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Walleye management can be contentious on Lake Erie because the fish is valuable economically to both Canada and the U.S. On Lake Erie, five state and provincial jurisdictionsâ€"Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Yorkâ€"must work together to establish an annual walleye harvest limit known as a “total allowable catch” or TAC. To facilitate cooperation, the jurisdictions formed the Lake Erie Committee, which operates pursuant to a multijurisdictional agreement called A Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakes Fisheries. Most of the time, members of the Lake Erie Committee can agree on and adhere to the annual walleye TAC. However, the committee failed to maintain consensus on the 2004 TAC after consensus was achieved and announced. The committee could not resolve the dispute on its own and invoked the Joint Strategic Plan’s dispute provisions, a rare occurrence. This paper discusses cross-border walleye management on Lake Erie, describes how the jurisdictions handled the dispute, and reflects on how the Joint Strategic Plan can help jurisdictions overcome conflict. The paper argues that the plan can address distributional issues like TACs, despite being non-binding. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with the suggestion that Protestant theological interpretation and religious practice are important, although thoroughly under-analyzed, factors in the emergence and structure of early political populist movements in Prairie Canada. Specifically, Protestant Christian theology originating in the United States, which is so often mentioned as a factor in the evolution of that country's democratic theory and practice, has also significantly influenced the development of a general, "pre-ideological" populist political spirit that exists in the Canadian Prairies. This paper provides a working definition of populism, with specific focus on its anti-establishment and anti-elite characteristics, before reviewing relevant literature related to religious influence on populist political sentiment in both the United States and Canada. This paper concludes with the suggestion that, although it is reasonable to expect a similar connection in Prairie Canada as one finds in America between religion and populism, further research is required to establish an empirical link. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom holds that governments matter. That a new government, particularly one of a different political party, will make substantial changes to the policies of the state they were elected to lead. The focus of this paper is on whether party affiliation matters in determining Canada's priorities and policies in its trade relationship with the United States (US). It will compare policy statements and performances of Liberal, Progressive Conservative, and Conservative governments from 1968 to the present and it will argue that party affiliation has had little impact on Canada's US trade policy over this period. The analysis will proceed in four parts. In the first part, the role of political parties in Canada will be outlined briefly. This will be followed by an overview of Canada's exports to the US. The third section of the paper will examine the economic priorities of Canadian governments concerning the US from 1968 to present as gleaned from major policy statements (e.g. white papers and speeches). The final part of the paper will set out some of the reasons why party affiliation has had little substantive impact on Canada's trade policy with the US over the last forty years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian and American Supreme Courts have both adjudicated cases concerning the rights claims of suspected terrorists. While the Canadian Supreme Court adjudicates these cases asking whether the government actions violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Court, in the American tradition, does not look to its Bill of Rights for answers, but rather adjudicates such claims based on a separation of powers framework. This paper examines the judicially-created reasoning used to decide security cases in a post-911 world in Canada and the United States. I show that while the Canadian experience looks like it is more rights-based, the Court, like its American counterpart, looks at the procedure of how the law goes about limiting rights over the substance of the legitimacy of the limit in the first place. I conclude that the two courts end up using similar legal reasoning, despite the differing in approaches, resulting in each state providing a delicate balance between security and liberty. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has generally been framed as a global problem warranting an international policy response. But the growing reality of climate policy development suggests enormous variation among nations and surprisingly large roles for sub-national units. Ironically, both Canada and the United States took similar bargaining positions into Kyoto but only the former ratified this treaty. However, Canadian emissions growth has far exceeded American trends and neither its federal nor provincial levels have been active in policy development. In contrast, individual states and regional clusters have taken an ever-expanding role in this area. This paper examines key factors that explain this divergent pattern, considers whether provinces are beginning to engage in policy learning with neighboring states, and explores early signs of formal collaboration that cross the 49th parallel. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whistleblowing in Canada. It traces the growing body of whistleblower legislation in Canada over the past several years, assesses some of the shortcomings of these efforts, and compares them to American approaches. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how different approaches to national identity and ethno-racial diversity bear on the political commitments of immigrants in Canada, the United States and France . ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines why the relationship between private and public benefits in health insurance and pensions in Canada was the reverse of the U.S., with public benefits in Canada coming to dominate where private benefits were already well established. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the history of the relationship and concludes that while there have been some fundamental changes to it there is also a strain of consistency and invariability that continues to serve as its foundation and structure over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares recent court decisions regarding alien detention in three countries. It is a case study that explores the effects of international forces on courts, and examines ways in which comparative constitutionalism can illuminate the dynamics of immigration policy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a comparative framework, this paper explores the parallel rights revolutions in Canada and the United States, particularly as they relate to the implementation of federal fair employment policies during the 1940s and 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do changes in finance laws impact development of fundraising? This paper examines how party finance laws, such as contribution limits, have encouraged fundraising on the national and sub-national level in Canada and the U.S. from 1980 to 2003. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a vast literature on the possible causes of low and declining turnout in Western democracies. Most of these studies explicitly or implicitly argue that we should be concerned that fewer citizens go to the polls. The argument tends to be that low turnout is a problem because rich and better educated citizens are far more likely to vote than poor, less educated citizens and that this makes for unequal influence and representation. There are two related underlying assumptions here. The first is that rich and poor citizens in fact differ significantly in their policy preferences. The second is that if these non-voters were to turnout, election results would be significantly different from what they are at present. However, while the view that low turnout constitutes a democratic dilemma is widely held and oft stated (Piven and Cloward 1988; Verba et al. 1995; Lijphart 1997; Putnam 2000), few if any of these studies provide empirical evidence for the accuracy of these assumptions; even fewer examine the question outside the American context. We test these propositions using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study. Our analysis entails two steps. First, we analyze differences in opinion between voters and non-voters across a wide spectrum of policy areas covering economics, social policy, national unity and others in order to assess the extent of divergent views between voters and abstainers. Next, we test the hypothesis that the outcome of the 2000 Canadian Federal Election would have been appreciably different if all citizens were to have voted by simulating universal turnout. The paper will make a significant contribution by providing an empirical assessment of some widely held but seldom tested propositions and also by extending the analysis of the consequences of low turnout beyond the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade there has been a proliferation of research on the relationship between diversity and redistributive social welfare policy. In conceptualizing the independent variable, diversity, the paper argues for distinctions between diversity as richness and diversity as evenness. In the dependent variable, redistributive welfare policy, the paper argues for looking beyond measures of generalized trust and spending on welfare to measures such as labor market policy and electoral reform. In terms of causal mechanisms, the paper argues for looking as well at the organizational capacity of the minority groups and policy framing. The usefulness of such concepts are demonstrated by looking at the case of Australia in the early 20th century which faced considerable diversity in that 20 percent of its population was Catholic, a minority population stigmatized by many Protestants. Yet up to the 1930s, Australia was one of the most progressive nations in the world, with considerable unionization, electorally successful labor parties, compulsory voting, and high levels of social welfare spending, while simultaneously raising Catholics to levels of political representation never before seen in Australian history. Brief comparisons with the United States and Canada are drawn. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crashing of planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC on September 11, 2001 altered instantly American thinking about itself and other states. Gone was the view that the US was shielded from foreign incursions and problems. The barriers of the oceans had been breached and the American homeland became a theatre of war for the first time since the War of 1812. This paper will examine the emergence of a new image of Canada as a security threat to the US in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The paper will argue that the traditional image of Canada as a friendly, benign neighbor has been challenged by this new image of Canada as a source of insecurity in the post 9-11 period, and that the existence of these dual images has had significant policy implications for Canada, particularly in terms of the making of Canada policy in the US. