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Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. The central character in her narrative is neither F.A. Hayek nor Milton Friedman, let alone Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises, but James M. Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics. MacLean argues that rather than extol the virtues of the market economy as Hayek and Friedman did before him, Buchanan focused on the dysfunctions of politics. Due to a series of argumentative fallacies and failures that follow from her ideological blinders, I argue that MacLean’s attempt is a missed opportunity to seriously engage some very pressing issues in public choice and political economy and understand how James Buchanan attempted to resolve them in a democratic manner. As such, Democracy in Chains is not only a mischaracterization of Buchanan and his project but also a poignant lesson to us all about how ideological blinders can subvert even the sincerest effort to unearth truth in the social sciences and the humanities.

A review of Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America focuses on the implications of her historiographic method in reading Jim Buchanan’s work and the resulting failure to take seriously the underlying framework of constitutional political economy that informed both Jim Buchanan’s and Frank H. Knight’s work. MacLean’s historiography is that of social movement history, which sublimates the interests and motivations of the individual to that of the movement. The real scholar disappears into simply an agent of the movement’s master plan. Because MacLean is suspicious of the movement she believes Buchanan to be part of, his work is interpreted solely in light of what she assumes to be the master plan. In particular, she ignores Buchanan’s habit of returning to key themes in order to develop new modes of analysis. MacLean focuses solely on his public choice work, ignoring the latter developments of constitutional economics and even moral order.

Two issues in MacLean’s account are the focus on the review. The first is simply a research mistake that she drew unwarranted conclusions from regarding Buchanan’s connection to the “massive resistance” movement against desegregation of Virginia public schools. The second issue reveals MacLean’s unwillingness to consider the changes in Buchanan’s scholarship over his career. Taken together, the issues indicate that she refused to read Buchanan on his own terms in order to understand the progress of his work, even if she disagreed with him at the end.

This study aims to better understand the communication of sustainability by Canadian universities, specifically the use of websites, interactive features and sustainability plans.

A total of 95 Canadian universities were included in this study. The mixed-methods approach sought to capture the communication of sustainability via websites, the interactive features used, as well as to evaluate the quality of sustainability plans.

The study revealed that 67% of universities address sustainability on their websites. On average, universities offer three to four interactive features on their sustainability-related Web pages, and the average score of the quality of campus sustainability plans was 29 (out of 41).

This study does not investigate the extent to which interactive features enhance the involvement and participation in sustainability efforts or the extent to which the sustainability plans were put into practice by universities.

The findings assist with understanding how higher education institutions (HEIs) can enhance their sustainability communication via their websites to encourage interaction and engagement in campus sustainability. The findings can also help universities to enhance the effectiveness of sustainability plans.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to assess sustainability content and the interactive features on sustainability-related pages of Canadian universities’ websites. The quality of sustainability plans is also evaluated. The study informs the present understanding of communicating sustainability by Canadian universities and provides a basis for future investigations in HEIs in Canada and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on new information from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on deaths caused by volatile substance abuse (VSA) in Great Britain which occurred between 2001 and 2016.

Comparing the new study with previous mortality data, the authors consider the strengths and some limitations of the analysis provided by ONS.

By utilising a broader range of codes and collating additional information from death certificates, the new report provides a more comprehensive measure of VSA mortality than was previously available, showing increasing prevalence of deaths. The age profile of people dying is older than in previous studies. Most deaths were associated with inhalation of gases and almost three-quarters of deaths involved volatile substances alone.

Understanding VSA mortality is essential for service planning. It is important that we identify why so many people whose deaths are associated with VSA are not accessing treatment, with particular concern about treatment access for those who only use volatiles. Training to support drug and alcohol and other health service staff to respond to VSA is essential. In future reports, data to identify socioeconomic correlations of VSA deaths would enable targeted responses. Additionally, information on whether deaths occur in long term rather than episodic or one-off users could enable risk reduction education.

This paper shows how data on VSA deaths may inform for policy and service planning.

This exploratory pilot study investigated the experiences and perceptions of young people who use N₂O recreationally. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative research conducted in Australia with young people investigating this topic in detail. The purpose of this pilot study was to explore young people’s perceptions, motives and experiences of N₂O use by exploring the positive and negative effects of N₂O, motives for use, practices and methods and suggested advice to help define targeted harm reduction messages.

Participants were recruited via hard copy posters, social media advertisements and snowball sampling. Seven in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with young people aged between 18 and 25 years who had used N₂O on at least ten occasions. The interview transcripts were analysed thematically. The study was completed in accordance with COREQ for qualitative research.

The findings identified four overarching themes about N₂O use: the nature of N₂O use; the appeal of N₂O; influences on N₂O use; and perception of risk and harms of N₂O use.

Young people in the study described their experiences as being largely pleasurable. However, several identified negative impacts, although harms, were primarily disregarded. Exploration of N₂O effects alongside other substance use highlighted how N₂O is a unique substance and should be considered as such when developing harm reduction strategies.

Nitrous oxide (N₂O) use for recreational purposes appears to have increased among young people in several countries, including Denmark, Australia, The Netherlands and the UK. This increase has prompted concern among health authorities and politicians. The purpose of this paper is to map out findings in the available literature about N₂O use among young people to better understand current trends and contextualize the public concerns and the new policy responses to it.

The authors draw here on a range of sources, including research literature, reports and policy documents in English and Danish. Given the broad aim, the authors used a scoping study approach (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005).

The authors found literature on prevalence of use, health effects and policy regulations. The literature suggests that health harms associated with N₂O use are generally associated with intensive and long-term use, and death is more likely where the means of administration entails a risk of suffocation. Overall, however, the analysis shows that substantial gaps exist in the available literature. The authors lack detailed knowledge on several issues, including comparable prevalence data of N₂O use; the extent to which N₂O is used with other drugs; how one can distinguish between harmful and non-harmful use in terms of both quantity inhaled and mode of administration; and on intended and unintended consequences of policy responses to this use.

The current increase and trend in inhaling N₂O for intoxication among young people is under researched. This general review maps out what kind of knowledge would be valuable to have for prevention, harm reduction and policy interventions.

Building on relational inequality theory, this paper incorporates social capital as a device to trace the flow of resources through relationships originating within and beyond organizations. I draw on a survey of over 1,700 lawyers to evaluate key dynamics of social capital that shape earnings: bridging and bonding, reciprocity exchanges and sponsorship, and boundary maintenance. The findings show social capital lends a lift to law graduates through bridges to professional careers and sponsorship following job entry. Racial minorities, however, suffer a shortfall of personal networks to facilitate job searches, and once having secured jobs, minorities experience social closure practices by clients and colleagues that disadvantage them in their professional work. A sizeable earnings gap remains between racial minority and white lawyers after controlling for human and social capitals, social closure practices, and organizational context. This earnings gap is particularly large among racial minorities with more years of experience and those working in large law firms. The findings demonstrate the importance of identifying the interrelations that connect social network and organizational context to impact social inequality.

In this chapter, we explore an actual incident of cyberbullying that occurred at a large Canadian university. In our analysis, we frame cyberbullying as part of the more general phenomena of classroom incivility. We focus on the sociocultural context and demonstrate how the structures and processes within the classroom environment can enable incivility as well as cyberbullying.