Integrity in democratic politics

The complaint that many professional politicians lack integrity is common. However, it is unclear what such a judgement amounts to. Taking various codes of political ethics in the United Kingdom as my starting point, I examine the extent to which we can understand political integrity as a matter of politicians adhering to the obligations that official codes of ethics prescribe and, in a more general sense, the public-service ethos that underpins these codes. I argue that although this way of approaching the issue usefully draws our attention to an important class of positional duties that apply to politicians, commitment to principled political causes plays a further, indispensable role in coherent assessments of political integrity. In consequence, I claim that politicians of integrity succeed in furthering their deepest political commitments while avoiding malfeasance or misconduct. As such, the ascription of political integrity can often only be made when assessing a long train of action

Socially Just Triple-Wins? A Framework for Evaluating the Social Justice Implications of Climate Compatible Development

Climate compatible development (CCD) aims to help people improve their lives in the face of climate threats without exacerbating these threats for current and future generations. It is proving an attractive concept to both academics and practitioners. However, the social justice implications of CCD have not yet been comprehensively explored and an absence of adequate evaluation frameworks has led to multiple, legitimate cross-scalar social justice claims being marginalised. This article develops a framework to guide holistic social justice evaluation of CCD initiatives across levels and scales. Underpinning this framework is a social justice approach that embraces particularism, pluralism and procedural justice. Drawing on existing research, the framework is used to explore the implications of the Clean Development Mechanism for recognition, participation and distribution in the Least Developed Countries. Findings show that achieving social justice through CCD is not a given; rather, the social justice implications of CCD differ within and between levels and scales. We conclude by suggesting ways in which our framework can be applied to augment knowledge on CCD. Understanding the processes through which social justices and injustices are created is integral to considerations of whether and how CCD should be used to underpin a new development landscape

Taming the late Quaternary phylogeography of the Eurasiatic wild ass through ancient and modern DNA

Taxonomic over-splitting of extinct or endangered taxa, due to an incomplete knowledge of both skeletal morphological variability and the geographical ranges of past populations, continues to confuse the link between isolated extant populations and their ancestors. This is particularly problematic with the genus Equus. To more reliably determine the evolution and phylogeographic history of the endangered Asiatic wild ass, we studied the genetic diversity and inter-relationships of both extinct and extant populations over the last 100,000 years, including samples throughout its previous range from Western Europe to Southwest and East Asia. Using 229 bp of the mitochondrial hypervariable region, an approach which allowed the inclusion of information from extremely poorly preserved ancient samples, we classify all non-African wild asses into eleven clades that show a clear phylogeographic structure revealing their phylogenetic history. This study places the extinct European wild ass, E. hydruntinus, the phylogeny of which has been debated since the end of the 19th century, into its phylogenetic context within the Asiatic wild asses and reveals recent mitochondrial introgression between populations currently regarded as separate species. The phylogeographic organization of clades resulting from these efforts can be used not only to improve future taxonomic determination of a poorly characterized group of equids, but also to identify historic ranges, interbreeding events between various populations, and the impact of ancient climatic changes. In addition, appropriately placing extant relict populations into a broader phylogeographic and genetic context can better inform ongoing conservation strategies for this highly-endangered species

Violence and publicity: constructions of political responsibility after 9/11

Focussing upon recent political philosophical reflections on the War on Terror, this paper asks whether violence can be understood without undermining the empirical and normative potential of public action to curtail it. Explanations of political violence are often either dismissed as mere exoneration, or end up reducing all forms of power to violence. Negotiating a path between these poles requires developing a double sense of responsibility that affirms that while violence can be comprehended as a rational phenomenon this does not in principle undermine the potential of public action to democratize violence. Theoretical approaches that ontologize violence as an ineradicable feature of 'the political' are criticized for leaving little space for thinking about the possibility of legitimate public action in curtailing political violence. The public dimensions of the relationships between justification, legitimacy and political violence are considered by relating contemporary left-liberal arguments about terrorism and legitimate violence to recent feminist conceptualizations of the practice of taking responsibility

The two forms of capitalism: developmentalism and economic liberalism

ABSTRACT This paper argues that the state and the market are the main institutions regulating capitalism, and, correspondingly, that the form of the economic and political coordination of capitalism will be either developmental or liberal. It defines the developmental state, relates it to the formation of a developmental class coalition, and notes that capitalism was born developmental in its mercantilist phase, turned liberal in the nineteenth century, and, after 1929, became once again developmental, but, now, democratic and progressive. All industrial and capitalist revolutions took place within the framework of developmentalism, whereby the state coordinates the non-competitive sector of the economy and the five macroeconomic prices (which the market is unable to make “right”), while the market coordinates the competitive sector. In the 1970s, a crisis opened the way for a short-lived and reactionary form of capitalism, neoliberalism or rentier-financier capitalism. Since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the neoliberal hegemony has come to an end, and we are now experiencing a period of transition.</div