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political disengagement of young people is a common theme across many of the mature democracies. One element of this disengagement is a cluster of characteristics and proclivities that might be termed "political inattentiveness." This inattentiveness among the young comprises three key elements: low levels of political knowledge, a relative lack of political interest and inattention to politics in the media. This paper seeks to advance our understanding of political inattentiveness among the young by assembling longitudinal data for six countries: Canada, the United States, Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway. The surveys are used to trace differences between young and old in political knowledge, interest and media attentiveness from the 1950s to the present day. This longitudinal and comparative analysis helps establish which dimensions of political attentiveness have changed most notably, the timing of these changes and the degree of cross-national divergence and convergence. In addition to the empirical contribution, the paper also assesses the implications of the findings for different theoretical accounts of political disengagement among the young. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable debate within federal states about the appropriate role of the federal government in setting national standards. The question of jurisdiction has been a prominent issue with respect to environmental policy, and drinking water, more specifically. For example, concerned citizens and environmental organizations such as the Sierra Legal Defense Fund (2001) have called on the Canadian federal government to issue national standards pointing to the American Safe Drinking Water Act as a benchmark. The centralized American system wherein the federal government effectively regulates states through coercive legal and financial threats is in sharp contrast to the Canadian decentralized model of each province setting its own standards. This important difference between the Canadian and US federal systems presents an opportunity to empirically examine the implications of these two contrasting federalisms. What happens when governments regulate governments within a federal state? The study of regulatory federalism with respect to drinking water policies can shed new light on intergovernmental relations as well as implementation challenges. This paper examines intergovernmental relations at both federal-state and federal-municipal, as well as state-municipal levels. Using a public choice framework and comparative case study methodology the paper examines the hypothesis that while intergovernmental relations will be worse in a top-down model, a regulatory federalism framework in which one level of government regulates another offers better protection for public health. The expectation is that when governments regulate governments, the government being regulated behaves akin to a private actor facing unwanted regulation evidenced, for example, by a focus on economic costs rather than social benefits. As state governments have more resources to protect and more votes to lose, they can be expected to act more adversely to regulation than local governments, though local governments may take on some characteristics of private actors. Finally, safe drinking water quality outcomes depend on the degree to which governments are held accountable in a principle-agent relationship. The six case studies involve three paired Canada-US groupings: (1) Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington; (2) Nanaimo, British Columbia and Longview, Washington; and (3) Abbottsford, British Columbia and Whatcom County, Washington. Cases have been paired based on their source waters, population sizes, industries, etcetera, and their variation in governance model with the border as the point of difference via differing federal and provincial regulations. The six case studies fit within a larger research agenda that examines safe drinking water policies in two federal states, Canada and the United States of America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the extent to which caseload and efficiency in state supreme courts are affected by the selection method of state supreme court justices. The bulk of contemporary research on judicial selection method focuses on the effects on such things as judicial roles, judicial decision-making, and policymaking trends. This study looks to expand this body of research by focusing on judicial caseload and efficiency as they are affected by the various selection methods employed to populate state supreme courts. It also seeks to address the difficulties of research design in studying such matters (e.g., Glick 1991). A paired-case study analysis is employed to examine data from selected states as a precursor to a larger, more comprehensive examination based on data from a larger number of states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising cost of prescription drugs in the United States has led state and local governments to openly develop prescription drug importation mail-order sites to combat the increasing deficit in state coffers. Similarly, US citizens are traveling to Canada and Mexico to purchase affordable prescription drugs. Both are violations of the law. What explains the disjuncture between federal law and state level policy practice? Why are senior citizens smuggling drugs across the border? .x000d.We suggest the answer to all these questions has something to do with the nature of the prescription drug policy domain and the difficulty in altering the existing policy equilibrium. The dynamic governing the evolution of pharmaceutical policy, and drug importation in particular, is a case study in how positive and negative feedback shape policy subsystems and by extension public policy. This study, an extension of earlier work, focuses on hearing activity, witness participation, and other indicators to track positive and negative feedback in the realm of pharmaceutical regulation between 1947 and 2007. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the American and Canadian governments have taken different environmental policy pathsâ€"Canada has ratified the agreement while the United States has not. But while officially approving the emissions plan, the Canadian government has not acted on its aims and objectives. Meanwhile, the United States has supported other environmental agreements, such as the APEC Sydney Declaration for Climate Change, also signed by Canada. These redirections and evasions serve to rhetorically undermine and defocus the Kyoto initiatives. In both countries, approaches to climate change have been politically and rhetorically opportunistic. In light of the ambiguous defeat of Kyoto in Canada and the United States a political discourse has emerged that has adopted the term “Kyoto” as a rhetorical tool to describe poor environmental policy. Using the debate transcripts from the American House of Representatives and the Canadian House of Commons this interdisciplinary and international panel will investigate the rhetoric of Kyoto from three unique perspectives: that of a rhetorician, that of a political scientist, and that of a biologist. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of September 11, Canada and the US have begun to revamp border security initiatives. Bolstering the screening of visitors, permanent immigrants and refugees has become a priority. Shared agreements have been updated and new accords are being addressed. New technologies to help border security are being tested at border crossings. However, the task is daunting. There are 135 land crossings, 203 airports, 187 commercial vessel points and 313 marine points between the two. Since September 11 perceived flaws in the system have been emphasized. From an American standpoint, Canada’s refugee policy is a “sore spot” and those policies are seen as compromising US security. From the Canadian viewpoint, the challenge is to address those fears while maintaining sovereignty over its borders and immigration policies. Technology has not lived up to expectations, and what we do have is not sufficient. As trade between the two grows concerns about the future security grows.This study will examine existing national and cross-border accords and agreements in general, and it will look at Shared Border Accord (SBA) and newer initiatives and the technology needed for to achieve the full benefits offered by the SBA. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A transnational team of researchers surveyed students at a Canadian and a U.S. university as they watched the presidential or prime ministerial debates or listened without video. Inspired by the legend that Nixon bested Kennedy in the 1960 debates among radio listeners but not television viewers, the current study builds on a study of the 2004 debates. It now includes Canadians surveyed as they watched or listened to the English-language debate among the five candidates to be Canada's prime minister and Canadians surveyed as they watched the second presidential debate -- along with U.S. students surveyed while watching or listening to the first two presidential debates and the vice presidential debate. A second expansion of the study is that Canadian and U.S. students who failed to watch or listen to a debate live were given parallel surveys to see how their impressions of the debates gained from the mass media and interpersonal discussions compared with those in the live debate watching or listening experiment. In all cases, the surveys were designed to develop and test a scale on how "presidential" (or "prime ministerial") the candidates were, because that was the most robust variable in the 2004 debates study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. public opinion literature applied to Canadian public opinion study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a comparative study of Canadian and U.S. autism policymaking. It utilizes narrative policy analysis to compare the 2006 Federal Autism Initiatives in Canada and the U.S. Combating Autism Act of 2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do attitudes towards public servants by Americans compare to similar attitudes in other nations? 2004 ISSP data are used to examine attitudes held by citizens in the U.S., Canada, and several European nations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate and compare the impact of the autism narrative construction on federal autism policy in the United States and Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that the value of party labels as heuristic devices depends on individual perceptions of party reputation, including cognition and affect. We test our theory using data collected from university students in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines homogeneity and heterogeneity in preferences for public policy, across income and education levels and party identification, and across policy domains in the US, UK, and Canada. Do preferences differ across segments of the public at particular points in time? What about over time â€" do we observe a uniform swing across different groups (parallel publics) or does the flow of opinion differ across party, income, and education? Our data on public preferences for government spending show cross-sectional heterogeneity across certain sub-aggregates in some domains, but overall very high levels of over-time homogeneity in trends across groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of firearms related focusing events in two states: the United States and Canada. It is my contention that focusing events can lead to items being placed on the agenda; however, interest group activity can either impede or promote the policy outcomes. In the United States firearms related focusing events often lead to new policy being placed on the agenda when there is a Democratic government; however, due to the nature of the political system and the presence of the NRA policy rarely goes to the formulation stage. When there is a Republican government in power, focusing events do not lead to new policy alternatives being placed on the agenda..x000d.In Canada when there is a liberal government, firearms related focusing events will lead to an item being placed on the agenda. Policy makers will react quickly and decisively in creating new firearm legislation. There are two