Suchergebnisse

That's the lesson to take from this: An increasing number of England's pothole-plagued roads will be completely resurfaced, ministers have said as councils are handed £8.3 billion for repairs.Councils will be urged to use the money to fund long-term improvements, including full-scale resurfacing, rather than quick fix repairs as part of a new decade-long funding settlement.To ensure this, for the first time, the cash will come with a condition that local authorities publish resurfacing plans every quarter, so motorists can hold them to account.The revenue raised from charging people to use the roads is vastly greater than the costs of building and or repairing roads. So there's our first clue - actually private roads would cost less and also be better maintained because there wouldn't be that leakage of some 60% (our guess) of the revenue into other things that usefully buy votes. Government's an inefficient method of providing roads that is.Secondly, government is simply a lousy way of maintaining anything. For maintenance never does gain political presence or visibility. Routine patching of holes doesn't make political careers - perhaps it ought to but it doesn't. Big plans to splash the cash do make careers - as here. So, doing the plodding boringness that needs to be done isn't done by politics. A corollary here is that we've already got methods for voters to hold local authorities to account. Called elections. And if we're suggesting that these don't work in doing so then we've got to call our basic manner of democracy into question, don't we? The third issue here - that unseen that the economist should look for - is that if we've just proven that governments are grossly inefficient providers of roads themselves, let alone maintenance, then what else is currently run by government and politics that badly? What else should we be privatising so that we can have the same at a lesser cost, or more for the same cash? It really is true that fuel duty (alone, before VAT and other such taxes) is £25 billion a year, spending on roads is about £12 billion. Private roads would be cheaper that is, as even the most vibrant capitalism won't soak that much in profit off the revenues. So, what else also meets this standard of currently being done grossly inefficiently - so that we can make ourselves richer by not doing it through the medium of government and politics?

It's long been thought that giving people resources through government programs will get them more involved in politics. But this has always been a difficult question to answer in a controlled environment. That is until the 2008 Medicaid expansion in Oregon.

There was a research initiative done on that expansion, and our boss the Dean of the Harris School of Public Policy, Katherine Baicker, was involved. We parse through the results with her to see if we can get a new perspective on this question.

A potential conflict of national interests over Ukrainian refugees needs to be anticipated and pre-empted.

The new EU fiscal rules being finalised would still leave central- and eastern-European states such as Latvia in a bind.

The post Racial Profiling in Germany appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

With Alexandra Endres
The post Interview in Die Zeit (Germany) appeared first on Chris Blattman.

The only way to shrink government, significantly and sustainably, is to convince more people that smaller government is better.

Our first episode of season 5 looks at relationships between governments and private sector suppliers. Why do they exist? What forms do they take? And how well do they work?

Prof. Jane Bambauer and I discuss Murthy v. Missouri (the former Missouri v. Biden).

Is Germany legally obligated to condemn violations of international humanitarian law? This argument was recently put forward in an article on Verfassungsblog. Elsewhere it was claimed that Germany, along with other States failing to utilize their full repertoire of diplomatic options (including "[calling] for a permanent ceasefire"), is in breach of its own IHL-responsibilities. Admittedly, international law does have a say when organs of States speak. Nevertheless, the intricacies of this matter go beyond first impression. I submit that such a duty is not as easy to derive in the present case as is suggested by opposing views.

My quest for a sabbatical hangout has succeeded (have I mentioned rejection is inherent in this enterprise?).  The Humboldt Foundation is going to fund six months of my hanging out at the Hertie School in Berlin--three months in 2024 and three months in 2025.  The Hertie School is an international affairs graduate program and very strong in international security.  What will I be doing there?  First, I will be pursuing the next big project: understanding the varying roles defense agencies play in democracies.  I have already been to South Korea, quite recently.  The next step will now be Germany. Obviously, being in Berlin will facilitate the German case as I will have much time to interview folks in their Minister of Defense, in their armed forces, journalists, and experts.Second, the project involves case studies in other European countries.  So, I will be able to travel to some other parts of Europe to do some of the work for this project.  Which ones?  Not sure yet.Third, I will get engaged in the life of Hertie, so that I can learn what the students and profs in Europe are thinking about a variety of international security issues.  Marina Henke, one of the very sharpest scholars on alliance politics and international security, is my host, so I hope to learn much from her about how folks are thinking about NATO, Ukraine-Russia, and other topics.  Fourth, I hope to have some chances to visit various research centers and talk about my work and, again, get different perspectives.  I will be a cheap date for two winters--that it won't be hard to bring me to any place from the UK to Eastern Europe, compared to the costs of flying me across the Atlantic.  That's, um, a hint.  Fifth, deep into my career, I need a breath of fresh air, a change of pace, a bit of a shake up.  Sabbaticals are good for that, but sabbaticals away from home are better at it. Oh, and maybe there will be some time for tourism and skiing.  So, there will be the complications of getting a visa and finding an apartment, but overall, it is time for this senior scholar to do a happy dance:

Last summer, Lord Nick Herbert launched the Commission for Smart Government to tackle the systemic problems of government in the UK.

With China increasingly assertive in pursuing its economic and geopolitical interests abroad, US–China tensions are rising, leading many traditional American allies to consider following Washington's lead in pursuing economic 'decoupling' from China. Their strategy aims ...

The Christian Democrats must not learn the wrong lessons from two state elections by adopting the rhetoric of the far right.

Researchers Lauren Mora and Deja Thomas discuss key takeaways from the latest PPIC Statewide Survey, including Californians' views on the 2024 election, the top issues facing the state, and US involvement in the Middle East and Ukraine.