Assessing China's Rise and US Leadership in Asia—growing maturity and balance

The common prediction in media and specialist commentary during much of the past decade was that Asia was adjusting to an emerging China-centered order and US influence was in decline. Over time, it became clearer that developments in the region showed a more complex reality. A growing contingent of scholars and specialists looked beyond accounts that inventoried China's strengths and US weaknesses and carefully considered other factors, including Chinese limitations and US strengths, before making their overall judgments. These more comprehensive and balanced assessments tempered sometimes alarming implications of earlier predictions of China's rise and decline in US leadership. This article reviews the evolution over the past decade of media and specialist assessments of China's rise and its implications for US leadership in Asia in order to draw lessons from this evolution in analysis and what the lessons might mean for future assessments of China's increasing role in Asian and world affairs.     

Do state balanced budget requirements matter? Testing two explanatory frameworks

Balanced budget requirements (BBRs) affect all aspects of financial operations. Previous studies relied on characterizations that highlight a constitutional-statutory distinction. Hou and Smith (Public Budgeting & Finance 26(3):22–45, 2006) instead propose a political-technical construct. This article uses probit estimation, six measures of balance, and long panels to test which framework offers more explanatory power. The findings suggest that BBRs matter to varying degrees. Technical requirements exert bigger effects than political ones, the effects are more obvious on narrower than broader measures of balance and in the later phases of the budget cycle, and the political-technical construct offers more explanatory power than the constitutional-statutory distinction.     

Linking coalition attitudes and split-ticket voting: The Scottish Parliament elections of 2007

The Scottish Parliament elections of 2007 were the third to be held under the country’s mixed-member proportional system. As voters continue to adapt to the new system, we explore two aspects of its use: i) preferences for coalitions as opposed to single-party government, and ii) ticket-splitting. The two are considered together for two reasons. First, both can be seen as manifestations of a preference for multiple parties, and as a result they share a number of likely predictors in common. In empirical practice, however, we find that rather different factors predict the two variables: ticket-splitting looks to be based on strategic partisan or ideological calculation, whereas coalition attitudes are less about partisan interests and more about an overall view of the kind of policies and politics delivered by coalitions. Second, there is potential for a causal connection between our two dependent variables, and indeed we do find clear evidence of such an attitude–behaviour link: some voters appear to split their ticket precisely because they would prefer a coalition.     

Why the Fair Use Doctrine Should be Eliminated

The concept of fair use was introduced in the Copyright Act of 1976 as a means of allowing limited free access to copyrighted material. However, the application of fair use principles in the adjudication of infringement cases has demonstrated a fundamental problem in our approach to intellectual property rights. In much the same way as Hardin recognized a tragedy of the commons, continued efforts to make decisions based on the fair use doctrine run the risk of creating an information anti-commons.     

Does price really converge among provinces in Canada？ A study using unit root tests for cross-sectional panels

This paper examines price convergences across different provinces in Canada using 1983-2006 data. We adopt the new panel unit root tests for analysis that can correct for cross-sectional correlation. Our findings are contrary to previous studies and we conclude that intra-national price convergence does not occur. We also briefly discuss the reasons for the absence of convergence within Canada.     

Measuring Delegation

Principal-agent analyses of delegation to international organizations have advanced our understanding of international cooperation through institutions. However, broader tests of why and when states delegate are not possible without a clear means for objectively identifying and measuring delegation. This paper develops a metric for delegation based upon the services the agent provides to its principals and the resources and autonomy it has to provide those services. This numerical metric is continuous and generalizable to a wide variety of principal-agent relationships. This paper then demonstrates the face validity of the measure with case studies of delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The paper concludes with a test of Realist and Institutionalist hypotheses for cooperation using the delegation metric, demonstrating the complexity of the underlying reasons we observe delegation.