Whose land was it anyway? The Crichel Down Rules and the sale of public land

The guiding principle of compulsory purchase of interests in land in England and Wales is that of fairness, best stated in the words of Lord Justice Scott in Horn v Sunderland Corporation when he said that the owner has “the right to be put, so far as money can do it, in the same position as if his land had not been taken from him”. In many instances, land acquired by compulsion subsequently becomes surplus to the requirements of the acquiring authority. This may be because the intended development scheme was scrapped, or substantially modified, or that after the passage of time the use of the land for which the purchase took place is no longer required. More controversially it may be that for ‘operational reasons’ the acquiring authority knowingly purchased more land than was required for the scheme. Under these circumstances, the Crichel Down Rules (‘the Rules’) require government departments and other statutory bodies to offer back to the former owners or their successors, any land previously so acquired by, or under the threat of, compulsory purchase.

Fora, networks and public examinations: the role and significance of public participation in the new regional plan for South East England

This paper overviews the main conceptual frameworks for understanding participatory approaches to land use planning and explores their utility in analysing the experience of a recent regional planning exercise in South East England. In particular it examines the contribution of recent ‘New Institutionalist’ ideas to our understanding of participatory processes and the implications for practice of using them to build strategies of public involvement in policy-making and implementation.

Access to the countryside of England and Wales: public/private partnership or the privatisation of public rights?

This paper examines the evolution of public rights of access to private land in England and Wales. Since the Eighteenth Century the administration and protection of these rights has been though a form of public/private partnership in which the judiciary, while maintaining the dominance of private property, have safeguarded de facto public access by refusing consistently to punish simple trespass. While this situation has been modified, principally by post-World War II legislation, to allow for some formalisation of access arrangements and consequent compensation to landowners in areas of high recreational pressure and low legal accessibility, recent policy initiatives suggest that the balance of the partnership has now shifted in favour of landowners. In particular, the new access payment schemes, developed by the UK Government in response to the European Commission's Agri-Environment Regulations, locate the landowner as the beneficiary of the partnership, financed by tax revenue and justified on the spurious basis of improved 'access provision'. As such the state, as the former upholder of citizen rights, now assumes the duplicitous position of underwriting private property ownership through the commodification of access, while proclaiming a significant improvement in citizens' access rights.

The use of public participation and economic appraisal for public involvement in large-scale hydropower projects: Case study of the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project

Gaining public acceptance is one of the main issues with large-scale low-carbon projects such as hydropower development. It has been recommended by the World Commission on Dams that to gain public acceptance, publicinvolvement is necessary in the decision-making process (WCD, 2000). As financially-significant actors in the planning and implementation of large-scale hydropowerprojects in developing country contexts, the paper examines the ways in which publicinvolvement may be influenced by international financial institutions. Using the casestudy of the NamTheun2HydropowerProject in Laos, the paper analyses how publicinvolvement facilitated by the Asian Development Bank had a bearing on procedural and distributional justice. The paper analyses the extent of publicparticipation and the assessment of full social and environmental costs of the project in the Cost-Benefit Analysis conducted during the projectappraisal stage. It is argued that while efforts were made to involve the public, there were several factors that influenced procedural and distributional justice: the late contribution of the Asian Development Bank in the projectappraisal stage; and the issue of non-market values and discount rate to calculate the full social and environmental costs.

The experimetrics of public goods: inferring motivations from contributions

In public goods experiments, stochastic choice, censoring and motivational heterogeneity give scope for disagreement over the extent of unselfishness, and whether it is reciprocal or altruistic. We show that these problems can be addressed econometrically, by estimating a finite mixture model to isolate types, incorporating double censoring and a tremble term. Most subjects act selfishly, but a substantial proportion are reciprocal with altruism playing only a marginal role. Isolating reciprocators enables a test of Sugden’s model of voluntary contributions. We estimate that reciprocators display a self-serving bias relative to the model.

Interpersonal interaction and economic theory: the case of public goods

Interpersonal interaction in public goods contexts is very different in character to its depiction in economic theory, despite the fact that the standard model is based on a small number of apparently plausible assumptions. Approaches to the problem are reviewed both from within and outside economics. It is argued that quick fixes such as a taste for giving do not provide a way forward. An improved understanding of why people contribute to such goods seems to require a different picture of the relationships between individuals than obtains in standard microeconomic theory, where they are usually depicted as asocial. No single economic model at present is consistent with all the relevant field and laboratory data. It is argued that there are defensible ideas from outside the discipline which ought to be explored, relying on different conceptions of rationality and/or more radically social agents. Three such suggestions are considered, one concerning the expressive/communicative aspect of behaviour, a second the possibility of a part-whole relationship between interacting agents and the third a version of conformism.

