Tasmania's Tamar Valley Pulp Mill: A Comparison of Planning Processes Using a Good Environmental Governance Framework

In November 2004, the Tasmanian government requested the state's planning body, the Resource Planning and Development Commission (RPDC), to undertake an evaluation of a proposal to establish a pulp mill at Long Reach near Bell Bay on Tasmania's Tamar Estuary. In early 2007, Gunns Limited, the project's proponent, pulled out of the RPDC process and the government established an alternative, ‘fast‐track’ process under the Pulp Mill Assessment Act (PMAA). This article evaluates the RPDC and the PMAA assessment processes using a ‘good environmental governance’ framework composed of eight criteria – transparency, accountability, openness, balance, deliberation, efficiency, science and risk. The comparison reveals that although the RPDC process fell short of the ideal, it was markedly superior to the PMAA process that replaced it. The case highlights how political economic power can be used to the detriment of public planning and the communities and environment that rely on it.     

Control and controls: A reexamination of control patterns in budget execution

Consistent choice in an inconsistent world requires processes both for rational calculation and effective control. The budgetary process incorporates both of these functions. However, students of public sector budgeting tend either to ignore budget execution or to view the time expended by budgeteers on the execution of budgets - as opposed to their construction - as a gross misallocation of resources. In the authors' opinion this perspective - or lack thereof - seriously undervalues the control function and the budgeteer's role in preventing control loss. At the same time, the authors acknowledge that budgeteers frequently misuse the controls at their disposal and that in certain cases (i.e., where competitive supply of a public service is justified and in effect) expenditure controls are redundant and serve no real purpose.Budget execution is primarily concerned with two kinds of expenditure controls, allotment controls and fund reports, and is supported by position controls. The immediate purpose of these controls is to insure that purchases are limited to the amounts and purposes specified in the budget act. However, given the typical relationship between the budget agency and the operating bureau, we argue that their ultimate function is to prevent the bureau from distorting or concealing cost and production information so as to increase its bargaining power, thereby permitting the budget office to insure that the preferences of the state are at least approximately met. Performance standards and control rules also serve to avoid inconsistency in the dealings between the budgeteer and the bureau and to stabilize expectations about the ground rules for bargaining and the likely outcomes of the bargaining process so as to reduce the costs of uncertainty to both sides.     

Religion,liberty and economic development: An empirical investigation

The empirical investigations conducted for this paper show that one can not accept the null hypothesis that religion and liberty are not related to development. Judeo-Christianity in particular appears to an important determinant of economic development. This is explained in part by its fostering of the private ownership of property. Nations with the Judeo-Christian values are more likely to have political democracies that are conductive to economic development. Capitalist economies with Judeo-Christian democracy are more likely to have higher levels of economic development.     

Managing economic crises: The role of the state in Bahrain and Kuwait

Bahrain and Kuwait adopted sharply divergent responses to the economic crisis in the Gulf during the 1980s. The Bahraini government reduced the level of state intervention in the local economy, opened up opportunities for private investment and relied on the operation of the unregulated market; Kuwait's government, on the other hand, imposed a greater degree of state supervision over domestic economic affairs and expanded central planning to allocate resources to the most profitable enterprises. Two influential bodies of neo-Marxist writing on the state—the state-derivation school and the writings of Claus Offe—have difficulty accounting for these differences. A more adequate explanation for Bahraini and Kuwaiti policy can be formulated in terms of the strength of each country's indigenous rich merchant community relative to that of the ruling family/central administration and the political activities of the labor movement in each amirate. Fred H. Lawson is associate professor, Department of Government, Mills College, Oakland, CA 94613. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1982 and has also taught at the University of North Carolina and Smith College. His most recent publications include “Political-economic trends in Ba'thi Syria: a reinterpretation,”Orient 29 (December 1988) and “Libéralisation économique en Syrie et Irak,”Maghred/Machrek 128 (April–May 1990). He is currently exploring the connection between class conflict and foreign policy in contemporary Syria and Iraq.