Environmental Protection Versus Economic Development: A False Trade‐Off?

Is a trade‐off between the social benefits of regulation and the economic benefits of development inevitable? We argue that environmental regulation may deter economic growth in some contexts, however, in other contexts the benefits of regulation may be obtained with little or no economic loss. We develop an explanation of the economic impacts of state environmental policy based on a model of public influence on private resource allocation decisions. In this model, we assume utility‐maximizing firms will make investment choices based upon the projected profits on their investments and their willingness to accept the risk associated with the investments. We assert that state policies and administrative institutions influence perceptions of risk by increasing or decreasing uncertainty over future environmental policy and influence return on investments at particular locations by affecting firm‐level production costs. Our results confirm that certain administrative arrangements for environmental regulation may enhance, rather than impede, economic development.     

Dangerous Revisionism: On the Founders, ‘Neocons’ and the Importance of History

Debates regarding the Bush Administration's grand strategy began long before the forty-third president left office. A group of distinguished historians and political scientists have argued over the course of the last few years that the Administration's grand strategy did not represent a major break with historical precedent, as is sometimes argued, but continued the evangelical support for liberty that has always made the United States a “dangerous nation” to tyrants. Along the way, this revisionism creates straw men, and co-opts or redefines terms that are central to the traditional understanding of U.S. foreign policy. It also seems to misunderstand grand strategy itself, focusing almost entirely on continuity of ends while ignoring the rather glaring discontinuities in the ways that generations of U.S. presidents have chosen to pursue them. Overall, the revisionist project fails in both of its tasks, which are: To make the case that the Bush administration took actions of which the Founding Fathers would have understood and approved; and by implication, to justify the unnecessary, tragic war in Iraq.     

Institutional design and the accountability paradox: A case study of three Aboriginal accountability regimes in Canada

While academic interest in accountability and transparency mechanisms in Aboriginal governance has risen over the past few years, very few studies have examined how these mechanisms operate in practice. One author, Shin Imai ( 2007 ), argues that Indigenous groups in Canada are faced with an accountability paradox that gives too much power to the federal government to intervene in band affairs, while giving too little power to band members to hold their local officials accountable for their actions. This paper examines the extent to which Aboriginal groups can avoid this paradox by reviewing three experiments in institutional design and self‐government in Aboriginal communities: the Sechelt Indian Band and the Westbank First Nation in British Columbia, and Nunatsiavut in Labrador. While considerable variation exists in terms of how well these communities overcome Imai's paradox, each community's accountability regime is an improvement over the one imposed by the Indian Act. The effectiveness of these regimes depends heavily on the institutional designs chosen by the Indigenous groups.     

Transparency and accountability in infrastructure stimulus spending: A comparison of Canadian,Australian and U.S. programs

In response to the global financial crisis that began in late 2007, many countries took on significant levels of deficit financing in order to increase spending on public works and infrastructure. This rapid infusion of public funding has raised concerns about the accountability and transparency of stimulus measures, including how best to monitor and evaluate the allocation and impact of the funds and report back to citizens. While there is growing research on the macro‐economic impacts of stimulus spending, very little comparative work has been done on the approaches of different countries to the governance of infrastructure stimulus spending programs. This article focuses on the latter by identifying and explaining the different practices in Canada, Australia and the United States in order to highlight implications for future stimulus‐led investment.     

A failure of imagination: R.G. Casey and Australian plans for counter-subversion in Asia, 1954-1956

This article is a study of some aspects of the non-military response of the Menzies government to the decolonisation of the European empires and the cold war in Asia. In the mid-1950s R.G. Casey, the Minister for External Affairs, was given responsibility by the cabinet to develop a programme of Colombo Plan - educational, cultural, propaganda, intelligence and political initiatives - which the Menzies government hoped would influence the outcome of the cold war in Asia. This article suggests that an examination of these government initiatives reveals some important insights into the nature of the Menzies government's understanding of and response to the revolutionary changes which swept through Asia in the decade after the Second World War.