Problems of Constitutional Design in Canada: Quebec and the Issue of Bicommunalism

This article traces the attempts by Canada to redesign its federalconstitution to reflect that political reality which most effectivelydistinguishes it from its American neighbor, namely, its bicommunalcharacter. Reviewing various explanations for the constitutionalimpasse, notably that of a conspiracy by English-speaking provincesor of bad faith by the Québec provincial government,the author concludes that in the case of two territorially-basedsocieties, constitution-making becomes a battleground wherelocal elites strive to maintain societal autonomy and make useof governmental institutions to achieve their own objectives.Thus the retreat from bicommunalism, which has characterizedthe 1982 and 1987 constitutional reform exercises, should beseen not so much as a failure of federal-provincial diplomacy,but of the difficulties in accommodating two competing and mutuallyexclusive strategies of state-building.     

The Impact of Federalism on the Organization of Canadian Foreign Policy

The international activities of Canadian provinces—mainlyAlbert, British Columbia, Ontario, and Québec—challengeconventional concepts of sovereignty and the federal view ofa national monopoly in foreign policy. These provincial activitieshave become more important since the early 1970s and have yieldedoutcomes in the field of foreign policy that would not haveoccurred otherwise. Provinces engage in international activitiesfor a number of reasons. They have the capacity, jurisdictionalobligation, and political desire to do so. Economic necessity,especially the international economic environment, is importantmotivation. Both conflict and cooperation with Ottawa also encourageprovincial involvements in international activities. Occasionally,foreign governments invite such activity as well. Present trendscoupled with the constitutional division of responsibilitiesin Canada suggest that territorial transgovernmentalism willhave greater consequences for Canadian foreign policy, therebygiving to Canada's international presence a character similarto the complexities and contradictions of the country's domesticmosaic.     

Alterable electorates in the context of residential mobility

In some circumstances, politicians set about altering the composition of their electorate with a view to increasing their chances of being re-elected. A hypothesis along these lines is formulated in the context of local elections and residential mobility. Although the hypothesis is general, an assessment of its validity implies auxiliary assumptions related to a specific spatio-temporal context. That is done with reference to conditions prevailing in post-war French metropolitan areas. In the empirical part of the paper, some of the implications are submitted to tests on demographical and political data. On the basis of the tests, and although alternative explanations of the findings are possible, the hypothesis can be said to be corroborated.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1986 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society and at the 1986 Journées de Microéconomie Appliquée. We are grateful for the comments and suggestions made on these occasions or independently by Jean Bénard, Albert Breton, Giorgio Brosio, Gérard Charreaux, Louis Duquesne de la Vinelle, Gianluigi Galeotti, François Gardes, Roger Guesnerie, Jean-Dominique Lafay, Claude Meidinger, Bernard Nonat, Werner Pommerehne, Alain Wolfelsperger, and an anonymous referee. Any remaining errors and shortcomings are our sole responsibility. We also thank the Institut de Mathématiques Appliquées for research support.     

Rent-seeking and the behavior of regulators: An empirical analysis

The main contribution of this paper is to describe empirically how the rent-seeking process takes place in a regulated industry through the consistency in Board decisions. Evidence provided by discrete-choice decision models of regulators confirms that the conventional rent-seeking view of regulation is correct, namely to distribute wealth between various groups differently from what market forces would do. First of all, the structure of the rent-seeking activities in the Quebec regulated trucking industry is well explained. There exist behavioral uniformities (Russell and Shelton, 1974) in decisions taken by the Quebec Transport Commission, given its wide range of choice provided by the absence of detailed regulatory standards by the Quebec legislature. Secondly, trucking firms and large shippers are the interest groups seeking to extract artificially contrived rents. The capture theory of regulation is not a dominant political strategy and therefore does not analytically explain various trades taking place among interest groups when a permit authority is requested. So logrolling by regulators is clearly essential to maintain their non-transferable investment of time and talent and protect their political afterlife. Thirdly, large firms are more successful, at the margin, than small firms in their expansion because of their political effectiveness. The regulatory agency gives more rents to those who offer relatively strong electoral support to its party. Finally, appointed regulators do not achieve other positive payoffs from the regulatory process than those which may result from the agency problem. So the regulatory agency does not promote its own policy agenda, but rather that of the elected politicians, given the organizational and control problem between these two.I am indebted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support, to Gérard Bélanger, Jean-Luc Migué for helpful comments and to Sylvain Veillette, Pascal Migué, Marc Leduc for valuable research assistance. I benefitted from useful comments by the editor of this journal. All the remaining errors are mine.     

