Showing papers on "Legislation published in 1997"

Policing the Risk Society

Abstract: These fine books on aspects of law and criminality support the platitude that crime does not pay -- except for lawyers, criminologists and insurance companies. Canadian criminals put in more time in jail per dollar stolen in other countries, although these statistics predate the conviction of Alan Eagleson. Another statistic, even less likely to stir patriotic pride, is that Canadian youth, as Bernard Schissel points out, have the highest per capita rate of incarceration of any country in the world.If crime rates in Canada have dropped off in recent years, corresponding to the diminishing ratio of youth in the Canadian population, we still have a lot more lawyers. Prior to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians had less than half as many lawyers per capita as the Americans but now we approach two-thirds of the American ratio (Law and Markets 77-81) creating "the danger of supply-driven and socially harmful increases in litigation" (85). Virtually, all of the contributors to Law and Markets bemoan Canada's increasing litigiousness; none defend the very quality that brought one of Canada's most honoured citizens to jail. The Fraser Institute has brought together an interesting volume that seems to bear the message of Adam Egoyan's movie The Sweet Hereafter; namely, that lawyers as ambulance-chasers are bad news. Law and Markets is concerned not with corporate criminality but with the prospect that enterprising lawyers, instigating class action suits on contingency fees, will be able to dupe civil juries, and cut into profit margins. Indeed, Richard Hazelton, the CEO of Dow Corning which filed for bankruptcy because of the silicone breast implant suit, tells a cautionary tale for Canadian businesspeople.Contributors point out that jurors lack competence to assess the scientific and technical evidence about toxic emissions, risks to health, the relationship of causality and legal accountability; prejudices about dioxin spills may skew assessment of the personal injury caused by the spillage. The one exception to the anti-litigation view of the 17 contributors to Law and Markets is Mark Mattson, an environmental litigator, who argues convincingly that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act needs radical revision or abolition. Mattson argues that the federal government should either enforce environmental standards or leave private litigators like himself to engage in civil ligation against environmental polluters. Mattson recommends that public interest groups and their lawyers split the fine levied on the offending corporations or municipalities (135). While Mattson may conform to the Fraser Institute's policy on deregulation -- "It is government intervention that stands in the way of a public right to protect community resources" (136) -- his proposals would encourage litigation, diminish shareholder profits and raise citizens' taxes. If the aim of Canadian economic regulation is, as Konrad von Finckenstein puts it, "user-friendly regulation," we are led to conclude that deregulation and user-friendly regulation are not the same thing. If the conflicting interests of Richard Hazelton and Mark Mattson reveal the current contradictions of capitalism, we might also note that the provinces geographically and ideologically closest to the Fraser Institute (British Columbia and Alberta) are the most litigious, while New Brunswick are Newfoundland are least litigious (158-9).An exciting challenge for the Fraser Institute would be to take on the human rights legislation that emerged after the Second World War, arising from a combination of anti-Nazi principle, Keynesian welfarism and acceptance of wartime control of goods and services in the public interest. Since human rights codes abridge several common law rights, of property and contract, specifically the right of business to discriminate in favour of preferred employees, buyers, tenants and customers, the Institute's views on James Walker's compelling account of the role of human rights legislation in limiting racism in the Canadian marketplace would be illuminating. …

The Legislative Impact of Divided Government

Abstract: Theory: The best test of the impact of divided government on legislative gridlock is to examine seriously considered, potentially important legislation that failed to pass under conditions of divided and unified government. To do so requires separate analyses of legislation the president opposes and supports. Hypotheses: Divided government will be associated with the president opposing more legislation and with more legislation the president opposes failing to pass. It will not be associated with the president supporting less legislation or with more legislation the president supports failing to pass. Important legislation is more likely to fail to pass under divided government. Methods: We used regression analysis of the failure of legislation to pass and the relative success of legislation over the 1947-92 period. Results: Presidents oppose significant legislation more often under divided government, and much more important legislation fails to pass under divided government than under unified government. Furthermore, the odds of important legislation failing to pass are considerably greater under divided government. However, there seems to be no relationship between divided government and the amount of significant legislation the administration supports or that passes.

