Barriers to competition and the effect on political shirking: 1953–1992

Economists and political scientists have offered a variety of explanations for why legislators might rationally choose to ignore the preferences of their constituents, political parties, and presidents. The broad conclusion of this literature is that there is an element of “shirking” in congressional voting. The objective of this paper is to suggest that the effects of shirking in congressional voting may have increased over time, largely in response to the raising of barriers to competition in congressional elections, thereby enabling legislators to vote their own preferences without fear of losing reelection. We use a quasi-experimental design that controls for the effects of party, region, electoral safety, presidential control of the White House, and constituency factors, in isolating the causal effects of barriers to entry on a continuous series of roll-calls regarding the raising of the debt limit between 1953 and 1992. We find that “shirking” in legislative voting on debt limit legislation is a post-1970s phenomenon.     

Justice, Democracy, and Hazardous Siting

In this essay we examine some issues of justice associated with the siting of hazardous industrial facilities. Utilitarian justifications of siting decisions are inadequate because they fail to address questions of fairness. Approaches that consider questions of distributive equity provide a better framework for siting justice, but are still incomplete. Limiting questions of justice to the distribution of benefits and burdens fails to examine the justice of procedures for deciding such issues of distribution. We argue that justice requires a participatory communicative democratic process for siting hazardous facilities, in two respects. It is prima facie unjust to impose a risk on citizens without their having participated in the siting process. Participatory communicative democratic procedures in facility siting, moreover, when structured according to specific norms of discussion and inclusion, are likely to yield the most just outcomes. We propose procedural as well as substantive conditions for such democratic procedures, and briefly apply these conditions to evaluate the siting of a landfill in Switzerland.     

The rational timing of parliamentary elections

This paper presents a rational choice model for the timing of parliamentary elections in political systems where the government has the option of calling an early election. The optimal timing of elections involves the government weighing the benefits of calling an election versus the costs and is modelled mathematically as an optimal stopping problem. The model implies that the timing of elections depends upon time left in the government's term, the degree of electoral uncertainty, the volatility of government popularity, the government's time rate of discount, and institutional constraints such as the length of term and whether the government is likely to be forced from power by a vote of no confidence.     

Intergovernmental Relations in the Reagan Era

This article reviews federal Reagan-era policies that affected grant-in-aid programs to state and local governments. We find the most important developments in federal aid policies of the Reagan years are twofold—the relative decline in the national government's involvement in domestic affairs and the concomitant rise in the role of the states. The administration achieved these effects by devolving federal authority to states and by reducing grant spending. Reagan's biggest cuts in federal aid outlays came in 1981; in subsequent years, total grant outlays began to rebound, increasing in nominal dollars to levels above those in the Carter years, though still below the high-water mark reached in 1978 in real terms. Medicaid, the largest federal aid program, accounts for most of the overall growth, masking cuts in operating and capital grant programs. Reagan's devolutionary and retrenchment policies are one of several factors we see as contributing to the rising role of states in domestic affairs, a trend we think is likely to continue in the next administration.     

Early Findings About the Newest New Federalism for Welfare

The article overviews initial findings from a multi-state studyon state implementation of the 1996 welfare reforms. Statesare responding to a law that is somewhat contradictory: it grantsthe states greatly increased fiscal flexibility at the sametime that it sets extensive and elaborate new behavioral requirements.Among the initial findings, one of the surprises is the degreeto which the 1996 reform has promoted "second-order devolution"from states to localities. It has also reinforced and heightenedthe emphasis on "work first, " placing people in jobs as thefirst step in the welfare process with states developing a varietyof innovative approaches in this regard. The most crucial challengenow is the creation of information systems to manage state andlocal welfare and social programs and to track recipients bothduring the time and after they receive cash benefits and socialservices.     

Transportation of Korean Slave Laborers During World War II: Kanfu Ferries

Japan was more dependent upon ocean shipping than any other major power during World War II, and the sea route had been the only means of transportation between Korea and Japan. The connecting steamers contributed to Japan’s wartime economy by transporting not only raw materials, but also forced laborers and sex slaves between Korea and Japan. More importantly, these connecting steamers were linked to railroads and land routes in Korea and were connected to various systems of transportation, including merchant ships and regular liners outside Japan. In this paper, we examine how Korean laborers and sex slaves were mobilized and transported from Korea to Japan during World War II by focusing on the interdependent relations between railroad-connecting ships and a travel agency.