Just Transitions for the Miners: Labor Environmentalism in the Ruhr and Appalachian Coalfields

As environmental legislation threatens energy-related jobs, unions may seek to assure just transitions for their workers. Just transitions are programs to guarantee decent, well-paying new jobs or early retirement for workers displaced by environmental regulations. Militant unions with a tradition of neo-corporatism will be best positioned to demand just transitions for their members. This article provides two comparative case studies of coal miners’ unions in areas where environmental reform threatens coal workers’ livelihoods. Workers in Germany’s IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie/Industrial Guild Mining, Chemical, Energy (IG BCE) have applied sustained militancy to force the German government and employers to accept increasingly comprehensive and democratic worker input into the energy sector’s policy-making. Possessing a good deal of control over their industry, IG BCE was prepared to demand a just transition for their miners by the time the German government began phasing out underground mining. The UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) miners have a long tradition of militancy and have, at various junctures in their history, forced their employers and union bureaucrats to accept some degree of industrial democracy. However, the UMWA’s corporatism was a limited corporatism that was never as democratic as German neo-corporatism. The UMWA’s commitment to environmentalism increased as they won an expanded level of input into the coal industry’s decision-making. Nevertheless, since the late 1970s the UMWA’s militancy has waned and they have come to reject just transitions and other environmentalist policies.     

21世纪初的美国和拉美关系

从第二次世界大战到20世纪70年代,美国和拉美国家的关系可以归结为美国的“霸权主义推论”。也就是说,美国有权在整个西半球坚持政治、思想、外交和经济的“一致性”,但却不用“附庸”这个字眼。为了确保亲美的政党和领袖掌控整个拉丁美洲和加勒比地区,美国采取一切必要手段,包括海军陆战队和第82空降师的军事实力威慑,中央情报局的秘密干预,陆军武官的建议咨询,美国国际开发署的对外援助和不时的强加于人,糖产品配额、关税优惠等其他方式的经济渗透,国务院的积极外交,对政党的资金援助和建议咨询,美国新闻署的公共宣传和信息传播等。那段时…     

Participatory Development in the Presence of Endogenous Community Imperfections

The participatory or decentralised approach to development is now favoured by most bilateral and multilateral aid organisations. At the root of this approach lies the belief that rural communities can be an effective channel of development if they receive a genuine delegation of powers and responsibilities. This article argues that there unfortunately exists a widespread tendency to downplay the community imperfections that plague many rural societies while simultaneously stressing market and state failures. In fact, such imperfections, as illustrated in the case of lineage-based societies of Africa, increase as development proceeds by way of expanding economic opportunities, growing resource scarcity, as well as rising aspiration and education levels. Under these circumstances, any early implementation of the approach runs a high risk of causing considerable disillusionment, as well as undue appropriation, by local elites operating within a logic of patronage, of the resources channelled through rural communities in this way.     

PROTECTING YOUTH PLACED IN UNLICENSED,UNREGULATED RESIDENTIAL “TREATMENT” FACILITIES

Throughout the country, there is considerable inconsistency in how states regulate residential treatment programs for youth. In states with little oversight, the health and safety of youth are unprotected and they may be subject to substandard treatment, rights violations, and/or abuse. Three initiatives to address this issue are reported: (1) an Internet survey of youth who are former residents, (2) a four‐state pilot study of how states regulate and monitor residential programs, and (3) a bridge‐building conference between residential treatment providers and mental health leaders. Recommendations address the next steps for lawmakers, lawyers, judges, mental health and education professionals, and parents.     

Justifying Imprisonment: On the Optimality of Excessively Costly Punishment

The criminal punishment literature has focused on justifyingnonmaximal punishments and the use of nonmonetary sanctions.It has not addressed why imprisonment, rather than cheaper formsof corporal punishment, should be the dominant type of nonmonetarysanctions. David Friedman (1999) recently hypothesized that,because convicts lack political influence, it is desirable tomake punishment costlier than necessary to prevent policy makersfrom excessively punishing convicts. This article explicitlymodels this hypothesis and uses simulations to determine underwhat circumstances this hypothesis justifies using imprisonmentrather than cheaper nonmonetary sanctions.     

Negotiation and accommodation in expert medical risk assessment and regulation: An institutional analysis of the benoxaprofen case

Taking an institutional approach, this article examines the assessment and regulation of the risks of onycholysis and photosensitivity associated with the medical drug benoxaprofen in the United Kingdom and the United States. The process by which technical experts in circles of industry and government negotiate risk assessment is here analyzed with specific reference to the role of institutional discretion and the political penetration of scientific knowledge. A number of policy changes are recommended as means of improving the regulation of medical risk.