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Research on agenda-setting often requires long time frames to illustrate and explain the rise and fall of issues on agendas and the punctuated nature of policy change. But less common are studies which treat time itself as a variable that helps to explain the particular trajectory of a policy issue or set of issues. To appreciate the importance of timing, we must examine agenda-setting and policy change processes around similar issues in two contexts where the timing and sequence of key events and strategies differ. This paper examines differences in agenda-setting and policy change around the issue of lawn care pesticides in the United States and Canada. I argue that the timing and sequencing of events, actor mobilization, and venue shifts significantly shaped the divergent paths of the conflicts. The relative mobilization of competing advocacy groups at the start of the campaigns, and successful venue shifts at key moments in the conflicts, led to different policy outcomes in the two cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of shocks to exchange rate uncertainty (volatility) on foreign direct investment (FDI) in Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The analysis is conducted using vector autoregressive models that contain the price level, real output, the real exchange rate, the volatility of the real exchange rate, the interest rate, and FDI. The results from variance decompositions yield public policy implications. In Canada, Japan, and the United States, innovations to exchange rate uncertainty explain significant portions of the forecast error variance in FDI at longer time horizons. The impulse response functions indicate that, to the extent that shocks to exchange rate volatility have an impact on FDI, the impact is positive and takes place with a lag. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work exploring the relationship between public opinion and public policy over time has largely been restricted to the US. However, a wider application of this line of research can provide valuable insights into whether and how representation varies across political systems. This paper takes a step in this direction using a new body of data on public opinion and government spending in Canada. Analyses reveal that the Canadian public notices and responds (thermostatically) to changes in public spending in particular domains, and also that Canadian policymakers represent these public preferences in spending. The extent and nature of public responsiveness and policy representation varies across domains. Relationships are more pronounced in certain domains, and they are more 'specific' in some domains and more 'global' in others. The findings generally accord with the results of similar work in the US and the UK, although the details differ in important ways. Indeed, the differences are strongly suggestive about the structuring role of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policy has been infiltrated by private regimes of regulation in the past decade. Such private regimes include industry codes of conduct and voluntary certification and labelling schemes. One such scheme is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC-AC), an international, civil-society-based organization headquartered in Bonn, Germany, which promotes forest certification. To ensure that forests are well managed, FSC requires forest managers to adopt practices that conform to its ten principles and 56 associated criteria (P&Cs). Committees were established across North America in the 1990s to develop indicators for FSC's generic P&Cs adapted to specific regional circumstances. In the paper, the author describes the negotiation arrangements used to develop four FSC North American regional standards, identifying a continuum that ranges from bottom-up to top-down approaches. The content of each of the standards is then assessed and a systematic, but not one-to-one relationship between negotiation arrangements and content standards is revealed. The author concludes that top-down negotiation arrangements gave rise to less demanding standards than did bottom-up negotiation arrangements, that FSC needs to re-think its unstructured approach to regional standards development and that private regulatory regimes are especially vulnerable to under- and over-consultative arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper probes the `deep structure" of perceptions of AIDS and the ensuing public policy trends. AIDS has become the latest symbol indexing 20th century conflicts over the family and sexuality and recapitulates some features of early debates over contraception and the control of sexually transmitted diseases. From 1981 to 1983, public talk about AIDS was virtually taboo. Since 1983, the massive proliferation of AIDS discourse has led to the development of an "official story" common in the press and clear in the presumptions underlying recent state policies in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. These policies have favored state control of sexual speech and education, as well as control of people "blamed" for HIV infection, while community-based groups have sought to empower people to affirm their sexuality while avoiding viral transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1981, the United States and Canada began a series of international field experiments to test the effectiveness of feedback as a way to encourage energy conservation. Current government studies show energy consumption is again on the rise after several years of decline. The research objective was to extend current feedback research by providing information formats and presentation modes that had not been previously tested but did represent realistic public policy and/or marketplace options. Results of the experiment replicated in two U.S. and two Canadian cities provide partial support for feedback as a viable information technology for consumer learning and motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments in many industrialized nations have made concerted efforts to reduce their immediate expenditures and to reduce the cost of major infrastructure projects. Public–private partnerships (P3s) are one emerging method that might do so. Despite the increased use of P3s, there is little independent research on the effectiveness of P3s as a public policy instrument. This article considers the major rationales for P3s, including cost savings and keeping project financing off government budgets. It then presents a transaction cost model that suggests that P3s can often be prone to conflict, high contracting costs, opportunism and failure. Evidence from six major infrastructure projects and a summary analysis of US prisons is then presented. These cases confirm that contracting costs have been high, as predicted by the model. Specifically, high contracting costs reflect the presence of complexity/uncertainty, asset specificity, the potential for ex post bilateral opportunism and a lack of contract management skills by governments. Given these circumstances, the private sector can behave opportunistically at the expense of the public sector as there has sometimes been a political imperative to prevent projects from terminating. Public partners have also behaved opportunistically after projects are in place. Unless public sector managers recognize that they must design contracts that both compensate private sector partners for risk and then ensure that they actually bear it, P3s have little chance of being efficient or effective service delivery mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over a decade ago, Page and Shapiro challenged the classical view of public opinion by arguing that Americans' collective policy preferences, instead of being volatile and meaningless, were 'rational' in the sense that they were reasonable and stable over time. We propose the first non-American test of Page and Shapiro's argument. We analyze 60 years of trends in Canadian public opinion on policy issues (1941-2001). Our results reveal that Canadian public opinion appears to be as stable as American public opinion. However, since government acts in advance of public opinion more often in Canada than in the United States, we argue that stability must be viewed as a reflection of collective complacency as much as it is a sign of a rational public opinion. Multivariate regression analyses of changes in public opinion further indicate that, other things being the same, the stability of public opinion is positively affected by issue salience and by the number of times a survey question is repeated. Although the positive impact of these variables on stability is consistent with the collective rationality model, we show that it can also be explained without assuming that opinion is collectively rational in the sense implied by Page and Shapiro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article raises questions about several key assumptions about business involvement in local policy making generally and in local development policy specifically. At issue is the nature and extent of systemic business influence and the nature of public policies that result. Based on data from a survey of 350 cities in Canada and the United States and nine case studies, the authors conclude that business interests are not unitary nor cohesive within cities, the composition and nature of the private sector is not uniform across cities, and that differentiated patterns of business input and policy output can result. The authors ultimately argue that a broader perspective is needed to fully portray the variety of public/private relationships present in cities than the prevalent growth machine or development regime frameworks suggest. The broader construct of local civic culture is provided as a more contextual basis for understanding the myriad roles businesses play in local economic development policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares the public policy in the U.S. and Canada. Diversity in political structures; Quality of relations between the two countries; Effect of individual policies or policy complexes on integration; Laggard performance of the U.S in developing social programs; Three dimensions of foreign policy.