Other News
State of the Union(s): The Relevance of Narrative for America's Post-Crisis Economy
A Pinpoint Politics article by Brendan Pastor
"Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we’ve got for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out.” (Huffington Post, 2012)
The above quote by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was in response to a question posed by billionaire and Republican Party donor Diane Hendricks, who asked if Walker could make Wisconsin a “completely red [Republican] state, and work on these unions’, transforming his state into “a right-to-work” state. Accepting Walker’s poorly phrased and politically slanted answer, Hendricks would go on to contribute over $510,000 to the Walker re-election campaign, his single biggest individual donor.
Dr John Parkinson's research on the political use of public space featured in The Atlantic
Dr John Parkinson, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of Research Degrees, was recently featured in an article entitled 'What Makes a Public Space Good for Democracy?' by Emily Badger in the Cities section of The Atlantic magazine.
“Filling the National Mall is a seriously impressive achievement,” Parkinson says. See, for example, this. A lot of these other capitals offer pretty meager public gathering spaces on the steps of their political institutions. Chater Garden, the main square next to the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, could fit maybe 5,000 people. “It’s so much harder in Hong Kong to express the physical scale of public displeasure,” Parkinson says.
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy: Why a Military Intervention Will Not Work in Syria
A Pinpoint Politics article by Christopher Ogunmodede
In the wake of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s failed six-point Syria peace plan and the Assad’s regime not-so-subtle admission that it possesses chemical weapons, the stakes of a Western-led military intervention have increased significantly in less than a week. A report by the Royal United Services Institute noting the possibility of chemical weapons being used or stolen, not to mention the increased capability of the opposition forces as well as the geopolitical implications of the conflict spreading to and gripping other nations, concludes that a military intervention may take place to prevent the conflict from spilling beyond Syrian borders. As the ongoing crisis continues to manifest itself in the international realm, many pro-intervention voices in academia, the media, think-tanks and policymaking circles have decided that a military intervention will be the pill that cures all that currently ails the conflict-ridden country. John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, has been making the rounds of Fox News and other right-wing press outlets decrying the administration’s response to the conflict.
Dr James Brassett and Dr Nick Vaughan-Williams publish Special Issue of Alternatives on 'Governing Traumatic Events'
Dr James Brassett and Dr Nick Vaughan-Williams have recently published a Special Issue of Alternatives, entitled: 'Governing Traumatic Events'. The volume draws together leading critical scholars on the politics of traumatic events, covering subjects like 9-11, Mumbai, and the Norway Massacre, as well as the ideologies of 'response' and 'resilience' that predominate. This publication is part of an ongoing research project on 'Resilience and the Politics of Security' that seeks to interrogate contemporary practices of civil contingency planning in the UK and abroad.
Dr Ben Richardson secures RDF bid for project 'Grow Warwick: Re-engaging with Food'
Dr Ben Richardson, current Research Fellow and future Assistant Professor in PAIS, has also successfully secured a Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) Research Development Fund (RDF) for his project entitled 'Grow Warwick: Re-engaging with Food'.
This project is led by Theatre Studies with co-investigators in Sociology, Life Sciences and PAIS, and the project will be used to develop a bid to the Arts & Humanities' Research Council (AHRC)'s ‘Care for the Future' programme as well as two trial demonstration events on campus - one in performance and another in creative writing - to encourage public re-engagement with food cultivation.