Role Of State Governments Research Articles

Asserting Tribal Sovereignty through Compact Negotiations: A Case Study of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana

Asserting Tribal Sovereignty through Compact NegotiationsA Case Study of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana Jay Precht (bio) In 2001 Lovelin Poncho, chairman of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, declared the community’s new gaming compact with the state “a win for southwest Louisiana, our local communities and for the tribe.” The agreement included an unprecedented appendix that dictated how local non-Indian governments would divide Coushatta grants, required annual audits, and included a safeguard that decreased Coushatta payments if casino revenue fell. This agreement suggests that the Coushattas had successfully navigated what political scientists Jeff Corntassel and Richard C. Witmer call the “politics of perception” in the era of “forced federalism.” According to Corntassel and Witmer, the increasing role of state governments in Indian affairs, highlighted by tribal-state compacts required for Indian casinos, marked a new era in federal Indian policy beginning in 1988 that increasingly forced tribal leaders to use new political strategies to deal with negative public perceptions of gaming tribes. Obstacles faced by tribal leaders during this new era include demands that gaming revenue fund state and local governments and assumptions by outsiders, including government officials, that tribes are unable to handle their new business ventures. As a result, these tribal leaders have increased their political participation at the state and federal levels to overcome opposition to Indian gaming and often to influence overall gaming policy. Corntassel and Witmer’s forced federalism survey of tribal leaders begins to assess the impact of these new relationships, but only by studying the recent histories of specific gaming tribes can scholars fully understand how successfully these communities have employed lobbying strategies to assert their sovereignty and how different [End Page 67] regional, economic, cultural, and historical contexts impact a tribe’s ability to maintain or even increase their level of self-determination through negotiations with state, local, and federal governments. This article offers a case study of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, a community with a successful casino and increased political influence in their region, based on the correspondence of local Coushatta and non-Coushatta political leaders, newspaper articles, and an analysis of the tribe’s 1992 and 2001 gaming compacts with the state of Louisiana. Between 1990 and 2001 the Coushatta Tribal Council overcame both internal and external political opposition and successfully navigated policy shifts on the local, state, and federal levels as each government adjusted to the challenges and opportunities created by Indian gaming, illustrating Steven Andrew Light’s contention that politics often prove more important than laws for issues surrounding Indian gaming. Coushatta success stemmed in part from a tradition of successful diplomacy, a clearly established Indigenous identity, experience working with local and state governments, and lessons learned from an earlier attempt to establish gaming on the reservation. However, the tribal government’s success came at a cost, as the push to establish their casino also marginalized tribal citizens opposed to the venture, and efforts to limit competition in their market embroiled the tribe in a lobbying scandal.1 Throughout their history, the Coushattas practiced shrewd diplomacy to ensure their survival and prosperity. The Coushattas have lived in their current location near Bayou Blue north of Elton, Louisiana, since the late nineteenth century. However, before settling there, community members relocated repeatedly to ally with powerful Indigenous confederacies to enhance their defense and trade opportunities. They often located in borderlands between European and European American nations to facilitate diplomacy. They made their first move between 800 and 1200 from their original homeland west of the Mississippi to the Tennessee River Valley and formed part of the Coosa chiefdom. Faced with English-inspired Cherokee and Westo slave raids, the Coushattas moved to the convergence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers in present-day Alabama in the seventeenth century and joined the Creek Confederacy. By the late eighteenth century, Coushattas had begun moving west to Louisiana, then Texas, and by the mid-nineteenth century, some of them had moved back into Louisiana, settling first at Indian Village near Kinder before finally homesteading land along Bayou [End Page 68] Blue beginning in 1884. In 1898 a Coushatta woman named Sissy Robinson put her 160-acre estate in trust with...

Economic development via dam building: The role of the state government in the sarawak corridor of renewable energy and the impact on environment and local communities

Since 1970, as a consequence of Malaysia’s New Economic Policy (NEP) and its integration into the global economy, the development achievements and per capita GDP growth of the resource-rich state of Sarawak have been impressive—although not without problems. Since timber and petroleum resources are exhaustible, and there is a concern with finding new sources of growth and revenue, the federal and state governments advocated industrial diversification in 2008 via the development of a multibillion-ringgit regional development corridor called the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE). Central to the success of the huge developmental corridor was cheap hydroelectric power (HEP). For the Sarawak government, SCORE’s launch and eventual success were based on the availability of abundant water resources and suitable hydropower dam sites in the state. Yet, SCORE is likely to contribute to further environmental degradation and impact negatively upon the livelihoods and welfare of local communities. This paper examines this recent development trend and its consequences. Specifically, it examines the role of the Sarawak state government in advocating the construction of numerous HEP dams, the role of foreign and local investment in SCORE, and their collective impact upon the environment and local communities. What this paper reveals is the nexus of close relationships that binds key politicians in the state administration with crony businesses associated with foreign-linked contracts that has proven to be destructive socially and environmentally

