Disaggregating the dependent variable in policy feedback research: an analysis of the EU Emissions Trading System

Policy Sciences - The literature on policy dynamics has long argued for a better conceptualization and measurement of the dependent variable (“policy”), but this fundamental point has...     

Humans Are Animals,Too: Critical Commonalities and Differences Between Human and Wildlife Forensic Genetics

Wildlife forensics has recently been recognized among the wide variety of forensic science disciplines. This review compares human and wildlife DNA forensics, which use the same genetic tools, but often for far different purposes. Human forensic genetics almost invariably attempts to identify individual perpetrators involved in a given crime. Wildlife forensics often determines whether a crime has occurred. In addition to techniques familiar in human laboratories, like individual matching with STRs, wildlife analysts may be asked to determine the taxonomic identity, geographic source, or sex of evidence items, or the familial relationships or minimum number of individuals among a group of samples. This review highlights the common questions, legal framework, databases, and similar validation requirements to foster understanding between disciplines. Based on this understanding, human and wildlife DNA practitioners may work together and learn from each other in order to elevate the discipline of forensic genetics.     

Cheng Li,Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era: Reassessing Collective Leadership

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Proactive Evaluation of PRP Status at Hazardous Waste Disposal Sites

Two keys to avoiding potentially responsible party (PRP) status at future Superfund sites are to manage all waste with appropriate care and to perform appropriate inquiries into the history of new properties prior to acquisition. However, corporations can become PRPs because of their ownership and/or operation of historically contaminated property, their historical waste management practices, or their historical disposal of hazardous substances at nonowned disposal sites, such as landfills. This article describes a method by which insurance companies, waste producers, and property owners can proactively evaluate their potential liability associated with environmental response action costs at contaminated sites.     

Occupancy rights: life planners and the Navajos

ABSTRACT

This Comment focuses on the limitations of Stilz’s individualist conception of occupancy rights. Her account of occupancy is critical to her attempt to answer the question of where one holds territorial rights as well as related place-related rights like the right of return. Her account appeals to the geographical location of individual life plans. This Comment argues that this fails to distinguish between Indigenous People who are connected historically and in many other ways to a place and individual Life-Planners: it treats the two as equivalent, which I argue is counter-intuitive. I also argue that Stilz’s occupancy account fails to explain the scope of occupancy rights in a number of cases that she appeals to in her examples, such as the Navajos’ expulsion from the area in which they lived. What she needs, I argue, is a group based conception of occupancy rights, in addition to the idea of individual rights of residency.     

Decentralized decision‐making and urban planning: A case study of density for benefit agreements in Toronto and Vancouver

This article compares the design and implementation of density for benefit agreements (DBAs), a form of density “bonusing” in Toronto and Vancouver. The cities identify many of the same priorities for benefits secured from developers, but in practice they prioritize widely different benefits. By comparing practice in Toronto and Vancouver, this article demonstrates how institutional differences and the decentralization of policy decision‐making in major cities can affect urban planning decision‐making.