The role of the Yorta Yorta people in clarifying the common interest in sustainable management of the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia

The Murray–Darling Basin incorporates Australia’s three longest rivers and spans four states and one territory. It is important for an agricultural industry worth more than AUS$9 billion per year, but is also the life source and the spirit of the Indigenous Yorta Yorta people. Here, we address whether the interests of the Yorta Yorta people can encompass the common interest of the wider community in the Basin, and how the colonial legacy and climate change of the past century continue to influence the realization of the common interest moving forward. We find that shared regional governance with an agreed outcome supports the ongoing sustainability of the country and its people, but because of the legal history of Australia since colonization, recognition and mutual respect are no less important. Further, we note that the increasing climatic variability and changing climatic mechanisms that now exemplify the southeast of Australia corroborates the need for adaptive planning with longer time horizons. These lessons are supported by the customary law and practice of the Yorta Yorta people.     

How electoral reform alters legislative speech: Evidence from the parliament of Victoria,Australia 1992–2017

Does changing single-member district (SMD) systems to proportional representation (PR) systems affect politicians' behavior? Previous studies, which have utilized cross-sectional or temporal variation in electoral systems, fail to estimate their effects. In contrast, we employ a difference-in-differences design and text analysis to estimate the causal effect of an electoral reform on politicians' issue attention. In particular, we estimate the causal effect of the electoral reform in the Parliament of Victoria in Australia, which changed the electoral systems of the Legislative Council from SMD to PR while holding the system of the Legislative Assembly constant. We analyzed a newly collected dataset of legislators' inaugural speeches from 1992 to 2017 using a topic model. The results show the electoral reform increased politicians’ attention to new economic issues but did not decrease attention to local interests such as promoting primary industries.     

The logic of China country ＂tax-for-fee reform＂ in politics and governance perspective

This article exercises theoretical analysis tax-for-fee reform in politics and governance perspective method and attempts to understand the logic of country in China. The article considers that it presents two kinds of very differences phenomena in politics and governance angle of view on China country ＂tax-for-fee reform＂. The reform has basically improved state-peasant tension relationship and enhanced political validity in political angle of view. But absenting on method and shrinking on resources of governance, town-village organization reduced supplies on public service and public goods, new governance crisis formed. If politics and governance deviate for a long time, political validity has the possibility to glide away because of new governance crisis.     

Globalisation,liberal theory and the spatiality of governance in Sub‐Saharan Africa

The debate over development and democracy is a highly charged one, because the two concepts are open to such divergent interpretation. In recent years, while academics were discovering globalisation, the major international financial institutions have been championing a particular version of the democracy‐development debate centred upon the notion of governance. They contend that democratisation and institutional reforms must occur before or alongside economic development. This article argues that their vision of governance is highly normative and simplifies reality for ideological purposes. This revolves around a particular reading of liberal political economy which sees political institutions as neutral arbiters and civil society as a space of freedom for plural voices. These formulations are implicitly spatial since they see political space as divided neatly into the international, national and local and thereby ignore the multiple power flows between these sites. The article concludes by trying to reformulate some of these concerns around the idea of the developmental state and progressive democracy.     

Whose ‘Freedom of Navigation’? Australia,China, the United States and the making of order in the ‘Indo-Pacific’

The so-called freedom of navigation through the Malacca straits and the South China Sea, some of the world’s busiest trade routes, has long been of concern to scholars and practitioners of international politics in the region. Increasing tensions around territorial disputes recently propelled the issue to the forefront of global foreign and security policy making. Yet, despite the frequent invocation of threats to the ‘freedom of navigation’ for the justification of military measures to protect the ‘liberal rules-based order’, the substance of this rule or norm remains ambiguous and the nature of the threatened order unclear. Located at the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australian discourses represent a suitable case for clarifying both. Starting from the original provisions on navigational regimes in international law, this study analyses the meanings that officials, think tank analysts and academics have been attributing to the freedom of navigation and contextualize them in the evolving debate about order. Focusing on political rather than legal discourses, it finds that concerns with the freedom of navigation are largely unrelated to the safety of maritime transport. Instead, they serve as proxy for an increasingly static imagination of international order – written backward in time – to be secured.     

