The prohibition-repeal amendments: A natural experiment in interest group influence

The pattern of state support for Prohibition (18th Amendment, 1919) and Repeal (21st Amendment, 1933) is analyzed and compared. This comparison is important because Prohibition is the only amendment ever to be repealed. The main thesis is that there was no wholesale change in preferences of citizens. Instead, producer interests failed to mobilize effectively in 1919, and the coupling of moral and economic arguments that worked in 1919 broke apart in 1933. Regression analysis is conducted on state legislatures (for Prohibition) and state referenda on convention delegates (for Repeal), so states are observations in the cross-sectional regression analysis. The results broadly support the main thesis.     

Wealth-Transfer Taxes in U.S. Fiscal Federalism: A Levy Still in Need of Reform

Wealth-transfer taxes are federal and state levies on the valueof estates, inheritances, and gifts. Because the federal governmentallows a limited tax credit, repeal of the federal tax has implicationsfor state governments. This article discusses the economic justificationof taxing wealth transfers and provides data on the importanceof the tax from 1977 to 1997. We measure the degree of variationin the use of the tax among the states and pinpoint those statesfor which death taxation is most important. Wealth-transfertaxation needs reform but, repeal of the federal tax is inappropriate.Instead, the state levies should be abandoned. We conclude byproposing to repeal the state taxes and reduce the federal taxby an amount equivalent to the value of the federal tax-credit.The resulting revenues, however, would not to be garnered bythe federal government but returned as revenue-sharing fundsto the resident state of the decedent.     

Back to the Future? Warnings from History for a Future UK Constitutional Convention

Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has been proposed as a mechanism to take stock not only of the referendum, but also of the past fifteen years of devolution. However, despite longstanding conceptions of British constitutional development, a constitutional convention would not herald a brave new world for the UK's constitution. As the article highlights, in the past hundred years there have been two attempts to treat the territorial constitution in the round: the Speaker's Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 and the Royal Commission on the Constitution, 1969–1973. This article examines both of these forums, arguing that they provide clear warnings for a future UK constitutional convention, in particular the threat of internal division that any such forum risks facing. A danger that this article highlights is heightened by the associated difficulty of reaching agreement across the UK's ‘state of unions’.     

Profoundly Un‐Conservative? David Cameron and the UK Bill of Rights Debate

This article considers David Cameron's proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. Cameron's proposal has been heavily criticised by a range of political, academic and non‐state actors and was described by a current senior Coalition Cabinet member as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘legal nonsense’. This article takes a slightly different direction to those lines of attack and critique that have been developed of the Conservative's proposals. The central proposition of the article is that Cameron's proposal is profoundly un‐Conservative at two levels. Firstly, at the level of Conservative approaches to constitutional reform and secondly, at the level of Conservative political philosophy.     

From secessionism to regionalism: The changing nature of territorial politics in Western Australia

The development of territorial politics within federal systems over time, specifically change in the nature and intensity of territorial claims, is an understudied question. This article looks at the case of Western Australia (WA) to gain a better understanding of the political dynamics behind changing territorial politics in a federation, more particularly around economic and fiscal policies. In April 1933, grievances surrounding the economic and fiscal policies of the Commonwealth government grew so loud in WA that a referendum on secession saw a majority of voters opting to leave Australia altogether. In the end, not only did WA not secede but the secessionist movement disappeared. Today, ironically, the equalization system, whose formalization through the creation of the Commonwealth Grants Commission one month following the referendum was designed to reduce regional disparities and discontent, is at the centre of regionalist politics in the state.     

Ann Diamond on an Unlimited Constitutional Convention

Ann Diamond has argued that, unless it is called by all thestates, a convention held under Article V of the Constitutionof the United States would be limited to proposing piecemealchanges. Diamond's arguments are flawed. The power of the statesto call a convention to propose amendments is coequal with thepower of Congress to propose amendments and is subject to onlyone explicit limitation. The Convention of 1787 was not attendedby all the states, and it did not delimit two types of futureconventions. Diamond's analysis reflects extreme notions ofindividual state sovereignty that lack historical support andwould, in any event, unduly hobble the states as a whole.     