The Environmental Geochemistry of Mineral Deposits: Part A: Processes, Techniques, and Health Issues Part B: Case Studies and Research Topics

Abstract: Environmental issues have become important, if not critical, factors in the success of proposed mining projects worldwide. In an ongoing and intense public debate about mining and its perceived environmental impacts, the mining industry points out that there are many examples of environmentally responsible mining currently being carried out (e.g., Todd and Struhsacker, 1997). The industry also emphasizes that the majority of mining-environmental problems facing society today are legacies from the past when environmental consequences of mining were poorly understood, not regulated, or viewed as secondary in importance to societal needs for the resources being extracted. On the other hand, environmental organizations (e.g., Mineral Policy Center, 1999) point to recent environmental problems, such as those stemming from open-pit gold mining at Summitville, Colorado, in the late 1980s (see Summitville summaries in Posey et al., 1995; Danielson and Alms, 1995; Williams, 1995; Plumlee, 1999), or those associated with a 1998 tailings dam collapse in Spain (van Geen and Chase, 1998), as an indication that environmental problems (whether accidental or resulting from inappropriate practices) can still occur in modern mining. Recent legislation imposing a moratorium on new mining in Wisconsin, and banning new mining in Montana using cyanide heap-leach extraction methods further underscore the seriousness of the debate and its implications for mineral resource extraction. In this debate, one certainty exists: there will always be a need for mineral resources in developed and developing societies. Although recycling and substitution will help meet some of the worlds resource needs, mining will always be relied upon to meet the remaining needs. The challenge will be to continue to improve the ways in which mining is done so as to minimize its environmental effects. The earth, engineering, and life sciences (which we group here under the term “earth-system sciences,” or ESS for short) provide an ample toolkit that can be drawn upon in the quest for environmentally friendly mineral resource development. The papers in this two-part volume provide many details on tools in the scientific toolkit, and how these tools can be used to better understand, anticipate, prevent, mitigate, and remediate the environmental effects of mining and mineral processing. As with any toolkit, it is the professional’s responsibility to choose the tool(s) best suited to a specific job. By describing the tools now available, we do not mean to imply that all of these tools need even be considered at any given site, nor that

The threat to medical-records research.

Abstract: The potential for misuse of personal information by insurers and employers has heightened concern about the confidentiality of medical records. Despite the absence of documented abuses related to approved research projects,1 legislation has been passed in Minnesota that restricts access to medical records for research purposes, and similar measures are proposed in some federal legislation. Such restrictions pose an obvious threat to patient-oriented investigations, such as observational outcome studies, that are based on existing medical-records data and require personal identifiers to link initial interventions with ultimate results. Clinicians and patients alike mostly take for granted the availability of this information, . . .

Making Governments Plan: State Experiments in Managing Land Use

Abstract: "The message of this book is one of cautious optimism. New challenges to planning are coming forth...These have caused some state legislatures to be reluctant to create or strengthen comprehensive-planning requirements. We do not think that such challenges necessitate a dismantling of these requirements. Instead, they require stronger justification for governmental actions and more (rather than less) attention to the details of the design of state mandates."-from Making Governments Plan In the past fifty years the American landscape-urban, rural, and wild-has undergone significant change. Searching for ways of coping with this change, policy makers at the state and local levels have attempted to capture the benefits of development while avoiding the congestion, housing shortages, and environmental degradation that often accompany rapid changes in land use. Uncounted new methods-growth boundaries, subdivision exactions, impact fees-have been tried. At the forefront of the growth management movement, a handful of states have forged new systems of governance to link local policy more closely to state goals and to cajole (and sometimes coerce) cooperation among neighboring localities. In this path-breaking book, a team of scholars from five universities show how new experiments in growth management can reinvigorate land use planning and help local governments find new solutions to the problems caused by growth and change. Drawing on evidence from five states and scores of cities and counties, the authors show why the benefits of growth are not automatic. Much depends on how well states craft growth management legislation, how amply programs are funded, and how dedicated state officials are to working with localities. By building on these findings, they conclude, states and localities can improve their chances for coping successfully with land use change. Beyond these policy lessons, Making Governments Plan offers important theoretical insights on how to design intergovernmental programs more effectively and how to use local comprehensive plans to further policy objectives. This knowledge can, in turn, provide the foundation for further theoretical work and for extending the lessons of this book to other policy arenas. Published in cooperation with the Center for American Places, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935

