Search

Many countries have seen attempts at sweeping reforms of their consumer bankruptcy systems. Surprisingly, many of these reforms were either defeated or watered down. Most of these reforms include provisions that will make the discharge of consumer debts more difficult. This is especially true in English Common Law countries. Four countries, Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States, either passed or attempted to pass broad reforms in an apparent attempt to reduce the number of consumer bankruptcy filings. This paper will examine the reforms and the increases in consumer bankruptcy filings in these countries, by examining the histories of their bankruptcy systems and the resulting institutions, as well as the political factors involved in the reform attempt. The similarities and differences between these countries will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructivist theories of securitization are built on a foundation of communicative action tenets. While this represents an important and innovative advance in international relations theory, securitization ignores some of the components involved in a successful communicative act. Williams (2003) calls for securitization theory to incorporate the hitherto ignored effects of mass media and in this paper we answer this call. We first show that securitization's specification of leaders' speech acts and audiences' legitimative discourse presumes mass media actors are indifferent in how they convey leader representations and justifications of crises. We take this presumption as an empirical question and execute a study of whether the national presses of ally countries differently emphasized the frames Bush invoked in their news coverage of key September 11th speeches. We show from comparisons of chi-square distributions and regression analyses that, far from being passive conveyers of speech frames, the national presses of the US, Canada, France, Britain and Ireland (1) did not convey all of Bush's securitizing problem representations and response justifications proportionate to the extent Bush invoked them in his speeches, and (2) that for each national press factors based on professional norms and/or organizational routines increased the likelihood that a speech sentence would be conveyed in a news story. We discuss the implications of our findings for how securitization theory should conceptualize media actors when redressing this gap in its explanatory models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the strategies currently developed by various public administrations and governments to tackle the policy challenges resulting from population ageing. The focus of the paper is on the Canadian provinces and American states having the highest percentage of individuals aged 65 and above. The first section of the paper analyses the ways in which population ageing is defined as a policy challenge. This has tremendous theoretical and practical implications since it defines the key policy actors involved in providing solutions. It is argued, for example, that if ageing is primarily construed as a health issue, health authorities will be mostly responsible for devising an ageing strategy and they will tend to neglect non-health related issues. The second section of the paper analyses the elements that facilitate the elaboration of a cohesive and comprehensive strategy to tackle the challenges posed by population ageing. Political variables, such as a divided government and ideology are first analyzed. They are then followed by public administration variables such as previous co-operative efforts among departments and the relationship between senior civil servants and politicians. Preliminary results suggest that a very limited number of jurisdictions have actually been able to conceive and implement an actual strategy to deal with the impact of population ageing suggesting that political and bureaucratic hurdles are significant. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the consociation similarities between Calhounian political theory and principles of Canadian Confederation, under the British North America Act of 1867. Topics discussed include public guidelines for consociational behavior established by Canadian institutions, secular political culture during Anglo-American systems and information on the U.S. democratic system.

The article offers information on a study regarding the comparison between breastfeeding policies in the U.S. and Canada. It informs that public policy development in both the countries is governed by subnational governments. It reports that Canadian breastfeeding policy has adopted the public health policy frame and the U.S. policy has worked on the rights-based frame.

The article offers information on a study related to an investigation in order to identify the impact of traditional security on the official policy human security of the U.S., European Union and Canada. It talks about solutions needed to test the effectiveness of human security in regards to civil and international conflict. It discusses about the problems that arises during the process of investigation.

