Browsing by Subject "Federalism"
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Item An examination of new regionalism, smart growth, and federalism in the Denver Metropolitan Area(2007-05) Walker, Brett Robert; Butler, Kent S.Smart growth tools address a diverse range of specific concerns, including historic preservation, farmland protection, habitat conservation, flexible architectural design, and expedited land development. Smart growth unites the traditionally separate and competing growth promotion and growth control measures into a single growth accommodation approach. In addition to these important concepts, Henry R. Richmond posits that smart growth must now be explained within the context of “new urbanism” and “new regionalism.” What smart growth tries to accomplish is thus development with implied improvements in quality of life and environmental protection rather than mere urban growth or economic expansion per se. An important obstacle to smart growth measures is that growth problems rarely respect political boundaries. Scattered development patterns, as well as the traffic congestion, environmental degradation, fiscal stresses, and other problems that often accompany them, tend to be regional in nature, extending beyond the boundaries of any one locality. Accordingly, many growth problems are better addressed through regional solutions that federal, state and local smart growth measures my not provide. The general premise of “new regionalism” is that the economic health of the city and its outlying areas are inseparably intertwined, and that without regional planning and programs, individual jurisdictions in a single region compete with one another for limited resources and economic investment. New regionalists typically advocate from one of these three competing positions: greater economic prosperity, increased environmental protection, or improved social equity. Consequently, many politicians, advocates and activists are calling for the implementation of integrated policies that address the interrelatedness of all regional challenges, including housing, transportation, water, sewage, and other regional physical infrastructure systems. Denver evidences a suite of tensions between the promise and outcomes of planning with a wider, regional applicability. On the one hand, there is a progressiveness that embraces regional governance, growth management, economic vitality and quality infrastructure. But on the other hand, there is the reality of city sprawl, competitive local government relationships, and a convergence of interest between citizen choice and development industry behavior. This report will illustrate three issues regarding effective and efficient regional planning implementation at local, state and federal levels in the context of regional planning efforts in the Denver Metro Area. First, why does infill development and economic revitalization not only benefit the central city but the region as a whole? Secondly, how do land-use assignments and development design, like Smart Growth and New Urbanism, encourage regional planning efforts towards integrated mass transit? Finally, How does government fragmentation and overlap contribute to the lack of regional consensus and efficient planning?Item Judicial federalism : a comparative study of its origin, operation, and significance(2020-05-20) Joyce, Stephen, 1979-; Brinks, Daniel M., 1961-; Jacobsohn, Gary J., 1946-; Elkins, Zachary; Levinson, Sanford V.; Perry, H.W.This comparative study of judicial federalism analyzes the origin, operation, and significance of the judicial systems found among past and present federations. Federal countries vary in the arrangement of their judiciaries. In some federations (e.g., U.S., Brazil, Australia), the subnational political units, such as states, provinces, and cantons, have judicial systems that belong to the subnational governments. In other federations, (e.g., Spain, Canada, India), the subnational political units do not have judicial systems that belong to the subnational governments. The countries in the first set manifest “judicial federalism,” while the countries in the second set manifest “judicial centralization.” Federations always have legislatures and executives at both the national and regional levels, but they do not always have judicial systems at both levels. This study offers an explanation for this divergence in institutional arrangement. Federations form in one of two ways. "Coming together" federations occur when multiple independent political units join together. “Holding together” federations occur when a country chooses to allow for the creation of subnational legislatures, executives, or judiciaries. Federations created by “coming together” emerge from the federating process with "judicial federalism," while federations created by “holding together” emerge from the federating process with “judicial centralization. Differences between the two processes’ preexisting instittions, such as political borders and separate judicial systems, explains In addition to quantitatively analyzing a medium-N sized dataset of over sixty current and historical federations, this study presents five in-depth case studies of Brazil (both 1834 and 1891), the Central American Federation (1823-1824), Germany (1866-1871), and India (1947-1950). Some evidence exists