Guilty by Association? The Case of The Karin B Scare

The waste disposal industry is susceptible to bad publicity owing to the nature of the products it is sometimes required to process. At particular risk are companies which treat and dispose of hazardous substances. In this paper we test whether media concerns about public safety arising from the international transfer of hazardous wastes can have a negative impact on the stockmarket valuation of firms and of the waste disposal industry as a whole, even when the affected companies have not themselves broken the law.     

Assessing the regulatory model for water supply in Jakarta

This article assesses the regulatory model for urban water supply services in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Water supply services have been privately operated there since February 1998 after two companies—Thames PAM Jaya (TPJ), operating in Eastern Jakarta, and PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (PALYJA), operating in Western Jakarta—signed 25‐years concession contracts with the state‐owned Jakarta City Water Company (PAM Jaya). An independent regulatory body, the Jakarta Water Supply Regulatory Body (JWSRB) was established in 2001. The article compares the regulatory system in Jakarta with the French and English approaches to water regulation. It then assesses this regulatory system from the perspective of customers in order to assess how well customer protection, a central purpose of regulation, is being performed. The article concludes that although the essential regulatory mechanisms and activities are operating in Jakarta, the key regulatory role of customer protection is not being performed because customers do not perceive that they receive an acceptable level of water supply services. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Electoral Volatility and Party Decline in Western Democracies: 1970–1995

In 1970, Richard Rose and Derek Urwin published a seminal piece on the stability of party support in Western democracies, 'Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since 1945'. Everywhere they looked, established parties seemed to reflect stability rather than change, lending credence to the notion that party systems were 'frozen'. Numerous subsequent studies, however, have produced mixed results. Part of what seems to be fueling this debate lies in the disparate measures researchers use to gauge stability. In this update of Rose and Urwin's study, I address the issue of comparable results by maintaining the same data source and methods they used to gauge the stability of party support, extending the study to the present. The results indicate that party system instability is on the rise throughout much of the West since 1970, with statistically significant increases seen in Scandinavia and across all regions combined. Furthermore, the parties which seem to be experiencing the most change are not only the newest parties – as the frozen cleavages thesis might predict – but also those parties formed during the interwar period, the large majority of which showed much greater stability in 1970.     

The impact of language differences on metropolitan reform in Montreal

Abstract. Although recent Quebec governments have shown great dedication to local institutional reform, their record with respect to municipal institutions in Montreal is not impressive. This article aims to show that it is Montreal's linguistic make-up which has made the process of metropolitan reform unusually difficult. The existing municipal system of the Island of Montreal was shaped in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during which time the City of Montreal annexed many poor francophone municipalities and wealthier anglophones established their own municipalities in the west. This arrangement was not threatened until the Drapeau-Saulnier annexation efforts of the early 1960s: lacking provincial support, the efforts failed. The Montreal Urban Community was created in 1969 as a direct result of a disastrous police strike. Its main purpose was to divert financial resources from the suburbs to the City in order to help cover increased police costs. The pooling of these costs inevitably led to the creation of a unified MUC police department, but the unification process was much more controversial than it had been in Toronto and Winnipeg. In other fields the suburbs have used their veto power to prevent any significant new initiatives. As a result, provincial control of urban development in Montreal is rapidly increasing. Although there have been many serious proposals for municipal consolidation in Montreal, no boundary changes have yet been made. Such changes would involve great political difficulty because they would create new linguistic majorities and minorities in each new municipality. Furthermore, the unusually strong alliance that binds francophone and anglophone suburbs makes it extremely difficult for any Quebec government to modify the existing situation. Sommaire. Bien que les récents gouvernements du Québecse soient lancés dans la réforme des institutions locales, leurs réalisations, quant aux institutions municipales de Montréal, ne sont pas spectaculaires. L'auteur de cet article s'efforce de démontrer que la composition linguistique de Montréal a compliquéénormément le processus de réforme métropolitaine. Le système municipal actuel de l'Ile de Montréal a pris forme à la fin du 19e siècle et au début du 20e, alors que la ville de Montréal annexait de nombreuses municipalités francophones pauvres et que les anglophones, plus riches, établissaient leurs propres municipalités dans l'ouest. Cet arrangementne s'est vu menacé que lors les tentatives d'annexion Drapeau-Saulnier, au debut des années 60. Ces efforts échouèrent, faute d'appui provincial. Une désastreuse grève de la police arnena, comme conséquence directe, la création en 1969 de la communauté urbaine de Montréal. Son principal but était le transfert des ressources financières des banlieues à la ville, pour aider à défrayer les majorations du coût de la police. L'amalgation des coûts de la police entraîna la création d'un service de police unifié CUM, mais ce processus d'unification rencontra beaucoup plus de résistance que cela n'avait été le cas à Toronto et à Winnipeg. Dans d'autres domaines, les banlieues utilisèrent leur droit de veto pour empêcher d'autres innovations importantes, ce qui cut pour résultat d'augmenter rapidement la mainmise provinciale sur le développement urbain de Montréal. En dépit du grand nombre de propositions sérieuses en vue d'une consolidation municipale à Montréal, aucune modification des divisions géographiques n'eut lieu. De tels changements rencontreraient de grandes difficultés d'ordre politique parce qu'ils créeraient de nouvelles majorités et minorités linguistiques dans chaque nouvelle municipalité. De plus, l'alliance exceptionnellement solide qui lie les banlieues anglophones et francophones rendrait extrêmement difficile la modification du statu quo pour tout gouvernement québécois, quel qu'il soit.     

The Nature of Legal Change on the U.S. Supreme Court: Jurisprudential Regimes Theory and Its Alternatives

Jurisprudential regimes theory (JRT) posits that legal change on the U.S. Supreme Court occurs in a drastic, structural‐break‐like manner. Methodological debates present conflicting evidence for JRT, which has implications for the important law versus ideology debate. We confront this debate by first elaborating two alternative theoretical perspectives to JRT—evolutionary change and legal stability. Our analytical framework focuses on two key substantive effects of jurisprudential categories on the Court's case outcomes—relative differences between categories over multiple time periods and longitudinal differences across time periods. Importantly, different pieces of empirical evidence can provide support for different dynamic processes. The extent to which “law matters” is not necessarily tied to one particular model of legal change. Empirical analysis of updated and backdated free expression data generates key findings consistent with JRT, legal stability, and evolutionary change. We discuss the implications of the results for understanding legal change and legal influence.