"TOO MANY LAWYERS, NOT ENOUGH PRACTICAL PEOPLE": The Policy-Making Discretion of the Federal Trade Commission

Contemporary legal theory recognizes three primary methods of controling administrative discretion: confining through substantive standards, structuring through procedural requirements, and checking through bureaucratic review. It is sometimes assumed that these techniques operate independently and that their effects are additive. This article reports on a study of Federal Trade Commission policy-making and concludes that in some instances there can be complex interactions among the legal techniques for controlling discretion, and between the legal techniques and political or bureaucratic forces shaping policy-making discretion.     

IS IT BETTER TO BE POWERFUL OR LUCKY? PART 2

Abstract. Part I of this article comprising sections I-III, which appeared in the issue for June 1980 (Vol. XXVIII, No. 2), offered a critique of some standard power indices. Part 2 is devoted to working out an alternative way of thinking about power. Section IV defines success as luck plus decisiveness. Section v illustrates the use of these concepts by applying them to the example of the US Constitutional Convention. Section VI offers a definition of power in terms of the conditions under which an actor can be decisive. It is then suggested that power should increase in importance to an actor the more uncertain that actor is of the likely alignment of forces in the relevant period of time.     

Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change Policy in Multilevel Governance Systems

Climate change policy has commonly been framed as a matter of international governance for which global policy strategies can be readily employed. The decade of experience following the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Protocol suggests a far more complex process involving a wide range of policy options and varied engagement by multiple levels of governance systems. The respective experiences of the United States and Canada suggest that formal engagement in the international realm of policy is not a good indicator of domestic policy development or emissions reductions. The different contexts of intergovernmental relations, varied resources available to subnational governments for policy development and implementation, and role of subnational leaders in policy formation have emerged as important factors in explaining national differences between these North American neighbors. Consequently, climate change increasingly presents itself as a challenge not only of international relations but also of multilevel governance, thereby creating considerable opportunity to learn from domestic policy experimentation.     

The Emotional Deficit in Political Communication

As a consequence of social changes which have weakened the boundaries between different spheres of life, politics is now interwoven with popular culture. This means that we now seek certain kinds of emotionalized experience from politics. The relationship of people to politics has changed, and has come more fully to resemble a mode of consumption. While this consumerization of politics has been much described (and criticized), its implications for the place of emotion in political communications have not been explored. From a base in the sociology of emotion, this article undertakes such an exploration. It notes how some analysts of political communication have already registered the influence of emotional states, and stresses how contemporary emotionality differs from traditional conceptions of the emotional as a domain separable from rationality and as an optional button for message strategists to press. The complexity and omnipresence of emotional states is emphasised. Political advertising is taken as one area where a sophistication of messages to match the complexity and power of audience emotions might have been expected to develop, but does not appear to have done so yet to a great extent. Making good this "emotional deficit" in political communications is not primarily a way for particular parties or candidates to gain electoral advantage (though it could be that), but is essential for the regeneration of the democratic process and the creation of a more viable settlement between reason and emotion in contemporary society.