reasons for this: centralized power, and the minimization of interest group influence. When there is a conservative government, firearms related focusing events will lead to the policy being placed on the agenda, but rather than having major overhauls to the subsystem, changes will be incremental in nature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The welfare state literature has an increasing focus on the gender-neutrality of family policies that relieve dependence on the market. Yet as Orloff (1993) argues, if wives face hurdles to the market that their husbands do not, a gender neutrality focus is premature, because policies that seem to help women actually hinder full market access. For example, Morgan and Zippel (2003) argue that increasingly generous leave policies in Europe mask a desire to keep women out of the workforce. Bambra (2004) creates a gender-neutral de-familiasation index, but this and other analyses of family policy focus on parental leave and childcare. These help mothers and fathers, but none relieves women of the dependence on marriage. A complete analysis of family policy requires a focus on policies outside the traditional welfare state sphere. The paper incorporates dependence on marriage into the analysis of family policies in Canada and the United States through an examination of abortion and domestic violence. These policies either remove or create dependence on marriage and thus allow for a complete picture of equality in modern welfare states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has highlighted a disconnect between “mainstream” political science and the study of urban politics in the United States. This paper suggests that Canadian urban political science suffers â€" doubly â€" from similar pathologies. This situation might be characterized, tongue-in-cheek, as one “black hole” orbiting another. As part of a larger project reviewing the state of Canadian urban political science, we evaluate the Canadian discipline in comparison to its American counterpart, positing and appraising various hypotheses that may explain the relative marginality of the (sub)field. Three explanations are advanced:.x000d.(1) Institutional: Canadian urban political science is marginalized not because there are too few interested scholars â€" as could be argued in the American case â€" but rather because interested faculty are so thinly dispersed across university departments. .x000d.(2) Epistemological: Unlike the US experience, students of Canadian politics, and especially federalism scholars, have been predisposed to ignore local government and urban politics. .x000d.(3) Ontological: Canadian cities are fundamentally different from American cities in important respects â€" though this may be changing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal electoral districts in Canada are typically drawn with much greater compactness than Congressional districts in the United States. However, in recent decades, redistricting commissions in some parts of Canada have engaged in aggressive U.S.-style redistricting. Is a decrease in compactness correlated with an increase in electoral volatility? Trends in recent elections across redistricting cycles in Canada are examined, with comparisons made to the United States. The paper also includes a discussion of the ramifications of redistricting that pays less attention to traditional political boundaries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite limited electoral and governmental reward, third parties commonly contest elections under single-member-district plurality (SMD-p) electoral rules. Even under the strong party duopoly of the United States, third parties continually contest local, state, and national elections. In this paper, we relax the assumption that third party candidates are motivated solely by the rewards of office and examine the incentives for them to contest elections under variations in electoral volatility and competition. We propose a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship between electoral competition and third party participation. When electoral competition is either very low or very high we expect the number of third party candidates to be high, due to increased opportunity to draw attention to policy issues or affect the election outcome. We expect a positive relationship between electoral volatility and third party candidacies, since high volatility signals a de-aligned electorate. We test our claims using district-level data in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States from 1980-2000. The results of negative binomial regressions indicate that third parties are more likely to contest elections when electoral uncertainty is high. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative study of the impact of party leaders and their personality traits on election outcomes is diverse and non-cumulative-it has followed a number of directions, and the literature is conflicted in almost all of these areas. One of the main branches within the leaders literature focuses on the evaluation of personality traits, and scholars are unable to agree about which traits voters take note of; whether traits actually affect election outcomes; if they do which are more important; and why or how traits are evaluated in the first place. When one looks more closely at the literature, it becomes clear that what is needed is a larger comparative analysis that incorporates election studies across time and space, in order to be able to make more definitive conclusions about the role of leader evaluations. However, one of the challenges to this endeavor stems from the nature of the data available. Different traits are included in different election studies over time, and often even where trait continuity does exist, the question format changes, making comparability over time and across space very difficult. This paper examines the impact of question format, using pooled data from election studies conducted in two countries, Canada and the United States. The analysis suggests that question format does indeed have an effect on respondents' evaluations of party leaders, but more research is needed before we can make conclusions about the implications of these effects for the comparative study of the role of leaders. