Unions,Parties, and the Politics of State Government Legacy Cost

Many American state governments have made extensive promises to pay for employees’ health care and other benefits in retirement. Currently estimated at over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities, these other postemployment benefits (OPEB) are creating a major fiscal problem for state governments. In this article, we examine the politics of OPEB. We seek to explain the variation in the generosity of OPEB across U.S. states. We argue that party competition theories do not adequately explain the outcomes we observe. Instead, we draw on the emerging Schattschneiderian approach to the politics of public policy to show that public union strength conditions a party's incentives to represent unions’ interests. In states where public sector unions are strong, unions can find their way into either party's coalition. We find that Republicans are more responsive to public union interests than either their ideological brand or prior research would suggest. It is only in states where public employees are weak that Republicans can act unilaterally and enact their preference for less government spending. To test our theories, we carry out an empirical analysis using a newly assembled data set of per capita OPEB liabilities across 49 states.     

The Country,the City and the State in the Australian Settlement

The Australian Settlement, as formulated by Paul Kelly, had a sixth pillar: a settlement between the city and the country in which the state compensated people living in the country for the costs of remoteness and sparse settlement. This was underpinned by the reliance of Australian export performance on agriculture, by nation-building commitments to peopling the continent, and by agrarian beliefs in the virtues of country life. Australia's egalitarianism had a spatial and regional as well as a class dimension. Changes in Australia's economy, demography, and political culture have eroded these foundations, leaving rural Australia vulnerable to the neoliberal agenda. The dismantling of tariffs, the restructuring of agriculture, microeconomic reforms driven by National Competition Policy, and regional policy which stresses self-reliance, all treat rural Australia as a minor part of the nation rather than its economic and cultural foundation, and reject claims to special treatment. To give country Australia its own pillar makes visible the magnitude of the historic shifts which have taken place in the state's relationship to rural Australia since 1983 and brings it into the main frame for understanding Australia's abandonment of protective statism.     

罗马税制的积弊与戴克里先税制改革

分析戴克里先税收改革失败的原因,不能只看改革措施本身,必须把税收问题与帝国3世纪的财政危机联系起来考察。共和国后期逐步确立的罗马税收制度并不完善,国家征税没有统一的税则和成文的税法,没有彻底的土地和人口普查,对税收完纳的日期、方法、数额没有具体界定,造成赋税名目繁多、税收混乱。罗马税收中唯一形成制度的是征税方式上实行包税制,但是包税制本身有其弊端和危害,包税商和总督勾结,中饱私囊,损害国家利益;后来包税制逐渐被破坏,直接或间接地起到了妨害社会生产的不良作用。从戴克里先的税收改革措施来看,他还是找到了罗马税收问题的症结,税收改革措施本身没有问题,导致改革失败的原因很多:首先是3世纪社会经济危机太深;其次,罗马税制之弊由来已久,且积弊已深,实际上已没有灵丹妙药可以救治。从这个意义上说,戴克里先税收改革的失败是不可避免的。     

Virtual Campaigning: Australian Parties and the Impact of the Internet

This paper examines the impact of the Internet, specifically the World Wide Web (WWW) and e-mail on Australian parties in two key areas: (1) party communication: what exactly are parties using their Websites for? and (2) party competition: does the Internet lower the threshold for smaller parties to communicate their message compared with the traditional media? We examine these questions with two types of data--a questionnaire of party communication staff and content analysis of a representative sample of party Websites. Our findings show, first, that Australian parties have taken a fairly cautious approach to the new medium, using it primarily as an information storehouse rather than putting it to more innovative use. Second, while almost all Australian parties have a Web presence, there is a divide between those parties with parliamentary representation and those without in terms of their site quality and visibility on the Web. The study concludes by interpreting the findings in the context of research on parties' use of the Internet worldwide.     