Explaining the Breakdown of the Religion–Vote Relationship in The Netherlands, 1971–2006

This article examines the extent to which changes in the effect of religion on voting in The Netherlands since the 1970s can be explained by ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches. The first includes religious integration and education. The latter category encompasses the restructuring of the party system and changes in party positions. Hypotheses are tested employing logistic and conditional logistic regression analyses of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies (1971–2006) supplemented by data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Weakening religious integration largely explains the decline of political boundaries between non-religious voters and Catholics and Calvinists. In line with earlier research, the article finds that the creation of a single Christian Democratic Party (CDA) has reduced the religion–vote relationship. However, this merger effect largely disappears after taking into account party positions. Moreover, party positions influence the religion–vote association: the effect of religion on voting increases as religious parties emphasise traditional moral issues in their manifestos.     

The Role of the Maternal in Diasporic Cultural Reproduction−Australia,Canada and Greece

Cultural reproduction is examined in this paper, not in the sense of replication, but as the creation of something new. Women's work in such cultural reproduction is explored through the experiences of Greek-identified women who live in Canada and Australia, or who have lived in these countries and now reside in Greece. These women are the daughters of immigrants who are now rearing the so-called third generation. Of particular interest is the way these women contrast their role in cultural reproduction to that of their own mothers. The argument is made that these women play a key role in the staging of Greek origin through the family and that, in the diaspora, this is a complex, dynamic and critical process that lies at the heart of new understandings of cultural identifications.     

Can private governance boost public policy? Insights from public–private governance interactions in the fisheries and electricity sectors

Based on the inductive analysis of two parallel cases of private environmental governance – private, market-driven fisheries governance and private, market-driven governance for electricity decarbonization – this paper uncovers a trigger for positive public policy spillovers from private environmental governance. It identifies circumstances that prompt groups of business actors working as private regulators to also take on a role as public policy advocates and supporters, revealing a potential for private governance initiatives that are targeted at a particular environmental problem to serve as a bolster for the public regulatory governance of that problem as well. Both private governance cases at the basis of this analysis feature groups of business actors seeking to meet voluntary sustainability goals through the tools of private governance (specifically, through flexing buyer power and private authority in an effort to reform environmentally problematic practices among particular groups of suppliers). In both cases, the business's inability to attain private sustainability goals though private governance means alone has given rise to business demand for facilitative public environmental policy and regulation. The analysis presented in this paper thus points to the occurrence of a particular and intriguing pattern of complementarity between private authority and public policy – one where public policy is called on to fill gaps left by private environmental governance and authority. And it identifies key conditions for such private-governance-driven recentering of public policy to occur, namely the presence of private supply chain greening goals and commitments that are economically, reputationally, and/or competitively critical for businesses to attain, combined with shortfalls in the capacity of businesses' private authority to bring about such attainment. The two case analysis further suggests the importance of ENGOs in identifying and activating some of the opportunities for leveraging shortfalls in private environmental governance to the advantage of public environmental policy and regulation.     

What drives the governance of ridesharing? A fuzzy-set QCA of local regulations in China

Policy Sciences - Ridesharing or ride-hailing services have received substantial attention from scholars and practitioners around the world, and it has become an urgent issue for the government to...     

Partisanship and the vote in Australia: Changes over time 1967–1990

This study investigates the influence of partisanship on the vote in Australia between 1967 and 1990. The investigation is the context of a model of electoral choice based on the revisionist elaboration of the Michigan model of electoral choice. The model specifies direct effects of partisanship, issues and leader evaluations on vote and reciprocal relations between partisanship and both issues and leader evaluations. The major finding is a decline in the influence of partisanship on the vote. This decline occurred in the presence of stable levels of partisanship in the electorate. Furthermore, the decline in the impact of partisanship appears to precede the declines in the proportion of strong identifiers. This decline was coincident with a moderate increase in the influence of issues with issues particularly strong at the 1990 election. The effects of leader evaluations show no consistent patterns over time suggesting that Australian politics has not become more presidential. The reciprocal effects of issues and leader evaluations on partisanship, were greater during the 1980s than during the late 1960s. The decline in the partisanship-vote relation was steeper when these reciprocal effects are taken into account.     

