‘At least 2001’: US security policy and exit strategy in Bosnia

This article describes and analyzes the United States’ security conduct in Bosnia since the Dayton Accords of November 1995, and its involvement in the multilateral conflict resolution and peacebuilding effort. From this analysis, the conclusion is that it will be difficult for the US to exit from its engagement in Bosnia. Various explanations are offered for the formulation of American policy: norms and values, alliance politics and the role of NATO, bureaucratic and congressional influence, as well as presidential leadership. The most important factor remains affirmation of US leadership to make the peacebuilding mission in Bosnia a successful one.     

Honesty in Environmental Compliance Games

This note investigates the consequences of honesty in a compliance game involving polluting firms and an environmental agency. Two enforcement schemes with or without self-reporting of behavior are considered. First, we show that non intervention may become optimal when the proportion of honest polluters is large enough but still inferior to one. Secondly, the increase in the number of honest polluters has striking ambiguous effects on pollution and social welfare. Indeed, we give examples in which an increase in the proportion of honest polluters leads to an increase in the number of non compliant polluters or a decrease in social welfare.     

Evaluation in France,a Component of Territorial Public Action

Evaluation practices developed in France, especially by local authorities and above all by regional councils, provide an interesting opportunity to examine from the inside the way public policies are constructed. Taking evaluation practices seriously as a subject of study reminds us, in a way, of the necessary empiricism needed to analyse public policies. At a time when this discipline experiences, at least in France, a surge in conceptual proposals, the point of view expressed here aims to point out the necessary modesty we have to show in the face of the complexity of the subjects studied and of the usefulness of evaluation practices to explain territorial public policies.