Rethinking Overlap and Duplication: Federalism and Environmental Assessment in Australia

Robyn Hollander

Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2010, vol. 40, issue 1, 136-170

Abstract: Critics of federalism have long pointed to overlap and duplication as evidence of a system under pressure. This article challenges their critique through an examination of Australia's environmental assessment and approval regime. It finds that, in their quest to eliminate duplication and overlap, policy makers have imposed artificial divisions on a complex policy domain. By limiting the opportunities for political engagement, they have also surrendered some of the strengths of a federal system of government and removed important failsafe mechanisms which provide valuable insurance against policy failure. While the empirical argument is based on the Australian experience, the analysis has more general implications for federations characterized by concurrency. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjp028 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:publus:v:40:y:2010:i:1:p:136-170

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Publius: The Journal of Federalism is currently edited by Paul Nolette and Philip Rocco

More articles in Publius: The Journal of Federalism from CSF Associates Inc. Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().