The "Transformation" of Governance: New Directions in Policy and Politics

The terms transformation and governance are used increasingly in the academic literature but often in a confused way. This article attempts to define both terms. It argues that there are three kinds of transformation: pseudo-change; incremental evolutionary transformation (IET), which is the most common form; and revolutionary transformation (RT). It applies this model of change to three paradigm shifts in developed countries since 1945: the Welfare State; the neo-liberal state; and the so-called Third Way. It argues that each of these paradigms involves a particular dominant mode of governance: statist; pluralist; and network respectively. It examines both the causes and consequences of these transformations for politics and policy.     

Balancing Fundamental Rights and Common Market Freedoms in Union Law: Schmidberger and Omega in the Light of the European Constitution

Abstract:  This article deals with how the Court of Justice balances fundamental rights protection and Common Market freedoms. From the particular perspective of the Charter and the ECHR, whose legal status will be upgraded upon entry into force of the European Constitution, it studies the Court of Justice's approach to fundamental rights invocations by Member States in the context of Common Market freedoms. For this purpose the judgments in Schmidberger and Omega will be discussed both in the current setting and that envisioned by the European Constitution. It will emerge that the Court of Justice's reasoning in Schmidberger and Omega can be criticised on different levels, and alternative approaches are proposed. At a later stage some further elements for refining the methodology for assessing Member States' fundamental rights invocations are addressed with a view to facilitating the Court of Justice more satisfactorily to take account of the current and likely future setting of fundamental rights protection in Union law.     

The impact of instability and institutions on US foreign direct investment in developing areas

American investors locating in developing countries attempt to minimize uncertainty by selecting hosts with the weakest capacity for engaging in post-contractual opportunistic behavior such as expropriation. Analysis shows that international investors prefer countries with democratic institutions, in order to monitor and defend their capital. Foreign investors also prefer developing states with smaller militaries to reduce the amount of coercion potential the host government can wield against external capital. Yet political instability does not seem to affect foreign investments as expected. A rationale for this finding is that domestic disturbances do not necessarily target foreign investors or their operations.     

Lost in Moral Space: On the Infringing/Violating Distinction and its Place in the Theory of Rights

Law and Philosophy -     

Police use of force: examining the relationship between calls for service and the balance of police force and suspect resistance

Over the past decade, the use of force by the police has become an important public policy concern and topic of social science research. A number of researchers hypothesized about the factors that explain the amount of force used by police officers. Prior research focused almost exclusively on the highest level of force used in police-citizen interactions and neglected to examine the relative amount of forced used by the police compared to that used by suspects. To address this shortcoming, this study analyzed data from three years of official use-of-force reports in the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD). Contrary to studies that examine only the use of force by the police, this study found that the relative amount of force used by the police was greatest in the less threatening types of offenses. The implications of this study for research and policy are discussed.     

Gambling, substance use, and other problem behaviors among youth: A test of general deviance models

Understanding the relationships between youthful gambling, substance use, and other problem behaviors is of interest to researchers studying deviance and to policymakers developing improved prevention strategies. This study used first-order and second-order factor models to test the hypothesis that gambling, alcohol misuse, other drug use, and delinquency were manifestations of a single general deviance construct. Respondents were seventeen to twenty-one year-old youth who were interviewed in two separate general population studies. Contrary to the hypothesis, the second-order model with a single deviance construct did not fit as well as a model specifying only correlations among all first-order factors. A single latent variable representing general deviant behavior did not explain deviance as well as distinct types of problem behaviors. This was true for overall samples and for gender-specific subgroups. Thus, while problem behaviors were related, there also must be uncorrelated antecedents predicting distinct types of youthful problem behaviors.