Legislative systems with absolute party discipline: Implications for the agency theory approach to the constituent-legislator link

This paper examines how the presence of absolute party discipline forces one to re-examine some of the issues surrounding the constituent-legislator link. With absolute party discipline, slack at the individual district level is determined by the policy choices of a political party, rather than by the choices of the individual legislator. This party discipline not only has implications for the representational effectiveness of individual legislators, but also results in the terms “slack” and “shirking” no longer necessarily being synonymous. The empirical work shows that Canadian political parties engaged in wide scale shirking on the 1988 U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement.     

The range and limitation of sub-national regime variations under electoral authoritarianism: The case of Russia

ABSTRACT

As has been demonstrated by scholars, different levels of a polity may encompass different political regimes. In this study we examine variations in regional political regimes which have developed under Russia's system of electoral authoritarianism. Comparing the results of two cycles of regional assembly elections (2008–12 and 2013–17) we analyse and compare elections results and levels of electoral contestation in both the party list (PL) and single member district (SMD) contests. This allows us to identify the range of sub-national regime variations: ‘hegemonic authoritarian’, ‘inter-elite bargain authoritarian’, ‘clearly-competitive authoritarian’, and ‘moderately-competitive authoritarian’ regions. Approximately half of the regions demonstrate stable electoral patterns across both cycles. At the same time, none of the regions go beyond the authoritarian limitations imposed by the Russian regime. The variation is explained by a combination of structural and agency factors with a prevalence of the latter.     

Ontario's Rae Report: Investing in growth

“I am urging the provincial government to adopt as a key mission for the province the goal for Ontario to be a leader in learning, and to fund higher education accordingly” Ontario: A Leader in Learning ‐ Report & Recommendations. By BOB RAE, Advisor to the Premier and the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. Toronto: Queen's Printer. 2005. Pp. iii, 124.     

Memory for political actors: Contrasting the use of semantic and evaluative organizational strategies

This paper explores the organizational strategies used to represent information about political actors in memory, and it illustrates the usefulness of a specific measure, the adjusted ratio of clustering score (ARC), for inferring memory structure. Assuming the operation of an associative network model, we argue that information about a political actor can be organized along three distinct dimensions: attribute type (differentiating between issue positions and personal attributes), partisanship (differentiating between characteristics typical of Republicans and Democrats), and evaluative type (differentiating between positively and negatively evaluated attributes). The results of a laboratory study indicate that organization along the attribute type dimension was most common, with some evidence of partisan organization. There was no evidence of organization along the evaluative dimension. The implications of the study for understanding individual differences in political reasoning, and the consequences of memory organization strategies, are discussed.     

Analyzing welfare effort: An appraisal of comparative methods

How do we measure and rate the social welfare efforts of nations? Most people consider the U.S. and Japan welfare laggards when compared with European countries. This view derives from a widely used measure of “welfare effort”—direct government outlays for social programs as the percentage of a nation's gross domestic product (GDP). This article challenges several assumptions implicit in the conventional measure and suggests an alternative approach in assessing “welfare effort.” By incorporating indirect tax expenditures and controlling for the differences in tax burdens and social need for welfare spending among countries, the alternative measure (the NET index) not only broadens the conceptual boundaries of welfare effort, but also affords a more meaningful standard for comparative analysis. To illustrate, this study compares the welfare effort levels of ten developed nations measured under several versions of the NET index.     

Intergovernmental Relations in Canada: The Emergence of Collaborative Federalism

"Executive federalism" or "federal-provincial diplomacy" haslong been considered the defining characteristic of Canadianfederalism, which combines federalism and Westminster-stylecabinet government. However, these processes have come underincreasing stress in recent years from a number of forces thathave affected the nature and conduct of federalism and intergovernmentalrelations in Canada. Executive federalism has not been displaced,but has been increasingly informed by a set of practices thatwe call "collaborative federalism," characterized more by theprinciple of co-determination of broad national policies ratherthan by the more traditional pattern of federal-leadership.     

The Origin and Outcome of an Amicus Brief in Kumho Tire v. Carmichael (1999)

Law and Human Behavior -