Oil, the state, and federalism

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John Erik Fossum

The creation and privatization of Petro-Canada provides an important lesson in state intervention and Canadian public policy. John Erik Fossum explores the reasons for the federal government's intervention in the energy industry between 1973 and 1984 and shows how its initial objectives failed, culminating in the privatization of Petro-Canada in 1990. In other countries, state oil policy unfolded along state-industry lines of conflict. Fossum shows us how in Canada the conflict was deflected to focus on the jurisdictional and constitutional concerns of governmental actors. The dismantling of state intervention was associated with a reverse deflection and reduced conflict in both the state-industry and intergovernmental arenas. Oil, the State, and Federalism is a sophisticated analysis of statist and federalist theories of Canadian public policy-making that will spark debate among political scientists, analysts, and policy-makers.

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Richard A. Colignon

Power Plays provides a conflict model of organizational behavior based on a historical reanalysis of the creation and early development of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from its origins as a World War I munitions plant to its consolidation as the largest electric utility in the United States. It also examines Philip Selznick's classic work, TVA and the Grass Roots. The book shows how the interactions among the Depression, New Deal politics, the promise of electricity, and diverse ideologies with the strategic and tactical maneuvers of a policy network explain the institutionalization of the TVA.

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Stephen D. Van Beek

"Megabills" that package scores of legislative proposals into House and Senate bills are a phenomenon of the congressional reforms of the 1970s and the agenda changes of the 1980s. These bills generate unprecedented disagreements between the House and Senate, requiring congressional leaders, the president, committee chairs, and junior members to play new roles in this struggle for resolution. Van Beek uses a case-study approach that investigates the legislative histories of recent bills on the savings and loan bailout, the major trade bill of the late 1980s, and several budget reconciliation bills. His research is brought to life through personal experience as a legislative aide, direct observation of Congress at work, and interviews with members, staff, and lobbyists. Post-Passage Politics is a significant contribution to congressional studies. Readers will come to understand how important the resolution stage is for shaping behavior at the committee and floor stages in the House and Senate. The case studies and descriptions of the politics of bicameral resolution will interest students of Congress, the presidency, and public policy.

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William Mallinson

"Partition through Foreign Aggression: The Case of Turkey in Cyprus unashamedly argues that Cyprus, a member of the European Union, should be a cohesive social and political federation, despite attempts to slice it into two, against the grain of its natural social and historical development. This book demonstrates that the very idea of partition for an island state like Cyprus is an unacceptable aberration of common sense and decency, an illicit escape route from commonly accepted norms of international relations, and a bizarre anomaly in the EU context. The current division of the island through the brute force of NATO's second largest army highlights the illegitimacy of partition in Cyprus. It also reflects the anachronistic military goals of a country that is occupying a member of the European Union which it itself is trying to join. Furthermore, Partition through Foreign Aggression shows that no amount of quasi-academic debate, think-tankery, semantic sliding, and humbuggery can detract from the fact that Cyprus should be reunited through EU and UN law, rather than used as a whipping-boy of the self-seeking strategic obsessions of the worst side of nineteenth-century power politics."--Publisher's description.