Abstract: GORDON, Linda, PITIED BUT NOT ENTITLED: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935. New York: Free Press, 1994, 433 pp., $22.95 hardcover Reviewed by: HEATHER JON MARONEY * Gordon's multifactor historical analysis of the development of policy on female-headed households in the United States of America starts with a contemporary question: why is "welfare" (Aid to Dependent Children), designed by feminists, so bad for women and children? The study contributes to two debates: first, about the nature, mode and timing of the US welfare state; and second, about the utility of neo-institutionalist as opposed to society-centred perspectives to explain its origins. Gordon argues that there is a gendered (or "two channel") welfare state with origins in the nineteenth century, agrees with Barbara Nelson and Theda Skocpol that women activists helped shape it before they won political rights, but is critical of Skocpol's emphasis on the agency of state managers. She responds to the neo-institutionlist challenge with a detailed analysis of the influence of US state actors and political forms on the tortuous passage of legislation through the multi-layered Congressional committee structure, but still persuasively demonstrates that a whole range of actors in social movements and from class and race positions were crucial in its development. Gordon's work is engaged history. It asks readers to think critically about a two tier system which sharpens existing inequalities. The US has a privileged stream that provides universal, higher, federally administered benefits understood as rights or earned benefits (like contributory old age pensions) for social groups who are already better off (workers wit stable jobs, men, middle and business classes, and whites). In addition, a range of "welfare" provisions benefit the better off (tax deductions for education, interest on mortgages or children, corporate tax breaks) or everyone (parks, garbage collection or sewage collection and disposal). In contrast, the poorest groups, where single mothers, blacks and hispanics are over-represented, are part of a stigmatized stream of means and morals tested, state or locally administered, lower benefits that are seen to be unearned and undeserved and so easy targets for right wing cost-cutting and moralistic attack. Gordon pushes the issue of agency by inquiring about responsibility for historical actions. Mother's aid campaigns by white and to a lesser extent by black women were so influential that the 1935 Social Security Act, which still shapes provisions, simply added mothers' aid to new federal programmes. What, then, in the ideological stances, analysis and political position of welfare system designers led to its inadequacies? Most important was maternalist feminists' insistence on women's special qualities as mothers, in a "breadwinner-dependent wife" family, which bought into organized labour's demand for a "family wage" and sometimes conflicted with campaigns for better jobs and wages for women. …

Environmental Information and Market Reactions to Environmental Legislation

Abstract: Environmental issues have attracted national attention and are becoming a focus at many firms. This paper examines the relation between stock price reactions to the Superfund Amendments and Reautho...

Political Sources of Presidencialismo in Mexico

Abstract: INTRODUCTION Mexico has been characterized as having an exceptionally strong presidency. In no country in Latin America does the president appear to wield such wide-ranging powers. The president in Mexico dominates the legislative and judicial branches of the national government and directs a highly centralized federal system in which states and municipalities ultimately appear to be subject to rule from the center. There is no question that the president of Mexico exercises an extraordinary range of powers. He can reform the constitution by proposing amendments, which are frequently accepted by Congress with only cosmetic changes. He initiates virtually all legislation, which often is passed by Congress with dispatch. The president designates his own successor to the presidency and also nominates most of the congressional candidates of his party. He also often names the candidates of the official party for governor. He can have governors, mayors, and members of Congress removed from their posts. He designates members of his cabinet and can fire them at his leisure. The federal judicial branch is filled with his appointees, which leads to a compliant judiciary (see Garrido 1989:422–26). This image of a powerful presidency survives despite the fact that the Mexican constitution provides for an independent congress and judiciary and insists on separation of powers. Furthermore, the 1917 constitution is explicitly federal with regard to relations between the federal government and the states, and it provides for free municipal government. How in fact is the president of Mexico so powerful?