Globalisation,Neoliberalism and the Transformation of the Australian State

A review of the literature is used to construct a model of economic 'globalisation' and its implications for the state. Three theses are derived from this exercise: the 'economic globalisation thesis', the 'loss of state sovereignty thesis' and the 'neoliberal convergence thesis'. These theses are assessed empirically, the latter two against Australian evidence. The paper argues that while the Australian state has lost considerable sovereignty, this effect is more pronounced at the macroeconomic level than at the microeconomic level. And though it can be argued that Australia broadly conforms to the pattern of 'neoliberal policy convergence', the paper argues that 'externalist' explanatory accounts of the type offered by the globalisation thesis overlook important domestic pressures for neoliberal policies.     

畜牧业与澳大利亚国家的建立

众所周知,澳大利亚是目前世界上最大的羊毛生产国和出口国,世界上约70％的羊毛来源于澳大利亚。澳大利亚现有羊约1．24亿只(其中4／5为优质美利奴羊),还有2400万头牛。1994-1995年,羊毛和牛羊肉的出口为澳大利亚赚回95亿美元的外汇。实际上在1945年第     

Tax Havens and Global Capitalism: Vanuatu and the Australian Connection

The growth of tax haven activities has been a feature of recent global capitalist development, yet geographical analysis of these activities has been limited. Vanuatu has become the South Pacific's major tax haven, expanding through its ability to capture (mainly) Australian and Asian investment in the 1970s and 1980s. Tax haven activities in Vanuatu have increasingly contributed to local employment and income generation, despite the growth of competition from newer tax havens in the region. Vanuatu is not used by major Australian public companies to the extent that either Hong Kong or the Caribbean tax havens are used, and it is suggested that activities from Asia are increasingly dominating Vanuatu's finance centre. Recent Australian taxation legislation may reduce Australia's role in the Vanuatu tax haven further, although it is apparent that there are limitations to the legislation's effectiveness in stopping tax haven activities.     

Bicameralism and Democracy: The Transformation of Australian State Upper Houses

Australia is unique among parliamentary federations in having strongly bicameral parliaments at regional as well as national levels. The purpose of this article is to analyse the evolution of the State-level second chambers, the Legislative Councils, over the past half-century. The main changes have concerned the electoral systems of the Councils, enhancing the latter's democratic legitimacy and recasting the mechanisms for producing differently composed chambers. Democratisation of the Councils, together with the other changes discussed, has brought about a subtle transformation of their role. Their design no longer casts them as conservative checks on the 'people's houses', but makes them key elements within a more fully developed system of 'consensus democracy'. The article concludes by discussing three types of second chamber now existing in the Australian States.     

Minor Parties and the Legislative Process in the Australian Senate: A Study of the 1993 Budget

In 1993, minor parties in the Australian Senate played a prominent role in negotiating changes to the ALP government's budget. The term 'obstructionist' was widely applied by the media and the Labor Party in describing these actions, particularly when it came to the Greens' (WA) efforts to change aspects of the budget bills. This article develops a conceptual framework through which the behaviour of the minor parties in the Senate might be viewed. Using the 1993 budget as an example, the article considers the capacity of minor parties to bring about legislative changes, as well as the type and level of resistance they pose to the executive.     

The Prestige of Australian State Supreme Courts Over the 20th Century

This article measures the prestige of the Australian State supreme courts and examines competing explanations for differentials in their prestige over the course of the 20th century. The study finds that the prestige of the State supreme courts are positively correlated with the reputation of their Bench, proxied by the number of High Court judges from that State; socioeconomic diversity in that State, proxied by the State's population; and legal capital, proxied by the number of pages of the official law reports of the State supreme court.     

State budget outcomes and Australian state politics revisited: The impact of parties

This research note reviews work by Gerritscn on budget outputs in Australian States, and more specifically on the explanatory significance of Labor and non‐Labor parties in office. It also extends his work by introducing a comparative dimension across time. This consists of comparison of the findings for the period Gerritsen saidied (1979/80–1982/83) with a later period (1985/86–1987/88) to assess the impact of partisan change in Slate governments on their relative budget efforts. The findings offer more support for the partisanship hypothesis than Gerritsen's allowed, by virtue of the findings for Western Australia and Tasmania. It concludes that though budget efforts are structured by a number of factors, partisanship nevertheless appears a potent explanatory variable.