A retrospective on retrospective voting

This paper critically reviews the extensive literature on retrospective voting in response to economic conditions. Each of the major types of analyses which have been performed — time-series analyses of national vote totals, presidential popularity, and cross-sectional analyses of individual survey responses — has raised several interesting and important questions. The answers that have been obtained, however, are only partial and limited, as each of these approaches entails serious problems of estimation and interpretation. Further progress in this area, we argue, requires explicit treatment of conceptual and statistical issues that have hindered previous research: the dynamic formulation of expectations and preferences, the incidence of policy (and nonpolicy) effects across the population, and notions of incumbency and political responsibility.     

HIV/AIDS and governance along the corridors of conflict in West Africa

West Africa demonstrates a sub-regional pattern of violence and political instability that has engulfed Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and now extends out from these states through corridors of violent conflict throughout the region; both physical and figurative. This article makes two arguments. That HIV/AIDS has developed a complex inter-relationship with violent conflict in the West African sub-region; and that the presence of HIV/AIDS in West Africa in zones of violent conflict is not given the recognition needed by the international policy community. The neglect of West Africa in the Pan-African response to HIV/AIDS, and the intractability of the region's Complex Political Emergencies, is creating an emerging phenomenon of Complex Human Emergency in the region. An acknowledged gap exists in social analyses of HIV/AIDS between policy speculations and the actual evidence base that these are built upon. Instead of speculative theorizing, this article presents seven key questions that need to be asked about HIV/AIDS and conflict in West Africa, in order to begin the process of serious policy research on the issue.     

In the Wake of 'Good Governance': Impact Assessments and the Politicisation of Statutory Interpretation

For some time 'regulatory reform' has been a government watchword, and the streamlining and improved quality of regulation its professed ambition. Impact assessments (formerly known as regulatory impact assessments) are a significant ingredient in these governmental initiatives, now promoted by the newly created Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Just as they have come to refer rather freely to the Explanatory Notes that now accompany all public Acts of Parliament, judges have also begun to invoke impact assessments when construing legislation. This paper investigates the extent of this practice and the manner in which judges employ impact assessments. It warns of the potential consequences if the judiciary avails itself too readily of these highly politicised, and sometimes deceptive, documents.
'The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say.'
G. K. Chesterton, Daily News 22 April 1905