supporting the hypothesis that territorially concentrated diversity engenders more decentralized federations. Noninstitutional sources of fragmentation within a federation include both the material (e.g., income inequality between political units, factor endowments, geography) and the immaterial (e.g., language, ethnicity, religion). The quantity and quality of the structural diversity present during the creation of these five federations predicts the outcome that both this study’s thesis and the record of history contradict. These five federal moments provide even stronger evidence by being “crucial,” “hard,” or “least probable” cases. The conclusion explains exceptions such as Cameroon, Canada, and Communist federations.Item Oil politics in the new Iraq(2011-05) Schenke, Joanna Marie; Henry, Clement M., 1937-; Rai, VarunIraq is one of the world’s major oil suppliers, and over ninety percent of its government revenues come from oil exports. Developing an oil management strategy that politicians from all sects and ethnic groups can agree on is therefore paramount to the future political and economic health of the Iraqi state. Yet the new Iraqi government cannot agree on a comprehensive hydrocarbons framework that would allocate oil ownership rights and share revenues eight years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. One major political battle preventing Iraq from developing its hydrocarbons industry is over the nature of federalism among all of the sects battling for oil wealth in Iraq. This paper focuses primarily on the issue between Kurds and Arabs, because the Kurds have actively promoted oil exploration. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is now a constitutionally-protected region, and has signed 37 production sharing agreement contracts with international oil companies. The federal government in Baghdad deems these contracts illegal. The KRG and Baghdad also cannot agree on the borders for the region, as both sides claim oil-rich Kirkuk. This paper analyses major developments in the KRG and Baghdad oil industries since 2003 and examines possible future scenarios for the country’s oil sector. Drawing on international lessons learned from other oil-rich divided societies such as Nigeria, Sudan, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates, the paper suggest that oil ownership and revenue allocation should be decentralized to reduce secessionist pressure. The paper concludes with recommendations that the government needs to not only take care of obvious issues such as resolving ambiguities in the constitution and passing comprehensive hydrocarbons legislation, but it also needs to address export agreements and institute measures to ensure transparency. The KRG needs to develop its own oil industry, complete with access to export pipelines, and should be allowed to keep a higher percentage of KRG oil revenue over its current 17%. Iraq needs international mediation to resolve issues on Kirkuk and should also make innovative changes to the structure of its national oil company. These changes will facilitate the proper investing of oil wealth for future generations of Iraqis.Item The Soul of Man Under Federalism(2014-09-17) McClay, WilfredItem Tatar nation, reality or rhetoric? : nation building in the Russian Federation(2010-12) McIntyre, George Eric; Moser, Robert G., 1966-; Garza, Thomas J.Tatarstan’s degree of political, economic and cultural sovereignty within the Russian Federation is the result of Soviet era ethno-national politics. The re-adoption of the ethnic federal state model in 1992 by Russia allowed ethnic regions such as Tatarstan to challenge the federal authorities for con-federal relations within the Federation. The Tatar leadership has attempted to work within the institutional and legal framework of the Russian Federation in an attempt to codify their state sovereignty within the Russian Federation. The political and economic concessions gained through tedious negotiation with the center have provided the Republic with the means to build a culturally distinct and semi sovereign state in the heart of the Russian Federation.Item The Habitus of Federal Theology: From the Scottish Covenanters to Early America(2021-05) Csoros, MarkSince the mid-nineteenth century, historiography on the Scottish Covenanters has made a remarkable and appropriate shift away from the propagandist histories which previously characterized much of the work in this field. This trend has resulted in valuable and nuanced understandings of Covenanting featuring exemplary historicity, and for that deserve to be celebrated. But in recent years, this scholarship has begun to overcorrect. Instead of the caricatured portrayals of the Covenanting movement as uniformly extreme, homogenously Presbyterian, and completely anti-crown, recent emphasis on the differences between Covenanter factions has begun to erode the rationale for considering Covenanting to be a movement at all. This scholarship has not produced a replacement rationale, but continues to describe scholarship as on “the Covenanters” or “the Covenanting movement” despite its efforts to dismantle the basis of support for such descriptions. This thesis proposes a new paradigm for Covenant historiography, under which the Covenanters are defined by their shared habitus of federal theology, not by their