Unipolarity,Hegemony, and the New Peace

Despite a few persistent, high-profile conflicts in the Middle East, the world is experiencing an era of unprecedented peace and stability. Many scholars have offered explanations for this “New Peace,” to borrow Steven Pinker's phrase, but few have devoted much time to the possibility that US hegemony has brought stability to the system. This paper examines the theoretical, empirical, and psychological foundations of the hegemonic-stability explanation for the decline in armed conflict. Those foundations are rather thin, as it turns out, and a review of relevant insights from political psychology suggests that unipolarity and stability are probably epiphenomenal. The New Peace can in all likelihood continue without US dominance and should persist long after unipolarity comes to an end.     

Fiscal rules in the Canadian provinces: Abject failure or qualified success?

Most Canadian provinces have introduced legislation to require politicians of all ideological stripes to meet annual balanced budget (BB) targets. Critics of this type of legislation argue that it is unnecessary, confining, and subject to manipulation. We examine provincial balanced budget legislation before and after the Great Recession and argue that the response of provinces needs to be evaluated taking into account the multiple objectives of fiscal policy and the behavioural changes that the rules introduce, including creative non‐compliance. Rules should be evaluated on their ability to contribute to good fiscal governance rather than on their stringency.     

The Conditional Nature of Political Risk: How Home Institutions Influence the Location of Foreign Direct Investment

What determines whether countries' institutions attract or deter investment? Although existing theories predict that multinational enterprises (MNEs) avoid locations where institutions cannot constrain public and private actors' opportunistic behavior, we argue host institutions' attractiveness depends on firms' home environment. Home country institutions shape firms' practices and capabilities, thus helping to determine the environments that firms are best prepared to face abroad. We test our predictions using multiple data sets at different levels of analysis: firm‐level data on MNEs' foreign subsidiaries, data on bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) positions, and longitudinal data on bilateral FDI flows. We find that states with independent judiciaries are particularly attractive to investment from countries also possessing independent courts. Similarly, countries with low judicial independence disproportionately send FDI to countries lacking independent judiciaries. These findings' implications challenge conventional wisdom: “Good” institutions may not attract all investors, and “bad” institutions may not always deter, as current research suggests.     

Détente in deep water: the CIA mission to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine and US-USSR relations, 1968–1975

Despite détente, the superpowers continued their Cold War practice of spying on one another throughout the 1970s. Yet intelligence is largely ‘missing’ from the historiography of détente. Why? Based on newly declassified data, ‘Détente in Deep Water’ reveals the geopolitical calculations behind the ‘Glomar response’ and how that legalese operated to limit disclosure of intelligence operations starting with AZORIAN/MATADOR, the CIA-led project to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine using the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a ship ostensibly owned (under a cover story) by industrialist Howard Hughes. Glomar’s diplomatic backstory sheds new light on the historical relationship between intelligence collection and foreign policy.     

劳动合同概念溯源及时代启示

20世纪初,围绕劳动合同的法律概念建构,以洛多维科·巴莱西、菲利普·洛特马尔为代表的一批欧陆法学家通过批判近代劳务供给契约的教义原理,以劳动人格原则为价值基础、"从属性劳动-自治性劳动"为首要区分,建立了从广义到狭义的劳动合同概念体系,为整合扩建现代劳动法、更新发展传统民法奠定了理论基础。作为制度后发国家,我国应当充分吸收劳动合同概念起源蕴藏的劳动交换法制现代化经验,摆脱近代劳务供给契约的理念与体系束缚,抛弃过时的雇佣合同制度,通过劳动立法,正式确立"从属-自治"为劳动交换的首要区分,先以从属性为核心要件规定类合同层级的劳动合同概念,再以"标准-非标准"为框架,将劳动合同进一步类型化,以便形成保护措施的多元配置体系;通过民事立法,完善自治性劳动的合同体系,正视灵活就业中自由职业者的保护诉求,以劳动人格为价值理念,作出专门的制度回应,最终形成适应新就业形态发展、平衡劳动力市场灵活与安全的劳动交换合同体系。     

The Empire Fracks Back: The Case for Hydraulic Fracturing Strict Liability in New York

The possibility that New York will allow high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the near future raises the issue of liability for environmental and other extraction-related harms. Given the potential risk, New York courts should consider treating natural gas exploration under a strict liability regime. Natural gas producers facing strict liability for drilling mishaps would be forced to internalize the environmental and other social costs inherent in the drilling process, thus incentivizing producers to exercise a maximum of care.