National Competition Policy

Abstract: National competition policy is having a major effect on Australian industry. The Hilmer committee recommendations on infrastructure access, competitive neutrality, restructuring of public enterprises and legislative review have been accepted by all Australian governments. The underlying economic principles, however, are not necessarily reflected in the reforms. The process of negotiated infrastructure access established under national competition policy may lead to monopoly rather than competitive pricing. Structural reforms of government business enterprises have ignored the benefits of integration and the relevant market characteristics. Legislative review has resulted in considerable political controversy. In some cases, competition policy can be improved by simple amendments to legislation while in other cases a clearer understanding of the relevant trade-offs may improve the reform process.

Care of Empowerment? A Disability Rights Perspective

Abstract: This paper challenges the notion of “care”, arguing that people who need support in their daily lives have been constructed as “dependent people”. Instead, the author argues, if we want to empower people we must learn from the Independent Living Movement, from the people who struggled against segregation and insisted that access to personal assistance over which they have control is a civil rights issue. The paper takes issue with Clare Ungerson's perspective on the new direct payments legislation. This legislation is an important stage in the achievements of a civil rights movement and social researchers have a moral responsibility to collaborate with this movement in any work which they develop on issues which are not of mere academic interest but which concern people's rights to choice and control in their lives.

Co-management of New Zealand's conservation estate by Maori and Pakeha: a review

Abstract: Despite direction by the Conservation Act (1987) to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's Department of Conservation has few formal collaborative management arrangements with Maori. Obstacles to establishing agreements that involve Maori in equitable conservation decision-making roles include divergent philosophies (preservation versus conservation for future use), institutional inertia, a lack of concrete models of co-management to evaluate success or otherwise to promote conservation, a lack of resources and opportunities for capacity building and scientific research amongst Maori, opposition and a lack of trust from conservation non-governmental organizations that are predominantly euro-centric in approach and membership, and a fundamental reluctance of some to share power with Maori. Recent examples of work towards co-management emphasize the need for innovative methods to build trust and explore common ground and differences. Meetings on marae (traditional Maori gathering places) have established guiding principles, lengthy dialogue, and a collective symbol as a metaphor for co-management. These were valuable steps towards building trust and understanding required for the restoration of coastal lakes and a river, and the potential joint management of two national parks on the west coast of the North Island. Establishment of a research project to assess the sustainability of a traditional harvest of a sea-bird (Puffinus griseus) by Rakiura Maori was facilitated by drawing up a 'cultural safety' contract. This contract underscored the role of Maori as directors of the research, protected their intellectual property rights to their traditional environmental knowledge, guaranteed continuity of the collaborative research project and regulated how results were to be communicated. The scientific ethics of a university ecological research team were safeguarded by the contract, which ensured that they could publish their inferences without erasure or interference. The New Zealand experience shows that even when legislation signals from the top down that the doorway is open for co-management with indigenous people, this by itself is unlikely to make it happen. Active facilitation by innovative middle-level agreements and the creation of new administrative structures are needed to govern co-management of a broad spectrum of resource issues. Bottom-up initiatives involving single, or very localized, resource uses may also trigger co-management. Models for successful co-management involving indigenous peoples must focus more strongly on issues of equity or power sharing, and therefore may be very different from models directed at a single conservation outcome.

Competing Principals: Committees, Parties, and the Organization of Congress

Abstract: Since Woodrow Wilson, political scientists have recognized the importance of congressional committees in the policy-making process. Congressional committees often determine what legislation will reach the floor of the House or Senate and what form that legislation will take. In spite of the broad consensus on the importance of congressional committees, there is little agreement on what explains committee action. Committees are alternately viewed as agents of the chamber, the party caucuses, or constituencies outside the institution. Each theory suggests a different distribution of power in the policy-making process.Forrest Maltzman argues that none of these models fully captures the role performed by congressional committees and that committee members attempt to balance the interests of the chamber, the party caucus, and outside constituencies. Over time, and with the changing importance of a committee's agenda to these groups, the responsiveness of members of committees will vary. Maltzman argues that the responsiveness of the committee to these groups is driven by changes in procedure, the strength of the party caucus, and the salience of a committee's agenda. Maltzman tests his theory against historical data.This book will appeal to social scientists interested in the study of Congress and legislative bodies, as well as those interested in studying the impact of institutional structure on the policy-making process."This specialized study, of value to congressional scholars and partisan activists, enriches an understanding of the increasingly predictable patterns of committee variety." --"Choice"Forrest Maltzman is Assistant Professor of Political Science, George Washington University.

