Suchergebnisse

This dissertation investigates the historical development of the right-to-know concept in the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-know Act (EPCRA) of 1986. It starts with the use of words during the American Revolution, words capacious or general enough to later include the modern right-to-know idea. It also traces the real emergence of the right-to-know concept during the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s, including the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966. Some of the limitations of the FOIA are discussed here, limited as it was and is by nine broad ―exemptions‖ to the release of information by the federal Executive Branch. This study deals with an important legislative response to environmental disasters and near-disasters, with the aid of the Anti-Toxic and Environmental Justice movements of the late 20th century and ending with the enactment of EPCRA in 1986 and its effects in subsequent decades. This historical account also provides a brief analysis on how the legislation based on the right-to-know principle opened opportunities for the field of communication, especially environmental risk communication. EPCRA was the first federal law in the United States to fully embrace the right-to-know approach to public policy, also known as regulation through revelation. The right-to-know approach is based on the ideas of self-governance and public participation in the decision-making process. EPCRA has served as a model for more than 80 countries, which adopted laws based on the right-to-know principle in different levels since EPCRA's enactment.

In their recent book,The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that American support for Israel does not serve American interests. Nevertheless, they observe that American foreign policy regarding the Middle East, especially in recent years, has tilted strongly toward support for Israel, and they attribute this support to the influence of the "Israel lobby" in American domestic politics. Their book is principally an attempt to make a causal argument about American politics and policymaking. I examine three aspects of this argument—its causal logic, the use of evidence to support hypotheses, and the argument's connection with the state of knowledge about American politics—and conclude that the case for the Israel lobby as the primary cause of American support for Israel is at best a weak one, although it points to a number of interesting questions about the mechanisms of power in American politics. Mearsheimer and Walt's propositions about the direct influence of the Israel lobby on Congress and the executive branch are generally not supported by theory or evidence. Less conclusive and more suggestive, however, are their arguments about the lobby's apparent influence on the terms and boundaries of legitimate debate and discussion of Israel and the Middle East in American policymaking. These directions point to an alternative approach to investigating the apparent influence of the Israel lobby in American politics, focusing less on direct, overt power over policy outcomes and more on more subtle pathways of influence over policy agendas and the terms of policy discourse.

El análisis econométrico realizado, en el marco de un modelo de datos depanel con efectos fijos, para el período 1993-2004, tuvo el objetivode determinar si la participación de diversas categorías de gasto públicoen el gasto público total de las provincias argentinas estuvo influida porvariables económicas, fiscales y político institucionales tales comola posibilidad de reelección, normas que limitan el gasto público o elendeudamiento o que condicionan el uso del crédito.Mientras que los coeficientes de regresión estimados para el esfuerzofiscal, la suficiencia financiera y la deuda pública fueron significativamentediferentes de cero, los resultados distaron de ser satisfactorios en el restode los casos, salvo por las variables que representaban límites impuestossobre el aumento del gasto o el uso del crédito público.Palabras Clave: gasto público provincial, respondabilidad, autonomía ysuficiencia financiera, variables político institucionales, datos de panelefectos fijos.Clasificación JEL: H72 , H11 AbstractUsing a panel data with fixed effect for the period 1993-2004, we aim at ascertaining whether the participation of public expenditure categories in total public spending of Argentine provinces was influenced by economic, fiscal and politico-institutional variables, such as provinces' political sign; possibility of reelection of the executive branch; provisions limiting public spending, public debt, or restrictions to the use of credit; and the structure of the legislative bodies. While estimated coefficients for fiscal effort, financial sufficiency, and public debt were significantly different from zero, results fell short of being conclusive for the other variables, except for categorical variables standing for limits on spending and credit use.Keywords: Provincial Public Spending, Accountability, Financial Autonomyand Sufficiency, Politico-Institutional Variables, Fixed Effect Panel Data.JEL Classification: H72 , H11

