COMPACTNESS AND ELECTORAL BOUNDARY ADJUSTMENT: AN ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES

Spatial compactness has been proposed as a suitable criterion for assessing whether electoral boundaries reflect partisan interests. Although several different measures of spatial compactness have been developed, only limited efforts have been made to compare and evaluate them in the context of electoral redistricting. This paper assesses alternative spatial compactness measures and applies conceptually appealing measures to the provincial ridings proposed by British Columbia's Royal Commission on Electoral Boundaries (1988).     

COMPLEXITY IN THE RURAL CANADIAN HOUSING LANDSCAPE

Rural housing conditions and needs across Canada are as complex as the rural landscape itself, yet within the research literature rural housing is often treated as a single and unproblematic unit. This paper makes two arguments about rural housing research in Canada. The first is that the ‘rural’ is a complex housing landscape, not simply an undifferentiated ‘other’ in comparison to urban housing. The second is that this complexity has important implications for assessing changes to the local housing stock. The empirical content of the paper is drawn from three study areas in Canada where there is a mix of rural / agricultural and cottage area properties. Questions of housing stock change within these rural-recreational countryside examples are examined using questionnaire and building permit data. The findings presented here support the contention that the rural landscape is in fact a complex housing landscape, and also support the view that unless this complexity is recognized, a coherent portrait of rural housing will not emerge. Les conditions et les besoins d'habitations rurales au Canada, sont aussi complexes que le paysage lui-même, même si la littérature traite I'habitat rural en tant qu'unité“unique, dénuée de problèmes. Cet article présente deux arguments concernant la recherche sur I'habitat rural au Canada. En premier lieu, ‘rural’ decrit un paysage contenant des habitations complexes et pas simplement une ‘autre chose’ non-déstincte par rapport a I'habitat urbain. Deuxidmèment, cette complexité a des conséquences importantes qui ont un rapport avec les changements dans I'inventaire local des habitations. Le contenu de l'article est basé sur trois Études de cas au Canada où il y a un mélange de propriétés rurales, agricoles et vacancyères. Les questions concernant le changement dans I'inventaire des habitations pour ces examples ruraux et vacanciers, sont reliées à des donnés de questionnaires et aux permis de construction. Les résultats présentés ici, confirment l'argument qu'un paysage rural est en fait un paysage complexe d'habitations. lis confirment aussi I'idée qu'un portrait cohérent de I'habitat rural n'apparaitra pas, sauf si cette complexity est reconnue.     

PREFERENCES FOR RURAL LAND SEVERANCE POLICIES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

The increasing demand for residential land in rural Ontario has generated a widespread interest in land severance activity and policy. This paper examines resident preferences for alternative land severance policies using a paired comparison experiment. The analysis identifies those severance policies most preferred by township residents and characterizes groups of residents with similar preferences. Differences in policy preferences are more closely associated with residents' property size, income, and length of residence in the area than with whether they are farmers, countryside non-farmers, or village dwellers.
La demande croissante d' espace résidentiel en Ontario rural est responsable pour l' intérêt grandissant envers le phénomène de détachement en parcelles et les politiques qui s'y rattachent. Le présent article examine les préférences des résidents d' un township ontarien envers différentes politiques de parcellement au moyen d' une méthode comparative. L' analyse des résultats identifie quelles sont les politiques de parcellement préférées et détermine des groupes de résidents qui ont des préférences semblables. Les différences au niveau des préférences des résidents en matière de politiques de parcellement sont plus particulièrement reliées à la grandeur des propriétés, le revenu, et la durée de résidence dans la région plutôt qu'avec leur statut résidentiel tel qu'exploitant agricole, habitant rural non-fermier, ou villageois.     

What consensus? Geopolitics and policy paradigms in China and the United States

The Washington Consensus is not what it was. A model of development associated with the Untied States, it has been diminished both by apparent failures, widespread criticism and by the recent economic crisis that had its origins in the US. Anglo‐American capitalism has lost a good deal of its influence and attractiveness. As a consequence, alternative models of development have become more prominent, especially the so‐called Beijing Consensus. The authors argue that at one level this evolving policy discourse and debate reflects a long‐term structural change in the relative positions of China and the United States. However, it is far from clear that this transformation has gone far enough to underpin a significant ideational or policy challenge on China's part. On the contrary, the debate in China demonstrates that there is little appetite for, or expectation of, a major paradigm change in the near future.     

An international civilization? Empire,internationalism and the crisis of the mid‐twentieth century

This article explores the notion of an international civilization in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century thinking on international relations and the state system. This idea was fundamental to Victorian thinking about relations between Europe and the rest of the world, and was particularly important in reconciling the universal claims of liberal thought with the spread of European imperial control in Africa and Asia. Between the First and Second World Wars, however, the collapse of liberalism and the rise of ideological conflict within Europe led to the gradual retreat from eurocentric claims to civilizational predominance. The emergence of a genuinely global international order after 1945 through the United Nations occurred simultaneously with the collapse of the idea of an international civilization.     

MODERNITY IN RELIGION: A RESPONSE TO CONSTANTIN FASOLT'S “HISTORY AND RELIGION IN THE MODERN AGE”

Contrary to Constantin Fasolt, I argue that it is no longer useful to think of religion as an anomaly in the modern age. Here is Fasolt's main argument: humankind suffers from a radical rift between the self and the world. The chief function of religion is to mitigate or cope with this fracture by means of dogmas and rituals that reconcile the self to the world. In the past, religion successfully fulfilled this job. But in modernity, it fails to, and it fails because religion is no longer plausible. Historical, confessional religions, then, are no longer doing what they are supposed to do; yet the need for religion is still very much with us. Fasolt's account would be a tragic tale, if not for his claim that there is a new religion for the modern age, a religion that fulfills the true reconciling function of religion. That new religion is the reading and writing of history. Indeed, for Fasolt, reading history is religiously redemptive, and writing history is a sacred act. The historian, it turns out, is the priest in modernity. In my response, I challenge both Fasolt's remedy (history as religiously redemptive) and its justification (the fall of historical religions). Indeed, I reject both his romantic view of past religion as the peaceful reconciler, as well as his pessimistic view of present religion as the maker of “enemies” among modern people. In the end, I argue that the way Fasolt employs his categories—“alienation,”“salvation,”“religion,”“history”— is too vague to do much useful work. They are significant categories and they deserve our attention. But in my view, the story Fasolt tells is both too grim (on human alienation) and too cheerful (on historian as modern savior).