Industrial Citizenship Under Regime Competition: The Case of the European Works Councils

Abstract: As integrated Europe will not turn into a federal state, rights of citizenship, including industrial citizenship, remain nationally based. The article explores some of the consequences of this for social policy, at both European and national level. For empirical reference, it reconstructs the evolution of European Union legislation on workplace representation, in particular its movement in two decades from company to labour law, from harmonization to co-ordination of national systems, from legal prescription to voluntaristic bargaining in the shadow of the market, and from a project of integrated European citizenship rights to the protection of the integrity of national systems. The article shows that national fragmentation of public power in an integrated economy, however internationally co-ordinated, exposes advanced national versions of industrial citizenship to economic competition. While thereby pressuring national systems to lower their standards, it even falls short of affording non-nationals equal...

Children of Incarcerated Parents

Abstract: Introduction Most of the over one million persons incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons on any given day and the millions more on probation or parole are parents. Although a considerable body of information has been collected about individuals who have been or are under some form of criminal justice system control, very little is known about their children, particularly those under the age of 18. There are approximately 10 million children in the U.S. who have had one or both parents incarcerated. These children and youth have little or no voice about who, in the absence of the parent who is the primary caregiver, will take care of them, or if they will be allowed to visit or communicate with the incarcerated parent. The children of parents involved in the criminal justice system have no voice because they are invisible to the larger society. The national trend to use incarceration to punish even minor offenses guarantees that children will continue to be adversely affected by policies enacted with no consideration of the harm done to family systems. There are many complex and interrelated contributing factors: the intensification of politically motivated "get tough on crime" rhetoric and the "War on Drugs," public discourse about crime designed to instilled fear, the enactment of increasingly harsh sentencing laws such as "Three Strikes," and the ratings-driven media preoccupation with policing and arrests, leading to public support for a prison-building frenzy. The virtual disappearance of work, along with stores, transportation, and other components of a viable infrastructure, from many inner-city communities has resulted in a concentration of poverty that has devastated neighborhoods and marginalized residents, making them easy first to criminalize and then to dehumanize. The original intent of this article was to examine what is presently known about the children of incarcerated parents. Its scope has been expanded to include the more realistic continuum of parental crime, arrest, incarceration, release, and recidivism that children experience and must contend with as their lives are disrupted, and sometimes shattered. We begin by placing present events into a larger historical and political context. Available information about the children of incarcerated parents is provided, followed by a discussion of caregivers, custody, and visitation issues. The next sections describe what is known about the impact on children of parental involvement in the criminal justice system, as well as observable intergenerational trends, and then look at how law enforcement and social service agencies regard and respond to children of arrested and incarcerated parents. We conclude with interventions that address and alleviate the problems resulting from parental involvement in the criminal justice system. Background In 1990, the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world, five times higher than France and Germany and over four times greater than Britain's rate (Foote, 1993). California has the dubious distinction of having the largest prison system in the country and the second largest in the world following China (Ibid.). One out of every eight U.S. prisoners is incarcerated in the Golden State. In less than 20 years, California's prison population has exploded by 631%, from 19,000 in 1977 to 139,000 in 1996; over 97,000 persons are presently on parole.(1) An additional 71,000 Californians were local jail inmates as of April 1996(2) and 400,000 former California jail inmates were on probation in 1995 (Criminal Justice Institute, 1994). Changes in mandatory sentencing guidelines enacted during the mid-1970s have led to a significant shift in public policy favoring punishment over rehabilitation. Passage of the "Three Strikes"(3) legislation in the early 1990s has taken a decisive step in making the concept of rehabilitation historically obsolete.(4) To accommodate growing numbers of felons sentenced under the 1,000 new state laws specifying new offenses and increased sentences passed by the legislature (Foote, 1993), California has added 20 new prisons to its original 12 since the early 1980s (CDC, 1994). …