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares secessionist mobilization strategies in federal and unitary environments. The cases are Scotland, Quebec, and South Carolina. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an in-depth examination of the same-sex marriage debate simultaneously occurring in the United States and Canada. The political, constitutional and societal elements of this debate will be considered. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada and the US have been partners in the defence of North America for over six decades. However, new tensions have recently begun to emerge. This paper will examine some of the current controversies as well as the increasing political divergence. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pairs Kingdon?s multiple streams with synthetic utility bargaining to examine the evolution of the highly contested Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, bringing domestic and external decision-making together in an integrated framework. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines path dependence analysis of the development of public health insurance in the United States and argues that a number of key interpretations are challenged by a comparative perspective examining the historical development of public healht insurance in Canada. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Canada and the United States had similar abortion policy legacies until the late twentieth century, policy divergence has recently occurred. This paper analyses relevant institutions to explain this policy divergence. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the level of Canada-US cooperation in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system after 9/11. In this case, we see a seamless integration of security measures into existing arrangements while not jeopardizing maritime trade. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the question of whether judicialpolicy-making that effects policy changes with respect to divisive socialissues is likely to generate a particularly hostile response. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies concerning North American environmental management focus on international regimes and nation-to-nation agreements. A smaller number have examined the local contexts affected by such arrangements. However, there exist a series of transboundary commons that have developed bounded rule structures combining both local and international elements. In times of federal devolution across North America of environmental responsibilities to states and provinces, it is crucial to understand the policy alternatives to traditional command and control management. Aided by the theory of institutional rational choice, this paper focuses on localized transnational natural resource management by examining the design and implementation of seven such interlocal organizations. The environmental contexts are the Great Lakes Basin and the Northwestern border region between Alaska and the Canadian territories. Canada and the United States, in the province of Ontario and the state of Michigan, share three rivers that have been severely polluted. In the late 1980s three localized binational plans were created to further the recovery of these waters. In the Northwest, there are four cases since the 1980s of interlocal arrangements to manage stocks of polar bears, beluga whales, caribou, and salmon. Each of the cases share the following features: the resource has been transnational; the participants and decision-making remain highly localized though international; local, state/provincial, and federal authorities have worked in concert to provide grants of authority and money; policy implementation capacity has been driven by resource users, and there is a bounded rule structure that includes the populations and resources of two countries, states/provinces and localities. Using lessons from the fifteen-year plus histories of these cases, I develop the concept of interlocality; design a model for effective interlocal cooperation; catalog variables that promote or hinder the successful policy delivery of such institutions; and analyze the contextual differences between interlocal institutions in the complex highly nested policy circumstances of the Great Lakes and in the remote sparsely populated Arctic. In brief, all seven local transnational institutions have played a valuable role in both the policy-making and policy-implementing phases of international coordination of shared resources in both landscapes. However, variability in local leadership capacity, perception of risk to a common pool resource, clear conflict resolution mechanisms, and agency stability has caused some cases to be more successful than others. While my research has been in the American-Canadian context, its focus is to determine fundamental variables that any interlocal context may present and highlights Mexican-American cases for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest groups wish to expand their organization to achieve maximum results. Therefore, it is theorized that an interest group will attempt to persuade the policies of their home government, as well as the policies of other states internationally. In theory, an interest group will both directly and indirectly lobby their home government as well as directly and indirectly lobby the governments of other states internationally. As a result, interest groups will at time become transnational organizations, becoming involved in a three-level game. The domestic level of the game involves the direct and indirect lobbying of the group’s home government. The international level is two-part. The first level