An Analysis of Statutory Development: The Correlates of State Activity in Product Liability Legislation

In the last few years legal scholars and politicians have been concerned with what many have referred to as the "liability crisis". While there is certainly no consensus involving precisely how serious the problem indeed, some argue that there is no crisis -there is some evidence that the frequency and size of jury awards in some types of personal injury cases have changed since the 1970s. In response to this evidence virtually every state has considered legislation that would limit the frequency or size of such awards and would modify related judicial processes. Although the final status of many of these "tort reforms" is still uncertain, bills related to punitive damages and other dimensions of tort Iiability have been introduced in and passed by one or more houses in many state legislatures. This paper examines this legislative activity and focus on bills that have passed in one or more state legislative houses in the 1986–88 time period. Using standard multivariate statistical techniques, it examines the relationship between this legislative activity and dimensions of state politics and culture. The research indicates that state legislative activity in the area of tort reform results from a rather complex mix of factors. It is a function of political and social-economic attributes, as well as features of the states' legal and judicial systems.     

With Strings Attached: Statutory Delegations of Authority to the Executive Branch

While research on the influence of divided government upon legislative outputs is available, relatively little identifies the effects of divided government on legislative control of bureaucratic discretion. Some suggest that inter‐branch conflict between the President and Congress leads legislators to seek to retain legislative control over the bureaucracy. As a result, periods of divided government increase statutory control and reduce agency autonomy. Close examination of statutes creating each federal agency between 1946 and 1997 reveal that divided government increases specificity of statutory control. In addition, the particular type of divided government involving split partisan control between the chambers of Congress fosters greater specific statutory control when new government agencies are created.     

权利二重性:解读农民自杀问题的一个视角

权利二重性是理解30年来农民自杀率变迁逻辑及其区域差异现象的重要理论视角。其中,权利启蒙论认为,分田到户以来,市场改变了资源的代际分配结构,农民的权利意识不断被启蒙,农民的行为逻辑逐渐从义务本位向权利本位转变,从而引发了农民家庭权力结构和家庭伦理秩序的适应性调整,使农民自杀现象在社会转型期得以凸显。权利规约论认为,农民的权利表达一旦失去有效的规约机制,就有可能在农村社会形成不利于老年人的自杀秩序;而如果能够得到村庄内部结构性力量的有效规约,农民代际之间的权利与义务关系就会在新的水平上达成均势状态,农民的自杀率随之就会出现明显的下降现象。     

县域如何治理:一个分析框架 ——对"宁海36条"的观察

基于整体性治理分析框架,对"宁海36条"政策的施行背景、动态演进和实现机制进行观察.研究显示,政策施行之前宁海县域治理呈现"碎片化",具体表现为政策出台分散化、政策执行碎片化、乡村公共服务缺失化、法治机制低效化和社会治理行政化.宁海县域治理的碎片化直接导致了宁海县乡村治理的濒临"失控",宁海县域治理重心下移至乡村".宁海36条"政策施行之后,通过县域层面对政策目标和执行手段的整合与调整,宁海县域内的治理层级、治理理念、治理主体、治理机制、治理技术五方面均发生变革,宁海县域治理模式从"碎片化政府"转向"整体性政府".     

Litigation Versus Legislation: Forum Shopping by Rent Seekers

To change the law, an interest group must choose between lobbyingthe legislature and litigating for new precedent. Lobbyingbecomes more likely as the relative benefits from rule changebecome greater, as the costs of lobbying become smaller and asthe voting strength of the interest groups becomes larger.Litigating becomes more likely as trial costs fall, as therelative benefits from rule change become greater, as theinclination of courts to change existing precedents increases,and as the interest group is involved in more trials. Examplesof using a litigating strategy include the NAACP is its battlefor racial integration and attorneys seeking change in tort law.Business, in resisting changes to tort law, has used the judicialprocess. The nature of equilibrium, if any, is not clear.     

The Institutionalization of Private Governance: How Business and Nonprofit Organizations Agree on Transnational Rules

This article assesses the recent trend of cooperation among antagonistic private actors that results in the creation and implementation of issue-specific transnational norms and rules and the subsequent shift from public to private forms of governance. Many political scientists agree that authority also exists outside of formal political structures. Private actors increasingly begin to make their own rules and standards that acquire authority beyond the international system. This observation is often referred to as private transnational governance as opposed to public or international governance. Although the concept of private governance gains prominence in academic debates, it is not clear how private governance on the global scale is constructed and maintained or what specific or general conditions are necessary for private governance to emerge. Based on the review of common theoretical propositions, this article develops an integrated model along which the necessary conditions for the emergence of private governance can be assessed and understood. As most research has hitherto focused on institutionalized cooperation between business actors (self-regulation), this article takes a closer look at those transnational systems of rule that result out of the enhanced cooperation between profit and nonprofit actors (coregulation).     

Into the Words: Using Statutory Text to Explore the Impact of Federal Courts on State Policy Diffusion

I examine the impact federal appellate courts have on state policy diffusion through the use of computational text analysis. Using a dyadic framework, I model the impact courts have on the decision to adopt a policy and, if adopted, how much text to borrow directly from another state's preexisting law. A court decision ruling a statute unconstitutional can generate up to a 28% relative reduction in the probability of adoption, and a ruling of constitutionality can both increase the probability of adoption by a similar amount and more than double the amount of borrowed text. These findings shed light on how states learn from one another.     

How to gerrymander: A formal analysis

The paper combines the optimal gerrymandering approach in political science with the “fair cake division” results in mathematics and economics to consider optimal partisan gerrymandering schemes on a given territory. We analyze existence and properties of an optimal districting map for a strategic party that has control over redistricting process, given arbitrary continuous distributions of voters and party supporters over the electoral territory. Interestingly, we find that imposition of certain equality-type constraints on districting might often help to prevent gerrymandering and sustain fairness.     

我国CFO应如何面对新挑战

本文探讨了CFO的起源及作用;分析了我国CFO的现状、存在的主要问题和成因;针对我国CFO在新形势下面临的新挑战,提出了解决问题的对策。     

Spending Stabilization Rules: A Solution to Recurring State Budget Crises?

Recurring state fiscal crises raise a fundamental question: Is it possible to stabilize budgets over the business cycle? This paper examines spending stabilization rules, an alternative to the inaccurate process of budget forecasting. Under two spending rules, we assess how state budget situations would compare with actual experience. Our analysis reconstructs recent aggregate state budget patterns assuming states had adopted a rule and then takes a closer look at California and South Carolina. With surpluses partially invested in a rainy‐day fund, a spending rule resulted in stable growth of state budgets throughout the recession and sluggish recovery of the early 2000s.