Excepted substances: a comparison of Federal and state laws.

A state law has placed an obligation on the criminal investigation laboratories to screen and quantitate all preparations, both pharmaceutical and illicit, that fall under the provisions of "Excepted Substances." Without complete screens on these preparations, there is room for erroneous indictments as well as possible acquittals on technicalities.     

Brussels between Bern and Berlin: Comparative Federalism Meets the European Union

In the current debate on the future European order, the European Union (EU) is often described as an "emerging federation." This article claims that federalism is not exclusively useful in deliberating about the future of the EU. Non-statecentric conceptions of federalism provide a better understanding of the current structure and functioning of the European system of multilevel governance than most theories of European integration and international relations do. We combine political and economic perspectives of federalism to analyze the "balancing act" between effective political representation and efficient policy-making in the EU. Drawing on the examples of Germany and Switzerland in particular, we argue that the increasing delegation of powers to the central EU level needs to be paralleled by strengthened patterns of fiscal federalism and an empowered representation of functional interests at the European level. Without such "rebalancing," the current legitimacy problems of the EU are likely to intensify.     

North-South Climate Change Negotiations: A Sequential Game with Asymmetric Information

This article determines the conditions under which theSouthern countries should act together, or separately, whilenegotiating with the North about climate change policy andabout the conditions for future Southern engagement. The papermodels the international negotiations with complete and withasymmetric information in a dynamic framework. Results showthat, depending on their characteristics, the differentplayers can obtain benefits delaying the moment of theagreement.     

Umbau des Sozialstaates? Österreich und Deutschland im Vergleich

In comparative analysis of welfare states, there is a consensus that mature welfare state systems have been confronted, for some considerable time, with substantial pressure towards re-structuring and that, as a result, they actually have undertaken several and varied modifications. This articles aims at exploring and analysing these developments in Austria and Germany from a comparative point of view. The analysis concentrates on two vital fields of social policy: old-age insurance and unemployment insurance. Especially in respect of the development of social policy and regarding important characteristics of the two welfare state systems, both countries traditionally show a large degree of resemblance to each other. Many similarities remained to exist during the phase of growing pressures on the welfare state, whereas at the same time it is evident that differences between the two countries increased. The respective actual developments will be interpreted in the light of corresponding theories of comparative welfare state research and classified as gradual and structural changes.     

Federal policy mandating safer cigarettes: a hypothetical simulation of the anticipated population health gains or losses.

If manufacturing a safer cigarette is technically possible--an open question--then mandating that tobacco manufacturers improve the safety of cigarettes would likely have both positive and negative implications for the nation's health. On the one hand, removing toxins may reduce the incidence of smoking-related diseases and premature mortality in smokers. On the other hand, smokers might be less inclined to quit, those who have quit might resume the habit, and youth who have never smoked will have one less reason to avoid tobacco use. To assess the expected population health impacts of a legislative or regulatory mandate, we created the Tobacco Policy Model, a system dynamics computer simulation model. The model relies on secondary data and simulates the U.S. population over time spans as long as 50 years. Our simulation results reveal that even if requiring cigarettes to be safer makes smoking more attractive and increases tobacco use, a net gain in population health is still possible.     

Do school accountability systems make it more difficult for low‐performing schools to attract and retain high‐quality teachers?

Administrative data from North Carolina are used to explore the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school‐based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low‐performing students face in retaining and attracting high‐quality teachers. Most clear are the adverse effects on retention rates, and hence on teacher turnover, in such schools. Less clear is the extent to which that higher turnover has translated into a decline in the average qualifications of the teachers in the low‐performing schools. Other states with more primitive accountability systems can expect even greater adverse effects on teacher turnover in low‐performing schools. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Migrating feminisms: Maligned overstayer or model citizen?

Since the 1960s, migration throughout the South Pacific has accelerated creating a fusion of peoples and ideas. This article explores how feminisms have been received, rejected, reworked, and, in some cases, reclaimed in order to better the position of women and their societies in the South Pacific.     

Regulatory budgeting: A bad idea whose time has come?

Advocates of regulatory relief propose a budget that would annually cap regulatory costs. But emulating fiscal budgeting would be much more difficult than they envision. An arbitrary macrobudgetary constraint would have to be selected, and the potential scope of the regulatory budget would be vast. The process of regulatory budgeting would be very-time consuming, and could increase micromanagement by the Congress. Estimating regulatory costs would be challenging, and ignoring regulatory benefits would be unfair and inefficient. A preferable alternative to regulatory budgeting would be to expand the Government Performance and Results Act to include cost-effectiveness reviews for regulations.     

Local Context and Democratization in Mexico

While democratization is often seen as a national-level process, we argue that there is important scope for local effects. Through analysis of Mexican public opinion data collected on the eve of that country's historic 2000 elections, we demonstrate that local context greatly affects evaluations of the legitimacy of the system, and these evaluations, in turn, help to shape the willingness of citizens to engage with the system. Citizens are more willing to participate in politics if they think the process is fair, and direct evidence of the fairness of the system is provided by the local political context. This local connection, then, becomes critical in the process of individuals becoming, in Almond and Verba's classic term, "participatory" citizens (1963).