In remembrance of Robert D. Tollison

We discuss the mechanisms related to quadratic voting, from Vickrey’s counter-speculation mechanism and his second-price auction, through the family of Groves mechanisms and its most notable member, the Clarke mechanism, to the expected externality mechanism, Goeree and Zhang’s mechanism, the Groves–Ledyard mechanism, and the Hylland–Zeckhauser mechanism. We show that each mechanism that involves collective decisions has a quadratic aspect and that all of the mechanisms that we discuss are applications of the fundamental insight that for a process to be efficient, all parties involved must bear the marginal social costs of their actions.     

Local government in the Canadian provincial north

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to explore the difficulties inherent in the organization of local government in large and geographically remote areas and the responses to those problems over time in a comparative cross-provincial perspective. After defining the provincial north, the article traces the origin and early development of local government structures in the provincial north to indicate just how these structures differ from those in the southern regions of the provinces. The article then discusses the range and nature of the problems faced by northern communities. This is followed by an analysis of the desires of northern local governments and the manner in which they express them. The final section describes the nature of governmental responses to the demands expressed by local governments. Sommaire. Le but de cet article est d'enqêter sur les difficultés inhérentes à l'organisation du gouvernement local dans de grandes régions gégraphiquement isolées et le traitement de ces problèmes sur une période de temps et ce dans une perspective interprovincial comparative, Après avoir défini le nord provincial, l'auteur retrace l'origine et l'ébauche du développement des structures de gouvernement local dans le nord provincial pour montrer en quoi celles-ci diffèrent de celles des régions du sud des provinces. Il analyse ensuite les desiderata des gouvernements locaux du nord et leur façon de les exprimer. Il consacre le dernier chapitre à l'analyse de la nature des réactions gouvernementales aux exigences manifestées par les gouvernements locaux.