Environmental policy implications of investor-state arbitration under NAFTA Chapter 11

Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement requires governments to treat foreign investors the same as domestic investors, to afford them international standards of due process of law, and to compensate investors for any actions that expropriate their investments or are “tantamount” to expropriation. It allows foreign investors to submit compensation claims to international arbitration. To the alarm of the environmental community, four of the early Chapter 11 claims involved challenges to government measures that were, or appeared to be, environmental protection measures. The first three of the four claimants ultimately received compensation; the fourth claim was denied as being outside the scope of Chapter 11. This paper takes an in-depth look at the circumstances of these four claims to determine whether the claimants had thwarted or avoided bona fide environmental protection measures and to try to assess whether these claims have “chilled” government imposition of new environmental measures. The facts of the cases and developments subsequently indicate that the government actions in the first three cases were not truly environmental protection measures, but were motivated by local political and economic considerations. The fourth claim, which involved a bona fide environmental protection, was rightly rejected. Meanwhile the number of “environmental” claims under Chapter 11 has dwindled. The paper concludes that environmentalists have little ground for alarm, and much reason to be encouraged, about how Chapter 11 has influenced environmental protection.

PARENT PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AND REDUCING THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF INTERPARENTAL CONFLICT FOLLOWING DIVORCE

This article reviews psychoeducational programs to reduce interparental conflict in divorcing families and the negative impact of conflict on children. The authors initially identify factors shown in the basic psychosocial research literature to be related to the effects of interparental conflict on children. They then review the content of programs currently being delivered and evaluate the evidence from well-controlled studies concerning their effectiveness. Finally, the article considers directions for future program development and evaluation.     

Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation

Unelected officials with coercive powers (e.g., police, prosecutors, bureaucrats) vary markedly in the extent to which citizens view their actions as legitimate. We explore the institutional determinants of legitimate authority in the context of a public goods laboratory experiment. In the experiment, an “authority” can target one “citizen” for punishment following citizen contribution choices. Untargeted citizens can then choose to help or hinder the authority. This latter choice may be interpreted as a behavioral measure of the authority's legitimacy. We find that legitimacy is affected by how authorities are compensated, the transparency with which their decisions are observed, and an interaction between these. When transparency is high, citizens are more willing to assist authorities who receive fixed salaries than those who personally benefit from collected penalties, even when citizens' material incentives are controlled for. Lower transparency reduces support, but only for salaried enforcers.     

Does Membership on the UN Security Council Influence Voting in the UN General Assembly?

Recent studies report that temporary members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the IMF, the World Bank, or in US foreign aid in exchange for their political support for permanent members. Nevertheless, few studies have examined whether this favorable treatment and these benefits have actually made any significant changes in the member states’ voting behavior in the United Nations. To explore this question, we investigate whether membership on the UN Security Council influences a state’s voting in the UN General Assembly. In the analysis of panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1946 to 2008, the empirical results show that elected members of the UN Security Council tend to behave similarly with permanent members, especially with the United States, as the number of loan programs signed with the IMF and the World Bank increases. Also, US foreign aid significantly increases temporary members’ vote coincidence with the United States and other permanent members. In this regard, this article contributes to our understanding of state voting behavior and power politics in international organizations.     

A Rigorous Quasi‐Experimental Design to Evaluate the Causal Effect of a Mandatory Divorce Education Program

All couples with minor children who filed for divorce within a specific 6‐week period (N = 191 couples) in one jurisdiction were ordered to attend a divorce education program. The control group included about 20 couples randomly selected from each of six 6‐week intervals before and six 6‐week intervals after the treatment interval (N = 243 couples). Archival records were searched for variables such as legal and residential custody award, visitation percentage, and relitigation. The impact of the program was assessed by evaluating, for each variable, whether the data for program interval departed from the straight (regression) line drawn through all the control group intervals. Only the visitation time award significantly differed: 27.75% for treatment couples and 22.46% for control couples. Analyses show that the father's attendance at the program primarily accounts for the difference.

Key Points for the Family Court Community
• There are considerable methodological weaknesses in most of the existing evaluations of divorcing parent education programs.
• Stronger, more scientifically rigorous—and thus persuasive—designs are possible in court settings, such as the regression discontinuity quasi‐experimental design we feature here.
• Archival records, such as various court filings, are a rich and relatively untapped source of data.
• Being mandated to attend a single 2‐hour divorcing parent education class caused an increase in the visitation time award in divorce decrees.
• There is a disconnect between being mandated by a judge to attend a program and actual attendance.

     

EFFECTS OF FATHER AND MOTHER PARENTING ON CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH IN HIGH‐ AND LOW‐CONFLICT DIVORCES

This article studied the relations of children's mental health problems to the warmth of their relationship with their noncustodial father and custodial mother and the level of conflict between the parents. Using a sample of 182 divorcing families, multiple regression was used to test the independent effect of father warmth, mother warmth, and interparental conflict. Results indicated that father warmth and mother warmth were both independently related to lower child‐externalizing problems. However, the relations between mother and child warmth and child‐internalizing problems were different as a function of interparental conflict and level of warmth with the other parent. Implications for court practices and policies are discussed.     

Quantitative Leverage Through Qualitative Knowledge: Augmenting the Statistical Analysis of Complex Causes

Social scientific theories frequently posit that multiple causalmechanisms may produce the same outcome. Unfortunately, it isnot always possible to observe which mechanism was responsible.For example, IMF scholars conjecture that nations enter IMFagreements both out of economic need and for discretionary domesticpolitical reasons. Typically, though, all we observe is thefact of agreement, not its cause. Partial observability probitmodels (Poirier 1980, Journal of Econometrics 12:209–217; Braumoeller2003, Political Analysis 11:209–233) provide one methodfor the statistical analysis of such phenomena. Unfortunately,they are often plagued by identification and labeling difficulties.Sometimes, however, qualitative studies of particular casesenlighten us about causes when quantitative studies cannot.We propose exploiting this information to lend additional structureto the partial observability approach. Monte Carlo simulationreveals that by anchoring "discernible" causes for a handfulof cases about which we possess qualitative information, weobtain greater efficiency. More important, our method provesreliable at recovering unbiased parameter estimates when thepartial observability model fails. The paper concludes withan analysis of the determinants of IMF agreements.

A member shall be entitled to purchase the currencies of othermembers from the Fund ...[provided] the member represents thatit has a need to make the purchase because of its balance ofpayments or its reserve position or developments in its reserves. —InternationalMonetary Fund Articles of Agreement [IMF] negotiations sometimesenable government leaders to do what they privately wish todo, but are powerless to do domestically. —Robert Putnam(1988, p. 457)