All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or derive any the least shadow of authority from that, which is held to be the fountain of all power, Adam's private dominion and paternal jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

Two Treatises of Government.

Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:

The Human Condition.

Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis

Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific. First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice.

A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes

Inclusion and democracy.

The Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill 2015–2016[HL] was introduced into the House of Lords as Bill No. 1 in the 2015–2016 parliamentary session. The Bill forms a critical element of the government's high-profile policy of devolving powers and responsibilities to local areas within England. The transition from first-generation ‘city deals’ to second-generation ‘devolution deals’ within five years provides a sense of the pace and development of the reform agenda but there is also a strong sense that something is missing. ‘Missing’ in the sense of an understanding of the specific type of devolution on offer, ‘missing’ in the sense of how an explosion of bilateral new ‘deals’ will be offset against the obvious risks of fragmentation and complexity, and ‘missing’—most importantly—in relation to the democratic roots that might be put in place to counterbalance the economic thrust and make the reform agenda sustainable. It is in exactly this context that this article argues that the full potential of the current devolution agenda will only be realised when the Conservative government fulfils its September 2014 commitment to wider civic engagement about how England is governed.

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Devolution, Evolution, Revolution … Democracy? What's Really Happening to English Local Governance?

The COVID-19 crisis has served not just to instil fear in the populace but to highlight the importance of fear as a motivating dynamic in politics. The gradual emergence of political-philosophical ...

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In defence of fear: COVID-19, crises and democracy

In the run up to the 2015 General Election Douglas Carswell, the former Conservative MP who defected to UKIP in 2014, reflected on the growth of anti-politics and argued that British political parties seemed to resemble ‘Kodak parties’. He drew from arguments made in his book The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy that identified the need for an ‘old politics’ to keep pace with a ‘new politics’ that was being driven by exactly those processes of social, economic and technical change that have been identified as ‘liquid modernity’. Carswell’s argument is that the Kodak brand was once synonymous with cameras and from the moment George Eastman launched the first Kodak camera in 1888 Kodak had a dominant market share. By the 1970s, more than 90% of camera film products sold in the USA were made by Kodak to the extent that people even spoke of taking family photographs as capturing that ‘Kodak moment’. Then came digital cameras and in 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Political parties were once synonymous with democratic politics but their social position and role has clearly changed from the mass-based organisations of the twentieth century. Carswell diagnoses a failure of British political institutions to keep pace with the expectations and demands of an increasingly diverse society and that exists to some extent beyond the reach of the public—the demos. It is in this context that this chapter reflects on the 2015

The General Rejection? Political Disengagement, Disaffected Democrats and ‘Doing Politics’ Differently

Despite concerns regarding its practical utility the convention of individual ministerial responsibility remains central to any analysis of the British constitution. The convention forms the ‘buckle’ in the relationship between parliament and the executive. It is widely acknowledged that throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the executive has gained the ascendancy in this relationship. Consequently, the enduring centrality of the convention rests not in its use by parliament as a tool with which to scrutinise the executive but, conversely, as a tool used by the executive to dismiss reform proposals that threaten its dominant position. This article reviews the way in which British government developed and particularly how this evolution gave primacy to a convention that contained mutually supportive yet contradictory strands. It then demonstrates the core argument of this article by examining two case studies ‐the introduction of freedom of information legislation and the incorporation of the E...

Matthew Flinders

Papers

Devolution, Evolution, Revolution … Democracy? What's Really Happening to English Local Governance?

In defence of fear: COVID-19, crises and democracy

The General Rejection? Political Disengagement, Disaffected Democrats and ‘Doing Politics’ Differently

The enduring centrality of individual ministerial responsibility within the British constitution

The politics of engaged scholarship: impact, relevance and imagination