The Glasgow 2014 XX Commonwealth Games and Scottish Independence: “Political Truce” or Political Truth(s)?

This paper explores the political reaction to Lord McConnell’s appeal for a political ‘truce’ in the form of a temporary halt to campaigning by all political parties and organisations involved in the debate regarding the Scottish independence referendum during the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games (BBC, 2014; McConnell, 2014). Urging both sides of the debate to cease campaigning for the two-week period of the Glasgow 2014 games, the current Labour peer and past First Minister of the Scottish Parliament cited concerns that there are “genuine concerns that the Games, and the image of Scotland, could be damaged by attempts by either side – for and against – to use the Games to promote their cause, or to use the venues for campaigning” (McConnell, 2014). Drawing upon the principles of both a critical discourse and a narrative analysis methodological approach, this paper will scrutinise the nature of the political reactions to McConnell’s proposal from a variety of perspectives on both sides of the independence referendum debate. In particular, the emphasis in the responses from both sides of the debate regarding the apolitical nature of the 2014 Games will be critiqued, drawing upon the arguments of past analyses of sporting mega-events which highlight the potential for political exploitation of such events by the host nations (e.g. Horne, 2007; Grix, 2012; Houlihan and Giulianotti, 2012; Roche, 2006). Furthermore, the findings of academic research on the political implications of hosting the Commonwealth Games will be considered (e.g. Majumdar and Mehta, 2010; Van Der Westhuizen, 2004; Macintosh and Greenhorn, 1992; Majumdar, 2011; Lockstone and Baum, 2010; Macfarlane and Herd, 1986), highlighting a number of precedents which demonstrate the numerous challenges faced in any attempts to the keep the 2014 Games free from political influence.

Political Discourse Analysis, Sport and Scottish Independence: Provisional Reflections upon Fairclough and Fairclough's (2012) Analytical Framework.

This paper aims to reflect upon the potential analytical utility of the political discourse analysis framework proposed by Isabela Fairclough and Norman Fairclough (2012). This framework represents the most recent substantive development upon Norman Fairclough's past work situated within the wider school of Critical Discourse Analysis, building upon his influential position this methodological tradition. Central to this development is the additional emphasis placed upon the necessity to conceptualise all political discourse as 'argumentative' in nature, given that political actors are ultimately proposing or refuting particular courses of concrete future action. This paper will therefore apply Fairclough and Fairclough's model to provisional data derived from an ongoing doctoral thesis which considers the nature of political discourse relating to sport, the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and Scottish independence, with an ultimate aim of critically considering the benefits and limitations of applying this analytical framework as a methodological tool within this ongoing study.

The Working Group on Scottish Sport and the Scottish Independence Referendum: an Unrealised Political 'Imaginary'?

In September 2014, a historic referendum on the issue of Scottish independence was held, with the potential to dissolve the political union between Scotland and the other constituent nations of the United Kingdom which had survived intact since the 1707 Act of Union. On a significantly high electoral turnout of 84.6%, the Scottish electorate opted to reject the proposals of the governing party in the devolved Scottish Parliament, the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP), to create an independent Scottish state, with 55.3% of the electorate voting ‘No’ to Scottish independence against a 44.7% ‘Yes’ vote. In the grand scheme of the Scottish independence referendum campaigns, sports policy remained a somewhat peripheral issue within the arguments forwarded by the Yes Scotland and Better Together campaigns. Nonetheless, developments such as the formation of the 'Sport for Yes' campaign sub-group, the inclusion of sport within the Scottish Government’s White Paper on Scottish independence and the establishment of the Working Group on Scottish Sport demonstrated that the potential implications of independence were still deemed significant enough to merit a degree of policy planning by the Scottish Government (Lafferty, 2014; Scottish Government, 2013; Working Group on Scottish Sport, 2013, 2014). This paper will critically consider the implications of the 'No' vote in the Scottish independence referendum for the latter of these developments, the policy proposals of the Working Group for Scottish Sport. Drawing upon the principles of critical discourse analysis, specifically the analytical framework proposed by Fairclough and Fairclough (2012), the content of this group's proposal will be examined in order to critically explore the policy for Scottish sport it envisaged for an independent Scottish state. The paper will then conclude by reflecting upon the extent to which elements of this political 'imaginary' (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012) of Scottish sport remain a possibility for future sports policy in Scotland following the eventual 'No' vote in the referendum.

Still Playing Together(?): A Recall to Physical Education and Sport History Intersections.

