variability, and its influence on drought season intensity and/or length. These findings are consistent with independent records of upwelling along the southern and western coasts, which indicate that periods of increased humidity are related to increased tropical easterly flow. This substantially refines our understanding of the nature of temperate and tropical circulation system dynamics in SW Africa, and how changes in their relative dominance have impacted regional environments during the Holocene.