Foxhunting and the Conservatives

The Conservatives are pledged to have a free vote in Parliament on legislation in Government time to reverse the 2004 Hunting Act. This Act bans hunting with dogs. The Countryside Alliance has opposed the Hunting Act as part of campaigns to defend its notion of rural interests. The Countryside Alliance's success in gaining the Tory pledge could be underscored by a Tory hope that hunting supporters give decisive support for Tory candidates in marginal Parliamentary constituencies. However, the Tory leadership may find it politically difficult to give early priority to legislative attempts to repeal the Hunting Act. Moreover, it is likely to require a large Tory majority and years of waiting before a Tory government is able and willing to complete a repeal of the hunting ban.     

论法规批准制度

法规批准制度是指有关主体制定的法规范性文件需经特定主体的批准才能生效的法律制度。现行法规批准制度存在批准范围小、批准程序缺少操作性等不足。完善法规批准制度需合理设置批准范围、完善批准程序等,并对经批准的法规性质进行了法理考察。     

“A Bureaucratic Trap:” Free,Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and Wind Energy Development in Juchitán,Mexico

ABSTRACT

On November 2014, the first Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) consultation was called for the Eólica del Sur wind project in Juchitán de Zaragoza, Mexico. Lasting eight months, the consultation was responding not only to the UN International Labor Organization’s (ILO) convention 169 that Mexico signed in 1990 but also to widespread uprisings against wind energy projects in the region. This article begins with an FPIC literature review, followed by sections examining the consultation in Juchitán, its spatial layout, the actors involved and its repressive atmosphere. The subsequent section analyzes the discursive techniques deployed by the FPIC technical committee (TC) which—despite unanswered questions and popular opposition to the wind energy project—granted project approval on 30 June 2015. The final section concludes that the FPIC consultation undermines Indigenous autonomy and serves as a counter-insurrectionary device, reinforcing a context of substantial political and economic asymmetry between state, corporate and elite interest and Indigenous fishermen and farmers. The FPIC consultation in Juchitán reinforced state power and simultaneously serves as a marketing platform for development projects, thereby creating an illusion of real dialogue, negotiation and, by extension, democratic decision making. Despite efforts to have the wind project approved, resistance groups’ temporarily halted construction.     

STI policy conventions in Uruguay. An analysis of political party platforms 2004–2019

Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) have been considered as critical tools in development processes, gaining growing importance in the public policy agenda. We assert that an intersubjective agreement about STI policy has emerged in Latin America from the beginning of the twenty-first century. This operates as a developmental convention which is based on a hybrid theoretical rationale from neoclassical economics and the innovation systems approach. This process has been analyzed from different perspectives of innovation and political economy studies. However, as far as we know, the role of political parties in the construction and reproduction of STI conventions has not been studied. After illustrating the general assertion with stylized facts from the whole Latin American region, we study the platforms that Uruguayan political parties presented in the national elections between 2004 and 2019. Text analysis techniques show that platforms of both left- and right-wing political parties were embedded in the current STI policy convention. However, critical discrepancies emerge in relation to policy implementation—the positive and negative agendas—which show that there has been political competition regarding the role of the state and of markets. This leads us to conclude that even though one can observe a shared set of building blocks on STI policy and development, there is competition within the current convention, suggesting that any agreement is illusory.     

Climate change refugees

Under the UNHCR definition of a refugee, set out in the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, people fleeing their homes because of natural disasters or other environmental problems do not qualify for refugee status and the protection that come from such status. In a recent paper, I defended the essentials of the UNHCR definition on the grounds that refugee status and protection is best reserved for people who can only be helped by granting them refuge in a safe state for an indefinite period of time, and argued that this does not include most people fleeing from natural disasters. This claim is most strongly challenged by the possibility of displacement from climate change. In this paper, I will explore to what degree the logic of the refugee convention, as set out in my earlier paper, can and should be extended to those fleeing the results of climate change.     

Hitler's opening gambit: Intelligence,encirclement, and the decision to Ally with Poland

This article asks why the German Foreign Ministry supported Hitler's radical reconstruction of Germany's eastern policy. Already by the fall of 1933, Germany was turning to an alignment with Poland against Soviet Russia ‐ the reverse of Germany's decade‐long Rapallo policy. The author identifies three principal factors that influenced the conservative, typically anti‐Polish diplomats in the Foreign Ministry to support the scheme: fear of a Polish‐Soviet alliance hinted at by recurrent intelligence reports; internal pressure from army and state police officials; and the constraints of the international system.     

