Analytical Distinction Research Articles

Ethics, Genetic Technologies and Equine Sports: The Prospect of Regulation of a Modified Therapeutic Use Exemption Policy

ABSTRACT This article critically reviews the current availability and selected use of genetic technologies for horses, before undertaking an ethical evaluation of current practice and regulatory positions in comparative relation to debates surrounding genetic testing, pre-implantation genetic testing and gene editing in humans. We argue that genetic testing for hereditary disorders is not only justified but should be encouraged on welfare grounds and that genetic testing for performance traits is ethically permissible based on a restricted imperative to genetically edit horses and horse embryos to reduce genetic predisposition to disease and injury. Given the current state of the science, where the effects of gene editing on health and welfare are currently undetermined, space is created for an analytical distinction between equine gene editing for ‘treatment’ and for ‘enhancement’. Gene editing is only justified for purposes of correcting/preventing disease and injury. Current regulation is challenged by apparently conflicting welfare-based ethical imperatives with respect to welfare-based gene editing. We propose modifications to the blanket bans on gene editing with a case-by-case assessment of applications to permit gene editing, based on best welfare interests underwritten by the aim of facilitating fair sport that adapt WADAs International Standard for Therapeutic Use Exemptions, adding an important reporting element. We reject the use of gene editing to obtain currently prohibited competitive advantages. In order to safeguard the welfare of human and equine athletes, we argue that regulatory institutions should urgently collaborate to develop cross-sport international regulations for the use of gene editing, including obligatory reporting of data about the health and welfare of genetically edited horses.

The Role of Evidence in Chronic Care Decision-Making

In the domain of medical science, factual evidence is usually considered as the criterion on which to base decisions and construct hypotheses. Evidence-based medicine is the translation of this approach into the field of patient care, and it means providing only the type of care that is based on evidence that proves its effectiveness and appropriateness. However, while the literature has focused on the types and force of evidence used to establish the recommendation and treatment guidelines, the problem of how evidence is used in doctor–patient interactions to motivate, or refuse, treatment or habit change has been almost completely neglected. In this specific context, characterized by the epistemic unbalance between the interlocutors and a specific conversational goal (making a decision shared by the patient), the scientific categories of evidence are often irrelevant. The goal of this paper is to address this challenge by analyzing the role evidence plays in doctor–patient interactions in diabetes care. After introducing an analytical distinction between the epistemic and the pragmatic aspect of evidence, we will propose a classification of the types and functions of evidence in chronic care communication, and illustrate its possible uses through its application to our corpus of diabetes-care consultations. From our qualitative analyses, it is possible to observe how in this communicative context a crucial role is played by the conflicts of evidence, in which providers correct patients’ uses of evidence leading them to using less defeasible levels of evidence.

Political origin and persistence of industrial policy in Africa

ABSTRACT The literature on industrial policy in Africa has generally explained its political origins in terms of ruling elites’ distribution of benefits to their supporters. However, in competitive political contexts in which policies are deeply political and designed to satisfy clients, such as policies that support party donors, the problem of policy discontinuity is bound to arise because a change in ruling party is bound to alter the direction of distributional policies. The current paper uses Nigeria’s backward integration policy (BIP), an industrial policy on cement production, to sharpen the analytical distinction between the origins and persistence. Although the ruling elites’ political quest for survival explains the origin of Nigeria’s industrial policy on cement (ruling elites were in search of re-election funds and teamed up with domestic capitalists for donations, who in turn influenced the political elites to create policies in their area of business), it does not explain the continuation.

