Assessing the 2000 Presidential Election Dispute–Judicial and Social Science Perspectives

Dershowitz, Alan M. Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xii, 275. $25.00 hardbound.

Gillman, Howard. The Votes that Counted: How the Supreme Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv, 301. $27.50 hardbound.

Greene, Abner. Understanding the 2000 Election: A Guide to the Legal Battles that Decided the Presidency. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2001. Pp. vii, 200. $20.00 hardbound.

Posner, Richard A. Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Election, The Constitution, and the Courts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. xvi, 266. $24.95 hardbound, $11.95 e-Book.     

The New Nature of Things? Canada's Conservative Government and the Design of the New Environmental Subject

Since coming to power in 2006, Canada's government under Stephen Harper has worked to recalibrate federal regulatory, legislative and economic development frameworks as they overlap in the littoral zone of the environment. We argue that Harper's Conservative government is pursuing a totalizing strategy in reconfiguring the desired Canadian environmental subject. This strategy approaches an integrated design that eclipses the incremental strategic options most Canadian federal governments have understood themselves to be constrained by. This design's basic features include the discursive strategies employed to collapse “the environment” into a singular resource extraction paradigm, a programmatic concentration of power to the executive branch of the Canadian government, and a classical conservative ideology that associates environmental regulation and management with dominion over and improvement of national territory, to the exclusion of other frames and relations. We query the articulation of consent and certainty in relation to the environment and extractive economies in Canada.     

How New is the New Local Governance? Lessons from the United Kingdom

In recent times, a conventional wisdom concerning the governance of cities has emerged. It revolves around the contention that policy and planning frameworks are increasingly closed off from public and democratic accountability, in order to facilitate the pursuit of efficiency over equity objectives. The implication is that 'old' styles of governance were more open and accountable, while the 'new' seek to close off debate and streamline procedures. Yet the evidence to sustain such claims seems limited; this paper situates the policies and practices of local government in the UK within a historical perspective, and develops the contention that the claimed differences between old and new styles of governance are overdrawn. Using empirical material from two UK cities, we demonstrate that there are significant continuities in the procedures and practices of policy-makers, in terms of policy objectives, styles and modes of accountability. In this sense, greater clarity is required in terms of what constitutes both the old and new modes of local governance in the British cities.     

Where is the Quality? Political Science Scholarship in Australia

This article presents a comparison of research quality in political science among Australian universities. Two sources are used to assess the output of high-quality political science scholarship. The first looks at publication totals in leading journals, using the hierarchy of journal quality from the Excellence in Research Australia program. The second counts Australian Research Council Discovery Grants awarded in political science. Although there is no attempt to present an authoritative master ranking, it is argued that common patterns do emerge regarding the distribution of high-quality political science research among different universities in Australia. More broadly, the data confirm earlier conclusions on the British or European character of the field in this country, despite the overwhelming dominance of the USA in political science worldwide.     

A Review of “Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal”

Abstract

Existing scholarship on the electoral careers of U.S. Senate appointees has made progress toward identifying the determinants of appointee success and failure in the electoral arena. This study builds on these analyses by considering the universe of Senate appointees and examining each stage of the electoral process, including the decision to run. In addition, appointee personal characteristics, including gender and dynastic familial relationships, which have not been investigated in past work are examined here. The results demonstrate the centrality of personal attributes, specifically previous elective office and familial connections, to the electoral fate of appointees. These findings have implications for governors who make appointments, the role of family dynasties in elections, and the elements of incumbency that help to create electoral advantage.