The political identities of neighbourhood planning in England

The rise of neighbourhood planning has been characterised as another step in a remorseless de-politicisation of the public sphere. A policy initiated by the Coalition Government in England to create the conditions for local communities to support housing growth, neighbourhood planning appears to evidence a continuing retreat from political debate and contestation. Clear boundaries are established for the holistic integration of participatory democracy into the strategic plan-making of the local authority. These boundaries seek to take politics out of development decisions and exclude all issues of contention from discussion. They achieve this goal at the cost of arming participatory democracy with a collective identity around which new antagonisms may develop. Drawing on the post-political theories of Chantal Mouffe this paper identifies the return of antagonism and conflict to participation in spatial planning. Key to its argument is the concept of the boundary or frontier that in Mouffe’s theoretical framework institutionalises conflict between political entities. Drawing on primary research with neighbourhood development plans in England the paper explores how boundary conditions and boundary designations generate antagonism and necessitate political action. The paper charts the development of the collective identities that result from these boundary lines and argues for the potential for neighbourhood planning to restore political conflict to the politics of housing development

Social network dynamics of face-to-face interactions

The recent availability of data describing social networks is changing our understanding of the "microscopic structure" of a social tie. A social tie indeed is an aggregated outcome of many social interactions such as face-to-face conversations or phone-calls. Analysis of data on face-to-face interactions shows that such events, as many other human activities, are bursty, with very heterogeneous durations. In this paper we present a model for social interactions at short time scales, aimed at describing contexts such as conference venues in which individuals interact in small groups. We present a detailed anayltical and numerical study of the model's dynamical properties, and show that it reproduces important features of empirical data. The model allows for many generalizations toward an increasingly realistic description of social interactions. In particular in this paper we investigate the case where the agents have intrinsic heterogeneities in their social behavior, or where dynamic variations of the local number of individuals are included. Finally we propose this model as a very flexible framework to investigate how dynamical processes unfold in social networks.Comment: 20 pages, 25 figure

Quantum information entropies of the eigenstates and the coherent state of the P\"oschl-Teller potential

The position and momentum space information entropies, of the ground state of the P\"oschl-Teller potential, are exactly evaluated and are found to satisfy the bound, obtained by Beckner, Bialynicki-Birula and Mycielski. These entropies for the first excited state, for different strengths of the potential well, are then numerically obtained. Interesting features of the entropy densities, owing their origin to the excited nature of the wave functions, are graphically demonstrated. We then compute the position space entropies of the coherent state of the P\"oschl-Teller potential, which is known to show revival and fractional revival. Time evolution of the coherent state reveals many interesting patterns in the space-time flow of information entropy.Comment: Revtex4, 11 pages, 11 eps figures and a tabl

On reminder effects, drop-outs and dominance: evidence from an online experiment on charitable giving

We present the results of an experiment that (a) shows the usefulness of screening out drop-outs and (b) tests whether different methods of payment and reminder intervals affect charitable giving. Following a lab session, participants could make online donations to charity for a total duration of three months. Our procedure justifying the exclusion of drop-outs consists in requiring participants to collect payments in person flexibly and as known in advance and as highlighted to them later. Our interpretation is that participants who failed to collect their positive payments under these circumstances are likely not to satisfy dominance. If we restrict the sample to subjects who did not drop out, but not otherwise, reminders significantly increase the overall amount of charitable giving. We also find that weekly reminders are no more effective than monthly reminders in increasing charitable giving, and that, in our three months duration experiment, standing orders do not increase giving relative to one-off donations

The Emerging Aversion to Inequality: Evidence from Poland 1992-2005

This paper provides an illustration of the changing tolerance for inequality in a context of radical political and economic transformation and rapid economic growth. We focus on the Polish experience of transition and explore self-declared attitudes of the citizens. Using monthly representative surveys of the population, realized by the Polish poll institute (CBOS) from 1992 to 2005, we identify a structural break in the relation between income inequality and subjective evaluation of well-being. The downturn in the tolerance for inequality (1997) coincides with the increasing distrust of political elites.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64387/1/wp919.pd

Living with the consequences of policy decisions: reactions to student lifestyles in the neighbourhood

A national (UK) policy to expand higher education has changed the demographic composition of communities in many university towns and cities and the social forces operating thereon. As the economy and services adapt, those already resident in such areas may be quite comfortable accommodating the changes. Those who are not may leave (exit/flight) or stay and either ‘hunker down’ (loyalty) or act to protect what it was they had come to value about the area (voice). The case examined here is that of a part of Leeds where the consequent ‘studentification’ prompted the exit of many residents, thereby making way for further students. Some residents, with strong roots in the area, remained loyal and it is their views, along with those of business people, councillors and others, that are examined in this paper. This study of reactions to student lifestyles was initially prompted by Cohen’s notion of ‘moral panic’ that gradually revealed a contestation over the right to determine the character, the soul, of the area. In so doing it considers how, as soft or symbolic power ebbed, attempts were made by local residents to shape a policy response. However, in that arena too, the locus of control is shown to be elusive

A 'Performative' Social Movement: The Emergence of Collective Contentions within Collaborative Governance

The enmeshment of urban movements in networks of collaborative governance has been characterised as a process of co-option in which previously disruptive contentions are absorbed by regimes and reproduced in ways that do not threaten the stability of power relations. Applying a theoretical framework drawn from feminist philosopher Judith Butler this paper directs attention to the development of collective oppositional identities that remain embedded in conventional political processes. In a case study of the English tenants' movement, it investigates the potential of regulatory discourses that draw on market theories of performative voice to offer the collectivising narratives and belief in change that can generate the emotional identification of a social movement. The paper originates the concept of the ‘performative social movement’ to denote the contentious claims that continue to emerge from urban movements that otherwise appear quiescent

Why Social Enterprises Are Asking to Be Multi-stakeholder and Deliberative: An Explanation around the Costs of Exclusion.

The study of multi-stakeholdership (and multi-stakeholder social enterprises in particular) is only at the start. Entrepreneurial choices which have emerged spontaneously, as well as the first legal frameworks approved in this direction, lack an adequate theoretical support. The debate itself is underdeveloped, as the existing understanding of organisations and their aims resist an inclusive, public interest view of enterprise. Our contribution aims at enriching the thin theoretical reflections on multi-stakeholdership, in a context where they are already established, i.e. that of social and personal services. The aim is to provide an economic justification on why the governance structure and decision-making praxis of the firm needs to account for multiple stakeholders. In particular with our analysis we want: a) to consider production and the role of firms in the context of the “public interest” which may or may not coincide with the non-profit objective; b) to ground the explanation of firm governance and processes upon the nature of production and the interconnections between demand and supply side; c) to explain that the costs associated with multi-stakeholder governance and deliberation in decision-making can increase internal efficiency and be “productive” since they lower internal costs and utilise resources that otherwise would go astray. The key insight of this work is that, differently from major interpretations, property costs should be compared with a more comprehensive range of costs, such as the social costs that emerge when the supply of social and personal services is insufficient or when the identification of aims and means is not shared amongst stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs derived from exclusion are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multistakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives