Culturing identities,the state,and national consciousness in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala1⋆

This paper examines the procedural culture that shaped ethnic and national identities in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala. Rooted in face‐to‐face encounters between departmental jefes políticos (departmental governors) and local Maya communities, this procedural culture emerged from routines of governance such as annual municipal inspections, ethnic struggles for municipal control, and local efforts to title community lands that led Maya and state officials to develop contrasting understandings of each other and their relations. Far from precipitating a national identity of mutual belonging, state formation here intensified the racism and political violence that would rend Guatemala during the century to come.     

The Seventeenth-Century Origins of Modern Salvage Law

Reginald Marsden argued that Sir Henry Marten, while judge of the High Court of Admiralty, had in 1633 entertained the first action for civil salvage ‘in the modern sense’. But Marsden could find little evidence among the formal Admiralty decrees of the seventeenth century that sea-coasters or mariners had regularly used this new plea in the central court to seek rewards for saving ships and cargoes. A sampling of the court's Act Books, however, reveals that Admiralty judges may well have ruled in more than 200 salvage cases from the time of Sir Henry's innovation until the end of the century. In some of these cases, moreover, Sir Richard Lloyd, a late-Stuart judge, abandoned the ancient custom of rewarding salvors with half of what was saved and developed instead the modern and equitable practice of adjusting awards according to what salvors had done and risked in rescuing the property of others.     

Assessing policy capacity in Canada's public services: Perspectives of deputy and assistant deputy ministers

Abstract: The state of policy capacity within Canada's various levels of government has for some time been the subject of discussion both within the public services themselves and among the academic research community. Drawing on the results of a 2006 survey of deputy and assistant deputy ministers working in Canada's federal, ten provincial and three territorial governments, this article presents assessments made by the most senior leadership. The survey results show that ninety per cent of deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers agree that policy capacity has changed but that the change is not uni‐directional. Both improvements and decline in policy capacity were observed, although assessments of decline were somewhat more pronounced. Moreover, improvements in policy capacity were found to be associated with a reduced focus on direct service delivery, a greater concern with long‐term planning, and the presence of a political leadership interested in innovation. Conversely, declining policy capacity was found to be linked to centralization of power, the loss of institutional memory, and “churning” within the ranks of the executive leadership. Additionally, level of government was also observed to be linked with change in policy capacity, with provincial deputies reflecting more negatively on policy capacity decline in their government than deputies at other levels.