During the year 2000, there were significant developments in immigration law and policy with respect to employment-based immigration, family visas, asylum regulations and jurisprudence, refugee admissions, Temporary Protection Status (TPS) designations, and the implementation of the United Nations Torture Convention. The net effect of changes in employment-based immigration was a gain to both the business community and to immigrants under most categories. There was a virtual unanimous consent among lawmakers to increase the number of temporary H-1B specialty workers in the United States and to ameliorate some of the unintended consequences of previous legislation such as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA).1 To accomplish these objectives, Congress enacted two significant pieces of immigration legislation late in the year: the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act2 (AC21) and the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act of 2000 (LIFE Act),3 as well as subsequent LIFE Act Amendments. Together, the new laws provide for a three-year increase in the H-1B visa cap, new rules allowing for "portability" and extensions of H-1B visa status, temporary restoration of the special adjustment of status provisions of former Immigration and Nationality Act4 (INA) § 245(i), and temporary nonimmigrant status for certain alien spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents during the pendency of their green card processing. In addition to these legislative developments, the executive branch and courts focused on an array of issues including permanent and temporary worker labor certifications, asylum claims, and implementation of the United Nations Torture Convention.

Este artículo se centra en los debates legislativos de la provincia de Buenos Aires en las dos primeras décadas del siglo XX, con el propósito de identificar las razones que obstruyeron las iniciativas del Ejecutivo provincial tendientes a limitar la amplia competencia de la justicia de paz en materia penal. Además de motivos económicos y políticos como marco explicativo de la inalterabilidad de esa institución en su jurisdicción, el texto sugiere atender la incidencia que habría tenido el contexto de preocupación generado por los efectos lesivos de la política criminal. Ante el crecimiento de la población carcelaria y la rigurosidad de la legislación penal sancionada en 1903, cobraría creciente gravitación la justicia de paz como una instancia clave de mediación. ; This article focuses on the legislative debates of the province of Buenos Aires during the period of consolidation of state institutions, with the purpose of identifying the reasons that blocked those provincial executive branch initiatives intended to limit the broad jurisdiction of the justice of the peace in criminal matters. Beyond economic and political reasonsthat explain the immutability of their powers, this study highlights the impact of the atmosphere of concern generated by the damaging effects of criminal policies. Because of the growth in prison population and stringency criminal law, the role of the justices of the peace would become more important as a key instance of mediation. ; Fil: Sedeillan, Gisela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tandil. Instituto de Geografía, Historia y Ciencias Sociales; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires; Argentina

On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, and the Space Age had arrived. While not an American achievement, Sputnik stands as a significant juncture in United States history. This thesis explores the resulting American political crisis, its development in the final three months of 1957, and the impact Sputnik had on American life. The thesis also examines the social and political context of the Sputnik crisis and will challenge some long-standing analysis of how America's reaction to the Soviet satellite developed. To accomplish this task, it was necessary to consult both primary and secondary sources. Important primary sources include government documents from both the Legislative and Executive Branches of the United States Government, attained from both printed volumes and online archives. The memoirs of key individuals also shed light on the mindset of prominent politicians and policymakers of the period. Newspapers and magazines from the era were examined to explore the media and public reaction to the Sputnik Crisis and related events. Secondary sources are used as both avenues of information and theory regarding the events, and also for the purposes of examining the consensus of others who have explored this topic. The topics covered in the thesis include the flow of events before, during, and after the Sputnik Crisis of 1957; analysis of contextual issues such as missile and satellite development and American culture of the period; and analysis of how the Sputnik Crisis unfolded and how this impacted American culture and national policy. ; 2005-12-01 ; M.A. ; Arts and Sciences, Department of History ; Masters ; This record was generated from author submitted information.

The relative as well as absolute aggrandizement of the executive branch of the national government is the outstanding single fact in the political experience of the United States. The Presidency today is not only stronger in relation to Congress and the Supreme Court but its role in the whole life of the nation has become much larger than apparently envisaged by the Founders. This development, however, is not considered a departure from the original scheme of government because the Constitution is held to be a "living document." The intermittent but cumulative growth of the Presidency has been absorbed into current constitutional theory on the general principle laid down by Justice Holmes deciding a question of federal-state relations: "This case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago." This unity of theory and practice constitutes, indeed, the genius of American politics to which Professor Daniel Boorstin has applied the term "givenness." The two components of this "givenness," according to Professor Boorstin, are the idea of a preformed original theory given to the nation by the Founding Fathers and adequate to all its future needs, and the idea of an implicit theory forever embodied in American institutions. Combined, these two tenets produce a sense of continuity — "homogeneity," "seamless web" — in which past and present, tradition and progress, constitutional law and political practice, are blended into that peculiar American optimism, at once reverent and practical. Since the Presidency participates in this "givenness," it also constitutes an indestructible composite of constitutional interpretation and history. It is a "living institution."