As academic disciplines, Physical Education and Sport History share interests in performance, participation, physique and the politics of corporeal praxis. Engendering unity between the two disciplines, however, has not been without concern. Scholars working within (and across) both fields have highlighted how the potential for shared knowledge production and meaning making has been, to a degree, stymied by epistemological and methodological criticism and trepidation. Issues over contextualization, rigour, narrative schemas, conceptualizations of the body, and notions of agency and power still, in particular, constrain our current educational and historical readings and renderings of physical culture(s). Scholarly schisms and methodological differences can be overcome, however, and need not prohibit disciplinary collaborations that might better address prevailing ethical questions and affect political cause; vis-à-vis the body, the physical and sport. This brief piece is, consequently, recourse to the scholarly symbiosis between Physical Education and Sport History and echoes the encouragement of our earlier colleagues to play, inquire, create and produce together.

For the Good of the Game(?): The Legacy of the Football Trust, the Football Pools & the Dangerous Seduction of Political Promise

During the late twentieth century, the United Kingdom’s football infrastructure and spectatorship underwent transformation as successive stadia disasters heightened political and public scrutiny of the game and prompted industry change. Central to this process was the government’s formation of an independent charitable organization to oversee subsequent policy implementation and grant-aid provision to clubs for safety, crowd, and spectator requirements. This entity, which began in 1975 focusing on ground improvement, developed into the Football Trust. The Trust was funded directly by the football pools companies who ran popular low-stakes football betting enterprises. Working in association with the Pools Promoters Association (PPA), and demonstrating their social responsibility towards the game’s constituents, the pools resourced a wide array of Trust activities. Yet irrespective of government mandate, the PPA and Trust were continually confronted by political and economic obstacles that threatened the effectiveness of their arrangements. In this paper the history of the Football Trust is investigated, along with its partnership with the PPA, and its relationship with the government within the context of broader political shifts, stadia catastrophes, official inquiries, and commercial threats. It is contended that while the Trust/PPA partnership had a respectable legacy, their history afforded little protection against adverse contemporary conditions.

Prospects and Problems for Religious Education in England, 1967-1970: Curriculum Reform in Political Context

This article provides an historical case study of an abortive attempt to revise policy and legislation relating to Religious Education (RE) in English schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing upon published sources, including parliamentary debates, as well as previously unutilised national archival sources from the Department of Education and Science, it comments upon events which have hitherto been omitted from the historiography of RE, but which help to contextualise significant changes in RE theory and practice at that time. Moreover, it demonstrates that the current parlous state of RE in schools is in part the result of latent and longstanding issues and problems, rather than a consequence of present-day government policy alone. Therefore, in reviewing and developing RE policies and practices, all stakeholders are urged to look more closely at both changes and continuities in the subject’s past and the contexts in which they occurred.

Rhetorical Topographies of Post-Earthquake L'Aquila: Locality, Activism, and Citizenship Engagement

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2014

A quarter century of creative chaos: Xinhua News Agency 1980-2005

Chinese media in the context of China's rise have puzzled many scholars who used to understand media and communications phenomena by employing the theories generated from a few affluent Western democracies, notably the US. As a result, a complex but more accurate picture has been ignored. Under numerous theoretical polarizations, the contemporary social world seems little changed but polarized. This thesis aims to propose a different approach endeavoring to 'de-Westernize' or 'internationalize' media and communications studies. As a starting point, this study focuses on the globalization debate, Chinese media and news agency studies. The thesis has investigated the Chinese news agency, Xinhua, by employing Fuzzy Logic which captures the complexity of the change in the agency's business structure and journalistic practices over last 25 years. The change is also examined by scrutinizing the role of journalists in the interrelations of Xinhua with its news sources, media and nonmedia clients, and other news agencies. A combination of archive study and 94 semistructured interviews conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and London provides an inclusive account of the Chinese news institution. The key research findings drawn from the empirical research into Xinhua have justified the central argument of this thesis: Crisp Logic or the 'either/or' approach has failed to explain the dynamics of the change to the media system based in a 'non-Western' society. The numerous theoretical polarizations generated by Crisp Logic to a large extent have distorted the understanding of the contemporary social world by polarizing it. Fuzzy Logic serves better(though it is not the only choice)than the traditional approach to reflect on the set of variables existing between the two poles created by Crisp Logic. This thesis is the first doctorate research in the UK and other English-speaking countries to investigate Xinhua by 'going inside' the news institution's headquarters, local branches and overseas bureaus. This is the first comprehensive academic study of the agency, which not only examines the agency's recent change in business structure and journalistic practices, but also provides a historical account of the agency and its relationship with other social institutions. This is the first media study that employs Fuzzy Logic to understand the globalization theory, Chinese media and news agencies.

