Grain market deregulation: a case study of the Canadian and Australian wheat boards

The recent deregulation in Canada's grain marketing sector with the resultant removal of the Canadian Wheat Board's single‐desk status presents a useful case for policy and institutional analysis. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the Canadian case using deregulation in Australia as a reference. Case studies of deregulation in the two countries are presented, and the different approaches are compared. This is to predict the likely trajectory along which the Canadian Wheat Board may evolve. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Selling Krishna in Ghana's religious market: proselytising strategies of the Sri Radha Govinda Temple community of Ghana

Drawing upon the metaphor of the religious market, this article presents an analysis of the proselytising strategies the Hare Krishna, a new Hindu worshipping community in Ghana, has developed in order to survive in Ghana's competitive religious economy. It demonstrates the creative ways in which the group negotiates the contours of this market, incorporating Pentecostal methods into its preaching culture, exploiting an ongoing debate between agents of African Religions and Pentecostals on the appropriate place of tradition in Ghana, and establishing its credentials as a religion whose culture is compatible with both African religions and Christianity, yet with deeper insights into the mysteries of life.     

调解、诉讼与公正——对现代自由社会和儒家传统的反思

调解作为一种解决纷争的做法和制度 ,是我国传统法律文化尤其是儒家法律文化的重要部分。在现代法治社会中 ,调解否已经过时 ?本文首先介绍中国的调解传统的哲学基础、理论和实践 ,然后从现代自由主义和法治理想的角度 ,对传统的调解提出批判。本文进而指出 ,调解在当代的中国以至西方仍有顽强的生命力 ,西方学者对调解作为“解决纠纷的另类选择”之一提出了多种理论依据 ,其中不少与儒家传统的睿见不谋而合。本文的结论是 ,经过“创造性转化”后的调解理论与实践能对现代文明作出贡献 ,由此可见 ,传统文化遗产在现代仍是十分宝贵和有用的资源。     

The effects of party competition on budget outcomes: Empirical evidence from local governments in Spain

This paper investigates the link between local budget outcomes and the intensity of party competition, measured as the margin of victory obtained by the incumbent in the previous local election (i.e. the difference between the vote share and 50%). Two competing hypotheses are tested in the paper. On the one hand, the Leviathan government hypothesis suggests that the lower the intensity of party competition is, the greater is the increase in the size of the local public sector, irrespective of the ideology of the party in power. On the other hand, the Partisan government hypothesis suggests that the incumbent will find it easier to advance its platform when intensity of competition is low (i.e., parties on the left/right will increase/decrease the size of the local public sector when the intensity of the challenge from the opposition is low). These hypotheses are tested with information on spending, own revenues and deficit for more than 500 Spanish local governments over 8 years (1992–1999), and information on the results of two local electoral contests (1991 and 1995). The evidence favors the Partisan hypothesis over the Leviathan one. We found that, for left-wing governments, spending, taxes and deficits increased as the electoral margin increases; whereas, for right-wing governments, a greater margin of victory led to reductions in all these variables.     

Democratizing the hospital: deliberative-democratic bioethics

The increased presence of moral consultants, or bioethicists, within hospitals and clinics in the last two decades has begun to raise questions about their sources of authority and norms of practice. Under pressure from critics in the social sciences, a number of bioethicists have recently raised the ideal of democratic deliberation to defend and reconstruct their place in the medical field. This article sheds light on these developments by placing bioethics in a historical context that shows an early tension between bioethicists as whistle-blowers and bioethicists as incremental reformers of medical practice. This article also develops a conceptual framework for analysis that indicates how such tensions have grown more complicated for contemporary bioethicists because they occupy a fluid and structurally ambiguous role in which there are multiple sources of normative expectations and little guidance for meeting these expectations. The liminality of the role and the overload of expectations have made bioethics vulnerable to methodological criticisms from social scientists. This article concludes that such methodological criticisms cannot address the more systemic problems of liminality and overload. The ideal of democratic deliberation, though imperfect, does address these systemic problems because it shows bioethicists how to gain guidance and share responsibility for moral consultation.