Conflict in Trade Policy: The Role of the Congress and the Provinces in Negotiating and Implementing the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

The provincial role in trade policy has until recently beenlimited, but the increasing impact of international trade negotiationson domestic policy issues has come into direct conflict withprovincial jurisdiction. At the same time, Congress has handedsome of its constitutional authority over trade matters to theexecutive branch through the granting of "fast track" negotiatingauthority. The paper argues that, as a result of these developments,the functional roles that Congress and the provinces playedin the negotiation of the FTA were not significantly differentin the two countries. However, in the implementation of thetrade agreement, roles again became clearly defined by constitutionaljurisdiction.     

The power of small-scale solar: gender,energy poverty,and entrepreneurship in Tanzania

Energy poverty is a major challenge in the developing world, with an estimated 1.2 billion people lacking household electricity. Although energy poverty affects both men and women, the burden of household energy supply disproportionately affects women in low-income countries in the developing world. This article examines the impact of a women-oriented solar lighting social enterprise, Solar Sister, in Tanzania for both solar entrepreneurs and customers, demonstrating that solar lanterns positively impact household savings, health, education and women’s economic productivity and empowerment. Our study argues that Solar Sister’s approach is successful because of its explicit gender lens. Providing energy access to women translates to a pro-woman, pro-child, and pro-family development intervention.     

Reducing the Compliance Burden of Non-profit Organisations: Cutting Red Tape

Australian governments now rely on the non-profit sector to provide essential services. Yet, anecdotally, the compliance burden imposed by governments consumes scarce service delivery resources. This study quantifies the cost of government generated paperwork for Queensland non-profit organisations. Fourteen non-profits kept logs to record government paperwork over 12 months. The non-profits also provided their experiences of government paperwork and in particular grant submission and reporting processes. The study finds that government grant paperwork forms the bulk of a non-profits total paperwork burden with grant submissions being the most costly to complete. Costs are clearly regressive with small non-profits bearing a significantly higher burden. Governments need to lead the way and empower the non-profit sector by reducing this administrative burden and releasing the funds for direct service provision .     

Protecting the living: Managerialism and professional turf wars in risk regulatory death investigations

This paper demonstrates how general trends in the management of public institutions, and a specific turf war between the doctors and lawyers in Ontario, Canada, have combined to shape an important risk regulatory decisionmaking process: the coroner's inquest. Drawing on ethnographic evidence, I show how the priorities of managerialism, and the collateral effects of physician coroners battling with lawyers, have reduced the number of public inquests convened in Ontario by 80 per cent over a 20‐year period. Where many public safety decisions affecting the province's legal, policy, and physical environments were once made at public inquests, they appear now more likely to be made in private. The paper examines the implications of reduced public participation in the analysis of, and response to, death.     

Deterring gun crime materially using forensic coatings

Surface coatings that can help deter and solve gun crime are described. These nanoengineered coatings have been applied and evaluated on brass cartridge cases, where they increase associative forensic evidence through nanotag donation to the handler and the retention of handler's DNA. In future we expect this approach to be used for other surfaces and conditions.     

Parental warmth amplifies the negative effect of parental hostility on dating violence

Past research has documented the positive association between parental hostility and offspring involvement in intimate partner violence. Researchers, practitioners, and parents typically adopt the standpoint that parental warmth may counter these negative lessons. However, Straus and colleagues argue that parents foster IPV to the extent that they teach their child that verbal and physical aggression are a normal and legitimate component of loving relationships. A strict interpretation of social learning theory would suggest that these lessons are more, not less, likely to occur when parental hostility is interspersed with displays of affection. The present study tests this idea using data from 2,088 undergraduate students from a large university in the Southeast. Consistent with Straus' arguments, findings suggest that, rather than attenuating the negative effects of hostility, supportive interactions seem to amplify the probability that offspring will emulate aggressive behaviors in their own romantic relationships. The same is true for the effects of harsh parenting for women. It seems that the best way parents can avoid contributing to their child's chances of being in a violent dating relationship is to eschew family interaction involving verbal and physical aggression.     

"We Have A Consensus": Explaining Political Support for Market Reforms in Latin America

By the 1990s, to the astonishment of many ob0servers, most Latin American countries had reformed their systems of national economic governance along market lines. Many analysts of this shift have assumed that it circumvented normal political processes, presuming that such reforms could not be popular. Explanations emphasizing economic crisis, external assistance, and politically insulated executives illustrate this approach. Through a qualitative investigation of the reform process in the region's four most industrialized countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, this study argues, to the contrary, that reforming governments found or created both elite and mass political support for their policies.