Guilty by Association? The Case of The Karin B Scare

The waste disposal industry is susceptible to bad publicity owing to the nature of the products it is sometimes required to process. At particular risk are companies which treat and dispose of hazardous substances. In this paper we test whether media concerns about public safety arising from the international transfer of hazardous wastes can have a negative impact on the stockmarket valuation of firms and of the waste disposal industry as a whole, even when the affected companies have not themselves broken the law.     

Assessing the regulatory model for water supply in Jakarta

This article assesses the regulatory model for urban water supply services in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Water supply services have been privately operated there since February 1998 after two companies—Thames PAM Jaya (TPJ), operating in Eastern Jakarta, and PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (PALYJA), operating in Western Jakarta—signed 25‐years concession contracts with the state‐owned Jakarta City Water Company (PAM Jaya). An independent regulatory body, the Jakarta Water Supply Regulatory Body (JWSRB) was established in 2001. The article compares the regulatory system in Jakarta with the French and English approaches to water regulation. It then assesses this regulatory system from the perspective of customers in order to assess how well customer protection, a central purpose of regulation, is being performed. The article concludes that although the essential regulatory mechanisms and activities are operating in Jakarta, the key regulatory role of customer protection is not being performed because customers do not perceive that they receive an acceptable level of water supply services. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Electoral Volatility and Party Decline in Western Democracies: 1970–1995

In 1970, Richard Rose and Derek Urwin published a seminal piece on the stability of party support in Western democracies, 'Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since 1945'. Everywhere they looked, established parties seemed to reflect stability rather than change, lending credence to the notion that party systems were 'frozen'. Numerous subsequent studies, however, have produced mixed results. Part of what seems to be fueling this debate lies in the disparate measures researchers use to gauge stability. In this update of Rose and Urwin's study, I address the issue of comparable results by maintaining the same data source and methods they used to gauge the stability of party support, extending the study to the present. The results indicate that party system instability is on the rise throughout much of the West since 1970, with statistically significant increases seen in Scandinavia and across all regions combined. Furthermore, the parties which seem to be experiencing the most change are not only the newest parties – as the frozen cleavages thesis might predict – but also those parties formed during the interwar period, the large majority of which showed much greater stability in 1970.     

The Nature of Legal Change on the U.S. Supreme Court: Jurisprudential Regimes Theory and Its Alternatives

Jurisprudential regimes theory (JRT) posits that legal change on the U.S. Supreme Court occurs in a drastic, structural‐break‐like manner. Methodological debates present conflicting evidence for JRT, which has implications for the important law versus ideology debate. We confront this debate by first elaborating two alternative theoretical perspectives to JRT—evolutionary change and legal stability. Our analytical framework focuses on two key substantive effects of jurisprudential categories on the Court's case outcomes—relative differences between categories over multiple time periods and longitudinal differences across time periods. Importantly, different pieces of empirical evidence can provide support for different dynamic processes. The extent to which “law matters” is not necessarily tied to one particular model of legal change. Empirical analysis of updated and backdated free expression data generates key findings consistent with JRT, legal stability, and evolutionary change. We discuss the implications of the results for understanding legal change and legal influence.     

On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races

The regression discontinuity (RD) design is a valuable tool for identifying electoral effects, but this design is only effective when relevant actors do not have precise control over election results. Several recent papers contend that such precise control is possible in large elections, pointing out that the incumbent party is more likely to win very close elections in the United States House of Representatives in recent periods. In this article, we examine whether similar patterns occur in other electoral settings, including the U.S. House in other time periods, statewide, state legislative, and mayoral races in the U.S. and national or local elections in nine other countries. No other case exhibits this pattern. We also cast doubt on suggested explanations for incumbent success in close House races. We conclude that the assumptions behind the RD design are likely to be met in a wide variety of electoral settings and offer a set of best practices for RD researchers going forward.     

Constructing a global commons in,against and beyond the state

The “commons” is emerging as one of the progressive political key words of our time. Against a backdrop of continuing neoliberal governance of the global economy, there is interest in a “translocal” global commons as an alternative that transcends both state and capitalist forms of appropriation. In this paper, I offer a constructive critique of the global commons. While sympathetic to arguments about the deficiencies of state-centric forms of socialist projects for emancipation, I nevertheless argue that realizing the commons vision of a more democratic politics means continuing engagement with the state, particularly for connecting up and scaling up local autonomous projects to achieve more transformative social change.     

Going it Alone? The Choice of Political Union in British Politics

This article explores the inter‐related debates over Britain's relationship with the EU and that over the future of the UK. It argues that euroscepticism and Scottish independence are based on exceptionalist identities that now revolve around economic policy. Elite euroscepticism cleaves to a neoliberal vision of minimalist regulation, while advocates of Scottish independence claim Westminster's austerity policies make the British Union incompatible with social democracy. However, this presentation of the choice facing British voters ignores the serious contradictions that overhauling the current order entails. Both forms of exceptionalism fail to recognize the significant limitations of self‐government outside and within the EU. If Conservatives can contain their neoliberal flirtation with EU withdrawal they are very well placed to prosper electorally. The dilemma of which union(s) to choose might thus constitute the prelude to the entrenchment of the economic and political order that gave rise to such contestation in the first place.