The executive lawmaking agenda: Political parties,prime ministers,and policy change in Australia

In Westminster systems, governments enjoy a privileged position in the lawmaking process that they can use to deliver on their campaign promises and achieve their policy goals. What policy areas do governments seek to affect through lawmaking? How stable is the executive lawmaking agenda? How responsive is that agenda to changes triggered by elections or by transitions in prime minister? This study uses a dataset of 3982 Australian bills introduced between 2000 and 2017 to answer these questions. While it finds considerable stability in the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas, the analysis also indicates that Australia's executive lawmaking agenda is more responsive to changes in prime minister than to changes in the party in power. As the first application of the comparative policy agendas approaches to government bills in Australia, this article offers new insights into executive lawmaking priorities during an especially turbulent period in Australian politics.     

Between a principled and a consequentialist logic: theory and practice of secession in Catalonia and Scotland

This paper inquires into whether the three types of arguments usually formulated in the normative literature on the legitimacy of secession – i.e. communitarian, choice, and remedial arguments – are articulated (or not) by separatist parties in Catalonia and Scotland. It concludes that these actors do use such arguments, but they tend to merge them in different combinations making a pluralist case for independence rather than developing monist reasoning as most political philosophers do. Furthermore, it finds a fourth type of argument which is under‐theorised in the relevant literature. This is an instrumental argument whereby independence is depicted not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieve better welfare and governance for the national population. It further proposes a fourfold theoretical scheme that links communitarian and choice arguments to a principled logic based on the belief in the existence of an absolute right to self‐determination and remedial and instrumental arguments to a consequentialist logic that legitimates secession on the condition that it serves the achievement of specific ends.     

The minimum wage and seasonal employment: Evidence from the US agricultural sector

Nearly 40% of agricultural workers in the United States earn an hourly wage that is within 10% of the prevailing state-level minimum wage. We evaluate the impact of the minimum wage on farm employment using county-level data from the United States Census of Agriculture. We employ long-differences specifications and find evidence of a dynamic, negative effect of the minimum wage on seasonal agricultural employment, but no effect on year-round agricultural employment. We estimate a long-run elasticity of total agricultural employment with respect to the minimum wage of about −0.40, which is both statistically and economically significant. Employers’ total expenditures on hired agricultural workers are not affected by the minimum wage. Finally, our analysis suggests that increases in minimum wages may lead to higher capital investment as well as the consolidation of farming operations in the agricultural sector.     

The theory of polynuclear urban regions and its application to central Scotland

The idea of strategic planning for networks of cities and towns, encapsulated in the polynuclear urban region concept, has attracted growing interest in many European regions. Key themes include cooperation between neighbouring cities and coordination between functional policies. This article explores the theoretical benefits, including increased economies of scale and improvements in the strength and quality of internal interactions. It also applies these arguments to Central Scotland. As the largest concentration of economic activity in Scotland, with a high level of organizational fragmentation but growing cross boundary issues and coincident growth pressures and deficiencies, there are potential gains from a common strategic perspective. These include improved communications for inter‐firm collaboration and trade, more efficient labour and housing market interactions, and an institutional framework for planning and marketing important regional assets. Closer cooperation within a regional perspective could help the Central Belt to function better as an economic unit and facilitate its ongoing development.     

THE EFFECTS OF TRADE WITH DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ON THE REGIONAL DEMAND FOR SKILL IN THE U.S.: EVIDENCE FROM COUNTY DATA*

ABSTRACT Using county‐level data from the 1980s and 1990s and a county‐level trade measure that incorporates the county's industrial mix and patterns of international trade across industries, I provide new evidence that trade with developing countries raises the demand for skill and the skill premium in the U.S. Consistent with Heckscher–Ohlin, I find that trade driven by differences in factor endowments has an economically significant impact on local labor markets. The evidence suggests that when trade with developing countries rises, counties with higher skill endowment and greater employment in industries with larger trade shares experience greater relative demand for high‐skilled labor.     

The transition of British Africa

At the turn of the century British literary historians and critics, such as Geikie, Sharp, and Thomas, studied the influence of environment on the works of novelists and poets. In particular, the concepts of literary geographers and a writer's country were developed. Earlier deterministic approaches have been modified and more recent studies by Drabble, O'Brien and Pocock have looked at the totality of influences of place on the work of various writers.