The dynamic role of state governance in executive compensation in China

This paper investigates the dynamic link between executive compensation and corporate governance of listed Chinese firms from 2003 to 2012. Empirical evidence supports agency theory predictions of a positive relationship between firm performance and executive compensation over the period of the study. Findings also indicate a dramatic shift in the relationship between state ownership and executive compensation over time. Consistent with previous studies, we find that state ownership is not significant prior to 2005; but analysing newly available data reveals a dramatic shift in and a negative impact of state ownership on compensation from 2006 to 2012. Empirical results also suggest that state ownership may act to mitigate agency problems by reducing executive compensation, as new independent board members, CEOs and to some degree the compensation committees, provide a counter balancing upward pressure on CEO compensation in recent years. From a policy perspective, robust findings also suggest that recent policy reforms targeted at strengthening the link between pay and performance have been successful.

The dynamic role of state governance in executive compensation in China

The dynamic role of state governance in executive compensation in China

Transforming Maine’s Economy: Innovation and Entrepreneurship Policy

Innovation and entrepreneurship are major drivers of economic growth. Support for them is a primary role of state government in order to increase the well being of its citizens through the provision of well-paying jobs that cannot be easily exported. Today, the state’s role is described as “enhancing the innovation ecosystem,” with the goal of increased productivity, innovation and competitiveness. Policies to build the ecosystem include: (1) building and supporting a state’s research and development capacity; (2) encouraging a state’s entrepreneurial community, (3) increasing the productivity of a state’s economy though the commercialization of new products, services, processes, business models and marketing strategies and (4) supporting sectors and/or clusters. Each of these is part of an overall policy environment that will support innovation and entrepreneurship.

Democracy and Infant Mortality in India’s ‘Mini-democracies’: A Preliminary Theoretical Inquiry and Analysis*

A number of cross-national studies find that democratic rule has beneficial effects on the health of nations. These studies, however, sidestep the key role of state governments—especially in federal systems like India—in providing those public goods and services that have an impact on health outcomes. Like national governments, state governments differ in the quantity and quality of public goods they provide. Consequently, interstate variations in health outcomes are quite common and even substantial. This article examines infant mortality rates (IMRs) in India’s 29 states—or ‘mini-democracies’—to show that many Indian states have achieved good/moderate IMRs, but others lag behind. To explain such divergent health outcomes across India’s states despite six decades of democratic rule, the article scrutinises the causal logic of three mechanisms that are said to activate the democracy-good health link: (1) political competition; (2) civil society activism; and (3) ideational changes. The discussion points to a long list of other enabling factors—whose presence varies across India’s states—that are necessary for democracy’s virtuous effects to be realised.

Gambling in Australia: experiences, problems, research and policy

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the development and current status of gambling in Australia. The paper examines the history and current status of gambling in Australia with a particular focus on the prevalence of problem gambling in the community and developments in policy and treatment services. The paper highlights the contradictory role of State governments as both providers of treatment services as well as agents for the liberalization for gambling. It also shows how the notion of 'addiction' is conceptualized in Australian research and treatment services, including the preference for harm-based and public health approaches. Such perspectives view problem gambling as having multiple pathways and determinants that extend beyond the pathology of individuals. Gambling in Australia provides a curious paradox. Highly liberalized State government policies that allow the proliferation of high intensity gambling coexist with extensive policy, regulation and research designed to address the negative impact of gambling on the Australian community.