"Anybody we like is efficient. Anybody we do not like is a bureaucrat." This good-natured comment on legislative attitudes toward the executive branch was made recently in Congress by an experienced lawmaker, speaking as chairman of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. The epigram may be relished for its knowing humor, but its greater significance lies in the light it sheds on one of the most important problems of modern government—the problem of insuring responsible administration in the framework of democratic society.For, of course, one way of getting nowhere in attempting a solution of this problem is to reduce it to a matter of personal preference. In the broader context, it is plainly irrelevant whether or not "we," as citizens or as lawmakers, happen to "like" the individual administrative official we confront, or the particular public agency, or the functions that have to be performed under the laws, or the general direction in which things are moving in response to the policies of those elected to exercise political control. Nor do our likes and dislikes furnish a trustworthy criterion to mark the border line between "efficient" public service and "bureaucracy."And yet, for the administrative official it is a familiar experience to encounter sharp animosity on the part of some legislators, as well as some elements of the public, precisely for doing his statutory duty. In a party system like ours, which puts only a small premium on political solidarity, the frequency of such experience is increased because lawmakers exercise great freedom of dissent from legislative measures passed with the support of their own party.

A criticism of the procedure which results in appropriations acts must proceed from some premises regarding the function of Congress and the nature and use of the budget process. This criticism is based on the assumption that it is not the function of Congress to govern, but instead: (1) to indicate wants, (2) to institutionalize the giving or withholding of consent, (3) to bring political conflicts toward resolution, (4) to provide a forum for the formation and expression of public opinion, and (5) to act as a court of final review in which the actions of the government may be scrutinized, controlled, and checked. All of these functions are thought of as being performed in the broadest policy sphere, the application of policy to particular matters being left to the executive branch. The whole function of Congress, so conceived, is to make value judgments in matters of widest concern.Budgeting is commonly regarded as a method of setting down, item by item, the estimated component costs of an undertaking in order to arrive at an estimated total cost. At the same time, budgeting is also used as a technique for securing managerial control over expenditures; by requiring that funds be spent according to a budget, it is possible, if the budget is sufficiently itemized, to control the spender in minutest detail. While these uses of budgetary procedure are by no means excluded, it is the premise of this paper that the primary purpose of budgeting ought to be to achieve the most desirable allocation of funds among alternative uses, and over time.

A century ago, foreign governments and their actions were essentially beyond U.S. judicial reach. In the 1950s, however, U.S. courts began to govern more and more activities of foreign governments leading to a transformation in the modality of U.S. power directed abroad. Legal historians describe this as a transition from an "absolute" to a "restrictive" practice of sovereign immunity, and one dominant narrative explains the transition as a pragmatic move away from an obsolete model of "territorial sovereignty" to a more flexible, "de-territorialized" or even "de-spatialized" sovereignty better suited for a globalized economy. Through tracing key U.S. legal changes involving foreign sovereign governments from 1898 to 2014, with a focus on sovereign debt law, I argue that transnational sovereign economic activity in fact remains dependent as ever on national borders — albeit borders that are continually reconfigured through minute changes in U.S. common law. Far from representing a homogeneous de-territorialization of the contemporary international legal order, I show that there has been an uneven re-territorialization that reduces the authority of most countries over their own economic decisions while expanding the judicial reach of a few — primarily the United States — and that New York state law has been especially important in this process. This has resulted not in a general restriction of state sovereignty in the face of "globalization," but in a differential displacement of economic sovereignty from post-colonial, poor and indebted states to rich, industrialized ones. The legal structures developed since the 1960s have aimed at entrenching and extending U.S. dominance over the global capitalist order and presently function to perpetuate exploitative relations between sovereign debtors and private creditors. U.S. judicial power has been a crucial and largely overlooked pillar of post-war U.S hegemony. I show how judicial transformations of the past half-century have occurred in relation to changing economic conditions, including threats to U.S. property posed by Third World nationalizations in the 1950s to the 1970s, rising indebtedness since the 1970s, and an ongoing overaccumulation crisis. The expansion of U.S. judicial power has simultaneously been driven at every step by U.S. geopolitical interests, including, importantly, the desire to contain Communism and maintain the colonial status quo in the context of the Cold War, widespread de-colonization and Third Worldist movements, and the reconstruction of U.S. dollar hegemony in the 1980s. I argue that the expansion of U.S. judicial power in the past half-century should be understood as territorial insofar as it has defined the space over which the state (in the form of courts) may exercise authority. Through a critical analysis of this legal history I show how the reconceptualization of key legal dichotomies — most importantly, foreign/domestic, public/private, and political/legal — has been a fundamental spatial mechanism through which these legal territories are produced and contested. Since the 1960s, U.S. — especially New York — courts have increasingly reclassified foreign sovereign transnational activities as "private" (rather than "public" or "sovereign") and therefore as properly within the scope of U.S. judicial ("legal") rather than executive ("political") authority. Foreign sovereign activities have also increasingly been reclassified from "foreign" (meaning outside the United States) to "domestic" (meaning inside the United States). Together, these interlinked changes have been used to bring activity that would previously have been considered beyond the authority of U.S. courts within U.S. judicial reach. This has expanded U.S. authority as a whole through the modality of judicial power, while simultaneously de-politicizing important social questions and removing them from even the possibility of democratic debate. Until recently, this process has unfolded with explicit support from the U.S. executive branch, but tensions between the interests of the U.S. executive and those of the U.S. judiciary have grown. In NML Capital v. Argentina, despite strenuous objections from the executive branch, the New York and U.S. Supreme Courts inverted the reigning spatial logic of U.S. law in order to extend U.S. judicial authority over most of the world outside Argentina – with important ramifications for U.S. economic and geopolitical interests, for sovereign debt crises and restructurings, and for the global financial order. The critical genealogy of the expansion of U.S. juridico-economic territory since WWII that I present in this dissertation is crucial for understanding the transnational operation of U.S. judicial power today and how it might most effectively be contested.

