Local government and the arts revisited

This article discusses policy developments in the arts and local government since the publication of the original article on this topic. It assesses the continued relevance of the thinking behind policy attachment in the original article for understanding and explaining policy in this sector, and indicates the direction in which the concept of policy attachment could be developed in both analytical and empirical ways.     

International Organization as a Seal of Approval: European Union Accession and Investor Risk

Much of the literature on international institutions argues that membership regularizes expectations about members' future behavior. Using the accession of the postcommunist countries as a test case, this article argues that the EU can send strong signals to financial markets about the trajectory of a particular country. Examining spreads on sovereign debt from 1990 to 2006, this article shows that closing negotiation chapters on domestic economic policy—in other words, receiving a seal of approval from Brussels that previously existing policy reform is acceptable to the wider EU—substantially decreases perceptions of default risk in those countries. That decrease operates independently from policy reform that the country has taken and is also distinct from selection processes (modeled here with new variables, including UNESCO World Heritage sites and domestic movie production, that proxy for cultural factors). Thus, this particular international organization has played an important role in coordinating market sentiment on members, conferring confidence that policy reform alone could not accomplish.     

Women,Federalism and Women Friendly Policies

Australian women activists have never been enthusiastic about federalism because of its reputation as a system that restricts the scope of government and obstructs the path of progressive social change. Like their sisters in other countries, women's groups have sought collectivist solutions to economic and social problems. In the last couple of decades, however, orthodox ideas about the restrictive impact of federalism have been questioned. A revisionist view has emerged, which holds that the system sometimes facilitates the adoption of innovative policies and may lead to an expansion of the role of government. The revisionist perspective raises the question of whether women's groups have been wise to oppose federalism. This article examines relevant Canadian and Australian studies in order to test the validity of orthodox and revisionist perspectives and to draw conclusions about appropriate feminist approaches to federalism. The evidence is mixed. The main argument of this article is that, to the extent that we can distinguish its independent effect, federalism sometimes obstructs policy development and sometimes facilitates it. There are serious methodological problems involved in trying to isolate the impact of the federal variable from the many factors that influence policy, making generalisations precarious. Experience, therefore, offers little guidance to women's groups seeking to decide whether to support centralised or decentralised decision‐making structures. However, this study concludes that in the context of present Australian federal arrangements, women are more likely to achieve their aims when the Commonwealth government takes action, either alone or in cooperation with sub‐national jurisdictions.     

Unpacking pivotal politics: exploring the differential effects of the filibuster and veto pivots

Formal models of politics regularly combine assumptions about a variety of actors and institutions to produce equilibrium expectations, which serve as the primary target for empirical testing. Yet the underlying assumptions can vary in their accuracy among actors and across time and context. We focus on the pivotal politics model of lawmaking and argue that a full evaluation of the theory requires a granular analysis of its two primary components: the filibuster and veto “pivots” in Congress. We show that both types of pivots contribute to the success of pivotal politics in explaining postwar lawmaking, but that the relevance of each varies based on institution-specific contexts. Specifically, the filibuster pivot has little explanatory power before the 1970s, when norms of filibuster use were quite restrictive, while the veto pivot’s explanatory power is limited to situations in which the president has sufficient public backing to be a force in the legislative process.     

Rural industry and uneven development: The significance of gender in the Irish Linen industry

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the Irish linen industry grew on the basis of unequal relations of exchange between spinning and weaving households. This regional division of labour in turn depended on unequal relations of production between women and men within rural industrial households. The ‘proto‐industrialisation’ thesis has tended to obscure this process by focussing on the household as a bounded entity, and by failing to recognise the significance of inequalities within the household production unit. Once gender relations are made central to the thesis, it can be expanded to explain regional differences in rural industrialisation and deindustrialisation.     

The Constitutionality of Australia's Compulsory Voting System

Electoral law has been the subject of several High Court decisions in recent years, and this jurisprudence, as well as some of the political science literature, is canvassed here. I argue that there are serious constitutional question marks over Australia's system of “compulsory voting”. There are two particular constitutional arguments against “compulsory voting”. Firstly it infringes the implied freedom of political communication which the High Court has recognised since 1992. Secondly, it is inconsistent with the right to vote recognised by the High Court as being implicit in s7 and s24 of the Constitution. On this basis citizens entitled to vote should have the freedom not to do so (as is the case in many other representative democracies in which voting is voluntary).     

The effect of social dominance orientation on perceptions of corporal punishment

Previous research has suggested the use of corporal punishment is widely endorsed in our society (Straus, 2000; Straus & Stewart, 1999). Furthermore, perceptions of what constitutes corporal punishment vary. The present study examined social dominance orientation (SDO) and age of child as potential factors that may influence perceptions of what is viewed as corporal punishment versus physical abuse. The sample consisted of 206 undergraduate students enrolled at a Rocky Mountain University. A series of regressions were used to examine the relationships between SDO and six forms of punishment. Findings suggest, higher levels of SDO are significantly related to more ratings of physical punishment versus physical abuse. The primary findings of the present study showed SDO was significantly related to how an individual perceives corporal punishment. These results have important implications by serving as a stepping-stone into further understanding what factors may have an influence on perceptions of corporal punishment.     

Mapping Corporate Influence and Institutional Corruption Inside Canadian Universities

Corporate influences that threaten the independence of science and trust in research often remain hidden from the general public. For university administrators these improper influences are often tacitly accepted as simply the new reality of funding environments—something to be managed, rather than eliminated. In this article, we structurally map patterns of corporate influence that threaten to distort the independence of research. Specifically, we map relationships between the fossil fuel industry and three major Canadian institutions of higher education. We also provide case studies of institutional corruption inside two of these universities. Our findings reveal elite interlocking networks between the fossil-fuel sector and academia as well as corporate influences that serve to decrease the independence of science and trust in research.     

The re-occurrence of violations in occupational safety and health administration inspections

How well do firms in the United States maintain compliance with occupational safety and health administration (OSHA) standards after being cited for a violation? How and why does this vary among standards? This paper identifies serious violations of 91 frequently cited standards at manufacturing plants during 1992–2002 and tracks compliance with that standard in later inspections over 10 years. While formal measures of Repeat violations are quite low, we find considerably higher re-violation rates for some standards once we look separately at how often health standards are cited in later health inspections and safety standards cited in later safety inspections. Characteristics of the standards affect re-violation rates, but not always in the expected direction. Standards whose violations are rated as more hazardous or which received higher initial penalties tend to have more re-violations. These findings could reflect inspector behavior, with those standards getting more attention and thus being cited more frequently. When, as in the case of OSHA and other enforcement agencies, we know about violations only when inspectors cite them, we need to consider bureaucratic behavior as well as employers' incentives.     

Is it time to highlight the limits of risk-based financial regulation?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• The run on Northern Rock that took place in September2007 has raised some serious questions about the ‘fitnessfor purpose’ of the institutions and techniques of financialregulation in the United Kingdom.
• One defining feature of theFinancial Services Authority (FSA) in the development since1998 of its role as a unitary and integrated financial regulatorhas been its pioneering of ‘risk-based’ and ‘principles-based’regulation.
• The way in which risk-based supervision was appliedto Northern Rock and the way in which risk-based regulationworked within it have been the subject of much public scrutinyafter the run on the bank and some elements of that scrutinyare highlighted here.
• In the light of the real distinctionsbetween risk and uncertainty that have been drawn by scholarsand indeed by the FSA itself in defence of its actions aroundNorthern Rock, this article raises questions about the wisdom. . . [Full Text of this Article]