Partial Victory Research Articles

Counter-hostility as defensive strategy in a hostile takeover: The acquisition of Hillards supermarket chain by Tesco

Hillards was a retail supermarket firm based in Yorkshire in the North of England between 1885 and 1987, when it was subject to a hostile takeover from Tesco. Using archival and interview data this article explores how Hillards pursued a sensemaking process to engage in a strategy of counter-hostility to the takeover attempt. Ultimately the firm was acquired by Tesco. By examining Hillards’ defence strategy, this paper contributes to the understanding of the nature of strategy-making within a takeover. The article shows how in defeat Hillards was able to secure a partial victory in the form of a substantially increased cost of acquisition, so maximising shareholder value. This contributes to the history of the supermarket sector, and the history of family firms in the UK.

The ICJ’s Judgment in Certain Iranian Assets: Consequences for Investment Disputes Arising Out of Economic Sanctions

On 30 March 2023, the International Court of Justice awarded Iran a partial victory in its Judgement on merits in Certain Iranian Assets (Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America). The icj ordered the United States to pay compensation to Iranian companies after ruling that Washington had allowed U.S. courts to illegally freeze their assets. However, the Court declined its jurisdiction over usd 1.75 billion in frozen assets from Bank Markazi, Iran’s central bank, held in the United States. This judgment, which is part of a series of ongoing disputes between Iran and the United States based on the same Treaty, raises questions about economic sanctions and international law that are relevant both to State- to- State and investor- State disputes.

The Technopolitics of THAAD in East Asia

The decision by South Korean authorities to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery in 2016 unleashed a storm of protest, both domestically and internationally. Attempts to resolve these debates by showing the ‘truth’ of the THAAD system obscure the considerable investment of time and resources needed to stabilize technological meanings in the face of rival interpretations. This article synthesizes work in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to present an integrated model of technopolitics explaining how doing politics through ‘things’ consists of interlinked rhetorical, performative, and material stabilization techniques each seeking to make the object simple, nonpolitical, and ultimately invisible or banal. In the case of THAAD, the single battery deployed to South Korea was the tip of a broader US technopolitical project to materially bind together its regional allies and contain North Korea and China. However, opponents inside and outside of the Korean peninsula tried to destabilize this project by employing their own rhetorical, performative, and de-materialization strategies. This resulted in a partial victory for both sides insofar as the broader US missile defense technopolitical project on the peninsula was paused but not defeated.

How do those affected by a disaster organize to meet their needs for justice? Campaign strategies and partial victories following the Grenfell Tower fire

Previous research has shown that disasters often involve a sense of injustice among affected communities. But the empowerment process through which ‘disaster communities’ organise strategically to confront such injustices have not been investigated by social psychology. This study addresses this gap by examining how community members impacted by the Grenfell Tower fire self-organized to demand justice in response to government neglect. Thematic analysis of interviews with fifteen campaigners helped us to understand the strategies of those involved in support campaigns following the fire. Campaigners aimed to: overcome injustice against the government inactions in the aftermath of the fire; empower their community against government neglect; create a sense of community for people who experienced injustice. Community members created a petition calling on the government to build trust in the public inquiry; they achieved their goals with the participation of people from wider communities. We found that reaching out to allies from different communities and building shared social identity among supporters were two main ways to achieve campaign goals. The study suggests ways that empowerment and hence organizing for justice can be achieved after a disaster if campaigners adopt strategies for empowering collective action.

Setbacks and Partial Victories: Social Justice Struggles After 28 Years of Democracy in South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is ravaged by crises of extreme unemployment, poverty, and inequality. While the majority who were politically excluded by apartheid can now choose their government through democratic elections, social and economic justice continues to elude them. Neoliberal policies which seek to reduce state expenditure on social services and promote state policies that protect the interests of big businesses at the expense of working-class and poor communities, along with corruption and abuse of power, are the primary causes of poverty and unemployment. However, what is missing in the assessments of social justice since the pre-1994 democratic era is the recognition that social justice organisations have not simply disappeared, but have actually remained involved in social justice struggles. Based on information from in-depth interviews and internet sources, this article records some of the partial victories scored through these struggles, albeit in the context of generalised pauperisation of working-class and poor communities. These partial victories in the era of defeats show that these organisations, although weakened, have not given up the struggle for social justice.

