This chapter assesses the broader implications of environmental shifts in the World Bank Group (WBG) organisation identities for the future of international development lending and environmental activism. It discusses the role of socialisation in the formation of the identity of WBG organizations and explains how they were influenced by norms of sustainable development. These organizations include the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). This chapter suggests that new paths to socialisation will need to be forged to reconstitute radically the broader international political economy towards ecologically driven development for all states, IOs and non-state actors alike.

This chapter examines the conceptualisation of identity in Irish official discourse in relation to the definition of the Irish ‘nation’ and the European ‘community’. ‘Nation’ and ‘community’ constitute the broad conceptual frameworks for identity in nation-statehood and European Union (EU), respectively. These frameworks are legitimated and strengthened through the use of narratives, including story-lines regarding significant historical events and normative judgements as to their contemporary relevance. The new model of the European community conceives identity in terms of multidimensional forms, from local to European. This chapter explores the way in which the traditional and new frameworks, narratives, and models of the nation and the European community have been brought together in Irish official discourse since the 1970s. After a summary of the traditional conception of the Irish nation, it considers the way in which this conception has been upheld in Ireland's approach to the EU. This then leads into an analysis of the way in which Irish official discourse has utilised the European conception of community in developing an ‘agreed’ approach to Northern Ireland.

This chapter considers the effects of postal voting, one of the favoured options for increasing participation. It reviews international experiences with absentee, or postal, voting in developed capitalist democracies. In the wake of the 2004 federal election in Australia, concerns were raised about the problems with postal voting in Australia. The Australian Electoral Commission recently acknowledged that there were serious problems with the distribution and production of postal voting packages especially in Queensland. This fiasco led to severe criticism from Commission members.

This book argues that Irish official discourse has been able to pose European integration and nation-statehood as mutually complementary. It highlights the richness of the interweaving elements of official nationalism and European integration in official discourse as an arena for exploring the relationship between nation-state and the European Union (EU). The first part of the book deals with official nationalism and its relationship to European integration, as well as the use of discourse analysis as a methodological tool in studying official nationalism. It uses the triform model to official nationalism and European integration, considering how each element of identity, borders, and governance is presented in the ‘traditional’ conception of the nation-state and the ‘new’ conception of the EU. The second part of the book provides an overview of the development of official nationalism in Ireland, focusing on the period from the first Home Rule Bill to the Irish War of Independence (1886–1921). It also analyses the way in which official discourse has addressed identity, borders, and governance in the context of EU membership and conflict in Northern Ireland.

During the passage of the Licensing Bill, there was some concern over 24-hour licensing but the issue in no way dominated public debate. It was not until the start of the following year that the tone changed. In 2004, ‘binge Britain’ — and the variation ‘booze Britain’ — would become part of the everyday language of the debate on alcohol. Alcohol consumption figures from public health campaigners often provided the statistical background to press reporting. Comparisons have been drawn between the representation of binge drinking, especially among women, and the fevered debate on gender and alcohol that characterised the gin craze. In the years that followed the implementation of the Licensing Act of 2003, the British government came under increasing pressure both from newspapers demanding greater intervention to deal with law and order and from public health groups calling for greater intervention to curb levels of overall consumption.

While the second half of the eighteenth century saw the emergence of new philosophical and medical speculations on the nature of intoxication and addiction, it also saw the return of some much older concerns over licensing and the social role of alehouses. In 1830, the passing of a Beer Act would, in one dramatic move, undo almost three centuries of work towards placing beer retail under the control of magistrates. The Beer Act of 1830 represented a victory of free trade capitalism over the established power of local economic and political elites. The 1830 Beer Act transformed an anti-spirits movement which stretched back to the days of the gin craze into a radical and well-organised teetotal temperance campaign. A confluence of anxieties over gin drinking and alehouses, radicalised by the pressures of a drift towards laissez-faire capitalism, kick-started a temperance movement which would become one of the dominant political forces of Victorian England. In 1787, George III was cajoled by William Wilberforce into issuing a Royal Proclamation against vice, profaneness, and immorality.

In England, chevalier d'Eon Beaumont became acquainted with commonwealth works and ideas, which he then applied to the contemporary situation in France. This chapter examines the British origins of d'Eon's patriotism, revealing something about the means by which commonwealth ideas were disseminated in France in the 1760s and 1770s, and the uses to which they were put. D'Eon owed his awareness of Nedham's work, and of the ideas of the English republican tradition more generally, to his long period of exile in Britain. It was during that stay that he began to acknowledge the importance of liberty and virtue and the threat posed to them by despotism and corruption. In this respect, d'Eon's friendship with Wilkes, and the parallels drawn between the experiences of the two men, appear to have been crucial.

Gabriel Bonnot de Mably is one of the central figures in the accounts of eighteenth-century French classical republicanism offered by Keith Baker and Kent Wright. Their groundbreaking studies transformed our understanding of Mably and placed him at the centre of accounts of eighteenth-century French republicanism and the intellectual origins of the French Revolution. Yet, the classical republican label does not quite do justice to the complexity of Mably's ideas. Though his ideal form of government was in line with the ancient republican tradition, his proposals for the reform of contemporary states were those of a commonwealthman. He not only analysed the strengths and weaknesses of the British constitution in commonwealth terms, but also self-consciously went on to propose a commonwealth reform package for France. He also engaged in a radicalisation of the early modern republican tradition.

This chapter covers the advent of Christianity. Particular emphasis is placed on the real and imagined Protestant contribution to the evolution of democratic politics; the post-revolutionary Roman Catholic reaction and opposition to democracy; and the mid-twentieth-century Vatican conversion to the merits of democracy. One of the products of the Reformation was religious fragmentation. The debates of significance for future democratic development are explained. Religion plays a key role in ensuring the survival of the young republic and the maintenance of a civil polity. The Christian Church tends to lose sight of its original egalitarian impulses and to take on board the hierarchical and monarchical characteristics of the temporal order with which it has co-existed and which it has come to legitimate. The Catholic Church in many developing countries has shifted its position from defender of authoritarian rule to promoter of human rights and democracy.