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Selected AbstractsAIChE offers technological insights to the public policy debate on global climate changeENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, Issue 3 2000David E. Gushee Global climate change has been a major issue on the national political agenda since 1988. Several Committees on Capitol Hill conducted hearings concerning the heat waves then searing the nation. Testimony by several well-regarded scientists at those hearings that "we ain't seen nothing yet" led to impressive headlines in the national media. Since then, unusually high temperatures, a succession of forecasts of serious negative impacts from the projected continued warming, and well-publicized Congressional hearings led to the creation of the United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol. As a result, climate change is on just about every technology organization's agenda. In 1996, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers joined the list of organizations formally responding to the issue. The Government Relations Committee (GRC) formed a Task Force on Climate Change, made up of Institute members active in a number of aspects of the issue area. The charge to the Task Force: Look for opportunities for the Institute to contribute to the public policy debate on the issue and frame position papers accordingly. The first major conclusion of the Task Force was that AIChE is not in a position to state whether or not global climate change is a real public policy problem. However, to the extent that the public policy process treats climate change as an issue, the Institute is well positioned to comment on the technical merits of proposed policy responses. The Task Force recommended this posture to the GRC, which agreed. [source] Sovereignty in the Balance: Claims and Bargains at the UN Conferences on the Environment, Human Rights, and WomenINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2000Kathryn Hochstetler States vary the content and subject matter of their claims to sovereignty. In an analysis of when states invoked sovereignty at recent UN World Conferences on the environment (1992), human rights (1993), and women (1995), the authors revise and extend Litfin's (1997) notion of bargains among components of sovereignty. At the conferences, states invoked sovereignty in debates over cultural and religious values, economics, and increased international accountability. The authors interpret the debates based on how four elements of sovereignty,autonomy, control, and legitimacy in the eyes of other states and nonstate actors,are traded by states through implicit or explicit bargaining. They identify patterns that vary by issue area. The authors argue that nongovernmental organizations as well as other states may legitimate or delegitimate states' sovereign claims. They find that countries of the global South made more sovereignty claims of all kinds than Northern states. And, sovereignty bargains may be struck more easily over power and economics than social values. [source] International Regimes: The Case of Western Corporate GovernanceINTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2006DAVID A. DETOMASI Accounting and financial scandals of unprecedented scale have recently occurred in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Much of the cause for these scandals has been attributed to the poor corporate governance standards practiced by the offending companies, leading researchers to re-examine how corporate governance affects economic development. One topic receiving significant research attention has been whether national corporate governance systems are likely to converge, what form that convergence may take, and what barriers currently inhibit convergence. This essay argues that the tools of regime theory hold significant potential for helping to structure empirical inquiry into the process of corporate governance convergence. It then draws upon the recent experience of Western corporate governance systems to illustrate how a consensus on norms, values, and principles in the issue area of corporate governance is emerging. The essay concludes by drawing out the implications of the developing corporate governance regime for emerging market economies and the general topic of global governance. It also poses questions for continued empirical research in the area of corporate governance and international relations. [source] Does the Lawyer Matter?LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 2 2007Influencing Outcomes on the Supreme Court of Canada This article examines the impact of lawyer capability on the decisionmaking of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Extending prior attorney capability studies of U.S. judicial decisionmaking, we test three lawyer variables: prior litigation experience, litigation team size, and Queen's Counsel designation. We find that the first two variables have a statistically significant and positive relationship with the SCC's decisions in non-reference-question cases from 1988 to 2000. Moreover, this relationship persists even after controlling for party capability, issue area, and judicial policy preferences. [source] Marching at the Pace of the Slowest: a Model of International Climate-Change NegotiationsPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2001Hugh Ward We model international negotiations on climate change. Leaders such as the European Union and the US can make proposals and influence veto players, including other countries and domestic lobbies, who must choose whether to accept or reject proposals. We explain why policy change has been minimal in this issue area, which veto-players receive the greatest and least attention and why leader actors wishing to see less progress are in such a strong bargaining position [source] Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions?INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2007Crises, The Meanings of Wars This symposium addresses the role of wars and crises as mechanisms of international change. Over the past two decades, the international system has undergone a number of remarkable transformations, from the end of the Cold War to the emergence of an ongoing "War on Terror," and from the collapse of statist development models to the emergence of a contested,if evolving,neoliberal "Washington Consensus." This volatility exceeds any underlying shifts in economic structures or the distribution of capabilities, and raises important questions regarding the roles of agency, uncertainty, and ideas in advancing change. In this introduction we examine the role of wars and economic crises as socially constructed openings for change. We attempt three things: to critique materialist approaches in the security and political economy issue areas, to outline the distinctive contribution that an agent-centered constructivist understanding of such events offers, and to offer a framework for the study of such events, one which highlights an expanded range of elite-mass interactions. [source] The Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court in a Polarized PolityJOURNAL OF EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2007James L. Gibson Conventional political science wisdom holds that contemporary American politics is characterized by deep and profound partisan and ideological divisions. Unanswered is the question of whether those divisions have spilled over into threats to the legitimacy of American political institutions, such as the U.S. Supreme Court. Since the Court is often intimately involved in making policy in many issue areas that divide Americans,including the contested 2000 presidential election,it is reasonable to hypothesize that loyalty toward the institution depends on policy and/or ideological agreement and partisanship. Using data stretching from 1987 through 2005, the analysis reveals that Court support among the American people has not declined, nor is it connected to partisan and ideological identifications. Instead, support is embedded within a larger set of relatively stable democratic values. Institutional legitimacy may not be obdurate, but it does not seem to be caught up in the divisiveness that characterizes so much of American politics,at least not at present. [source] | |||||||||||||