Human rights activism after the movement ends: Global lessons from Kenya’s unfinished “revolution”

Some 30 years after their dangerous human rights activism in Kenya that challenged an authoritarian regime and won multiparty democracy, more than half the leading survivors were still politically active. Three were governors, one was the Supreme Court Chief Justice, five were human rights activists; others were attorneys or otherwise politically engaged. This study provides fresh insights on the theory of cycles of social movements and offers global implications for movements in other countries. The decline of social movements “remains relatively understudied from an empirical standpoint.” The study builds on the cycle theories of Tarrow, considered the “leading theoretician of protest cycles.” It finds that (1) long after a protest movement has ended, some activists may continue individual activism in line with the goals of the movement or a subset of goals; (2) partial victories or regime concessions tend to weaken cohesiveness of a movement and make subsequent victories harder; (3) regime change, although more dangerous, in some ways is easier than regime reform. The findings are based on interviews conducted by the author, mostly in Nairobi, with the leading veteran activists and others between 2019 and 2021, plus archival reviews.

Decoloniality and Africanisation as Instruments for Change:

The end of 2017 marked a significant change in South African higher education with the government’s announcement that free higher education would be extended to poor and working-class students. For students who engaged in protest action to demand a curriculum which centers Africa and takes African discourses as its point of departure, this was a partial victory. While concessions were made regarding fees and the removal of colonial-era statues, students continue to grapple with the form and purpose of higher education. This struggle is not a new one; it can be traced back to the early 1960s when Black student movements rejected colonial and apartheid ideas at an intellectual level. In grappling with the critical epistemological questions raised by students, scholars have proposed the notions of decoloniality and Africanisation as instruments to rethink the purpose and form of higher education. Using sociological discourse analysis, this article examines the pragmatism of these concepts in the quest for relevance in higher education.
 Key words: Africanisation, decoloniality, sociological discourse analysis, higher education

Upon the Altar of Work: Child Labor and the Rise of a New American Sectionalism

Upon the Altar of Work: Child Labor and the Rise of a New American Sectionalism

You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Appealing CMS Enforcement Actions

You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Appealing CMS Enforcement Actions

Beyond consensus: perceptions of risk from petroleum developments in Lofoten, Vesterålen, and Senja, Norway

Abstract The proposed petroleum developments in the Lofoten, Vesterålen, and Senja are a controversial issue in Norway. We ask how insights into legitimacy and risk perception can help to illuminate the disputed policy process for petroleum developments in Lofoten, Vesterålen, and Senja. Our Q-methodology elicits three key narratives that steer the policy process: (i) best practice and knowledge does not permit coexistence, and fishing takes priority; (ii) coexistence is possible with good process where the nation-state manages risk; and (iii) the state and industry cannot facilitate coexistence, science and conservation come first. We argue these narratives reflect divergence in worldview in three key ways: (i) differential perspectives on the priority of local, national, and global scales; (ii) emphasis on the role of knowledge, skill, and rectitude in finding best policy; and (iii) differential concern for fish, the nation-state, and conservation. We argue for a more realistic approach to coexistence in deliberative democracy that does not aim for consensus and win-win outcomes, and assert that disagreement and partial victories and losses is a natural and healthy state of affairs in a democracy.

Employer granted a partial victory

Racial Discrimination

Conclusion: An Election that Satisfied Few and Solved Little

Rarely can a partial election victory have felt so akin to a defeat for a party. As the Conservatives scrambled in the aftermath to clinch an expensive deal with their only friends at Westminster, the Democratic Unionist Party, they ruefully reflected on how their majority had been mislaid. A Prime Minister who had called an unnecessary election had witnessed her Party’s apparently unassailable position at the outset of the contest eroded. The Conservatives’ lead over Labour diminished almost daily; ditto her lead over Jeremy Corbyn. An election without reason, an awful campaign and an uninspiring manifesto combined to provide the hollowest of partial victories. Britain Votes 2015 concluded by arguing that the sunlit uplands apparently offered by the surprise Conservative overall majority were cloudier than might be immediately apparent. It highlighted the dangers of the Brexit referendum as an exercise in internal party management and the continuing problems for the Conservative Party—short on members, young votes and ideas. The 2015 election was won primarily on economic competence; an election which strayed beyond that territory could be more problematic. The 2017 election was not a contest in which fiscal prudence and responsibility dominated to the extent of 2015. By 2017, the Conservatives had abandoned the deficit elimination targets trumpeted in 2015 and the Labour Party could reasonably gamble that another election fought on austerity terms might bore the voters. The 2017 outcome demonstrated that a cautious take on the Conservatives’ 2015 victory was justified. That said, a remotely competent Conservative campaign in 2017 would surely have delivered a reasonable parliamentary majority, given the evidence of council election results only one month earlier. Instead, May’s campaign was beset by difficulties. As Bale and Webb have charted, disagreements over the wisdom of calling the election, a lack of trust between Conservative HQ and grassroots activists, an overly presidential campaign (only a good idea if the leader has something to say), an underestimation of Corbyn the campaigner (perhaps his main asset) and a sharp drop in levels of activism were all evident.