Appropriate Use of Metrics in Research Assessment of Autonomous Academic Institutions

Policy highlights• This paper criticizes a “quick-and-dirty” desktop model for the use of metrics in the assessment of academic research performance, and proposes a series of alternatives.• It considers often used indicators: publication and citation counts, university rankings, journal impact factors, and social media-based metrics.• It is argued that research output and impact are multi-dimensional concepts; when used to assess individuals and groups, these indicators suffer from severe limitations:• Metrics for individual researchers suggest a “false precision”; university rankings are semi-objective and semi-multidimensional; informetric evidence of the validity of journal impact measures is thin; and social media-based indicators should at best be used as complementary measures.• The paper proposes alternatives to the desktop application model: Combine metrics and expert knowledge; assess research groups rather than individuals; use indicators to define minimum standards; and use funding formula that reward promising, emerging research groups.• It proposes a two-level model in which institutions develop their own assessment and funding policies, combining metrics with expert and background knowledge, while at a national level a meta-institutional agency marginally tests the institutions’ internal assessment processes.• According to this model, an inappropriate type of metrics use is when a meta-institutional agency is concerned directly with the assessment of individuals or groups within an institution.• The proposed model is not politically neutral. A normative assumption is that of the autonomy of academic institutions. The meta-institutional entity acknowledges that it is the primary responsibility of the institutions themselves to conduct quality control.• Rather than having one meta-national agency defining what is research quality and what is not, and how it should be measured, the proposed model facilitates each institution to define its own quality criteria and internal policy objectives, and to make these public.• But this freedom of institutions is accompanied by a series of obligations. As a necessary condition, institutions should conceptualize and implement their internal quality control and funding procedures.• Although a meta-institutional agency may help to improve an institution’s internal processes, a repeatedly negative outcome of a marginal test may have negative consequences for the institution’s research funding. This paper discusses a subject as complex as the assessment of scientific-scholarly research for evaluative purposes. It focuses on the use of informetric or bibliometric indicators in academic research assessment. It proposes a series of analytical distinctions. Moreover, it draws conclusions regarding the validity and usefulness of indicators frequently used in the assessment of individual scholars, scholarly institutions and journals. The paper criticizes a so called desktop application model based upon a set of simplistic, poorly founded assumptions about the potential of indicators and the essence of research evaluation. It proposes a more reflexive, theoretically founded, two-level model for the use of metrics of academic research assessment.

Risk Identification: A Corpus‐Assisted Study of Websites of Government Agencies

Government agencies have a key role in the regulation, management, and communication of risk. This paper explores how seven Swedish government agencies in the policy fields of (i) chemicals, (ii) civil contingencies, (iii) energy, (iv) environmental protection, (v) food, (vi) housing and buildings, and (vii) traffic identify risks on their websites. The relational theory of risk is used as an analytical tool to unpack risk identification. An analytical distinction is made between “risk objects,” that is, potentially harmful objects, and “objects at risk,” that is values at stake. The articulation of risk objects and objects at risk on government agencies’ websites is explored by using corpus linguistic techniques that reveal lexical and grammatical patterns of the word “risk.” The agencies identify an extensive assembly of risk objects of various kinds. The sets of risks identified are rather idiosyncratic and there is limited overlap between agencies. The identification of objects at risk is less varied and idiosyncratic than the identification of risk objects, were the agencies appear to be more in agreement. The findings are discussed in relation to the scope of risk identification; institutional explanations, and in terms of conditions for inter‐agency collaboration, identified as a key feature of effective risk governance.