To Spend or Not To Spend? An Empirical Analysis of the Fundamental Role of State Governments in Economic Output

Amidst an economic recession and a long period of high rates of unemployment, the appropriate role of government expenditures in creating economic growth has become a major feature in current political discourse at both the federal and state level. This article uses an endogenous growth model to examine the fundamental relationship of state-level government spending and per capita GDP. Specifically, the analysis uses state-level data covering a six-year period controlling for state workforce characteristics, distribution of industrial activities, and tax revenue sources to develop a working model of state economies. The analysis found that state government spending had a positive, statistically significant effect on per capita GDP. The marginal return in per capita GDP for an additional dollar per capita of public expenditure was found to be between $1.89 and $2.39. In addition, indicator variables for political party in power were added to examine correlations between political party control and economic outcomes. The political party in power had no significant effect on GDP. The positive, statistically significant correlation between GDP and public expenditures alongside political variables with no significant effect on GDP indicates specific policies implemented by state governments may have more explanatory power of economic output than political party control.

The Use of Postloss Financing of Catastrophic Risk

AbstractCatastrophic risk financing is a critical issue for many states. At the epicenter of the debate is the role of the state government in helping homeowners finance catastrophic storm risk. In general, states have used a variety of pre‐ and postloss strategies, including rate regulation, residual markets, guaranty funds, and postloss assessment structures. However, several states, including Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas have used strategies that involve potentially large postloss funding of hurricane risk. In some cases, the structure of the postloss financing mechanism is likely to create significant assessments and subsidies. This article examines the role of state government in catastrophe financing, focusing primarily on postloss financing methods. Specifically, the article provides a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the postloss catastrophe financing as well as the political forces that motivate the use of this approach. Further, given the potential magnitude of postloss assessments and related subsidies, we use the Florida homeowners market to illustrate the implications of the state's decisions. This allows for a concrete discussion of the impact and viability of postloss financing mechanisms.

Citizen “Trust” as an Explanation of State Education Funding to Local School Districts

Many previous studies have examined the level of state grants to local K-12 school districts. However, these studies have not considered the role of citizen “trust” in state versus local governments as a factor. We hypothesize that the role of the state in funding education reflects citizen “trust” in the relative capabilities of governments. We measure “trust” directly via public opinion polls that capture citizen attitudes about the appropriate responsibilities of state versus local governments; we also measure “trust” indirectly, by the role of state government as revealed by its relative importance in overall service provision (net of K-12 spending). We find that the state share of K-12 education spending tends to be higher when there is greater citizen trust in state versus local governments.

Stretched Net: The Retrenchment of State and Local Social Welfare Spending Before the Recession

This article examines social welfare spending on the eve of the recession to understand the likely effects of the economic downturn on the funding of state and local social welfare systems. It finds that state and local spending outside of medical assistance lost much of its real fiscal value since the last recession of 2001–02, especially when inflation-adjusted expenditures are compared to measures of need. Other trends include a growing concentration of state social welfare budgets around medical assistance, declines in federal assistance to states, and growing differences in social service spending across states of different fiscal capacities. The recession may exacerbate most of these developments and, along with the federal stimulus package, reduce the role of state governments in funding the national social welfare system.

A Century of Differential Evolution of Housing Co-operatives in Mumbai and Chennai

Since their inception at the beginning of the 20th century, the evolutionary paths of housing co-operatives have diverged in Mumbai and Chennai. Housing co-operatives in Mumbai have been principally Tenure co-operatives (i.e. for collective ownership and management). In Chennai they have been mainly Finance co-operatives (i.e. for providing loans to members). This paper makes a comparative institutional analysis of the two cities to examine the divergent evolution. The examination is important for informing the institutional conditions that enable co-operatives to flourish. Four institutional aspects are examined in this context: the local housing market, local housing policies, role of state government and co-operative institutional support structures.

States on Steroids: The Intergovernmental Odyssey of American Climate Policy

AbstractClimate change has conventionally been framed as an issue that would be addressed by an international regime established through negotiation among nation‐states. The experience of policy development in the decade following the signing of the Kyoto Protocol indicates that climate change also needs to be examined as a challenge of multilevel governance. The increasingly central role of state governments in American climate policy formation squares with recent experience in other Western democracies that share authority across governmental levels. This paper examines the American experience, considering factors that have contributed to a state‐centric policy process and using that body of experience to assess competing strategic choices faced by individual states based on their mix of emission trends and policy adoption rates. In turn, the collective state experience allows for consideration of the varied political feasibility of competing climate policy tools that remain under active review in subnational, national, and international contexts. The paper concludes with a set of scenarios that explore different ways in which a state‐centric system may be integrated with expanding involvement at the national level.

Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America

In 1796, famed engineer and architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe toured the coal fields outside Richmond, Virginia, declaring enthusiastically, Such a mine of Wealth exists, I believe, nowhere else! With its abundant and accessible deposits, growing industries, and network of rivers and ports, Virginia stood poised to serve as the center of the young nation's coal trade. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, Virginia's leadership in the American coal industry had completely unraveled while Pennsylvania, at first slow to exploit its vast reserves of anthracite and bituminous coal, had become the country's leading producer. Sean Patrick Adams compares the political economies of coal in Virginia and Pennsylvania from the late eighteenth century through the Civil War, examining the divergent paths these two states took in developing their ample coal reserves during a critical period of American industrialization. In both cases, Adams finds, state economic policies played a major role. Virginia's failure to exploit the rich coal fields in the western part of the state can be traced to the legislature's overriding concern to protect and promote the interests of the agrarian, slaveholding elite of eastern Virginia. Pennsylvania's more factious legislature enthusiastically embraced a policy of economic growth that resulted in the construction of an extensive transportation network, a statewide geological survey, and support for private investment in its coal fields. Using coal as a barometer of economic change, Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth addresses longstanding questions about North-South economic divergence and the role of state government in American industrial development, providing new insights for both political and economic historians of nineteenth-century America.

US state government and DARE: the story in four states

English In contrast to the widespread local popularity of the police-led Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) school-based programme, evaluation studies have consistently questioned its sustained impact on adolescent drug use. Our focus in this article is on the role of state government in DARE policy. Semi-structured personal interviews were conducted with 30 people, including past or present state agency officials and external researchers. These cases are organised chronologically along three time periods: (1) the genesis and expansion of DARE; (2) the resiliency of the programme to negative evaluation evidence; and (3) the decline of DARE.

Managing across levels of government: Evaluation of federal-state roles and responsibilities involving nonfederal forests in the United States

Abstract With the assistance of state foresters and federal agency executives, an evaluation was made of federal and state government roles and responsibilities focused nonfederal forests in the United States. The evaluation involved an inventory of legally (and administratively) defined federal roles, identification of federal programs supporting accomplishment of such roles, and assessment of the appropriateness of these roles and the effectiveness of supporting programs. Legal specification of federal roles occurs in myriad laws, rules, and planning documents, while nearly 190 federal programs represent actual expressions of federal roles. State foresters and federal agency executives favor federal roles that promote financial stability, technical competence, and coordination between states. From a state perspective, few (or no) restrictions on state discretion are an important consideration when judging the appropriateness of a federal role or program, while direct federal financial support is viewed as the most appropriate way of formally linking federal roles to state governments. Inadequate resources, cumbersome administrative process, and absence of a shared federal-state vision for nonfederal forests are important deterrents to effective federal-state working relationships.

Las finanzas públicas en los siglos XVIII-XIX

Las finanzas públicas en los siglos XVIII-XIX

Foreign Direct Investment, Linkage Formation and Supplier Development in Thailand during the 1990s: The Role of State Governance

During the 1990s inbound foreign direct investment (FDI) became a significant factor in Thailand's industrial transformation. At the same time there were increasing concerns about whether the new transnational comporation (TNC)-driven export industries actually contributed to the long-term competitiveness and a sustainable pattern of industrialisation in Thailand. This led in turn to the formulation of TNC–small and medium-scale enterprise (SME) linkage policies as well as a set of broader SME and supporting industry policies to supplement unfolding liberalisation of trade and investment policies. The article is concerned with the extent to which the Thai government was able to formulate and in particular implement a credible and adequate set of linkage and supplier development policies. It is generally argued that the Thai governments failed to implement such policies and thereby missed an early opportunity of supporting upgrading among Thai-owned parts producers. Mistaken policies were mainly due to a r...

The Changing Financial and Policy Role of State Governments Regarding Higher Education and Prospects for the Future

Higher education in the United States grew rapidly in the post-World War II era, more than doubling the total number of degree-granting institutions (1,851 to 4,084) and increasing the total number of students enrolled more than five-fold (2.7 million to 14.8 million) between 1950 and 2000.

Trust, Trusts, and Accountability: The Role of States in College Saving Plans

With the adoption of Section 529 plans, states have played an increasing role in college savings. When parents prepay for their children's college education, states invest the proceeds with the expectation that the investment returns will cover tuition increases. In times of fiscal stress, states decrease funding for higher education, causing schools to increase tuition. Because current investment returns have not kept pace with tuition increases, state managers have an even greater burden to ensure that these funds are managed properly. Our research interest is the fiduciary role of state governments in managing these plans in a volatile investment market.