Policy Watch: The Family and Medical Leave Act

Abstract: President Clinton's first legislative action upon taking office in February 1993 was to sign the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The act is designed to "support families in their efforts to strike a workable balance between the competing demands of the workplace and the home" (Commission on Family and Medical Leave, 1996, p. xii). Most notably, the FMLA is the first federal law requiring some U.S. employers to offer maternity leave to women with qualifying employment histories. Prior to its enactment, the United States was virtually the only industrialized country that did not guarantee job-protected parental leave (Kamerman, 1991). During the recent presidential campaign, President Clinton proposed expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act by guaranteeing workers' rights to up to 24 hours per year off work to participate in their children's school activities or to accompany relatives to medical appointments or related professional services. Individuals would also have the option to earn flex-time for overtime work of up to 80 hours per year, to be used for any purpose including family leave. These extensions were strongly opposed by Senator Dole, as was the original FMLA by President Bush during his term of office. This article summarizes provisions of the FMLA, considers its possible effects on labor markets and examines resulting changes in the ability of workers to take leave. I conclude that the actual provisions of the act are quite modest and have neither yielded large benefits to workers nor imposed significant costs on employers. One reason for this is that relatively few workers gained significant new rights to time off work as a result of the law. These conclusions should be viewed as tentative given the brief period the FMLA has been in effect and the dearth of previous research on related legislation.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996: an overview.

Abstract: "On September 30, 1996, President Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (1996 Act), Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009. After an intense lobbying effort by the business community, most provisions relating to legal immigration were omitted from the final bill. Instead, the 1996 Act focuses on illegal immigration reform and includes some of the toughest measures ever taken against illegal immigration." Aspects considered include border enforcement, penalities against alien smuggling and document fraud, deportation and exclusion proceedings, employer sanctions, welfare provisions, and changes to existing refugee and asylum procedures.

Earnings Management of Chemical Firms in Response to Political Costs from Environmental Legislation

Abstract: This paper examines the earnings management of chemical firms at the end of 1979 when Congress was considering legislation leading to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Recovery Act of 1980. This legislation gave the U.S. government the authority to remediate hazardous chemical waste sites and set up a Superfund, funded largely by the chemical industry, to cover cleanup costs. Unlike prior studies that use single, often crude, measures of political costs, we employ seven different measures of the firms' exposure to costs arising from Superfund. Additionally, using factor analysis, we construct a composite measure of political costs. There is some evidence from time-series tests that chemical firms took income-decreasing accruals in 1979 at the height of the Superfund debate but, as expected, they did not in the prior or preceding year. Cross-sectional tests show that the size of the earnings response is correlated negatively with four of the seven individual proxies for political ...

Spurts in Union Growth: Defining Moments and Social Processes

Abstract: This paper examines the spurt in U.S. unionism during the Great Depression. It argues that the Depression spurt is better understood as resulting from a Depression sparked endogenous social process than from New Deal legislation and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) leadership. Four pieces of evidence are offered for this interpretation: 1. The ubiquity of spurts in unionization across countries, particularly in the Depression. 2. The widespread use of recognition strikes during the 1930s spurt. 3. The growth of CIO affiliates with little CIO financial or organizing aid. 4. The growth of American Federation of Labor (AFL) affiliated unions. I model unionization as the outcome from a conflict between union/worker organizing activity and employer opposition, both of which depend on the proportion organized. Union organizing and activity rises with density, then falls with density. Employer opposition is high at low densities but falls once unions gain control of the relevant market. The result is a nonlinear difference equation that produces spurts of union growth. The Depression initiated a spurt by increasing worker desires for unions and by raising density above the critical level' for rapid growth in many industries.

Evaluating chemical risks : Results of a survey of the British Toxicology Society

Abstract: 1. Members of the British Toxicology Society participated in a survey to determine their attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions regarding risks from chemicals. Similar surveys had previously been conducted with toxicologists and members of the general public in the United States and Canada. Data from 312 completed questionnaires were analyzed. 2. In general, the British toxicologists judged risks to be quite low for most hazards, with the exception of cigarette smoking and asbestos. They tended to have quite favorable attitudes toward the use of chemicals and were confident about the adequacy of chemical regulations. 3. As in previous studies of toxicologists, women expressed higher perceptions of risk than did men and had consistently stronger anti-chemical attitudes. 4. Toxicologists working in industry had more favorable attitudes towards chemicals and their use than did those working in academic settings. 5. When asked to evaluate chemical technical summaries of various animals studies there was considerable disagreement among the respondents about the toxicity of the chemicals involved. 6. In general, British toxicologists were equivocal about the reliability of animal studies in predicting human effects (particularly carcinogenicity) probably because of the belief that animal studies overestimate risk. However, they were rather confident that human health risks could be assessed reasonably accurately.

