Visual consumption, collective memory and the representation of war

Conceiving of the visual as a significant force in the production and dissemination of collective memory, we argue that a new genre of World War Two films has recently emerged that form part of a new discursive “regime of memory” about the war and those that fought and lived through it, constituting a commemoration as much about reflecting on the present as it is about remembering the past. First, we argue that these films seek to reaffirm a (particular conception of a) US national identity and military patriotism in the post–Cold War era by importing World War Two as the key meta‐narrative of America’s relationship to war in order to “correct” and help “erase” Vietnam’s more negative discursive rendering. Second, we argue that these films attempt to rewrite the history of World War Two by elevating and illuminating the role of the US at the expense of the Allies, further serving to reaffirm America’s position of political and military dominance in the current age, and third, that these films form part of a celebration of the generation that fought World War Two, which may accord them a position of nostalgic and sentimental greatness, as their collective spirit and notions of duty and service shine against the foil of what might frequently be seen as our own present moral ambivalence

On the temporal effects of static constitutional environmental rights provisions on access to improved sanitation facilities and water sources

Using novel panel data on constitutional environmental rights (CER) for 190 countries from 1990 to 2012, this paper questions if the presence/language of CER provisions provides increased access to improved sanitation facilities and drinking water sources. While implementing statutory laws/regulations derived from CER provisions is a dynamic process, the presence/language of CER provisions is temporally fixed. To capture these dynamics, the presence of a CER and a measure of its legal strength are interacted with its age as explanatory variables within a fixed effects framework yielding: (1) no evidence of an association between the CER measures and access to improved sanitation facilities; (2) a positive statistically significant association between ageing CER provisions and access to improved water sources; and (3) a positive but weakly statistically significant association between the legal strength of ageing CER provisions and access to improved water sources, which is improved upon for countries with British as opposed to French legal origins

Preference-Directed Regulation When Ethical Environmental Policy Choices Are Formed With Limited Information

Preference-directed regulation (PDR) can supplement traditional environmental policies through frequent regulatory revision (Livermore, 2007). Stakeholders can use PDR to garner popular support for a specific policy. By providing individuals with information that augments their opinions about the effectiveness of a policy at driving environmental outcomes, stakeholders can induce preference switching in favor of or in detriment to a specific policy. This paper documents the extent to which this is true using cross-sectional data from an original national survey where individuals were asked to choose one of three policies aimed at reducing the number of products manufactured in environmentally damaging ways. Proxies for policy-specifc opinions about the effectiveness of each policy are extracted from the data and form the central focus of inducing preference switching. PDR is operationalized by exogenously augmenting individual opinions via counterfactual simulations within a limited information discrete choice model. The results demonstrate that the extent of preference switching depends not only on the relative change in opinion for a specific policy, but that different forms of PDR may be more effective at inducing preference switching. The substitution patterns arising from the counterfactual simulations are further explained by analytically demonstrating the mitigation of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives property endemic to traditional multinomial choice models (i.e., full information). Additional empirical results are documented by comparing the results to a full information model, including downward bias in mean utility levels and individual-level preference switching across the limited and full information conditional choice utilities

Constitutional Environmental Human Rights: A Descriptive Analysis of 142 National Constitutions

This paper provides a detailed keyword analysis of the 142 out of 198 national constitutions that include at least one reference to the environment as of 2010. Out of these 142 constitutions, 125 contain provisions that are explicitly related to environmental human rights, and ten include a direct human right to water. Focusing mostly on the language of the provisions and the age of the constitutions (not the age of the provision itself), the analysis provides insight into the extent to which countries are taking environmental human rights seriously. The findings note that constitutions that reference the environment are, on average, generally younger in age than those that do not. This is also the case for developing versus developed countries, and Non-OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) versus OECD member countries. Constitutions that have a direct human right to water are, on average, even younger. The paper also develops a simple index of the legal strength of constitutional environmental human rights provisions and offers the data as an alternative, positive (versus subjective) specification to a similar set of data compiled by the Toronto Initiative for Economic and Social Rights (TIESR).Constitutions, Environmental Human Rights, Human Right to Water

Preference-Directed Regulation When Ethical Environmental Policy Choices Are Formed With Limited Information

