Buying treaties with cigarettes: Internal side‐payments in two level games

Two‐level games models predict that domestic division within a state can alter the extent to which that state is able to reach agreements with other states, and also alter the content of any agreement that is reached. I extend the model by introducing internal side‐payments composed of unrelated domestic issues. Domestic opposition to an international agreement will inhibit cooperation most when the executive and median legislators are in relative agreement about other salient domestic political issues. Domestic opposition to an international agreement will inhibit cooperation least when the executive and median legislators are in relative disagreement about other salient domestic political issues. U.S. ratifications of the NAFTA and the Chemical Weapons Convention illustrate that not all types of domestic division inhibit international cooperation—some can facilitate it     

Reflections on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion 50 Years After Publication of The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society

In The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson in 1967 acknowledged the influential role that prosecutors play but lamented the fact that their highly discretionary charging and plea bargaining decisions were often made haphazardly and inconsistently. The Commission called for more transparency and accountability in charging and plea bargaining processes. I examine the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the 50 years since the publication of the Commission's report, with a focus on the results of research and changes in policy and practice. Although the charging and plea bargaining processes have not been subject to the type of scholarly scrutiny directed at judges’ sentencing decisions, the research that has been published in the past several decades has become more theoretically grounded, methodologically sophisticated, and transdisciplinary. In terms of policy, decisions handed down by the Supreme Court since the 1960s have provided some minimal regulation of charging and plea bargaining, and the reforms embraced by state and federal prosecutors have affected the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.     

The changing political economy of Taiwan‐Southeast Asia relations

This paper examines the possibility that the United States could ‘capture’ the Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and use it to impose America's economic agenda on the region. It discusses Washington's ability to shape the choices of APEC's East Asian members at APEC negotiations to reflect US interests through employing its military, economic, cultural, and ideological resources as instruments of leverage and influence. While interdependence constrains Washington's use of military and/or economic leverage to influence the choices of APEC's East Asian members, the complex bargaining and consensual decision‐making features of APEC further prevent Washington from imposing its agenda on APEC. On the other hand, Washington's capture of APEC could be facilitated if East Asian policy‐making elites were socialized through the APEC process to accept American norms. This would tend to lead to preference convergence since the values of both the US and East Asia would coincide. The analysis suggests, however, that American norms are unlikely to prevail within APEC in the near to medium term primarily because APEC's East Asian members consider East Asian norms to be superior. American culture and especially ideology are not sufficiently attractive to East Asian elites and are thus unable to be used as instruments of influence. For these reasons, the paper concludes that the United States will find it difficult to impose its economic agenda on the region through APEC.     

Discourses on Poverty: emerging perspectives on a caring economy

In The Real Wealth of Nations, Eisler proposes a holistic view of the economy, which would include the caring sectors—the household, unpaid community work and the environment—as an alternative to market-oriented economic models that have proven ineffective in dealing with the problems facing our local and global communities. Her inclusion of language change as part of a strategy for economic transformation implicitly recognises the socially constitutive function of discourse, a notion put forth by critical linguists. Based on these economic and linguistic perspectives, this article reports on a study that examined the social knowledge about poverty constructed through selected discourses to determine whether they communicate a narrow or holistic view of the economy. It proposes that economic planning for poverty reduction build upon the process of language change towards a caring economy as revealed by the study.     

Six Deadly Flaws

Following publication of the Brahimi Report on the future of UN Peacekeeping Operations under Chapter 6 of the UN Charter, the author, a former Operations Officer with UNTSO-OGL on the Israeli-Lebanon border, casts a critical eye over the report's recommendations and identifies areas that raise some concern.     

