Remembering Bill Niskanen: pursuing economics as a public science in the service of liberty

This short essay is a memorial piece about William A. Niskanen (13 March 1933–26 October 2011). The essay starts with his time at the University of Chicago in the mid-1950s, and gives most attention to his contributions to public choice. Especial attention is paid to his Bureaucracy and Representative Government, which opened vast territory for subsequent analytical exploration. A good deal of attention is also paid to his Autocratic, Democratic, and Optimal Government because this work both conveys his interest in comparative constitutional analysis and is useful for illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of his approach to this material.     

Negotiating a Place for ‘Sustainability’ Policies in Municipal Planning and Governance: The Role of Scalar Discourses and Practices

The widespread adoption of sustainability agendas in urban contexts has opened a now well-recognised ‘policy space’ linking sustainability principles with urban development and local politics. Central to these enquiries is a focus on the need to spatialise debates on sustainable urban development by examining the scales at which locally grounded tensions are resolved. Using a case study set in the City of Vancouver, Canada, this article shows how the adoption of one specific sustainability policy—food policy—was enabled by specific reframings of the scale at which it was assumed to be most appropriately situated, and shows how new strategies for co-ordinating governance at and between scales were deployed.     

The Measurement of Adolescent Psychological Health: One or Two Dimensions?

Psychological health in adult populations has been conceptualized as being comprised of two distinct, though related, dimensions: well-being and distress. Research into adolescent psychological health, however, has been dominated by a single factor approach with well-being and distress defining opposite ends of this continuum. Measures of psychological health were administered to 345 late adolescents. A series of confirmatory factor analyses supported an oblique two-factor model of psychological health with measures of anxiety and negative affect defining a distress construct and measures of positive affect, satisfaction with life, and happiness defining a well-being construct. A measure of depression loaded on both well-being and distress. It is concluded that although these two dimensions are highly correlated, they are distinguishable in adolescent samples. It is suggested that to avoid confusion in the literature authors should take more care in labeling the aspects of psychological health that they wish to assess.     

A Secret Police: The Lasting Impact of the 1986 FOIA Amendments

The 1986 Freedom of Information Act amendments were passed as a last-minute rider to Reagan-era War on Drugs legislation. The three pieces – a broad restructuring of Exemption 7, the law enforcement exemption; the addition of exclusions for law enforcement and intelligence requests; and introduction of a new fee structure – have had a lasting impact on FOIA implementation and contribute to the contemporary inability to affect police transparency. Review of the 1986 FOIA amendments’ legislative history documents the White House’s determination to loosen law enforcement oversight and congressional appeals to exaggerated fears of illicit drug users. The study considers the effect on judicial interpretation of Exemption 7, exploring decisions before and after the amendments, while also analyzing FOIA use and implementation patterns through a dataset of annual reports from 1975 until present. The analysis reveals a sharp increase in Exemption 7 claims and “no records” responses, both attributable to the 1986 FOIA amendments.