divergences in practice, thus preserving the appropriate conception of Covenanting as a distinct phenomenon, as well as the laudable historicity of recent scholarship. In addition, the use of this paradigm yields valuable insights into the relationship between Covenanter dispositions of federal theology and the early American religiopolitical thought which developed into a federal political structure.Item The politics of sovereignty : federalism in American political development(2016-12) Ewing, Connor Maxwell; Tulis, Jeffrey; Jacobsohn, Gary J., 1946-; Levinson, Sanford V; Perry, H.W.; Brinks, Daniel MThe development of American federalism is a story of contested sovereignty, and those contests are fundamentally shaped by the evolving structures, relationships, and understandings of the constitutional order. This dissertation seeks to show how the American federal system is both cause and effect of political development. Even as it structures legal and political contestation, American federalism is shaped—even redefined—by such contestation. Central to the account of American federalism that I advance are two related arguments about the nature of the federal system. The first is that the Constitution’s definition of the state-federal relationship is structurally underdeterminate: while the Constitution constrains the set of permissible state-federal relationships, it fixes no single definition. Rather than establish a determinate division of state and national powers, the Constitution establishes a range of parameters for their relationship and sets forth the legal and political processes through which that relationship is contested, defined, and revised. As a result, the American federal system both shapes and is shaped by constitutionally structured politics. Developing an implication of this argument, the second argument holds that notions and definitions of sovereignty are structured relationally. Articulations of national power reciprocally define a category of state powers, just as invocation of local concerns over which states have authority reciprocally define national concerns over which the national government has authority. On this account federalism is both an independent and a dependent variable, an approach that shifts our focus from federalism and American political development to federalism in American political development. By foregrounding the underdeterminacy of the federal system and interrogating the constitutional construction it anticipates, we can glimpse the intertwined contingency and continuity of American constitutional development. This dissertation is broadly divided into two parts—the first theoretical, the second developmental—each of which consists of two components. The resulting four chapters constitute the core of the project. The theoretical chapters (Chapters One and Two) provide a framework for understanding the federal system both in the general context of the American Constitution and, more specifically, in contrast with the separation of powers. This framework is fundamentally structured by the underdeterminate constitutional division of state and national powers and the consequent need for constitutional construction of the state-federal relationship. The developmental chapters (Chapters Three and Four) operationalize the theoretical framework developed in the first two chapters in two different domains: constitutional jurisprudence and a discrete episode of the political construction of the state-federal relationship. Taken together, these chapters are intended to illustrate the central argument of the preceding chapters: that the constitutional design of the federal system anticipates development and that this development is inflected by the institutional logics of the principal institutions of American government. The dissertation concludes with a brief reflection on the two conceptual cornerstones of the analysis presented in the preceding chapters: constitutional construction and constitutional logics.Item Tocqueville the nationalist : reassessing federalism in Democracy in America(2015-12-03) Noriega, Christina Rose; Jacobsohn, Gary J., 1946-; Tulis, Jeffrey KSome read Alexis de Tocqueville as a great proponent of federalism. However, Tocqueville’s account of federalism in Democracy in America is complicated and multifaceted. He discusses the advantages of administrative decentralization, as well as the advantages of governmental centralization. Moreover, his characterization of the United States Constitution seems to vacillate between a confederation of sovereign states and a unified nation with a strong central government. Finally, Tocqueville describes the great power he perceives in the state governments, and the natural influence they seem to enjoy over the people relative to the national government. To conclude from these discussions that Tocqueville is an advocate of federalism, I argue, oversimplifies his view. Indeed, Tocqueville offers a gradual reassessment of American federalism over the course of Democracy in America, beginning with such accounts as the conciliatory description of federalism in The Federalist Papers and the theories of the southern nullifiers, but eventually coming to very different conclusions about the constitutional logic. Ultimately, Tocqueville is not the champion of federalism that some think he is.