Author's Response: Revisiting Asia's Regional Architecture

Author's Response:Revisiting Asia's Regional Architecture Andrew Yeo (bio) I am sincerely grateful to each of the roundtable participants not only for sharing insights and praise for Asia's Regional Architecture but also for using my monograph to spark further discussion regarding Asian security and the future of the Indo-Pacific order. I am pleased to continue a conversation that began as an "author meets critic" panel in Singapore at the International Studies Association's 2019 Asia-Pacific conference hosted by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. In my response, I will briefly summarize areas where the other participants and I are largely in agreement before addressing points of difference and disagreement. I identify three primary critiques. First, does the book sacrifice depth for breadth by covering too much ground and too many institutions? Second, does it make conceptual sense to describe Asia's regional architecture under a single, overarching framework? Third, is optimism for liberal internationalism misplaced in an era of "America first" and the "China dream"? I acknowledge the insights and shortcomings my colleagues note in their respective reviews, but in the "spirit of discussion" (to borrow Alice Ba's phrase), this response essay addresses their questions. A Holistic Approach to East Asian International Relations As Ralf Emmers notes, scholars too often treat East Asian international relations in a bifurcated manner. They tend to emphasize either multilateral processes and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or bilateralism and U.S. alliances. The former are more likely to incorporate the role of norms and nontraditional security issues, whereas the latter tend to focus on power and traditional security problems. Underlying this bifurcation is the regional subdivision between Southeast and Northeast Asia. There are sound theoretical and empirical reasons for creating such analytical distinctions in the study of East Asian international relations. Nevertheless, Asia's Regional Architecture was an attempt to examine East Asia as a whole. The roundtable participants generally agree that [End Page 143] more synergies exist across subregions and functional issues than is often acknowledged. The Trump administration's free and open Indo-Pacific concept and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) further reinforce the need for a "whole of Asia" approach. Both grand strategies identify linkages across subregions—including South Asia—and highlight the economic-security nexus across Asia and the Eurasian continent. For instance, a November 2019 report on the Indo-Pacific strategy released by the U.S. Department of State articulates how U.S. investments in energy, digital economy, and infrastructure support the goals of security, economic prosperity, and good governance in Indo-Pacific countries.1 Likewise, BRI, touted by Beijing as a massive overseas investment and economic development strategy, carries clear implications for regional security.2 In short, there is merit in investigating Asia's regional architecture from a whole-of-Asia perspective. My roundtable colleagues also welcome the use of historical institutionalism to uncover elements of change and continuity in the regional architecture. The application of historical institutionalism allows room for interests, institutions, and ideas to become a part of a nuanced framework explaining Asia's evolving regional architecture. In that sense, the book provides a post-paradigmatic approach to Asian international relations. Choosing Breadth over Depth Even when adopting a holistic approach to the region, researchers must still make trade-offs between depth and breadth in their analyses. Two of the reviewers (Ralf Emmers and Alice Ba) suggest that empirical breadth outweighs theoretical depth in the book. As Ba writes, although the book is "inclusive of nearly all of Asia's actors and a wide range of diverse arrangements," its analysis does not dig as deep into the specific processes and mechanisms that result in Asia's complex patchwork of institutions. Without understanding "cognitive priors," or the bureaucratic or normative [End Page 144] commitments of individuals shaping decisions, the argument leans on a minimalist understanding of historical institutionalism. Perhaps a deeper focus on a few key ASEAN-related organizations such as the ASEAN Regional Forum or the East Asia Summit may have provided a more succinct narrative while also spelling out in greater detail the mechanisms that produce continuity and change within Asia's regional architecture...

An Interpretation of Sartre’s Phenomenology of the Image as a Phenomenology of the Sign

Sartre’s phenomenology of the image in L’Imaginaire includes analytical distinctions between the mind’s comportments towards perceptual objects, images, and signs, which he refers to as different forms of consciousness. Sartre denies any possible convergence between imaging and sign consciousness, arguing that there are essential differences in the way they relate to the notions of resemblance, positionality, and affect. This essay argues against his phenomenological distinctions by stressing the continuity of imaging with sign consciousness: between images and words. In particular, it argues that his understanding of the sign as affectless is questionable and that there is no reason to believe that images and signs cannot elicit similar affects or perform the same functions. Consequently, it is possible to interpret Sartre’s physical images or “analoga” as pictorial signs: his phenomenological descriptions of physical images may indeed be recast in the language of the sign and reformulated as acts of consciousness that involve pictorial signs.

How Does One Understand the Stability of Political Regimes from a Theoretical Point of View?

The investigations of this paper revolve around the concept of stability. We would like to make several analytical distinctions which would allow us to differentiate between various concepts of stability. The background of our work is the theory of political change supported by examples of this kind presented by Plato, Polybius, James Harrington, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Aristotle.The paper includes some remarks on Hobbes’s and Hume’s theories of stability which, strictly speaking, can be smoothly subsumed under a modern political concept thereof. Also worthy of note is the specification of the main subject-matter of political theories in terms of the problem of stability. Finally, we propose a sketch of the map of the problem of stability

Cultural transitions? Transcultural and border-crossing activities among sport labor migrants

Taking inspiration from anthropology and migration studies our study on transnational athletes’ career trajectories adds to a growing body of psychological works on cultural transitions in sports-related migration. It is based on multi-sited fieldwork in sending and receiving contexts including semi-structured interviews with 20 current and former male footballers of West African origin who have moved to Scandinavian clubs. Having met various and particular challenges abroad, these athletes have continuously engaged in border-crossing practices to negotiate and overcome these. Their ongoing transcultural activities open a discussion whether transnational athletes’ experiences over their careers can be best conceptualized as acculturation and cultural adaptation processes. Doing so, we further discuss the consequences of an analytical distinction between a ‘home culture’ and a ‘new culture’ as suggested by the cultural transition model.

