Sentencing Parricides: Text and Context; Rhetoric and Silence

This article considers the sentencing of two eighteenth centuryparricides, one committed by a daughter, the other by a son. In eachcase the sentencing remarks are first subject to generic analysis,derived from the work of Rukiya Hasan and Susan Urmston Philips. Withinthose thematic structures there is a traditional rhetorical analysis. Bycombining both types of analysis one can demonstrate the salientfeatures of each set of judicial remarks. The focus of the article thenshifts from these texts to their contexts, and reveals features in theiroffence narratives which have been omitted in these otherwise powerfulrhetorical utterances. Explanations for these silences are given.     

Global Politics of Mercury Pollution: The Need for Multi-Scale Governance

This article analyses international legal and policy developments on mercury from the 1970s to the present time, and examines options for continued abatement. Multiple scientific assessments have demonstrated that mercury is an environmental pollutant that can pose a serious threat to human health and development. Currently, the international community is engaged in extensive debate about options for improved mercury governance. This article will critically examine three major policy options under discussion: the creation of a global mercury convention; the regulation of mercury under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; and the development of voluntary partnerships. It is concluded that expanded and better integrated policy efforts are needed across global, regional and local governance scales to address mercury pollution and contamination effectively.     

Economic Interdependence and the Balance of Power

To account for variance in great powers responses to threats and the implications for the peacefulness of the international system since the late nineteenth century, this article elucidates a theory which refines and synthesizes economic liberal perspectives and realist balance of power theory. I argue that different patterns and levels of economic interdependence in the great power system generate societal-based economic constraints on, or incentives for, state leaders of status quo powers hoping to mobilize economic resources and political support to oppose perceived threats. This mobilization process influences strongly the preferences of status quo powers, other states beliefs about those preferences, and the interpretation of signals in balance of power politics. In this way, economic ties influence the strategies great powers pursue. Firm balancing policies conducive to peace in the international system are most likely, I then hypothesize, when there are extensive economic ties among status quo powers and few or no such links between them and perceived threatening powers. When economic interdependence is not significant between status quo powers or if status quo powers have strong economic links with threatening powers, weaker balancing postures and conciliatory policies by status quo powers, and aggression by aspiring revisionist powers, are more likely. I then illustrate how these hypotheses explain the development of the Franco-Russian alliance of the 1890s and its effectiveness as a deterrent of Germany up to 1905, British ambivalence toward Germany from 1906 to the First World War, the weakness of British, French, Soviet, and American behavior toward Germany in the 1930s and World War II, and the American and European responses to the Soviet threat, including the NATO alliance, and the "long peace" of the post-1945 era.