The International Joint Commission (IJC): an exploration of its fit as a binational commission
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The signing of the Boundary Waters Treaty (BWT) in 1909 between Canada and the United States established the International Joint Commission (IJC). The main responsibilities of the IJC are to evaluate projects that affect water level and flows across the borders, and to investigate transboundary issues and provide possible solutions. One of the main attributes of the IJC is that, in theory, it is binational. A binational agreement means that Canada and the United States work together on common issues rather than on separate problems along national preferences. The IJC has been studied by many scholars, however, they mainly focus on its history, functions, and activities. A weakness in the literature is the lack of attention to the commission and binational nature of IJC. It is generally assumed that the IJC is a binational commission without evaluating whether or not it meets the requirements of a binational commission. To investigate this gap in the literature, this thesis asks: is the IJC truly a binational joint commission? To assess the question, this thesis draws on existing literature to analyze the characteristics of the IJC and employs two case studies: the Zosel Dam applications and the Garrison Diversion Unit (GDU) reference which provides a good test of the IJC’s commission and binational status. Ultimately, this thesis concludes that the IJC is indeed a binational commission. Given that environmental and economic uncertainties are growing in the world and even allies, American and Canadian policy analysts and decision-makers should look to the IJC’s binational mechanisms to develop mutually acceptable solutions to water border issues.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.025 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.028 | 0.018 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".