Employment insecurity and social policy: preferences for investment vis-à-vis consumption

ABSTRACT While existing studies on redistribution politics provide explanations of ‘who’ supports redistribution, we know very little about who supports ‘what’ type of redistribution. This omission is unfortunate because government spending has diverse functions and impacts, which are not differentiated in existing research. By capturing individual preferences for specific types of government policy under conditions of unemployment, we assess how economic insecurity influences calls for government action. Building on the analytic distinction between social consumption and social investment, this study examined the role of unemployment in social policy preferences. First, the experience of unemployment drives individual demand for social consumption but reduces support for social investment. Second, income levels have a heterogeneous effect on social policy preferences. In other words, a high income level is positively associated with support for social investment but negatively associated with support for social consumption. Third, the income effect is conditional on the experience of job loss, with the effect more pronounced in lower income groups than in higher income groups. An analysis of European Social Survey (ESS) Wave 8 (2016) data found empirical evidence supporting arguments about the impact of economic insecurity on individual preferences for a particular type of social expenditure.

Lobbying the Client: The role of policy intermediaries in corporate political activity

Traditionally, CPA scholarship has either assumed away policy intermediaries completely, or depicted them as corporate mouthpieces. Meanwhile, research on policy intermediaries has portrayed actors such as think tanks, PR firms and lobbying firms as far more active and self-interested. Our study investigates this puzzle by attending to the question: ‘Whose political agenda is expressed by intermediaries during their lobbying on behalf of corporate clients?’ By importing insights from studies of policy intermediaries, and approaching the world of lobbying qualitatively – delving deep into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of corporate lobbying using ethnographic field data and interviews with corporate lobbyists – we provide a different, more fine-grained picture of the lobbyist–client relationship, in which policy intermediaries shape, adapt and even invent their clients’ agendas. Our study contributes CPA scholarship by (1) providing an analytical distinction between the political agendas of corporate clients and those of their lobbyists, (2) bringing further detail and modification to Barley’s theory of an institutional field of political influence and (3) identifying agency problems between client and lobbyist as a novel explanation for why the financial profitability of CPA investment has been difficult to verify. Moreover, the study brings further sophistication to a burgeoning literature on policy intermediaries by suggesting that lobbyists’ own professional characteristics – such as length of political experience and strength of political convictions – influence how independently of their clients they dare to act.

Legislation and regulation: three analytical distinctions

ABSTRACTWe live in an age where legislation and regulation make an increasing impact on our lives. The expansion of legislative and regulatory activities and outputs in the last century and especially in the last four decades has been followed by a growth of scholarly interest. However, far too little attention has been paid to the conceptual and empirical exploration of the relationships between legislation and regulation, and especially to the democratic consequences of their co-evolution, substitutivity, and intersection. This essay provides an introduction to the special issue on legislation and regulation. After introducing the topic, it presents three analytical distinctions between legislation and regulation and introduces the contributions to the issue.

Rethinking mechanism and process in the geographical analysis of uneven development

Speaking directly to economic and political geographers working on uneven development, this article critically examines the deployment of two key concepts, mechanism and process, as analytical tools for causal explanation in geographical analysis during the past two decades. Drawing upon critical realism to develop a theory of mechanism, this article clarifies the conceptual distinction between mechanism and process. Whereas process is conceived as a contingent change in the sequential series of entities and their relations, mechanism serves as a necessary relation to connect an initial causal condition with its particular socio-spatial outcomes in context. This analytical distinction between a contingent process of change and a necessary mechanism for an outcome requires a careful specification of the concrete outcomes to be explained and the working of various mechanisms. Illustrating my case through existing studies of neoliberalization and, briefly, path dependence, I argue that there is a tendency in the literature to conflate mechanism and process in different meso-level theories of socio-spatial change. This conflation, in turn, distorts the causal links in core concepts and reduces their explanatory efficacy in accounting for uneven development. Rethinking mechanism and process can therefore help revitalize systematic explanations of uneven development as one of geography’s core intellectual projects and contributions to the social sciences; it can also allow geographers to engage more productively with the rapidly growing mechanistic thought in analytical sociology, political science and the philosophy of social science during the past two decades.

