Mandates: Fiscal Accountability Issues
National leaders under pressure are often tempted to consider shifting costs to other levels of government and to satisfy new demands for public services by passing mandates and costs to other levels of governments to finance new programmes. These new mandates take a variety of forms but have one central feature: they permit the national government leaders to claim credit without paying for the costs of their own initiatives. This article examines intergovernmental relationships and the various forms of mandates including direct-order mandates, grants, pre-emptions, and tax policy. The article discusses the arguments for mandates, trends in their use, and reforms to curb them. The roles of agency cost-benefit analysis and legislative information and deliberation are particularly important. JEL classification: H200, H300, H540, H710, H810.
Congressional Preemption During the George W. Bush Administration
President Bush approved 64 preemption acts during 2001-2005. Fifteen acts were responses to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and five acts extended sunset provisions. The other acts removed specified powers from states in the fields of banking, commerce, energy, environmental protection, finance, foreign commerce, health, intellectual property, safety, taxation, telecommunications, and transportation. Only the two Internet taxation prohibition acts have a major impact on state governments by depriving them of billions of dollars in tax revenues that could be used to exercise their reserved powers. The other acts are minor ones on the periphery of state exercised powers compared to laws enacted in the period 1964-1999.
Capturing Crime in the Antipodes: Colonist Cultural Representation of Indigeneity
This chapter adopts a Southern criminological lens, which allows the authors to explore how colonialism has been constructed and depicted in museums within both regional and urban Australia. By studying spatial and historical silences in Australian museums, this chapter offers a consistent frame to chronologically chart Anglo-Australian depictions of Indigeneity, imperialism and violence wielded by the state. As this chapter will argue, museums can often reflect Westernized (white) conceptualizations about Indigeneity and the state violence involved in colonization, which actively re-enforces popular views and influences sociopolitical visions of identity, the state and justice.