Explaining Supreme Court Policymaking in Civil Rights: The Influence of the Solicitor General, 1953–2002

What factors explain Supreme Court policymaking in civil rights cases? Despite the importance of this question of law and policy, few empirical studies have explored the problem on the area of racial and ethnic discrimination. This study seeks to fill this gap by assessing the importance of the solicitor general, the federal government's representative before the Supreme Court, as a litigant and in the filings of amicus curiae briefs. The findings confirm that the solicitor general's presence in civil rights cases does matter when explaining whether the Supreme Court reaches a liberal or conservative outcome. This research demonstrates the significance of executive‐judicial interaction in explaining Supreme Court policymaking in civil rights cases.     

What do the World Bank's Poverty Assessments teach us about Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa?

As part of the World Bank's poverty reduction strategy, Poverty Assessments have been carried out for a number of countries which analyse who the poor are, the causes of poverty and poverty reduction policies. This article reviews what can be learnt from the twenty-five Assessments prepared for countries in sub-Saharan Africa up to 1996. Whilst other factors are acknowledged in identifying the poor, the Assessments over-emphasize income-poverty defined against an inevitably arbitrary poverty line. The Assessments are shown to be weak in addressing the causes of poverty, often ignoring the historical perspective, political context, and international dimensions such as debt and commodity price trends, focusing instead on the lack of growth in recent years as the main cause of poverty. Weak understanding of the causes of poverty undermines the basis for country-specific poverty reduction strategies: policy recommendations are usually an uncritical presentation of the World Bank's three-pronged strategy of growth, investment in human capital and social safety nets. Although the Assessments do not explicitly acknowledge the point, they suggest that the number of poor people in Africa will continue to rise; nor is there any basis for confidence that policies are being put in place to redress the situation.     

The Location and Concentration of Businesses in Britain: Business Clusters, Business Services, Market Coverage and Local Economic Development

An important debate has recently developed around the significance of business clusters for the development of the economy. This paper assesses the extent to which concentrated clusters of businesses exist in Britain, using the fine spatial mesh of postcode districts. It identifies the major clusters using a development of the methodology to define local labour market areas. The paper demonstrates the high degree of localization and uneven development of businesses in Britain. It also shows that business service firms are even more highly localized and clustered than other businesses. Moreover, the larger the business centre, the more localized and clustered the firms. The pattern suggests that there is a strong influence of increasing returns of scale, and that, as well as local clusters, much of the British economy is covered by one metacluster. Implications from these results are drawn for the likely future development of the economy, the location of business service suppliers in order to develop their market coverage, and local economic development policy.     

Reconstruction of diffusion processes at local scales: the 1846, 1882 and 1904 measles epidemics in northwest Iceland

Because medical records of individuals contracting measles were not kept in northwest lceland for epidemics before 1904, the spread of the disease in 1846 and 1882 has been traced from notifications of death recorded in burial registers and census returns. Using this evidence, a time-space matrix of measles deaths has been constructed and the dynamics of the diffusion process through a necklace of small communities strung along the coast has been analysed. In each of the three epidemics the mortality curve corresponded closely to an S-shaped logistic model, each new epidemic passing through the area more rapidly than its predecessor. The operation of a neighbourhood effect from a single point of introduction implies that the disease should move in a wave-like form through the area. Whereas the 1882 epidemic advanced steadily as a wave-front progression characteristic of the neighbourhood effect, those of 1846 and 1904 had strong spatial biases towards the parish of Eyri. The intense localization of the outbreaks in 1846 and 1904 appears not to be related directly to distinctive features in the demography or form of the settlement. In 1904 a confirmation service held in Eyri church brought many victims into contact with a measles carrier, but no special circumstances have been reported or can be deduced for 1846.