Generalists and specialists in executive politics: Why ambitious meta‐policies so often fail

AbstractThis article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.

Language, Ethno-nationalism and the South African university

This article presents a conceptual analysis of the relations between language, ethnicity, and nationalism – within the domain of the university. While an analytical distinction is commonly madbetween “ethnicity” and “nationalism,” here “ethno-nationalism” is used to highlight aspects of cultural continuity between these constructs and to draw attention to problematic “telementational” assumptions about the vehicular role of “languages” in influential modernist theories of nationalism (notably Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson). The empirical focus of the article falls on long-run institutional changes in the South African university system; and on the deployment of ideas about ethnicity, nationalism, language, and race. While assumptions about the vehicular capacity of languages have deep roots in the colonial and apartheid periods, these also feature prominently in post-apartheid debates on the transformation of the university system.

Sonic Diegesis: Reality and the Expressive Potential of Sound in Narrative Film

Perspectives and approaches from electroacoustic music are applied to support a phenomenological understanding of the role of sound in film, whereby all sounds are presented as potential drivers of cinematic diegesis. Building upon notions of the non-diegetic fallacy (Winters 2010, Kassabian 2008) and extending these concepts from film music into an examination of all sound, conventional classifications of sound into binary (diegetic / non-diegetic) and tripartite (Voice / Music / Sound Effects) divisions are challenged. Such divisions are argued as limiting to an understanding of the full expressive potentials of sound, failing to reflect the filmic experience, by assigning limited functional roles to specific types of sound. Notions of “reality” are core to this exposition, with existing analytical distinctions operating in relation to an assumed objective reality, a transparent mimesis, which fails to take into consideration the subjectivity of the audience nor the diegetic potential of mimetic sounds. However, with reference to specific examples drawn from mainstream cinema – Gravity [2013], Dunkirk [2017] – and creative practice research ¬– coccolith [2016] – the expressive potential of sound is demonstrated to be embodied by all sound types, with the apparent realism of mimetic sounds belying their significant diegetic power. Indeed, the illusory realism of mimetic sounds is argued as core to their communicative action and affect, extending audiences’ own experiences of sonic phenomena. Approaches to the analysis of sound within narrative film contexts are demonstrated and posited as affording deeper and more nuanced readings of the role of all sound in the construction of filmic diegesis.

China’s urban ideology: new towns, creation cities, and contested landscapes of memory

ABSTRACT This paper argues that “the urban” has emerged as the most significant ideological realm in contemporary China. In developing this argument, I suggest an alternative approach to how we theorize urbanization in China. Seeking to avoid the dichotomized analyses that often characterize scholarship on China’s urbanization, the paper suggests reading “the urban” as an ideological device. Such a reading calls for an analytical distinction between the city as a technology of socialist party-state planning and government and urbanization as a messy social process over which the state struggles for control. It also calls for a recognition of the ways that ideology itself has shifted dramatically in China, from the Mao-era centrality and coherence of class struggle and its overriding goal of proletarianization to a much less coherent post-reform message of “stability”. The paper begins with a brief discussion of ideology and Gramsci’s notion of “common sense” in a Chinese register. It then considers the film 24 City, directed by Jia Zhangke, as a template for understanding urban spaces as sites of conflict between the city as an ideological device and urbanization as a social process. New urban spaces are then explored in an effort to tease out their complex and contradictory ideological renderings. I conclude with an argument about the openness and contradictions of China’s urban spaces and how an ideological analysis can resist the kind of theoretical closure that much work on urbanization in China seems to aim for.