From contention to social bargaining: labour unions and democratic consolidation in Spain

The main objective of this article is to examine how the links between trade unions and affiliated political parties of the left influenced the strategies of labour during the transition and the early years of democracy in Spain. It argues that political partisanship is a key factor for understanding the unions' strategies. After a period of intense labour conflict during the transition to democracy, labour mobilization decreased and Spain's unions and other social actors initiated distinctive processes of social bargaining, starting in 1979. The central argument is that the relationship of unions and political parties in the authoritarian and transition periods was a major factor in conditioning strategies in the post-authoritarian period. In the end, the consolidation of Spanish democracy has led to the strengthening of the main trade unions. Contrary to what happened in other historical periods they used this power to contribute to governability and the consolidation of the new democratic regime.     

Determinants of cabinet size

A large literature examines the composition of cabinets in parliamentary systems, but very little attention has been paid to the size of those cabinets. Yet not only is the size of the cabinet related to the division of portfolios that may take place, cabinet size is also related to policy outcomes. In this article, a theory of party size is considered which examines how coalition bargaining considerations, intra‐party politics and efficiency concerns affect the size of cabinets. Hypotheses derived from the theory are examined using an extensive cross‐national dataset on coalition governments which allows us to track changes in cabinet size and membership both across and within cabinets.     

“讨价还价”的背后——对现行市场销售模式的法理批判

当今,讨价还价已经成为市场销售的主要模式。讨价还价虽然与自愿和公平有联系,但并不反映自愿与公平;相反,讨价还价与欺诈联系在一起。从效率的角度看,讨价还价也不能反映真实的市场供需关系;相反,它极大地增加了市场的交易成本以及政府的决策成本和管理成本,也抑制了供应商的生产积极性。商品的价格不只是人与自然的关系,更反映了人与人之间的关系,因此,商品价格的确定就不只在于效率,更在于公平。商品价格的公平性就在于成本加合理利润,因此,成本与利润信息的充分披露可以保证消费者在讨价还价中免于欺诈。集团购买以及标准合同也在一定程度可以弥补消费者讨价还价能力的不足。而作为消除讨价还价的销售模式最为有效也最为现实的办法,莫过于以明码实价的方式代替明码标价的规定。对此,政府的价格调控措施必须有所作为。     

Negotiating Effective International Environmental Agreements: Is an Objective Approach to Differential Treatment Possible?

The negotiation of international environmental agreements is rendered less effective and more costly than necessary on account of the incentives for rent seeking. This article argues that the problem of rent seeking in this context is complicated by the legitimate demand for the differential treatment of relevant heterogeneity, when insufficient information is available to distinguish between demands based on legitimate differences and rent-seeking. In order to reduce the overall costliness of the totality of international resource agreements, the general rule should be that differential treatment should be provided only in exceptional circumstances. A corollary to this rule is that differences that do not affect future negotiating costs may be considered in current negotiations. This points to differences that are exogenous to the bargaining process, such as a country's physical location. It is argued that development status of a country is another such factor, since the incentives to pursue development are unlikely to be affected by its recognition in current negotiations. Furthermore, the failure to recognise development status as a legitimate basis for differentiated treatment implicitly rewards the early identification and exploitation of unmanaged resources. Restriction of differential treatment to a small number of such differences enables the focusing of negotiations, and the structuring of discussions. A case study of the Montreal Protocol illustrates how the differential impacts of a uniform standard may be estimated, once the range of impacts is delimited.     

Trade Unions and Employment Relations in Italy during the Economic Crisis

Abstract

Many of the usual assumptions about the impact of the economic crisis on trade unions and employment relations only partially fit the Italian case. Trade unions during the crisis showed resilience both organisationally and as important actors in economic and political life. Also, the national industry level reaffirmed itself as the key level in industrial relations. Explanations of these unexpected outcomes have to do with some features of all three actors of Italian employment relations. Trade unions have become over time a relevant actor not just in the industrial relations arena but in several other spheres of Italian society and politics. As to employers, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have tended to prefer national sectoral-level agreements and set rather low wage standards, while employers’ associations have shown an organisational interest in preserving centralised bargaining where they play a role. Finally, governments have been too weak and short-lived to follow a consistent strategy of unilateral decision-making.