If You Don't Have Solid Borders,You Get Walls

Anti‐immigrant populists seek to create a familiar space for their own kind in a world of tumult fomented by strangers.     

The Politics of the Human Rights Act

The Human Rights Act is the result of post-war changes in Europe. It is the consequence less of the campaigning of dedicated individuals and more of the change in the position of the United Kingdom in Europe and the world. Objections to incorporation of the Convention have given way to the desire to be like the rest of Europe. Traditional views of the judicial role have given way to a perception of the judiciary as the last bastion against an over-powerful executive, unchecked by Parliament.     

Federal, state, and local governments: evaluating their separate roles in US growth

We use US county level data from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and government employment at three levels: federal, state and local. Increases in federal, state and local government employments are all negatively related to economic growth. We find no evidence that government is more efficient at lower levels. While we cannot separate out the productive and redistributive services of government, we document that the county-level income distribution became slightly more unequal from 1970 to 1998. We conclude that a release of government-employed labor inputs to the private sector would be growth-enhancing.     

An institutional assessment of the public interest and accountability committee (PIAC) in Ghana’s oil and gas sector

ABSTRACT

Ghana’s Petroleum Revenue Management Act 815 (amended to Act 893 in 2015) established the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) in 2011 with the mandate to ensure accountability and transparency in the management and usage of oil and gas revenue. This paper critically examines the activities and operations of the PIAC from 2011 vis-à-vis its legally reposed mandate. It points to severe deficit in accountability but improvements in transparency in the management of oil and gas revenues in spite of the existence and operations of the PIAC. After eight years of operation, the PIAC continues to suffer monumental challenges that undermine its effectiveness in serving as an accountability and transparency initiative in Ghana’s oil and gas sector. The paper makes some recommendation based on the empirical challenges of the PIAC identified to strengthen the PIAC to deliver effectively on its mandate.