There is a fairly extensive and longstanding literature on the nature and causes of dissensus on appellate courts in the US. However, much of this literature suffered from two shortcomings that reduce its utility in providing a general theory of dissent. First, much of the work has taken a single court as the sole focus of analysis. Additionally, many of the earlier studies have failed to account for the increasing diversity of appellate courts. We propose to address these lacunae with a cross national analysis of changing patterns of dissensus over time in two national high courts: the supreme courts of the United States and Canada from 1950 to the present. The Supreme Court of Canada provides a useful basis of comparison to the US because although the two courts are similar in many ways, the gender diversification of the high court has proceeded much more rapidly in Canada than in the U.S. This will not only allow us to test whether theories of dissensus developed in the US retain their explanatory power in a similar common law court but will also permit a more thorough examination of the impact of gender diversity on dissensus. We propose to test whether diversity effects emerge on the supreme courts of the US and Canada as the number of women on the courts increases. We will further test whether dissensus is greater in cases raising women's issues and whether diversity induced dissensus depends on reaching a "critical mass" of women on the court. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some declining industries easily receive the benefits of trade restriction whereas others not? How do elected officials determine industrial sectors to protect? While illuminating several factors that create inter-industry variations in protection, economists regard trade-policy outcomes as a function of lobbying and campaign contributions of import-competing sectors. To redress this gap, this paper analyzes the influence of electoral competition on the inter-industry structure of protection. I argue that all things being equal, sectoral variations in protection is explained by party unity, the extent to which parties act cohesively as strategic units and serve the interest of their core-partisan groups. Party unity, by shaping electoral values of party labels and personal reputations to reelection-minded politicians, determines types of electoral constituencies whom legislators are likely to target in policy decisions. The higher party unity over trade issues, the more likely is the incumbent-party to serve the interest of their core-partisan groups by protecting industries and sectors in their partisan strongholds rather than those in pivotal regions. These hypotheses will be tested with a variety of statistical methods, employing data on trade protection and district-level elections in the United States and Canada. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party capability theory suggests that parties who have access to resources are advantaged in courts of law. As the disparity between the parties' resources increases, the relative advantage increases as well. Party capability theory also argues that the government and corporations possess the advantage of repeat player status and have greater opportunities than individuals to shape the rules. In empirical tests, party capability theory seems to explain litigant outcomes in the appellate courts of the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. However, research on developing countries such as the Philippines, South Africa, and Israel suggests that courts in less economically developed nations actually favor individuals, who presumably have the least resources of any type of litigant. Judges in countries where wealth is unevenly distributed appear to be sympathetic to those with less. One possible explanation for this finding is that courts in developing countries support individuals in certain contexts in order to further the court's legitimacyThe purpose of this paper is to apply party capability theory to the U.S. state supreme courts which provide tremendous variation across a number of political and economic factors. Using the State Supreme Court Data Base, I expect that state supreme courts will demonstrate similar concerns for the population's perceptions, particularly in states with partisan elections. Moreover, I anticipate that this concern will be greatest in the states with the greatest income inequalities. The results will provide much greater understanding of the effects of presumed resources on litigation outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a cross-national study that examines the role of gender in judicial decision making in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. It mentions that socialization of female lawyers with female judges within the respective judicial systems might affect the case outcome. The study examined appellate court decisions in each country from 1980 to 2000.

The article focuses on the Beyond the Borders Action Plan, an initiative between the U.S. and Canada to secure their joint border from security threats while maintaining flow of people, goods, and services. It discusses the factors that have shaped the Action Plan including the problem faced by the U.S. in its effort to preserve rigid border restrictions at the time of stagnant economic growth, and the fears of Canada of how border restrictions will decline access to the American market.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 both Canada and the United States have begun to reexamine their immigration and security policies. Bolstering the screening of temporary visitors, as well as permanent immigrants and refugees has become a priority for both the United States and Canada. Shared border agreements have been updated and signed by both countries, and new initiatives are being discussed. As I write this, new technologies to help border security between the two countries are being tested, and in some cases installed at various border crossings. However, the task is daunting. There are 135 land border crossings, 203 airports, 187 commercial vessel points and 313 small marine points between the two countries. Add to that approximately two hundred million people that cross the US-Canada border every year and no wonder it is extremely difficult and challenging to have safe borders while maintaining the openness that Canada and the United States have traditionally shared. Since September 11 however, perceived flaws in the system have been emphasized. From an American standpoint, Canada's refugee policy and lack of visa coordination for visitors from certain countries is a "sore spot" on the relations between the two countries, and these policies are seen by lawmakers as compromising American security. From the Canadian viewpoint, the challenge is to address those fears while maintaining sovereignty over its borders and immigration policies, and continued pursuit of openness towards refugees and asylum claimants. This study will examine our, Canadian and American existing national and cross-border accords and agreements in general, and it will look at specifically the Shared Border Accord (SBA) and the technology needed for to achieve the full benefits offered by the SBA. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past four years, the United States and Canada have both implemented new campaign finance laws that sharply restrict the influence of organized interests, particularly businesses and labor unions, in elections. In both nations, these new laws restrict groups' ability to contribute to politicians and air political advertisements on radio or television. In the United States, interest groups have responded by increasing their direct communication with their own members about politics. There is some evidence, as well, that Canadian groups have done this. This project explores the degree to which American and Canadian organized interests have learned political strategies from each other, either directly and indirectly, and it explores the applicability of groups' adaptations to campaign finance reform in each country. Through interviews with major American and Canadian interest groups and analysis of campaign finance data, it explores the degree of direct and indirect coordination by groups in the two countries. This project will help to researchers to understand the effects of campaign finance reforms in both countries, and it will assess the degree to which groups in the two countries share political information. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, election turnout rates in the United States and Canada started to converge, in part due to an increase in interest which led to higher turnout in the United States, and in part due to a generational-induced decline in turnout in Canada. Based on the theory that higher rates of participation are commonly associated with lower socioeconomic bias in participation (Lijphart, APSR 1997), I will use National Election Studies data from both countries to examine whether the recent changes in turnout levels have resulted in lower turnout bias in the United States and higher turnout bias in Canada (using standard SES variables). Possible partisan consequences will be discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]