Public involvement methods in natural resource policy making: Advantages, disadvantages and trade-offs

Abstract: IntroductionIn the late 1960s and 1970s, legislation such as the National EnvironmentalPolicy Act (1969), the Coastal Zone Management Act (1972), and the NationalForest Management Act (1976) called for public hearings and comment periodsto allow citizen input into the policy making process. During this same timeframe, the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agencyalso began utilizing citizen advisory committees

How Do Rights Become Real?: Formal and Informal Institutions in South Africa's Land Reform

Abstract: Summary Central components of South Africa's post‐apartheid land reform comprise ambitious and wide‐ranging ‘rights‐based’ laws and programmes. But how do legally defined rights to resources become effective command over those resources? And what are the limits to social change through legal reform? Two central issues which arise are: supplementing the passing of new legislation with the detailed design of programmes to implement these laws, and the interplay of formal and informal institutions in the complex social arenas within which people actually live. Both centrally involve issues of power, authority and contestation, and require us to consider law as only one source of rule‐making in society. The environmental entitlements framework helps us to explore these questions.

The European Parliament and Comitology: On the Road to Nowhere?

Abstract: The European Parliament has generally been deeply distrustful of the comitology system, primarily on the grounds that it allows the national administrations to undermine its supervisory role in the area of implementing legislation. Parliament has therefore sought to use the political, budgetary and jurisdictional means at its disposal to counteract the spread of comitology, or at least to promote the less intrusive forms of committee procedure. These initiatives have not, for the most part, been wholly successful; neither the interinstitutional agreements nor Parliament's arguments before the Court of Justice have produced the results it had hoped for. Parliament has been able, however, to use its Maastricht powers to influence the choice of committee procedure included in legislation adopted under codecision, and its budgetary tactics have forced the Commission to rationalise somewhat the annual expenditure on committees of all kinds and to bring a modicum of transparency into their operation. The imminence of the intergovernmental conference led to a suspension of hostilities towards the end of 1996.

Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America: The Unrealized Potential of Presidential Dominance in Colombia

Abstract: On July 4, 1991, Colombians ceased to live under what had been the oldest continuously functioning constitution in Latin America. A new document, drafted and ratified by the specially elected Constituent Assembly, replaced a constitution that, while frequently amended, had served since 1886. In order to understand why Colombians undertook the process of constitutional revision, one needs to consider the various ways in which the old constitution had contributed to a crisis that most Colombian political observers believed was confronting the country by the late 1980s. A significant aspect of the Constituent Assembly's task was to remedy a perceived imbalance between an overly powerful president and a Congress that appeared incapable of addressing the nation's problems. In this chapter we argue that Colombian presidents hold great constitutional powers over legislation yet frequently appear unable to accomplish policy agendas that are nominally endorsed by their own parties. Despite most presidents' having held copartisan legislative majorities, presidents have low partisan powers because parties are internally fragmented. Two institutional features contribute to low partisan powers: First, parties lack control over the use of their party labels (i.e., candidates do not need to have party approval to run under the party name); second, the electoral system fosters intraparty competition. Evaluations of presidentialism in Colombia have tended to overlook the real limits to the powers of the Colombian executive. Our argument is that the partisan powers of the Colombian president have decreased since the mid-1970s as a result of increased intraparty competition.

Translating ideas into actions: entrepreneurial leadership in state health care reforms.

Abstract: States are often touted as "laboratories" for developing national solutions to social problems. In this article we examine the appropriateness of this metaphor for comprehensive health care reform and attempt to draw lessons about policy innovation from recent state actions. We present evidence from six states that enacted major pieces of health care legislation in the late 1980s or early 1990s: Massachusetts, Oregon, Florida, Minnesota, Vermont, and Washington State. The variation in design casts doubt on the proposition that states can invent plans and programs for other states and the federal government to adopt for themselves. Instead, we argue that it is more accurate to think of states as specialized political markets in which individuals and groups develop and promote innovative products. We examine the factors that might create receptive markets for comprehensive health care reforms and conclude that the critical factor these states shared in common was skilled and committed leadership from "policy entrepreneurs" who formulated the plans for system reform and prominent "investors" who contributed substantial political capital to the development of the reforms. We illustrate different strategies that leaders in these states used to carry out the entrepreneurial tasks of identifying a market opportunity, designing an innovation, attracting political investment, marketing the innovation, and monitoring its early production.

