Urban policy perspectives in the U.S.A.: An extension of the Yarmolinsky option

Building on a suggestion by Adam Yarmolinsky that the Federal American government insure the equity that homeowners have developed in their property, we suggest some additional elements which would make a more complete urban policy package. Educational opportunity is seen as a critical element in property value within the American context and any scheme such as Yarmolinsky suggests needs to take into account the fact that house price reflects heavily the general judgment of the quality of the school to which that residence has access. Hence, a stabilization of the housing market is heavily dependent upon an equalization of educational opportunity. Two ideas to this end are suggested. One, the school parity adjustment, would grant funds directly to the school district, generally in inverse proportion to the assessed property valuation, and consistent with the funding required for a quality education. The second notion, the urban tax credit would help to rectify the desirability of suburban locations for parents of school age children by giving them tax credits for living in the city, and in effect, equalizing the subsidy which the government already provides suburban dwellers through insuring the school-inflated value of their property through Mortgage Insurance.     

INVESTING IN PEOPLE

Education and training may be the single most important elements of a national revitalization strategy. In spite of their importance, public policies which address the major issues in education and training do not exist for the most part. Where policies do exist, they are founded on incorrect premises or are made inappropriate by incompatible policies in other domains. This paper attempts to identify the problems and offers solutions to the issue of education and training.     

Non-global social contracts: A note on inefficient social institutions

This paper explores some perverse features that can emerge when social contracts are moved from a social vacuum to a setting of social interdependence. In particular we note incentives that might exist in conjunction with externality problems that yield situations in which: (1) social contracts reduce social wealth; (2) sub-global social contracts are Pareto inferior to the absence of social contracts; (3) there are no incentives for global social contracts. While previous works emphasized the benefits of contracts, this paper focuses on their costs. A conclusion reached is that perhaps justice and efficiency demand not a single global social contract but rather a rich melange of sub-global contracts with appropriate interstices of anarchy.     

Canadian Federalism, The Charter of Rights, and the 1984 Election

The federal election of 1984 may prove to be a critical eventin the evolution of Canadian federalism. The election createda political climate favorable to a restructuring of the Canadianpolitical agenda away from the "territorial politics" that hasdominated it for several decades, toward a politics of national,non territorial issues. Such a transformation of the politicalagenda had been sought by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau,which saw the new Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms as amechanism for promoting a more national politics. The climateof intergovernmental confrontation that characterized the Trudeauera, however, may very well have undermined the Charter's nationalunity potential. Ironically, that potential is more likely tobe realized under the Mulroney Conservatives than it would havebeen under a continuation of the Trudeau regime.     

Nonverbal displays and political leadership in France and the United States

Because contemporary theories of politics discuss the appeal of leaders primarily in verbal terms, it is often difficult to go beyond anecdotes when explaining the effects of televized appearances of leaders and candidates. Experimental studies of the way American viewers respond to televized excerpts of leaders were replicated in France shortly before the legislative elections of March 1986, using comparable expressive displays of Laurent Fabius (then Social Prime Minister), Jacques Chirac (Gaullist Mayor of Paris who became Prime Minister), and Jean Marie LePen (head of the Front Nationale). Although the results show striking similarities in the system of nonverbal behavior in France and the United States, there are cultural differences in the role of anger/threat (which elicits more positive responses from French viewers than Americans) as well as variations in the evocative character of the facial displays of individual leaders. These experimental findings clarify recent discussions concerning the evolution of the French party system, providing insights into the role of political culture as well as leadership style in the media age.     

Political deadlocks and distributional information: The value of the veil

Contractarian normative theory relies on the veil of ignorance construct to generate the political consensus required for its theories of justice. By eliminating distributional information, the veil is presumed to facilite consensus building by reducing conflict over the distributional effects of proposed constitutional rules or institutions. This paper explores the extent to which excessive distributional information might also impede the ordinary day-to-day decision making of democratic institutions. Our analysis suggests that distributive information makes political deadlocks under majority rule more likely. Statistical evidence suggests that the efficacy of the U.S. Congress has been reduced by the dramatic increase in distributional information made available to it over the past twenty five years.The authors would like to thank an anonymous referee and the participants of the Center for Study of Public Choice Luncheon Work Shop for helpful comments and suggestions. Helpful comments were also provided by Bruce Benson and Z.A. Spindler at the 1988 meeting of the Public Choice Society. We also wish to thank Jack Triplett for providing us with a pre-publication copy of the page proofs of his piece on computer price indices.     

Socialism,political ideas and the labour party

Nicholas Ellison, Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics. Retreating Visions, (Routledge, London 1994). 272pp. ISBN 0–415–06972–6 (hb).

Eric Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979. Crisis and Transformation, (Routledge, London 1994). 276pp. ISBN 0–415–05614–4 (hb), 0–415–05615–2 (pb).

Robin Archer, Economic Democracy. The Politics of Feasible Socialism, (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1995). 280pp. ISBN 0–19–827891–8 (hb).