Net loss: A cost‐benefit analysis of the Canadian Pacific salmon fishery

This article applies cost‐benefit analysis to the Canadian Pacific commercial salmon fishery. It demonstrates that government policies to preserve the fishery have resulted in higher net social costs than would have resulted from a "do nothing" policy, notwithstanding the rent dissipation associated with unconstrained resource exploitation. The value of landings and the private costs of the harvest over a cycle (1988‐1994) are calculated. On average, fishers extracted rents of C$34.7 million (in constant 1995 Canadian dollars) annually. The public costs of enhancing the resource and organizing and policing the harvest are estimated. When these costs are included in the calculation, net benefits drop to an average of negative C$55.6 million annually. This translates into a net present value (NPV) of the salmon fishery of negative C$784. The effects on NPV of both modest policy changes implemented in 1996‐1997 and of a more dramatic but credible fleet rationalization program are provided. The results indicate that further policy change is called for. More generally, the study shows that policy reform that would significantly benefit both the private sector (through reduced rent dissipation) and the public sector (through reduced government expenditures) can be surprisingly difficult. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Fictitious Freedom: A Polanyian Critique of the Republican Revival

Prominent republican theorists invoke anonymous orders such as the market as mechanisms that secure freedom as non‐domination. Drawing on Karl Polanyi's account of fictitious commodities and demonstration of the impossibility of a just and rational market society, this article critically scrutinizes neo‐republican assumptions regarding the market, develops an alternate social theory within which to situate the ideal of non‐domination, and illustrates the importance of this reconfiguration for the kind of collective agents and political strategies that can be expected to advance republican freedom in the economy.     

Homeownership and Nontraditional and Subprime Mortgages

This article documents the growth and geographic distribution of nontraditional mortgages (NTMs) and subprime mortgages during 2000-2006, and examines the association between these products and homeownership at the county level between 2000 and 2012. It finds a significant relationship between the origination of NTM and subprime mortgages during the boom and changes in the number of homeowners (positive during the 2000-2006 period and negative during the 2006-2012 period) but no significant relationship with the change in the homeownership rate. Looking at specific categories of the population, the results indicate a positive relationship between the presence of NTMs and subprime mortgages and increased numbers of homeowners for young households as well as for low income and minority households, but the relationship is smaller than for the general population. Overall, the relationship between NTMs and homeownership is stronger than the relationship between subprime mortgages and homeownership during the boom and it is less negative during the bust.     

The Airports Commission,the Dilemmas of Political Leadership and the Third Runway at Heathrow Airport

This article assesses the character, role and outcomes of the Airports Commission. Analysing its workings from September 2012, it evaluates the final recommendations and then charts their subsequent public reception. The article claims that the Airports Commission's endeavours to depoliticise aviation by using ‘reasonable’ methods and impartial judgements—often embodied in Howard Davies himself—have been met with local resistance and political opposition, focussed on the proposal to expand either Heathrow or Gatwick. It exposes how the recourse to expert commissions offers only temporary respite for government responsibility and accountability in the making of hard decisions. It concludes that the inability to secure a binding and acceptable agreement does not just reside at the door of the Airports Commission, but rests also on the failures of political leadership and the ‘missed opportunity’ to articulate a sustainable vision for aviation after the 2010 moratorium on airport expansion in the south‐east of England.     

The politics of decarbonization and the catalytic impact of subnational climate experiments

The Paris Agreement of 2015 marks a formal shift in global climate change governance from an international legal regime that distributes state commitments to solve a collective action problem to a catalytic mechanism to promote and facilitate transformative pathways to decarbonization. It does so through a system of nationally determined contributions, monitoring and ratcheting up of commitments, and recognition that the practice of climate governance already involved an array of actors and institutions at multiple scales. In this article, we develop a framework that focuses on the politics of decarbonization to explore policy pathways and mechanisms that can disrupt carbon lock-in through these diverse, decentralized responses. It identifies political mechanisms—normalization, capacity building, and coalition building—that contribute to the scaling and entrenchment of discrete decarbonization initiatives within or across jurisdictions, markets, and practices. The role for subnational (municipal, state/provincial) climate governance experiments in this new context is especially profound. Drawing on such cases, we illustrate the framework, demonstrate its utility, and show how its political analysis can provide insight into the relationship between climate governance experiments and the formal global response as well as the broader challenge of decarbonization.     

Immigration Benefits America

David Stoll suggests that because contemporary immigrants are non-European, uneducated, poor, and uninterested in joining the moral community of American society, their presence threatens national unity, obscures citizens’ obligations to one another and will shortly change the US into a minority–majority society. Drawing from historical accounts and statistical evidence, this article asserts that immigrants provide American society with social, economic and demographic benefits. Moreover, while pundits have long predicted that immigrants with national origins distinct from those of natives will transform American life to its detriment, the record reveals the US has been able to incorporate diverse nationalities to the benefit of immigrants and the native-born alike.

Organizational [Dis]trust: Comparing Disengagement Among Former Left-Wing and Right-Wing Violent Extremists

In order to move beyond the existing push/pull framework to understand disengagement, we apply a systematic coding scheme derived from Mayer and colleagues' integrative model of organizational trust to examine why people leave extremist groups. In doing so, we also rely on in-depth life history interviews with twenty former left- and right-wing extremists to examine whether antecedents of distrust vary between the two groups. Findings suggest substantial similarities and important differences between left- and right-wing extremists' decision to leave. In particular, perceptions of poor planning and organization, low-quality personnel and vindictive behavior generate perceptions of organizational distrust and disillusionment. Although findings from the current study are based on a relatively small sample, notable similarities were identified between both groups regarding sources of distrust (e.g., leaders, group members). We also identified differences regarding the role of violence in weakening solidarity and nurturing disillusionment with extremist activities. We conclude this article with suggestions for future research that extend the study of terrorism and that may have significance for how practitioners address countering violent extremism initiatives.