The Electoral Consequences of Roll Call Voting: Health Care and the 2018 Election

Political Behavior - For years, Republicans in Congress promised to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The results of the 2016 elections put them in position to take action...     

Is the Death of Inheritance Tax Inevitable? Lessons from America

In 2001, George Bush repealed estate tax in America. This was a shock to many in the US as inherited privilege had never been popular in a country where individuals were supposed to secure the American Dream through their own efforts. The tax had existed for over a century and only 2 per cent of the richest Americans paid it. But the repeal lobby managed to build an unlikely and broad alliance against the 'Death Tax' (as they managed to rename it). The key to their campaign was a moral case against the tax, illustrated with a few well-chosen narratives. The opposition fought back, ineffectively, with pragmatic arguments and statistics. This paper will apply lessons from America to the UK politics of taxation. It will focus on the role of lobby groups and the power of moral arguments and narrative evidence over more pragmatic arguments and 'scientific' forms of evidence.     

A start to START III

Despite the fact that the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) II has still to be ratified by the Russian Duma, the March 1997 summit in Helsinki between US and Russian Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin has initiated the process towards a START III agreement. But even more than its predecessors, this arms-reduction agreement – with what is likely to be a highly intrusive verification regime – could face difficulties in gaining legislative approval in both countries. For the first time, a START agreement is likely to cover warheads as well as delivery systems.     

Representational roles and representative/constituency agreement: The democratic national party convention of 1976

Representational Role Theory is applied to presidential nominating conventions. Delegates to the 1976 Democratic convention are compared to the voters who selected their slates in 10 key presidential preference primaries. Because of party rule restrictions on delegates' behavior, representational roles are not pertinent to what is typically the most important decision of the convention, the first ballet vote for the party's presidential nominee. However, role orientations appear to be useful in understanding two other sets of decisions: (1) the creation of the party platform and (2) voting for the party's presidential nominee in the event that the nomination requires more than one ballot. Other than the first ballot, the Delegate role is not very popular among convention delegates.     

Jews in the Christian Gaze: Munich's Churches before and after Hitler

Abstract

Kauders sets out to examine three interrelated topics: the nature of antisemitism after the Second World War; the continuity in thinking about the Jews in the twentieth century; and the problem of responsibility inherent in any analysis of the events surrounding the Holocaust. In what follows, emphasis is placed on the Catholic and Protestant churches in the Bavarian capital of Munich, whose reactions to Jew-hatred before 1933 and after 1945 are studied in some detail. Several conclusions emerge from this investigation. Both churches embraced völkisch thinking before 1933, without approving of violent manifestations of racialist thought. Both Catholics and Protestants, whenever they defended the Jews before the rise of Hitler, did so in order to safeguard Christian dogma, and in particular the value of the Old Testament as well as the Jewish origins of Jesus and Paul. After 1945 clerics employed language that ignored events between 1933 and 1945, describing the ‘Jewish question’ as if the issue was still embedded in Weimar politics; they did so because they assumed that a majority of Germans had been innocent of any wrongdoing, so that a pre-1933 image of ‘the Jew’ (which did not allow for extremism and violence) could be re-adopted with impunity after 1945. Christian views began to change in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Jews were increasingly seen as Others who were to be respected as such. Although German-Jewish irreconcilability was thereby cemented, this shift also entailed an acceptance as opposed to a denial of the Jew as different from Christians and ‘Germans’.     

Constitutions for new democracies: Reflections of turmoil or agents of stability?

Despite the widely held view in newly emerging democracies that constitutions are mere words on paper or that parchment barriers cannot render a state stable or democratic, those who draft such documents commonly act as if words ARE of consequence. The difficulty, however, is that contemporaneous conflicts too easily intervene so as to corrupt the drafting process and to preclude optimal constitutional design. The specific principle of design most likely to be violated is the proposition that we treat all parts of the constitution as an interconnected whole and that we not try to assess the consequences of one part without appreciating the full meaning of all other parts. This essay illustrates this violation by looking at the new Russian constitution, ratified by direct popular vote in December 1993, with special attention paid to that document's treatment of federalism. We offer the additional argument, however, that even contemporary research in political institutional design pays insufficient heed to this principle.