Privacy and security in centralized vs. decentralized databank systems

This paper explores the questions of whether or not a centralized personal-information databank system presents a greater threat to the privacy and other related rights of the persons on whom data are kept than does a decentralized system that collectively holds the same data, and which databank system can provide better data security. It is concluded that, except possibly in the case of a coup d'état, a properly designed and controlled centralized databank system is a smaller threat to privacy and provides more effective security than a decentralized system.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant No. 29943.     

Optimal federalism: A model of psychological dependence

Increased size, scope, and visibility of government may strengthen relations of psychological dependence, an unintended aggregate effect of liberal programs. Such an effect depends upon the dominant phenomenological world of the citizenry which intersects objective trends: dependence,éminence grise identification, or enlightened maturity.A model of self-conceptions and emotional syndromes characteristic of the two parties in a dependency relationship predicts there will be objectively inconsistent and unrealistic expectations and demands by both parties, inadequate rationality and program evaluation, and mutual frustration, mistrust, and disillusionment. Trends in American politics suggest the possibility of an increasing dependency substructure. If dependency relations are growing, then the political and administrative problems outlined can be expected to increase.I am indebted to Lynn Etheredge and Jeff Pressman for discussions which partially stimulated this hybrid of topics.     

The Federal Formula and the Collapse of the USSR

A plan for the most ambitious political reform in Soviet historywas approved by the USSR's parliament in late 1988. As the reformunfolded, a key component came to be what Mikhail S. Gorbachevcalled "a renewed federal structure. "Reform proponents arguedthat only a renewed federalism could provide for the continuedintegrity of the Soviet state while assuring greater responsivenessto local demands. However, the attempt to breathe life intothe USSR's pseudo-federal structure unleashed long-suppressednationalist, territorial, and localist sentiments. Beginningin 1990, "refederalization" passed from mainly rhetorical discussionto a plan for a more loosely organized federation under theauspices of a Union Treaty. Following the attempted coup d'étatby Kremlin hard-liners in August 1991, pressures for decentralizationled, in the closing weeks of 1991, to the complete abandonmentof the "Great Soviet experiment." With the demise of the USSR,the plan for federal redesign was superseded by the rapid emergenceof independent states.     

Forty Years of German Federalism: Past Trends and New Developments

This article traces the major developments in German federalismfrom 1949 to the present. From a system based on a concept of"dual federalism," which was different in important ways fromthe American system, German federalism became somewhat morelike the postwar American cooperative federalism. Criticismof this system in the 1970s led to various reform efforts, whichmade little headway until the 1980s and the formation of a CDU/CSU-FDPcoalition government under Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The "turnabout"promised by this government and carried out to some extent includedplans and policies to strengthen the Länder by some sortingout of functions. These efforts were successful at first, butthe federal government has oriented its policies more towardthe national arena. Financial constraints, the nationalizationof basic rights, technological concerns, and pressures by theEC have led to new tendencies toward intergovernmentalizingand centralizing the relations between the federation and Landgovernments.     

New Millennium,New Public Management and the New Zealand Model

Recently the much‐discussed ‘New Zealand model’ of new public management (NPM) has become significantly revised. It now lacks the theoretical coherence and the market‐led focus that it relied on between 1987 and 1996. Labour‐led governments since 1999 have undertaken gradual and pragmatic – yet significant – changes in public management structures and principles, refining and sometimes reversing the model implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This article does a ‘stock‐take’ of public management developments in New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, and argues that New Zealand can no longer be viewed as a leading exponent of market‐led NPM. Some NPM principles have been refined, but others have been quietly abandoned. The new National‐led government appears unwilling to undertake radical reforms, and, while it may seek a greater role for the private sector, looks set to continue with the ‘gradual and pragmatic’ approach adopted since 1999.     

