Financing Transport Infrastructure: The Effects of Institutional Durability in French and American Policymaking

This article compares the finance of transportation infrastructure in France and the United States in order to test the concept of institutional durability as an intervening variable that can account for different patterns of industrial development. Institutional durability is defined as the degree to which the fiscal norms and principles established in agreements between government, industry, and financial investors go on to exert influence over subsequent attempts to reorder the allocation of collective economic burdens and benefits. Two historical episodes of infrastructure development, mid-19th century railroad construction and the creation of inter-city highways between the First and Second World Wars, will be evaluated to identify and differentiate the effect of institutional durability upon American and French transportation policy.
French infrastructure finance is shown to exhibit a limited institutional durability which has facilitated the historical adjustment of both rail and road infrastructure along convergent fiscal terms. US infrastructure development is seen to possess a much greater institutional durability which has encouraged the divergence of fiscal arrangements set up at different periods of time. The resulting accumulation of incompatible and often competitive arrangements appears to have locked the US into conflicting means of transport development that make a fiscally coherent transportation policy very difficult to achieve. No such institutional obstacle emerges in French transport policy where the terms of macroeconomic decision-making are seen to be integrated.     

What Ministers Do

Having been a minister in three different departments for a period of over nine years (1999–2008), during the Blair and, briefly, the Brown governments, I thought it might be useful to reflect on what ministers actually do, their functions and how they spend their days. In thinking about what I did as a minister, I have avoided going back to some of the classic constitutional texts on what ministers supposedly do, how they are accountable and such like. I am sure there is good literature on this from political scientists and constitutionalists, but I have avoided influencing my own views and approach by consulting these texts.     

After Bananas: The IMF and the Politics of Stabilisation and Diversification in Dominica

Dominica was the quintessential banana island but now faces a major turning point in its history caused by the changing position of this crop within the global political economy. As the decline of its banana industry generated a major economic crisis, it was forced in 2002 to make a desperate turn towards the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It has remained under IMF supervision ever since, but has at last begun to chart the bases of a post‐banana development strategy under the leadership of Roosevelt Skerrit, projected into the leadership of his country at an early age by the death of his predecessor but since re‐elected to office in May 2005.     

The Rise and Fall of New Labour

The world is rapidly evolving on many fronts. Brazil, Turkey and other emerging powers are taking their own initiatives and building their own global links outside the old frameworks of the G‐8, the United Nations Security Council and NATO. The “third way” politics of Tony Blair that embraced globalization from the left of center in Britain has given way to the Tory party once again. Just as recovery from the financial crash seemed on the horizon, Europe's sovereign debt crisis has erupted. The historically unprecedented pace and scale of urbanization in China is transforming the politics of the Communist Party. President Lula of Brazil, former US treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Singapore's foreign minister George Yeo and others take stock of these manifold developments.     

Delegating to the Quango: Ex Ante and Ex Post Ministerial Constraints

This article examines delegation in the environment of quasi‐governmental, special purpose bodies. Better known as “quangos,” these agencies present a challenge for the theory of delegation, because their tasks are often comprised of routine administration, such as the distribution of benefits and the collection of user fees, rather than more politically salient policymaking. Do (spatial) policy conflict and legislative capacity affect the conditions under which authority is delegated to quangos? What effect do “good government” ideology and legislative capacity have on the presence of ex ante and ex post control over quangos? Theoretical predictions are examined with data from a study of Dutch public bodies as well as issue scales from the Manifesto Research Group. Multinomial logit statistical models produce evidence that although policy conflict and legislative capacity measures affect the probabilities of enacting both ex ante and ex post controls, their contributions to ex post measures, as expected in the presence of important hidden action incentives, are much stronger.     

Citizenship and the Constitution

The status of “British subjects”, the relationship between the individual and the State, and the concept of “rights” and “liberties” are relevant to the current political debate about “British identity”, citizenship, “multiculturalism”, a “British Bill of Rights”, and whether there is now a need for a written constitution. This article describes the confused contemporary understanding of what is meant by “British” citizenship and analyses the parallel developments of citizenship and our constitutional arrangements. The Human Rights Act, devolution and Gordon Brown's proposed constitutional renewal are important steps in setting out the ideas and principles that bind us together as a nation. Together with a coherent definition of the rights and obligations of British citizenship, constitutional reform would achieve a stronger sense of what it means to be British today.