Role Ambiguity and Perceived Organizational Politics in Wolf Recovery: Washington State Wildlife Agency Personnel Perspectives

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2015-12

Rethinking crises and the accretion of executive power: the “War on Terror” and conditionality evidence from seven political systems

External shocks to democratic systems are likely to threaten the stability of relations between the executive and the representative assembly. This article investigates the impact of the so-called “war on terror” on executive-assembly relations in comparative perspective. We analyze data from seven countries, which varied in terms of form of government, level of democracy, culture, social structure, and geographic location, to evaluate its effects. We find that whereas in some systems the “war on terror” altered the balance of power between the executive and the assembly, in other cases the extant balance of power was preserved. We postulate various conditions under which the constitutionally sanctioned balance of power is most likely to be preserved in times of crisis.

How can economic and political liberalisation improve financial development in African countries?

The objective of this paper is to study the interactions between Economic liberalisation, Political liberalisation and Financial development in African countries. More specifically, we seek to establish the impact of Economic, Political and institutional openness on financial deepening. The empirical approach will be two-step procedure, first using a difference in difference method to show the various aspect of financial liberalisation on economic and political freedom while the second step will be using panel data techniques from period 1990 to 2005. The estimation results can be summarised as the following, first, Economic and financial liberalisation did account significantly for the financial development performance. While political stability show a positive overall effect on financial development, the association with Political freedom is consistent only after controlling the endogeneity of Political freedom on financial development. This result indicates that the transformation of the political and economic environment has improved the performance of the financial sector.

Defining the nation, defining public television: discourses of publics on public service television in post-communist Latvia

Institutional and political economy approaches have long dominated the study of post-Communist public broadcasting, as well as the entire body of post-Communist media transformations research, and the enquiry into publics of public broadcasting has traditionally been neglected. Though media scholars like to talk about a deep crisis in the relationship between public broadcasters and their publics in former Communist bloc countries across Central and Eastern Europe, little has been done to understand the relationship between public broadcasters and their publics in these societies drawing on qualitative audience research tradition. Building on Hirschman’s influential theory of ‘exit, voice and loyalty’, which made it possible to see viewing choices audiences make as an act of agency, in combination with theoretical tools developed within the framework of social constructionist approaches to national imagination and broadcasting, my study focuses on the investigation of responses publics of the Latvian public television LTV have developed vis-à-vis its role as contributing to the nation-building project in this ex-Soviet Baltic country. With the help of focus groups methodology and family ethnography, the thesis aims to explore the relationship between the way members of the ethno-linguistic majority of Latvian-speakers and the sizeable ethno-linguistic minority of Russian-speakers conceptualize the public broadcaster LTV, as well as understand the concept of public broadcasting more generally, and the way they define the national ‘we’. The study concludes that what I call publics of LTV employ Hirschman’s described exit mechanism as a voice-type response. Through their rejection of public television which, for a number of complex reasons they consider to be a state broadcaster serving the interests of those in power they voice their protest against the country’s political establishment and in the case of its Russian-speaking publics also against the government’s ethno-nationalistic conception of the national ‘we’. I also find that though having exited from the public broadcaster LTV, its publics have not abandoned the idea of public broadcasting as such. At least at a normative level the public broadcasting ideals are recognized, accepted and valued, though they are not necessarily associated with the country’s de jure institutional embodiment of public broadcasting LTV. Rejection of the public television has also not made its non-loyal publics ‘less citizens’. The commercial rivals of LTV, be they national or, in the case of Russian-speaking audiences, localized transnational Russian television, have allowed their viewers to exercise citizenship and be loyal nationals day in day out in a way that is more liberal and flexible than the hegemonic form of citizenship and national imagination of the public television LTV can offer.

Symposium: Editing Political Diaries

The witness seminar was held in December 1991 at the Institute of Historical Research in London. It examined some of the key issues surrounding the editing of political diaries, including what to edit, the motivation of the diarist and the value of diaries to historians. Peter Catterall of the ICBH was in the chair. The three principal speakers were Ruth Winstone, editor of Tony Benn's diaries, David Brooks, editor of the diary of Sir Edward Hamilton, and John Barnes, co‐editor with David Nicholson, of the diary of Leo Amery. Other contributors included Jad Adams (biographer of Tony Benn), Kathleen Burk (co‐author of a study of the 1976 IMF crisis), Philip Williamson (editor of the diary of William Bridgeman), M.R.D. Foot (an editor of the Gladstone diaries), and Stuart Ball (editor of the diary of Sir Cuthbert Headlam).