SOUTH AFRICAN REALITIES AND REALPOLITIK

South Africa is a country of major and powerful tribes, of many sub-tribes, of one large non-tribe, and of two articulate communities (the Asians and mixed-race coloureds). Chief among the tribes in their history and their right to control tracts of South Africa are the white Afrikaner tribe led by Mr, Vorster himself and the black Zulus led by Chief Gatsha Buthelezi. Both dominate, but are feared and resented by, the rest of their respective racial communities. The two are, and have been for hundreds of years, each other's prime adversaries…. To advocate one man, one vote in a unitary state as the solution to such a patchwork of racial resentments and history frankly seems a nonsense….     

Epidemiological accountability: philanthropists,global health and the audit of saving lives

Abstract

There have been concerns about the recent private turn and re-emergence of philanthropies in world health, with many worrying about philanthropies’ perceived lack of transparency and accountability. In contrast, I argue that while the private turn might have led to a decline in democratic or public accountability, it did not bring an end to all forms of accountability. Specifically, I suggest that philanthropists’ involvement in global health has led to the spread of another, new form of accountability: epidemiological accountability. The latter is a combination of two regimes of expertise and practices hitherto kept separate: audit and epidemiology. To substantiate this argument, I draw on my research on the Bloomberg Initiative – a global effort to reduce tobacco use spearheaded by the Bloomberg and Gates foundations.     

Nowcasting V. polling: The 2010 UK election trials

This paper first offers a final forecast for the May 2010 UK general election based on our “two-step model” [Nadeau, R., Lewis-Beck, M.S., Bélanger, É., 2009. Election forecasting in the United Kingdom: a two-step model. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 19, 333-358.]. That model is then used to explore a new technique, “nowcasting.” We examine our model “nowcasts,” comparing it to the classic forecasting strategy of the vote intention poll, across the contemporary election period, 2005-2010. As is shown, nowcasting offers forecasting advantages that simple polling does not. Most notably, the nowcast provides variation that appears much more subject to substantive explanation of the electoral cycle, and it provides predictions with a three-month lead.     

Obama’s Human Rights Policy: Déjà vu with a Twist

In US history, much human rights policy developed in four waves during the twentieth century. These waves were triggered by similar circumstances, but all proved short-lived as structural constraints such as limited US power over other countries’ domestic actions, competing US policy priorities, a US hesitance to join multilateral institutions, and the continued domestic political weakness of human rights advocates led to setbacks. As Barack Obama took office, his campaign comments and the past patterns led to widespread expectations that he would introduce new human rights initiatives. His policies, though, would continue to face the structural constraints and would be affected by the Bush administration’s legacy. It was predictable that many of Obama’s initiatives would be only partially implemented and only partially successful. As expected, Obama’s first years have seen mixed results, but the Obama administration has advanced US human rights policies sufficiently in half-dozen key areas to say that a fifth wave of human rights policy development is underway.     

Women Police in Post‐Fitzgerald Queensland: A 20 Year Review

The Fitzgerald report was the catalyst for major reforms to Queensland's system of government and criminal justice, and included explicit recommendations related to women in policing. Reforms led to the removal of discriminatory barriers and significant improvements in the recruitment and promotion of women. However, these changes provoked a backlash in the 1990s that led to reductions in female recruitment. A return to less discriminatory policies eventually ensued, with steady improvements on key equity indicators. This paper provides a historical perspective on developments over the two decades since Fitzgerald, and includes a critical analysis of the implementation of contemporary equity and diversity strategies within the policing context. Recruitment of women police in Queensland has plateaued at one‐third and progress in the overall number of sworn women and women in management is slow. The paper concludes by emphasising the wider lessons for a more developed and proactive gender equity program in public sector employment and policing.     

