THE OPERATION OF CANADIAN FEDERALISM CAN BE PREDICTED NEITHER BY ASSUMING THAT GOVERNMENTAL RELATIONSHIPS ARE HIERARCHICAL NOR BY ASSUMING THAT PUBLIC OFFICIALS ARE OMNICOMPETENT. PROLONGED FEDERAEL-PROVINCIAL BARGAINING DOMINATES THE DECISIONS THAT PREVAIL, AND CANADIAN ELECTORATES MAINTAIN THE DOMINANCE OF THIS SYSTEM BY THE CHOICE OF PARTY COALITIONS TO FEDERAL CONTROL AND PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS.
After nearly fifty-nine years of Independence, Nigeria is by all standards of measurement, a poor country. Poverty is endemic in Nigeria. As a result of this, money politics and vote buying have taken the centre stage in political activities. This is because parties and candidates have shown by their conduct during political campaigns, that good party manifestoes and integrity of candidates jostling for public offices are no longer sufficient to guarantee electoral success; thus, the resort to vote buying. On the other hand, the electorates too have obviously demonstrated cynical electoral behaviour by the readiness to sell their votes to the highest bidder. This uncharitable practice constitutes a blemish on public policy and on the electoral process. Politicians influence the electorate with money, food and other items by politicians. The paper argued that democracy does not thrive in a poverty infested environment and thus attributes the major challenges facing the present democratic experiment in Nigeria to the existence of poverty on a large scale. The paper observed that electioneering in Nigeria has been marred by contradictions that threaten objectivity in voting for a preferred candidate during elections. It concluded that to sustain Nigeria's nascent democracy, the political class must embrace good governance through prudent use of available resources, provision of critical infrastructures and social amenities, conduct of free and fair elections, and the promotion of accountability, transparency and the rule of law.
The Federal Government of Nigeria in July 2006 instituted an independent study carried out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to ascertain the nature and the extent of oil contamination in Ogoniland as a precondition for reconciliation between the Ogoni on one hand, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Nigeria and the Federal Government of Nigeria on the other hand. The UNEP's field observations and scientific investigations reveal that the oil contamination in Ogoniland is widespread and severely impacting many components of the environment (biophysical and socio-economic). It is of special note that oil production by Shell Petroleum in Ogoniland was stopped abruptly in 1993 following agitation by the Ogoni against the Federal Government of Nigeria, and against multinational oil companies. At shut down in 1993, facilities were exposed to frequent sabotage resulting in fires, spillages, oil theft and illegal oil refining leading to significant environmental degradation. The Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Nigeria, a major operating oil transnational company in Ogoniland, has publicly demonstrated commitment towards the full implementation of the UNEP Report by embarking on intensive clean-up and extensive remediation of areas of environmental degradation in Ogoniland. The aim of this paper is to examine the remediation efforts of the SPDC in Ogoniland, the challenges to complete restoration of the Ogoni environment and the way forward.
As Tak-Wing Ngo has argued, the 'dominant' view of colonial rule in Hong Kong is one of a state which governed through 'a deliberate policy of indirect rule - a combination of economic laissez-faire and political non-intervention'. It depicts a government which was disengaged from the population, preferring to see the colony as a trading opportunity, whilst leaving the condition of the peoples it held sway over to the philanthropy and humanitarianism of the colony's Chinese elites. This view of British rule was even supported by the primary representative of the imperial state when Sir David Trench admitted in 1970 that social policy, in the sense of responding to the needs of the populace, only began in the colony in 1953. But as Tak-Wing Ngo has argued, these 'established narratives' of Hong Kong's colonial history need to be reassessed and a more nuanced approach adopted to reveal the complexity of even Hong Kong's seemingly simple 'colonial state-society' relations.
Issues relating to diversity and pluralism continue to permeate both social and political discourse. Of particular contemporary importance and relevance are those issues raised when the demands associated with forms of pluralism clash with those of the liberal state. These forms of pluralism can be divided into two subcategories: thin and thick pluralism. Thin pluralism refers to forms of pluralism that can be accommodated by the existing liberal framework, whereas thick pluralism challenges this liberal framework. This thesis is an examination of four forms of political association that may be able to accommodate and support the demands of pluralism. These four models are Rawls' political liberalism, Crowder's value pluralism, Rorty's post-foundational liberalism, and Mouffe's radical democratic project. What unites these four forms of political association is their capacity to avoid the exclusionary effects of a form of liberalism that I, following Gaus, refer to as Enlightenment liberalism. As the name suggests, this conception of liberalism is anchored in the Enlightenment, and in particular with what may be considered as the Enlightenment view of reason. As such, therefore, Enlightenment liberalism is both universal and perfectionist. In this context, I argue that Enlightenment liberalism is a species of what Berlin refers to as 'moral monism'. These four forms of political association are ordered in such a way as to chart an intellectual trajectory. Rawls and Crowder are both situated firmly within the liberal tradition, whereas Rorty and Mouffe move beyond this, and embrace a form of post-foundational politics. It is in this trajectory that the second theme of this thesis emerges. This is centred on a paradox: in order to avoid the exclusionary effect of Enlightenment liberalism and embrace a form of political association that meets the demands of pluralism and diversity, the models examined still promote autonomy as the dominant virtue. Key words: liberalism, pluralism, the Enlightenment, Enlightenment liberalism, Romanticism, communitarianism, feminism, political liberalism, value pluralism, post-foundational liberalism, radical democracy, agonistic pluralism, Rawls, Crowder, Rorty, Laclau, Mouffe.
