Public participation and the concept of space in environmental governance: An application of PPGIS

Citizen participation ought to be important in environmental governance. However, environmental issues are usually defined as science‐related ones, wherein expert knowledge is more important than the opinions, demands or needs of citizens. On the other hand, environmental issues involve spatial dimensions, the geographic characteristics of which require specific techniques to analyse. PPGIS is applied to study An‐Shun, the site of a well‐known pollution case in Taiwan, to reveal, through a participatory process, the perception of space of citizens of a nearby community. The results of this study suggest that the government needs to ensure more citizen participation in its future plans for the decontamination and renovation of the An‐Shun site. Lay knowledge or citizen perceptions of space should not replace scientific knowledge, but can supplement it. They are additional views that ought to be considered by government agencies in dealing with environmental issues. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Perils of Public Health Regulation

Policies that are designed to promote public health should not use coercion to discourage unhealthy decision making. Though public health officials may be experts about medical regularities in a population, they are not experts about which dietary or lifestyle choices are best for particular indiviuals. Experts in regulatory agencies also face several political incentives that undermine their ability effectively to promote health at the population level. Furthermore, without consent, coercive public health policies are extremely difficult to justify to citizens. For these reasons, states should not enforce coercive public health policies, even if the state subsidizes citizens' healthcare. Many of the same reasons to reject coercive public health regulations are also reasons to reject other coercive paternalistic policies.     

Segregation and Inequality in Public Goods

Many U.S. cities function without regular problems. They have well‐kept roads, sewers that never overflow, and public parks with swing sets and restrooms. Others struggle to maintain balanced budgets, fail to adequately equip or staff their police forces, and offer little assistance to residents of limited means. What explains these differences? I argue that segregation along racial lines contributes to public goods inequalities. Racially segregated cities are also politically polarized cities, making collective investment more challenging and public goods expenditures lower. I provide evidence for this argument using election data from 25 large cities and demographic data matched to city finances in more than 2,600 places. To handle the problem of endogeneity, I instrument for segregation using the number of waterways in a city. I find that segregated municipalities are more politically polarized and spend less on a wide range of public goods.     

From Three Mile Island to Fukushima: the impact of analogy on attitudes toward nuclear power

Policy Sciences - Policy scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of language in policy debates, with particular emphasis on narratives. Policy narratives serve as strategic tools that,...     

Protecting Sovereignty,Protecting the Planet: State Delegation to International Organizations and Private Actors in Environmental Politics

As global interdependence grows, states often use international organizations to achieve both domestic and foreign policy goals. One way states respond to demands for cooperation is to delegate to international organizations and private actors. In this article, we use new data spanning a century of international environmental law to understand when and why states delegate to international organizations to manage environmental problems. We find that delegation is a persistent phenomenon that facilitates the implementation of states' preferences. However, they make this decision with care: States tend to delegate functions with lower sovereignty costs, such as implementation and monitoring, but rarely delegate rule making and enforcement. We also find that heterogeneous preferences among states increases the likelihood of delegation. Overall, our results suggest that states seek to delegate out of a motivation both to reduce transaction costs and to establish credible commitments.     

Wild Justice Redux: What We Know About Social Justice in Animals and Why It Matters

Social justice in animals is beginning to attract interest in a broad range of academic disciplines. Justice is an important area of study because it may help explain social dynamics among individuals living in tightly-knit groups, as well as social interactions among individuals who only occasionally meet. In this paper, we provide an overview of what is currently known about social justice in animals and offer an agenda for further research. We provide working definitions of key terms, outline some central research questions, and explore some of the challenges of studying social justice in animals, as well as the promise of the work we're proposing. Finally, we suggest why continued research into animal cognition and social behavior has significant ethical implications for our treatment of nonhuman animals.