Abstract: The complex links between heritage and tourism, and the ways in which attitudes towards historical built environments vary over time and place, are demonstrated in a study of Levuka, on the small island of Ovalau, Fiji. The town was founded by traders of European origin, and for a few years was Fiji's first colonial capital. Since the late 1800s, however, it has remained undeveloped, despite periodic efforts by tourism interests, resident expatriates and some government departments, to raise its profile and conserve its buildings and ambience through the development of tourism. Over the past decade, these attempts have crystallised in moves to nominate the municipality for listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site. This paper describes Levuka's origins and its continued association with the colonial past, discusses the impetus within Fiji to nominate it, analyses UNESCO's role in supporting Levuka's case, and indicates the variety of perceptions to 'heritage' in the town, across Ovalau, and more widely in t...

Abstract: The importance of primary elections is considered within the context of U.S. Senate elections where senators serve overlapping terms and voters are assumed to balance their two senators against each other. Voters behave strategically in the primaries but convergence to the median position is not achieved except as a knife-edge result. More generally, constraints in the party space prevent the party of the sitting senator from obtaining the median's preference allowing the opposition party to nominate a candidate further away from the median while still capturing the median voter. Empirical evidence supports the notion that senate divergence is a function of the state primary system.

Abstract: The European Commission is commonly portrayed as an actor constantly taking policy positions which, in EU legislative decision-making, fundamentally differ from those of the EU member states. That is, the European Commission is a (pro-integrationist) preference outlier. Yet, there are hardly any theoretical explanations, let alone systematic empirical evidence, which substantiate this common portrayal. Why should the Commission repeatedly take positions which fundamentally differ from those member states which at the same time appoint the Commission? By recourse to arguments of principal-agent theory, I argue that their right to (s)elect the Commission(ers) provides member state governments with valuable means to influence the policy preferences of the Commission. Member state governments can nominate candidates who share their party affiliation and thus can be expected to share basic policy preferences. In addition, the nomination of candidates who previously occupied “highly visible” posts in the political arena, allows governments to assess the respective candidate’s reliability. Thus, from this article’s theoretical perspective it seems rather unlikely that the Commission constantly acts as a preference outlier in EU decision-making.|The data set used to test the theoretical arguments developed in this paper was generated for this purpose and covers the relevant information for all Commissioners who were appointed to the Commission between January 1958 and March 2004 (N

Abstract: Frank Hyneman Knight (1885-1972) was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell in 1916, under the guidance of Allyn A. Young. He taught at the University of Iowa, Cornell, and the University of Chicago, where he was Martin D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor and one of the founders of the "Chicago School" of economics. Among his students were such famous economists as James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler. During the 1930s, he was one of the editors of the Journal of Political Economy, and he became the president of the American Economic Association in 1950. In 1957, he was awarded the Francis Walker medal, which is awarded every five years to the "living American economist who has made the greatest contribution to economics." Knight was a man of forceful disposition, with opinions strongly held, bluntly expressed, and tenaciously retained. One of these opinions was hostility to Georgism. This hostility, however, did not extend to personal relationships--as witnessed by his gratuitous offer to nominate a Georgist, Harry Gunnison Brown, to the presidency of the American Economic Association. Knight's most famous contribution to economics, developed in his 1921 book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, (1) concerns the difference between "risk" and "uncertainty." As he defined these terms, "risk" is concerned with known probabilities and can be dealt with through pooling and insurance, while "uncertainty" is concerned with unknown probabilities and is the source of true economic profit. (2) Besides being a widely respected economist, Knight was also a social philosopher who strongly believed in individual freedom and opposed all forms of social engineering. In a famous 1924 article, (3) he responded to Arthur Pigou's claim that road congestion justifies taxes on roads users. Knight argued that such congestion is a result of the absence of property rights in roads. The assignment of property rights, Knight asserted, would induce owners of congested roads to demand tolls from travelers, yielding the same efficient allocation of road space as taxation. This insight laid the foundation for James Buchanan's and Ronald Coase's famous analyses of property rights. Knight did not believe that unregulated markets had the ethical merit that some economists have claimed. In a 1923 article on the "Ethics of Competition," (4) he agreed that competitive markets allocate resources efficiently and that they reward every market participant according to the value of his marginal contribution to output. However, he argued, not only are real markets unlikely to meet the assumptions that are necessary for competition to yield the theoretically predicted outcome, but it is also impossible to conclude that any ethical implications are embedded in the theory of competition. (5) The only justification of competition is that "it is effective to get things done; but any candid answer to the question, 'what things,' compels the admission that they leave much to be desired." (6) While rejecting an ethical defense of markets, Knight still defended laissez-faire because he considered it impossible to preserve individual freedom when governments have great power. In a public lecture at the University of Chicago in 1944, he said: Extensive positive action as a unit by a large group, defined by Residence in a contiguous area, means delegation of power to a limited number of officials, politicians and bureaucrats. If this is done on an extensive scale, as it is done by planners and "neo-liberals," the agent cannot be held responsible for the use of power, even to a technical majority of those for whom he acts. Such grants of power tend to become irrevocable and the power itself tends to grow beyond assignable bounds. (7) This distrust of extensive government power may have been at the root of Knight's negative position on the single tax. …

Abstract: only nationwide political parties, with a minimum of 30,000 members distributed among at least two thirds of the federal entities, could apply for legal registration, allowing them to nominate candidates and compete for public office.2 Local or state parties could only be registered and participate at the state level. This change created a system in which political parties maintained a monopolistic power to nominate candidates. Over the next forty-five years, elections in Mexico were organized under this system, in which they were a governmental responsibility and were conducted by a party-based electoral commission.3 The most salient characteristic of this form of electoral administration was that although federal electoral contests were organized every three years, everyone knew that they were a mere ritual to formally sanction what the government and the ruling party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) had previously decided. In other words, elections were not politically relevant. However, during