Sustainable agricultural intensification or Jevons paradox? The role of public governance in tropical South America

The process of global deforestation calls for urgent attention, particularly in South America where deforestation rates have failed to decline over the past 20 years. The main direct cause of deforestation is land conversion to agriculture. We combine data from the FAO and the World Bank for six tropical Southern American countries over the period 1970–2006, estimate a panel data model accounting for various determinants of agricultural land expansion and derive elasticities to quantify the effect of the different independent variables. We investigate whether agricultural intensification, in conjunction with governance factors, has been promoting agricultural expansion, leading to a ‘‘Jevons paradox’’. The paradox occurs if an increase in the productivity of one factor (here agricultural land) leads to its increased, rather than decreased, utilization. We find that for high values of our governance indicators a Jevons paradox exists even for moderate levels of agricultural productivity, leading to an overall expansion of agricultural area. Agricultural expansion is also positively related to the level of service on external debt and population growth, while its association with agricultural exports is only moderate. Finally, we find no evidence of an environmental Kuznets curve, as agricultural area is ultimately positively correlated to per-capita income levels.

Evaluation of cumulative externality: environmental economics, oligopoly and the private provision of public goods

This paper evaluates environmental externality when the structure of the externality is cumulative. The evaluation exercise is based on the assumption that the agents in question form conjectural variations. A number of environments are encompassed within this classification and have received due attention in the literature. Each of these heterogeneous environments, however, possesses considerable analytical homogeneity and permit subscription to a general model treatment. These environments include environmental externality, oligopoly and the analysis of the private provision of public goods. We highlight the general analytical approach by focusing on this latter context, in which debate centers around four issues: the existence of free-riding, the extent to which contributions are matched equally across individuals, the nature of conjectures consistent with equilibrium, and the allocative inefficiency of alternative regimes. This paper resolves each of these issues, with the following conclusions: A consistent-conjectures equilibrium exists in the private provision of public goods. It is the monopolistic-conjectures equilibrium. Agents act identically, contributing positive amounts of the public good in an efficient allocation of resources. There is complete matching of contributions among agents, no free-riding, and the allocation is independent of the number of members within the community. Thus the Olson conjecture—that inefficiency is exacerbated by community size—has no foundation in a consistent-conjectures, cumulative-externality, context (212 words).

The effects of strategy instruction on writing strategy use for students of different proficiency levels

Learners’ strategy use has been widely researched over the past few decades. However, studies which focus on the impact of strategy instruction on strategy use, and how far learners of different proficiency levels are able to use the strategies taught in an effective manner, are somewhat rare. The focus of this paper is the impact of writing strategy instruction on writing strategy use of a group of 12 second language learners learning to write in English for Academic Purposes classes. Stimulated recall was used to explore whether this impact differed according to the proficiency level of the students, and revealed that for both high and low proficiency learners’ strategy use developed as a result of the instruction. The implications of these findings for strategy instruction design are discussed

Globalization, Agency, and Institutional Innovation: The Rise of Public-Private Partnerships in Global Governance

Public and private actors increasingly cooperate in global governance, a realm previously reserved for states and intergovernmental organizations (IOs). This trend raises fascinating theoretical questions. What explains the rise in public-private institutions and their role in international politics? Who leads such institutional innovation and why? To address the questions, this paper develops a theory of the political demand and supply of public-private institutions and specifies the conditions under which IOs and non-state actors would cooperate, and states would support this public-private cooperation. The observable implications of the theoretical argument are evaluated against the broad trends in public-private cooperation and in a statistical analysis of the significance of demand and supply-side incentives in public-private cooperation for sustainable development. The study shows that public-private institutions do not simply fill governance gaps opened by globalization, but cluster in narrower areas of cooperation, where the strategic interests of IOs, states, and transnational actors intersect.

Commitment of the Mentally Ill in Maine: a History of Public Policy

This paper traces the historical development in the State of Maine of the procedures by which persons found to be mentally unsound can be committed to institutional care against their will. Beginning in 1820 and continuing to the present, specific changes in the statutes governing this area are noted. Both the criminal and civil commitment procedures are dealt with. Following the historical trace, pending legislation relating to the criminal commitment process is examined in detail. Finally, consideration is given to the need for a complete reexamination of the practice of involuntary commitment involving ethical and constitutional issues.