An Evaluation of the Economic Approaches Used by Policy Actors towards Investment in Place-Based Partnerships in Victoria

Place-based partnerships are supported by the state and include various organisations and interests within particular geographic areas. The Victorian government has established place-based partnerships to plan and coordinate resource allocation decisions to meet objectives such as economic development and social inclusion. In the literature there are positive and negative views of these partnerships. One view is that they allow regions to build competitive advantage, while another is that they are a means of pursuing a neoliberal policy agenda that seeks to reduce government protection and investment. We help clarify the tensions between positive and negative views of partnerships by examining the economic approaches used by policy actors toward place-based partnerships in Victoria. We find that policy actors combine neoclassical and institutionalist approaches to argue that partnerships generate networks that enable more efficient and equitable resource allocation within places .     

The petit effect of campaign spending on votes: using political financing reforms to measure spending impacts in multiparty elections

Public Choice - This paper explores the relation between campaign spending and votes, in France, relying on political financing reforms as a quasi-natural experiment to assess if and how spending...     

A Means of First Resort: Explaining “Hot Pursuit” in International Relations

This article provides a new theory of hot pursuit—the use of military force by a state against a nonstate actor across borders—in international relations. Drawing from the literature on civil-military relations, I argue that attitudes on limited use of force in peripheral areas will vary between civilian and military, with the latter preferring to treat hot pursuit as a policing operation, whereas the former will treat it as a military one. The logic of my argument is that militaries are oriented structurally and culturally to fight conventionally and against state near-peer adversaries. Threats emanating from nonstate actors, while at times perceived to be existential, require “pin-prick”-style targeted airstrikes, raids by commando forces, or policing operations along a state's periphery. I draw on an original dataset of “hot pursuit” (1975–2009) I collected and examine two recent case studies: India's hot pursuit of ethnic militants into Myanmar and Turkey's pursuit of Kurdish militants into Iraq and Syria.     

Fragile states and the territory conundrum to countering violent nonstate actors

The concept of controlling territorial space informs Western conventions of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. The Islamic State surprised the West when it recently captured dozens of cities across Iraq and Syria. Eradicating failed states and ungoverned territories vis-à-vis more robust state-building also forms the backbone of U.S. efforts to reduce violence, provide order, and build stronger societies. I argue that clearing territory, while important, should be selectively employed. Greater stateness does not always correlate with reductions in violence, and conversely not all “ungoverned spaces” are terrorist safe havens. A number of these areas are natural, if non-integrated, parts of the international system. Second, I posit that state-building can have its own negative externalities, such as pushing nonstate actors across state borders and thereby externalizing internal conflicts. The policy implications of my theory are twofold: First, territory is often a poor metric to capture military progress in the fight violent nonstate actors; second, fixing failed or fragile states does not always reduce the threat of violence but often just relocates it, as nonstate actors get squeezed out of areas of increasing stateness and move toward areas of weak stateness.     

The Confidence Game: Of Ropers and Roping

This is the fourth in a series of five articles on the Bernard Madoff con game. This essay is about the arrangements between some ropers, those that solicited money for Madoff and his investment company, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS). Ropers lure victims/marks/clients/investors into a con game. The focus of this essay is on, what began as an accounting firm, Avellino and Bienes (A & B), Madoff’s own roping operation, Cohmad Securities, and Robert M. Jaffe, a well-connected competitive golfer. Madoff’s ropers were generously rewarded for their efforts at bringing in money to keep his con game going.     

La concrétisation législative des initiatives populaires fédérales acceptées en votation: un processus aux outputs très incertains

L'étude des processus de concrétisation législative des rares initiatives populaires fédérales adoptées en votation a été négligée par la recherche politologique. Dans une démarche exploratoire, en abordant l'initiative “pour l'internement à vie” et en recourant à des études de cas traitant des initiatives “des Alpes” et “de Rothenthurm”, le contenu de ces dispositions constitutionnelles est comparé avec leurs outputs législatifs d'exécution. Les résultats mettent en lumière l'issue difficilement prévisible de ces processus: les lois d'application ne correspondent pas toujours aux souhaits des initiants tels qu'inscrits dans la Constitution. Paradoxalement, alors que la majorité des Chambres fédérales est généralement opposée aux initiatives populaires, c'est précisément au parlement que revient la charge de concrétiser celles qui sont acceptées par le peuple et les cantons.     

The Fairness of Media Coverage in Question: An Analysis of Referendum Campaigns on Welfare State Issues in Switzerland

Abstract: The mass media are assigned an important role in political campaigns on popular votes. This article asks how the press communicates political issues to citizens during referendum campaigns, and whether some minimal criteria for successful public deliberation are met. The press coverage of all 24 ballot votes on welfare state issues from 1995 to 2004 in Switzerland is examined, distinguishing seven criteria to judge how news coverage compares to idealized notions of the media’s role in the democratic process: coverage intensity, time for public deliberation, balance in media coverage, source independence and inclusiveness, substantive coverage, and spatial homogeneity. The results of our quantitative analysis suggest that the press does fulfil these normative requirements to a reasonable extent and that fears about biased or deceitful media treatment of ballot issues are not well‐founded. However, some potential for optimizing the coverage of referendum campaigns by the Swiss press does exist.