Introduction. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic announced by the WHO in 2020, American researchers bring up the question of the legitimacy, adequacy, or, on the contrary, redundancy of measures taken by the US leadership to protect the population. The study of the US President's history of emergency powers can demonstrate how previous American Presidents managed to preserve or, conversely, subvert the established liberal foundations of American society in emergency situations. Methods and Materials. The author used methods of structural analysis and synthesis, historical and legal comparative method, formal legal method, and method of legal modeling. Analysis. The author studied A. Lincoln's extra-constitutional authority to emancipate slaves, suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, create a volunteer army, and declare a naval blockade. On the basis of legal sources, we carried out the analysis of F. Roosevelt's decisions on the creation of courts-martial and the internment of people of Japanese descent; reviewed the activities of G. Bush after the September 11 attacks and D. Trump's emergency measures related to building the border wall in the south of the USA. Results. During the research, we found, that each military, economic, or social crisis increased the political significance and role of the executive branch in emergencies. We can characterize the increase of the emergency powers, delegated to the US Presidents, as steadily growing due to the crises that took place in various periods of American history. It was proved, that the precedents of emergency measures created by A. Lincoln, F. Roosevelt and George W. Bush had a long-term impact on the actions of the next US Presidents, opening up new legal opportunities for the use of emergency powers. At the same time, Congress and the US Supreme Court have taken a controversial stance on the validity of the President's actions at various historical stages. Most of the time, the status of the legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as the understanding of "emergency situation" itself depended on the specific case and practical political needs.

The paper examines a complex web of domestic and external issues which have both provoked a systemic crisis in Venezuela and, at the same time, determined its specificity in comparison with the wave of protests sweeping across Latin America in 2019.The authors conclude that the escalation of the conflict in Venezuela was caused not only by the standoff between the legislative and the executive branches of the government, but also by the split of the whole society into proponents and opponents of 'socialism of the 21st century'. The contradictions have led to the formation of the parallel branches of power: two presidents, two parliaments and two supreme courts (one of them in exile) which de facto coexist in the country and each claims exclusive rights and legitimacy.The authors also stress that the situation in Venezuela has obvious regional consequences. The miscalculations of the incumbent president were used in election campaigns in other Latin American countries and became one of the reasons for the defeat of left candidates, the subsequent 'right drift' leading to the isolation of the republic. The new political landscape has also affected the architecture of integration associations, which failed to develop a unified position toward the Bolivarian regime.Furthermore, in a current heightened state of international tensions Venezuela has turned into a theatre of international rivalry and conflict involving all the key subjects of world politics. The United States, China, Russia and the European Union compete for the energy resources of the country and pursue their own strategic interests. The inability or unwillingness of external forces to reach compromise and to bring the parties to the negotiating table can pose a threat to peace and international security.As a result, Venezuela has become one of the most turbulent countries in the region. At the same time, the repeated outbursts of protest waves are significantly different from popular uprisings in other Latin American states. In the worst-case scenario, a constantly worsening situation may result in a social explosion which threatens to make the Bolivarian Republic another hot spot of the planet.