Textbooks and Culture Wars: An essay review of Charles Eagles, Civil rights culture wars: The fight over a Mississippi textbook. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 298. ISBN 9781469631158.

The politics of collective memory, over what counts as “official knowledge,” is crucial in education. With its primary focus on the politics of memory and how this works in the politics of school knowledge as its primary focus, Civil Rights Culture Wars gives us a rich historical picture of this process as it played out in a significant battle over a specific textbook in Mississippi. As some readers may already know, there have been a large number of interesting case studies of textbook controversies over the years, as well as a long history of studies that critically focus on the political and educational issues surrounding textbooks. As Eagles documents in great detail, this book became a center of ideological conflict and many conservative groups were clear that they would seek to block its approval. The conflict over the book in the courts, in the press, and in government agencies took years. There were defeats, partial victories, and then ultimately a vindication. Even though the implications of his analysis to more general issues of political and cultural theory are always there, Eagles’s account is not about the abstraction called the “state.” It reads more like an anguished drama, filled with real characters, biographies, and movements, from the authors of the textbook themselves, to state legislators, to educational administrators and state textbook adoption commission members, to judges, to members of the public who held varied political positions on the battle over inclusion and exclusion, over the epistemological fog, amnesia and memory, and so much more.

Northern Ireland U-turn on nurse training budget.

Protests over plans to drastically cut the post-registration nurse training budget in Northern Ireland appear to have led to a partial victory.

Divided families and the immigration rules: a partial victory for British citizens with foreign spouses

In MM and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] UKSC 10, the Supreme Court upheld the Minimum Income Requirement (MIR) requiring an income of at least £18,600 for British citiz...

Invocations of the Driver Assists

Invocations of the Driver Assists

Peripheral Players? German Colonial Interests, The Press, and the Spirit of Locarno

ABSTRACTThe Locarno Conference, held on 5–16 October 1925, represented the culmination of nearly two years of diplomatic communication between the foreign offices of Germany, Britain, and France. The conference was an attempt to normalize relations between the former Allied powers and Germany's new Weimar Republic and more tightly bind Germany's politics and economy to Western Europe. Colonial German lobbies hoped that the Locarno talks heralded the return of empire and an end to Germany's banishment from the work of the ‘civilizing mission’ and the humiliating experience of being a ‘postcolonial state in a still colonial world’. Public scrutiny from false press reports about the restoration of the German colonies emanating from Germany, France, Britain and its colonies and dominions, and even the United States complicated matters for Locarno delegates by forcing discussion of off-agenda topics. This article interrogates how the Colonial German lobby influenced the Locarno Conference through activity in the international public sphere, how they managed a partial victory in the wake of Locarno, and more importantly, the Colonial German lobby learned new and better strategies for playing properly to public opinion and international bureaucracies.

Student‐athletes gain partial victory with increase in scholarship benefits

Case name: O'Bannon v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, et al., No. 14‐16601, No. 14‐17068 (9th Cir. 09/30/15).

American Indian and Euro-Western negotiations

Antenarrative (before-the-narrative) analysis reveals features of historical Native American and Euro-Western negotiations which contributed to undesired and unintended outcomes, while sometimes overlooking the resplendent possibilities of living stories. This study uncovers the antenarrative processes in existing accounts of three particular indigenous cultures negotiating with Euro-Westerners. These three case examples include two negotiations that were partial victories accompanied by lingering resentments, and one success. In the latter, participants were able to use elements of living story to break an impasse and achieve lasting success based on mutually beneficial outcomes. Breaking out of restrictive linear and cyclical antenarratives, and instead incorporating spiral and rhizomatic ones, opens more options for negotiators. Power-equal perspectives, along with the diversity-accommodating nature of rhizomatic (decentered and networked) ways of telling stories, can help negotiating parties to co-create upsurging spirals of win–win stories for mutual benefit.

The Move to Affirmative Consent

AbstractIn “The Move to Affirmative Consent,” I argue that, though affirmative consent has great appeal because of its respect for norms about good sex that we all share, as a rule intended to be enforced in actual punitive processes, whether on campus or in the criminal justice system, it will be vastly overinclusive, deeply repressive, and socially conservative in its enforcement of traditional gender roles. I show how affirmative consent reforms represent a partial victory (and thus also a partial defeat) for dominance feminists ultimately seeking to criminalize subjectively unwanted sexual behavior without respect to the intent or knowledge of the accused; the relationship history of the parties; the racial, cultural, or other social distance between the parties; and the character of the complainant’s memory of the events. I further demonstrate how existing affirmative consent rules will allow decision makers to hold people responsible for serious misconduct based on one or more of three states of min...