Is there an export‐ or import‐led growth in emerging countries? A case of BRICS countries

The BRICS economies could be considered a world number one trading group in one respect and emerging economies in another. The study applied both Johansen cointegration methodology for the long‐run relationship and Granger causality test for the direction of causality for the period of 1979–2018. The study findings confirmed that the growth‐led exports (GLE) hypothesis model is relevant for India, South Africa, and China, while exports‐led growth (ELG) hypothesis model is relevant for both Brazil and Russia. The growth‐led imports (GLI) hypothesis model is relevant for Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, while import‐led growth (ILG) hypothesis model is relevant for Russia. Hence, based on the findings, we confirmed that trade‐led growth hypothesis is valid. Finally, the results show that domestic and global demand contributes to a larger trade; countries that are labor‐abundant generate employment and foster economic growth.     

Does federally subsidized rental housing depress neighborhood property values?

Few communities welcome federally subsidized rental housing, with one of the most commonly voiced fears being reductions in property values. Yet there is little empirical evidence that subsidized housing depresses neighborhood property values. This paper estimates and compares the neighborhood impacts of a broad range of federally subsidized rental housing programs, using rich data for New York City and a difference‐in‐difference specification of a hedonic regression model. We find that federally subsidized developments have not typically led to reductions in property values and have, in fact, led to increases in some cases. Impacts are highly sensitive to scale, though patterns vary across programs. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Myanmar: the challenges of power

Despite the National League for Democracy's resounding victory in Myanmar's November 2015 general election, the country's political future is far from clear. There remain major obstacles to a peaceful transfer of power from the military-supported government to one led by Aung San Suu Kyi.     

“超行政治理”:党建引领的基层治理逻辑与工作路径

当前,行政化治理导致基层社会陷入“行政有效,治理无效”的治理危机,表现为治理碎片化、治理封闭化和治理等级化。需要打破行政科层组织的结构性壁垒,破解行政化治理造成的基层治理困境。执政党通过发挥政党的组织和政治优势,依托政党的政治整合功能和社会整合功能,促进治理与服务的有效融合,在基层治理场域形成了一种强调政党引领的“超行政治理”模式。与政府主导的行政化治理相比较,政党引领下的“超行政治理”以基础性权力为基础,依托政党权威,实现治理效能提升。具体而言,“超行政治理”通过三种治理机制展开运作。第一,运用党建的空间塑造功能推动组织整合,建构基层共治平台;第二,依靠政治引领功能促进价值整合,实现话语转换;第三,通过社会动员功能助推社会建构,再造社区团结。“超行政治理”以其政治整合和社会建构的工作逻辑,在基层治理场域推动了治理主体的跨组织协同、治理价值的共识维护以及治理权威的社会化建构。     

Revolution 2.0 in Egypt: Pushing for Change,Foreign Influences on a Popular Revolt

This article presents a case study of a movement for democratic change in Egypt. In particular, it reviews the uses of social media that helped to facilitate the revolution that led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's regime in February 2011. It looks at the movement in Egypt and the uses of social media from the perspective of public diplomacy, particularly in the context of U.S. efforts to drive public opinion in the Middle East. It reviews how the groups and individuals considered instrumental in the events that led to Mubarak's resignation are connected to the actors in U.S. “democracy promotion.” The article further discusses how social media, by dint of its characteristics, conveniently lends itself to democracy promotion. It highlights the risks involved in an instrumental approach to democracy promotion that treats the tools of social media as means to effect immediate policy gains country by country.     

Portugal's Quota-Parity Law: An Analysis of its Adoption

In August 2006, Portugal approved a new quota law, called the parity law. According to this, all candidate lists presented for local, parliamentary, and European elections must guarantee a minimum representation of 33 per cent for each sex. This article analyses the proximate causes that led to the adoption of gender quotas by the Portuguese Parliament. The simple answer is that the law's passage was a direct consequence of a draft piece of legislation presented by the Socialist Party (PS), which enjoyed a majority. However, the reasons that led the PS to push through a quota law remain unclear. Using open-ended interviews with key women deputies from all the main Portuguese political parties, and national public opinion data, among other sources, the role of four actors/factors that were involved in the law's adoption are critically examined: notably, civil society actors, state actors, international and transnational actors, and the Portuguese political context.