What about the non-legal facts: Revising Allen and Pardo’s analytical distinction between law and fact

This paper deals with the distinction between law and fact. In the article ‘The myth of the law-fact distinction’ (Allen and Pardo, 2003a), Ronald Allen and Michael Pardo argue that there is no ontological, epistemological or analytical distinction between law and fact. Instead, they claim that the distinction ought to be understood pragmatically, by considering whether the judge or jury is in the best position to decide the question. The problem with this is that it does not add to the understanding. In a soon-forgotten passus they suggest that the distinction is between legal and non-legal facts, rather than between law and fact. In this paper I revise the article by Ron and Pardo and make an argument in favour of the distinction between legal and non-legal facts. The notion of ‘legal’ and ‘non-legal’ underlines the fact that the dichotomy is relevant specifically from a legal point of view. In the legal context different consequences apply to law and fact, the same is not true in a non-legal context.

Time for a reassessment of the treatment of hypothyroidism

BackgroundIn the treatment for hypothyroidism, a historically symptom-orientated approach has given way to reliance on a single biochemical parameter, thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH).Main bodyThe historical developments and motivation leading to that decision and its potential implications are explored from pathophysiological, clinical and statistical viewpoints. An increasing frequency of hypothyroid-like complaints is noted in patients in the wake of this directional shift, together with relaxation of treatment targets. Recent prospective and retrospective studies suggested a changing pattern in patient complaints associated with recent guideline-led low-dose policies. A resulting dramatic rise has ensued in patients, expressing in various ways dissatisfaction with the standard treatment. Contributing factors may include raised problem awareness, overlap of thyroid-related complaints with numerous non-specific symptoms, and apparent deficiencies in the diagnostic process itself. Assuming that maintaining TSH anywhere within its broad reference limits may achieve a satisfactory outcome is challenged. The interrelationship between TSH, free thyroxine (FT4) and free triiodothyronine (FT3) is patient specific and highly individual. Population-based statistical analysis is therefore subject to amalgamation problems (Simpson’s paradox, collider stratification bias). This invalidates group-averaged and range-bound approaches, rather demanding a subject-related statistical approach. Randomised clinical trial (RCT) outcomes may be equally distorted by intra-class clustering. Analytical distinction between an averaged versus typical outcome becomes clinically relevant, because doctors and patients are more interested in the latter. It follows that population-based diagnostic cut-offs for TSH may not be an appropriate treatment target. Studies relating TSH and thyroid hormone concentrations to adverse effects such as osteoporosis and atrial fibrillation invite similar caveats, as measuring TSH within the euthyroid range cannot substitute for FT4 and FT3 concentrations in the risk assessment. Direct markers of thyroid tissue effects and thyroid-specific quality of life instruments are required, but need methodological improvement.ConclusionIt appears that we are witnessing a consequential historic shift in the treatment of thyroid disease, driven by over-reliance on a single laboratory parameter TSH. The focus on biochemistry rather than patient symptom relief should be re-assessed. A joint consideration together with a more personalized approach may be required to address the recent surge in patient complaint rates.

What's so Sectarian about Sectarian Politics? Identity Politics and Authoritarianism in a New Middle East

AbstractShia/Sunni sectarianism figures prominently in post‐Arab uprising claims that the Middle East is witnessing a darker kind of authoritarianism drawing on exclusionary and xenophobic forms of identity politics. This article explores whether sectarianism per se is associated with a distinct form of identity politics or if authoritarian techniques involving the use of the ‘sectarian card’ should be subsumed under a broader category of authoritarian identity politics involving the inclusion or exclusion of social groups based on identity and implemented with varying degrees of repression. The article shows how Brubaker's analytical distinction between a ‘diacritical’ and ‘normative ordering power’ understanding of religious identities gives rise to different expectations in regard to whether sectarianism leads to different and more violent forms of repression than other forms of identity politics. Against this background, the article compares authoritarian identity politics in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and Egypt, which all differ from each other both in terms of the importance of a Shia/Sunni distinction compared to other identity cleavages, and also as regards the intensity and level of the regime's response to the Arab uprisings. From this comparison five general lessons about sectarianism and authoritarian identity politics can be drawn.