A Typology of Mansionization in the Inner-Ring Suburbs of Chicago,Illinois, 2000–2015

ABSTRACT

Mansionization—the process in which original single-family houses are demolished and replaced with larger houses—in the older inner-ring suburbs of U.S. cities is a contentious and important driver of physical, social, and economic neighborhood change, yet little is known about how the mansionization process varies across the diverse inner-ring suburban landscape. With a focus on the inner-ring suburbs of Chicago located in Cook County, Illinois, this study presents a typology of mansionization based upon the housing, population, and household characteristics; economic status; and race and ethnicity of the neighborhoods in which mansionization occurs. Principal components analysis followed by cluster analysis are used to identify five distinct types of mansionization in the inner-ring suburbs of Chicago: highly affluent, upper middle class, postwar ethnoburb, white middle class, and diverse working class. Although mansionization is often perceived as a single process, findings reveal that it occurs in a variety of places and manifests in a variety of ways. The regulatory approaches of municipalities with differing types of suburban mansionization are discussed.     

Recent reform of intelligence in the UK: Democratization or risk management?

The recent flurry of intelligence legislation in the UK can be taken to mean that Britain has democratized its intelligence services in line with other western democracies. However, this argument is rejected. The changing role of intelligence, particularly in the area of ‘serious and organized crime’, altered the environment in which intelligence services operate and meant that they lost their monopoly of control over information. It is more a process of risk management than democratization. The Intelligence Services Act 1994 and the role of the new oversight body, the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, are also assessed.     

Changes in the Location of the Median Voter in theU.S. House of Representatives, 1963–1996

We consider the degree of ideological polarizationwithin and between the parties in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives for the period 1963–1996, using theGroseclose, Levitt and Snyder (1996) adjustment method for ADA and ACU scores to ensure over timecomparability of roll call voting data. We focusespecially on the median House member, since webelieve that change in the median offers a bettermeasure of the impact of the change in party controlthan does changes in the mean roll-call votingscore. Our data analysis makes two general points. First andforemost, when we looked at the change in the locationof the House median voter, we found a dramatic changeafter the Republicans gained a majority in the House in1994. After the Republicans became a majority in theHouse, the ADA median in the House in 1995–1996 was at24, far closer to the Republican median of 4 than tothe Democratic median of 83. The shift in medianfrom 1993–1994 to 1994–1995 involved a change of over 25points in one election – far and away the greatestsingle shift in ideology of the modern era. Incontrast, the mean changed only 1 point overthis same period. Second, for the three decades weinvestigated, we found three historical epochs vis a visthe relative locations of the ADA (or ACU) floormedian and the ADA (or ACU) floor mean in the U.S.House of Representatives – two inflection points in1983 and 1994 which are related to trends in regionalrealignment.     

Trending economic factors and the structure of Congress in the growth of government, 1930–2002

We investigate the role of Congress in the growth of federal public expenditure since 1930, building on the work of Kau and Rubin (Public Choice, 113:389–402, 2002). The model incorporates majority party strength and the extent of party control of Congress in addition to the median ideological position of elected representatives. We first provide estimates of the relative importance of the state of Congress and of trending supply and demand-side economic factors in the evolution of federal spending. The resulting models are then used to simulate the consequences of the radical and historically unprecedented shift to the right of Congress in 1994/95.     

The role of institutional and governance factors in public–private partnerships infrastructure investments in emerging economies

The overall development and sustained growth of any economy depend heavily on its infrastructure provisioning. Emerging economies are usually characterised by constrained public investments in infrastructure. Budgetary constraints of the governments are one of the major hurdles to these investments. Due to these reasons that governments of emerging economies continuously seek collaborations with the private sector for additional sources of funding infrastructure. Economies with solid institutional and governance frameworks are known to provide a conducive environment for enhanced private sector attraction in the sector. However, emerging economies face greater institutional and governance issues than developed economies, and they sometimes fall short of luring private investments in the infrastructure sector. The objective of this study is to empirically evaluate the role of institutional and governance aspects in private sector attraction in emerging economies. This study provides empirical evidence with a sample of 114 emerging economies over a period of 20 years. Various econometric estimates were developed to explore the interplay between public-private partnership investments and governance factors. The results of the study provide an evidence of a positive association between these factors and private investments in public-private partnership arrangements.     

Ideological change and the economics of voting behavior in the US, 1920–2008

This paper tests the proposition that voters advance a more liberal agenda in prosperous times and turn more conservative in dire economic times. A reference-dependent utility model suggests that, with income growth, the relative demand for public goods increases and the median voter is more likely to vote Democrat. With slowing income growth, the median voter derives increased marginal utility from personal income—making taxation more painful—and is more likely to vote Republican. Ordinary and instrumented analyses of a new time series for the US median voter are encouraging of this income growth model. This work links voting behavior to economic business cycles and shows that ideological change is endogenous to income growth rates.