The structured value referendum: Eliciting preferences for environmental policy alternatives

This article introduces a voting-based method for eliciting public preferences, referred to as a structured value referendum (SVR). The process for developing and implementing an SVR is viewed as a version of public sector decision analysis, in which problem-structuring activities are crucial, and preference is elicited on a large scale by voters selecting among specified alternatives. The present study discusses the steps involved in developing an SVR, drawing on the problem-structuring approaches of decision analysis. Next, the advantages offered by SVR are discussed and compared to standard preference elicitation techniques or conventional referendums. A rationale for the use of SVR as an approach to preference elicitation is provided. Political judgments that differentiate SVR from other elicitation approaches are considered; the nature of the preference judgments and the required level of measurement are discussed. Concluding sections of the study discuss the implementation of an SVR for a regional government in British Columbia, in which 34,000 people voted to select among wastewater treatment alternatives for managing a potential environmental risk.     

Authentic Interpretation

I approach the identification of the principles of legal interpretation through a discussion of an important but largely forgotten strand in our legal heritage: the idea (and at some points in English law, the rule) that the interpretation of legislation is to be done by the lawmaker. The idea that authentic interpretation is interpretation by the lawmaker united the Roman emperors Constantine and Justinian with Bracton, Aquinas, King James I of England, Hobbes, and Bentham. Already in the early 17th century, a new modern approach was emerging in England. The modern approach separates the interpretive power from the legislative power, and allocates the interpretive power to an independent court. I argue that there are some cogent, general considerations in favour of the modern approach. But it is worth identifying the elements of good sense that made it seem that the interpretive power ought to be reserved for the lawmaker. And it is worth identifying the drawbacks in the modern approach; I argue that they are highly relevant to the complex question of how judges ought to interpret legislation.     

Public Perceptions of Income Inequality in Hong Kong: trends,causes and implications

This article examines the patterns and changes in public perceptions of domestic income inequality in Hong Kong in the past two decades and explains individual variations in these perceptions. It found that the perceived seriousness of income disparities had been persistently high, while the perceived unjustness of income disparities showed a fluctuating trend. Our findings lent partial support to the structural position thesis that the privileged groups are less likely than the underprivileged groups to consider existing income disparities to be serious and unjust. Nonetheless, the popular understanding of poverty is still biased towards ‘individual’ explanations, and this perhaps explains why the government is less willing to tackle the economic and political foundations of poverty in Hong Kong.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

Centers of Gravity: Regional Powers,Democracy, and Trade

Classic studies on hegemonic stability and power transition suggest that concentration of capabilities favoring a single state can promote economic cooperation and discourage militarized conflict. However, tests of these arguments have been primarily limited to examining temporal variation in global capability distributions and corresponding levels of system-wide cooperation; few have examined the impact of capability concentration at the region level. In this article, we contend that concentration of regional military capabilities corresponds to lower trade costs for states throughout a region and to an incentive for weaker states to de-prioritize expenditure on the military, freeing resources that can be used to promote trade. As a result, this condition promotes higher levels of trade, particularly within the region. We also argue that democratic regional powers are better able to foster confidence in the sustainability of cooperation; thus, the trade-enhancing impact of concentrated regional capabilities is stronger when the predominant state is more democratic. We find evidence in support of our expectations in statistical models examining state trade between 1960 and 2007.     

How Do Indifferent Voters Decide? The Political Importance of Implicit Attitudes

A hallmark finding in the study of public opinion is that many citizens approach the political realm with one‐sided attitudes that color their judgments, making attitude change difficult. This finding highlights the importance of citizens with weak prior attitudes, since they might represent a segment of the electorate that is more susceptible to influence. The judgment processes of citizens with weak attitudes, however, are poorly understood. Drawing from dual‐process models in psychology, I test the idea that citizens with weak explicit attitudes rely on implicit attitudes as they render political judgments. I find support for this conjecture in experimental and observational data. There are two main contributions. First, I show that an important and understudied segment of the electorate arrives at political decisions via automatic (but nonetheless predictable) mental processes. Second, I characterize the conditions under which implicit political attitudes matter more and less.