involves the groups contact with similar groups in an attempt to indirectly sway the policy outcomes of that state. At the same time, the second level involves the interest group’s attempts to directly lobby the policy makers of the international state. In order to test this theory, an environmental case study will be developed in which the environmental policies of the United States and Canada will be reviewed. Through review, it will be determined which groups supported the legislation, and how the policies developed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism and other neurological differences gained increasing public attention over the past twenty years. Part of the reason for this rise in public agenda prominence is the dramatic increase in perceived incidence of autism spectrum disorders. Though there is no consensus on prevalence, a condition once affecting only 1 in 10,000 people is now believed to be in present in 1 in 150 children. This dramatic change presents significant challenges to policy makers in domains including education and health care. Despite the need for information concerning the policy implications of the autism epidemic, to date there has been little political science research on autism policy. This study identifies and compares the maps of institutions and actors emerging around autism and public policy in Canada and the United States. Comparing and contrasting how the autism policy subsystem is emerging Canada and the United States sheds light on the relationship between government structure and public policy development. Also, analyzing the governments’ capacities to respond to the challenges autism poses to individuals and families suggests possible reforms and directions for further research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charlton Heston's Cold Dead Hands and Violent Crime in the United States: Using Counterfactual Evidence from Canada. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral competition has long been held as a required and essential component of a smoothly functioning democracy. This common wisdom suggests that representative responsiveness is likely to decrease as the level of general election competitiveness falls off. The closer the election the more uncertain the incumbent member of the legislature is about her ability to get reelected, which motivates her to work harder to win votes (i.e. campaign harder, spend more time in the district, secure more pork projects, modify voting behavior in the legislature, etc.). In turn these activities should increase voter satisfaction and efficacy. This final linkage is what we take up here. Namely, do voters in districts that have competitive elections demonstrate higher levels of efficacy and higher levels of satisfaction with the representative and with the legislature itself? Using survey data from the most recent elections in three western democracies with single member district systems (UK, Canada, and the U.S.) we find no such connection. Rather, the winner/loser dichotomy is primal. Electoral competitiveness has no measurable effect on voters either in terms of satisfaction with their representative or with more abstract variables like efficacy. This finding has important implications for democratic theory and for redistricting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How indigenous peoples fit into the federal systems of Canada and the United States has been a vexing problem to both countries for centuries. Although the problem is similar, the two countries have addressed it in different ways. Using the lens of federalism we examine how the time of independence, the role of the judiciary, and the recognition of sovereignty through history has affected the relationship between the indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada and their respective national governments. We do this through a review of the relevant literature. We finish by comparing the current place of the native populations within the two federal systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the extent to which female justices have altered patterns of unanimity in the Supreme Courts of Canada and the U.S., and explores whether female justices vote differently than men in discrimination cases. Using time series and logistic regression techniques that control for rival hypotheses, the study uncovers surprising findings of gender effects on both courts. While female justices on the U.S. Court have fostered increased levels of unanimity, they do not vote more liberally than men in equality disputes. The findings in the Canadian Court are quite different, with female justices much more likely to cast votes in favor of rights claimants, but having little positive effect on rates of unanimity. We explain these results by advancing a theory of "mediated feminism," suggesting that gender effects will often be suppressed and mediated by the unique political and institutional forces at work in different court settings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic comparison of news coverage of men and women candidates across democratic systems allows for comparison of how the news media influence the election of women to political office, and how political institutions and context may influence gender differences in newspaper coverage of election candidates. We compare newspaper coverage of male and female candidates in the most recent national elections in Australia, Canada, and the United States. We find gender differences in the amount and type of coverage of contemporary campaigns, and these differences take different forms under different political contexts. This research represents the initial piece of a larger project in which we will examine patterns in coverage across a larger set of post-industrial democracies, over a series of elections. In this way, our initial findings remain tentative, and our final conclusions will be based on a larger body of evidence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]