Mitigation of habitat "Take": application to habitat conservation planning

Abstract: One of the most important provisions of the U.S. Endangered Species Act precludes the “taking” of listed species on both public and private land. In past Endangered Species Act litigation, take has been broadly interpreted to include the destruction or modification of habitats as well as the direct killing of animals. This requirement created an extensive burden on private landowners to provide habitats for listed species. This burden was substantially lessened when the ESA was modified in 1982 to allow incidental takings conditioned on preparation of a satisfactory “habitat conservation plan.” Because the majority of listed species are imperiled due to habitat modification, most habitat conservation plans must demonstrate defensible methods to mitigate against incidental habitat loss. A review of HCPs for the Northern Spotted Owl ( Strix occidentalis), and other species, indicates that mitigation solutions are often arbitrary, lacking an empirical foundation in the species’ life history requirements. Based on data from the Spotted Owl, we illustrate a biologically based method for estimating the areal requirements necessary to mitigate against the take of essential habitats. Toward this goal we adopt the concept of “core area,” that portion of an animal’s home range that receives disproportionate use. We estimated core areas by means of the adaptive kernel density function and tested against a null distribution of animal use that assumes a bivariate, uniform distribution of locations within the home range. The method we illustrate, which is defensible, repeatable, and empirical, is a clear improvement over the ad hoc methods used in many habitat conservation plans. Further, the methods we propose should be applicable to a large number of terrestrial species for which home range is a meaningful concept.

Thinking ecologically : the next generation of environmental policy

Abstract: Twenty-five years ago, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so contaminated that it caught fire, air pollution in some cities was thick enough to taste, and environmental laws focused on the obvious enemy: large American factories with belching smokestacks and pipes gushing wastes. Federal legislation has succeeded in providing cleaner air and water, but we now confront a different set of environmental problems-less visible and more subtle. This important book offers thought-provoking ideas on how America can respond to changing public health and ecological risks and create sound environmental policy for the future. The innovative thinkers of the Next Generation Project of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy-experts from business, government, nongovernmental organizations, and academia-propose reforms that balance environmental efforts with other public needs and issues. They call for new foundations for environmental law and policy, adoption of a more diverse set of policy tools and strategies (economic incentives, ecolabels), and new connections between critical sectors (agriculture, energy, transportation, service providers) and environmental policy. Future progress must involve not only officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state environmental protection departments, say the authors, but also decision-makers as diverse as mayors, farmers, energy company executives, and delivery route planners. To be effective, next-generation policy-making will view environmental challenges comprehensively, connect academic theory with practical policy, and bridge the gaps that have caused recent policy debates to break down in rancor. This book begins the process of accomplishing these challenging goals.

Environmental Responsibility and Business Regulation: the case of sustainable tourism

Abstract: This paper adds to the growing literature within geography on environmental regulation of business activities. The adoption of voluntary practices of environmental responsibility is discussed as a form of environmental regulation, and then applied to tourism using a survey of 69 companies and institutions in the UK outgoing tourism industry. Results indicate that business has adopted a wide range of practices, but considers them to be weak regulatory instruments because ultimate responsibility for change lies with host governments via legislation. However, environmental protection may enhance business performance if voluntary practices could differentiate mass-market holiday packages and allow companies to compete on more than price alone. This paper, therefore, supports research from other industries which states that environmental practices may lead to commercial advantage if adopted proactively rather than in response to market demand for ethical or 'green' products. However, change may be accelerated by labelling 'green' or 'sustainable' tourism as 'quality' tourism, and by acknowledging that populist market demand may lead to stereotypical approaches to minorities or ecotourism not helpful to equitable development. Future debate should focus on common ground between regulators and business, and on shared responsibility for excluding 'free-rider' companies not willing to adopt practices.