Preference-directed regulation (PDR) can supplement traditional environmental policies through frequent regulatory revision(Livermore, 2007). Stakeholders can use PDR to garner popular support for a specific policy. By providing individuals with information that augments their opinions about the effectiveness of a policy at driving environmental outcomes, stakeholders can induce preference switching in favor of or in detriment to a specific policy. This paper documents the extent to which this is true using cross-sectional data from an original national survey where individuals were asked to choose one of three policies aimed at reducing the number of products manufactured in environmentally damaging ways. Proxies for policy-specific opinions about the effectiveness of each policy are extracted from the data and form the central focus of inducing preference switching. PDR is operationalized by exogenously augmenting individual opinions via counterfactual simulations within a limited information discrete choice model. The results demonstrate that the extent of preference switching depends not only on the relative change in opinion for a specific policy, but that different forms of PDR may be more effective at inducing preference switching. The substitution patterns arising from the counterfactual simulations are further explained by analytically demonstrating the mitigation of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives property endemic to traditional multinomial choice models (i.e., full information). Additional empirical results are documented by comparing the results to a full information model, including downward bias in mean utility levels and individual-level preference switching across the limited and full information conditional choice utilities.Discrete Choice, Limited Information, Preference Switching, Survey Data, Environmental Policy, Preference-Directed Regulation

Three essays in environmental economics and environmental human rights

Recognizing that economics and human rights each have their own methodologies, merits, and flaws, and further realizing that it would take countless dissertations and lifetimes to link the totality of both disciplines, my dissertation offers a bridge between two related subfields of each: environmental and resource economics and environmental human rights (EHR). To bridge the gap, I rely on the following unifying theme: the political economy and management of the natural environment, with a specific focus on government efforts to mitigate environmental damage or harm. I consider both statutory and constitutional government efforts and rely on a broad definition of environmental harm inclusive of traditional aspects (e.g., air and water pollution) and non-traditional aspects (e.g., EHR violations). In my first essay, I calibrate a limited information discrete choice model on original national survey data to demonstrate the effects of preference-directed regulation (PDR) on individual preferences for policies to reduce the number of products manufactured in environmentally harmful ways. Counterfactual simulations augment the probability an individual is informed about the behavioral effects of each environmental policy, thereby illustrating the implications of PDR for support of national environmental policies. In my second essay, I compile data from 198 national constitutions to: (1) characterize constitutional EHR; and (2) create a simple linear index of the legal strength of each provision based on the theory and language used to define and describe EHR. Surprisingly, I find that 125 national constitutions include EHR provisions and, based on the numerical index created from 7 keyword categories, each provision is of varying legal strength. In my third essay, the human right to water is embedded in a nonrenewable resource model with a backstop technology and interpreted as a minimum consumption requirement the government is obligated to fulfill in the event that an individual cannot do so independently. This obligation manifests itself through a fiscal policy the government imposes on two types of individuals - poor and rich. A novel human rights welfare standard is developed and compared against traditional social welfare measures to demonstrate cases where the standard is fulfilled, surpassed, or violated.

Environmental Rights in the Asia Pacific Region: Taking Stock and Assessing Impacts

Since their emergence in the 1970s, human rights relating to environmental protection have spread all over the world and continue to find homes in an ever-growing list of national constitutions. These provisions mainly fall into one of three categories – substantive, procedural, or derivative environmental rights. Over the last two decades, the proliferation of these rights has caught the attention of legal scholars and social scientists, who have sought to catalogue their distribution and analyze the origins and impacts of this development. The literature in this area has provided anecdotal updates concerning environmental rights jurisprudence at the national and regional levels and global quantitative assessments regarding the effects that such rights have on humans and the environment. However, scant work offers regionally-focused empirical examinations of the variation of the presence and impacts of environmental rights. In an effort toward filling this gap, this article utilizes statistical techniques in order to determine what, if any, correlation exists between environmental rights and environmental performance in the Asia Pacific region. Preliminary results suggest that, over the past several years, countries with environmental rights have experienced strong improvements in ecosystem vitality but weak reductions in measures of environmental health. In addition, there is evidence of important intra-regional differences – South and South-West Asia lay claim to some of the world\u27s most innovative environmental rights jurisprudence, while North and Central Asia possess the region\u27s greatest concentration of constitutions featuring environmental rights. The article concludes with several recommendations for policy-makers in the region regarding the adoption and implementation of environmental rights

On the Natural and Economic Difficulties to Fulfilling the Human Right to Water

We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first economic model of the human right to water using a nonrenewable resource model inclusive of a backstop technology. The right is interpreted as a minimum consumption requirement the government is obligated to fulfill in the event that any one household cannot do so independently. Differing by income levels, households maximize utility by purchasing a composite consumption good and water from two distinct, government-owned sources. Facing physical and financial constraints, the government uses fiscal policy to address potential human rights violations. Reducing the analysis to two-periods, we develop a novel approach to compare total welfare levels from a joint human rights and economics perspective. We define a human rights welfare standard and discuss cases where traditional social welfare measures would meet, surpass, or violate this standard. We thus offer a unique way to merge economic analysis with human rights research.Nonrenewable resource, water, minimum consumption requirement, human right to water, government policy