Публічні фінанси – ключова дисципліна, яка формує управлінську еліту для забезпечення взаємодії інтересів бізнесу, політики, громадянського суспільства з метою розробки та прийняття ефективних управлінських рішень з використанням міжнародного досвіду у сфері формування й розподілу публічних фінансів. Публічні фінанси є галуззю знань, що вивчає регламентовану діяльність суб'єктів публічного адміністрування щодо формування й використання фінансових ресурсів, удосконалення бюджетних відносин, спрямовану на реалізацію законів та нормативно-правових актів через механізм прийняття адміністративно-управлінських рішень. У вузькому сенсі публічні фінанси пов'язане з діяльністю виконавчої гілки влади і розглядаються як професійна діяльність державних службовців, яка охоплює всі види діяльності, спрямовані на реалізацію рішень уряду щодо формування фінансових потоків, формування бюджету на рівні держави, області, регіону та ОТГ, обслуговування зовнішнього боргу держави, вивчення, розробку та впровадження напрямів державної політики у сфері вдосконалення публічних фінансів на основі міжнародного досвіду. У широкому сенсі під публічними фінансами розуміють систему фінансових ресурсів, бюджетних відносин та органів державного управління ними. «Public Finances» have been a key discipline that forms the management elite to ensure the interaction of business, policy and civil society interests in order to develop and adopt effective managerial decisions using international experience in Formation and distribution of public finances. «Public Finances» are the branch of knowledge that have been studying the regulated activities of subjects of public administration regarding the formation and use of financial resources, improvement of budgetary relations aimed at realization of laws and normative legal mechanism of administrative and managerial decision-making. In the a narrow sense «Public Finances» relate to the activities of the executive branch of power and are regarded as the professional activities of civil servants covering all activities aimed at implementing the government's decisions on the formation of financial flows, budgeting at the state, region and amalgamated сommunities level, servicing the state's external debt, studying, developing and implementing State policy directions in the field of improving public finances based on international experience. In the broadest sense, public finances understand the system of financial resources, budgetary relations and state management bodies

La función administrativa en Colombia, no sólo es desarrollada por la Rama Ejecutiva del poder público, sino que también es ejercida por la Rama Legislativa para el cumplimiento de sus fines. Es a partir de la Constitución de 1991, cuando en desarrollo del mandato Constitucional y de las facultades que tiene el Congreso de la República, se expidieron dos normativas: la ley 3ª de 1992 (por la cual se expiden normas sobre las Comisiones del Congreso de Colombia y se dictan otras disposiciones) y la ley 5ª de 1992 (por la cual se expide el reglamento del Congreso, el Senado y la Cámara de Representantes), en las cuales se despliega el ejercicio de la actividad legislativa, sin embargo, en estas disposiciones, no se contiene de manera expresa el procedimiento que ha de adoptarse para el ejercicio de dicha función administrativa y en tal sentido, tanto el Senado de la República como la Cámara de Representantes, deben recurrir a la expedición de Resoluciones internas con el fin de establecer el procedimiento requerido para cumplir con esta función. ; The administrative function in Colombia, is not only developed by the Executive Branch of government, but also is exercised by the Legislative Branch for the fulfillment of its purposes. It is from The Constitution of 1991, when in development of the constitutional mandate and the authority that has the Congress of the Colombian Republic, two regulations were issued: 3rd law of 1992 (by establishing rules on the Committees of the Congress of Colombia are issued and other provisions) and the 5th law of 1992 (for which the rules of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives is issued), in which unfolds the exercise of legislative activity, however, in these provisions, is not contained explicitly the procedure to be adopted for the exercise of this administrative function and in that sense, both the Senate and the House of Representatives, must resort to issuance of internal resolutions in order to establish the procedure required to fulfill this function.