Negotiating chile's entry to nafta: trade and investment issues

In December 1994, the United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed in principle to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Chile at the Summit of the Americas. This paper examines Chile's accession to NAFTA with special reference to key issues in the negotiations. It discusses the rationale for extending NAFTA to Chile from the U.S. and Chilean perspectives. The study also examines how NAFTA negotiators may address issues such as trade and investment rules, technical standards, dispute settlement obligations, intellectual property rights, phase-in periods, and labor and environmental standards.     

Organizational loyalty and personal ethics: The moral priorities of Chinese cadres

The ethical norms of senior cadres in the Peoples Republic of China are examined with respect to personal ethics, organizational loyalty and social responsibility. The extent to which one of these sets of norms may take priority over the other is investigated using survey research. The personal ethical values of the 46-50 age group are found to be unusually acute for a group of middle-aged administrators, much closer to those of the younger cadres. Also, they demonstrate exceptional homogeneity in their responses as compared to other age groups. However, they appear to have little independence of conscience when confronted with concrete decision making situations. Loyalty to the organization is found to be particularly dominant over personal ethics and responsibility to the larger society among these 46-50 year-old cadres. Lacking a moral anchor in any foundational philosophy or ideology, these cadres are highly vulnerable to control by the bureaucracies in which they are employed. Further research is suggested to explore the possibility that the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 may have impacted this particular generation of cadres in ways that severed their ties to Marxism and traditional Chinese values rooted in Confucianism.     

The impact of tax structures on deficits: tax elasticity and fiscal illusion in sixteen oecd countries

This paper represents the first systematic attempt to link revenue structure to deficits cross-nationally. Recent analyses of the causes of increased budget deficits in the industrialized countries have focused on the factors that influence government spending, ignoring the possibility that chronic deficits might also be caused by shortfalls in revenue. In this research, using data from sixteen OECD countries during the period 1959-1990, we test hypotheses regarding the linkage between a country's revenue structure and its experience with deficits. We find evidence that countries heavily dependent on direct taxes had more difficulty keeping spending and revenues in line, particularly during times of high unemployment. We find no evidence, however, of a “fiscal illusion” impact on deficits.     

Waging Lawfare: Law,Environment and Depoliticization in Neoliberal Australia

ABSTRACT

When environmental NGOs in Australia successfully sued the nation’s environment minister in August 2015 to temporarily withhold environmental approval for Australia’s largest coal mine, the ruling Coalition government accused environmentalists of waging “lawfare.” Through a critical discourse analysis of Parliamentary debate and media coverage, this article explores the lawfare battles fought in Australia in 2015, arguing that these were a site of depoliticization, in Mouffe’s (2005, Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. Abingdon: Routledge) sense of the term. By exploring how the question of legal regulation of coal mining was rationalized, moralized, and stripped of significant political or ideological differences, this seeks to add to our understanding of processes of depoliticization by considering metadiscourses concerning “the law.”     

Teaching Foreign Policy with Memoirs

Excerpts from the memoirs of high foreign policy officials, if carefully selected and structured, can be a valuable resource in the teaching of diplomatic history, American foreign policy, and international relations. Two decades of teaching a memoirs-only course to mid-career military officers and foreign affairs professionals in a seminar discussion format reveals many of their advantages. Memoirs are interesting reading that rarely fail to engage a reader's attention; they impart detailed knowledge of historical events; they provide a rich understanding of process and the neglected area of policy implementation; like case studies, they let students build vicarious experience in policymaking and execution; and they often provide what Alexander George called "policy-relevant generalizations." While lack of objectivity can be a serious drawback of first-person accounts, it provides its own lessons on the nature of history and can be offset by using multiple accounts of the same events and by combining memoirs with documents and historical works, or countering analytical studies. Although picking the most interesting and worthwhile excerpts, getting them in students' hands, and accommodating their length within the boundaries of a standard college course are additional challenges, professors who take them on should find that memoirs add a new level of excitement and realism to their courses.     

Managing Prisoners as Problem Populations and the Evolving Nature of Imprisonment: A Convict Perspective

This article employs a convict perspective toexamine the evolving nature of imprisonment inthe United States. Drawing from the prisonliterature, and placed within the politicaleconomy of the wider society, it utilizespersonal accounts of the author (an ex-convict)and his interactions with prisoners to providea critical look at the changing structures,inequities, and hierarchical social relationsof the prison system and their effect on thelives of people behind bars.