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In this article, we propose to develop a realist interpretation of political progress—that is, an analysis of what it means to achieve better conditions of life in society under political power according to realist standards. Specifically, we are interested in identifying the criteria according to which political realism defines a change in the status quo as a desirable change...
Defenders of current restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights in host member states often invoke a principle of reciprocity among member states to justify these policies. The argument is that membership of a system of social cooperation triggers duties of reciprocity characteristic of welfare rights. Newly arriving EU immigrants who look for work do not meet the relevant criteria of membership, the argument goes, because they have not yet contributed enough to qualify as members on the grounds of reciprocity. Therefore, current restrictions on their access to welfare rights are justified. In this article, I challenge this argument by showing how restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights are inconsistent with duties of international reciprocity. There are different variations of this challenge, but my focus here will be on one that uses a veil of ignorance device to support this claim. What matters from a perspective concerned with international reciprocity, I will argue, is what kind of welfare policy EU member states would choose were they not to know whether those receiving EU migrants were net contributors or net beneficiaries to the relevant scheme of international cooperation made possible by the four freedoms, and freedom of movement in particular. I argue that framing the requirement of reciprocity in this way provides a more comprehensive understanding of what should count as an ‘unreasonable burden’ on the welfare systems of host member states. The paper also examines alternative accounts of ‘unreasonable burdens’. It shows when and how the current institutional structure of the EU could take steps to deal with such burdens by preventing member states from gaming a comprehensive system of welfare rights protections across member states and by recognising the achievements of those member states that best serve them.
Many democracies use geographic constituencies to elect some or all of their legislators. Furthermore, many people regard this as desirable in a noncomparative sense, thinking that local constituencies are not necessarily superior to other schemes but are nevertheless attractive when considered on their own merits. Yet, this position of noncomparative constituency localism is now under philosophical pressure as local constituencies have recently attracted severe criticism. This article examines how damaging this recent criticism is, and argues that within limits, noncomparative constituency localism remains philosophically tenable despite the criticisms. The article shows that noncomparative constituency localism is compelling in the first place because geographic constituencies foster partisan voter mobilisation, and practices of constituency service help to sustain deliberation among constituents and within the legislature and promote the realisation of equal opportunity for political influence. The article further argues that it is unwarranted to criticise geographic constituencies for being biased against geographically dispersed voter groups, for causing vote-seat disproportionality, and for being vulnerable to gerrymandering. The article also discusses the criticisms that local constituencies may pose risks of inefficiency and injustice in resource allocation decisions, may lead legislators to neglect the common good, and may limit citizens’ control over the political agenda. Whilst conceding that these objections may be valid, the article argues that they do not outweigh the diverse and normatively weighty considerations speaking in favour of noncomparative constituency localism. Finally, the article’s analysis is defended against several variants of the charge that it exaggerates the benefits of geographic constituencies.
Militarization, factionalism and political transitions: an inquiry into the causes of state collapse
(2020)
Why do some fragile states collapse while others do not? This article presents results from a comparative analysis of the causes of state collapse. Using a dataset of 15 cases of state collapse between 1960 and 2007, we conduct both synchronic and diachronic comparisons with two different control groups of fragile states using crisp-set QCA. The results support our hypothesis that state collapse has multiple causes. The militarization of political groups, when combined with other conditions, plays a major part in the process. Other causal factors are political transition, extreme poverty, declining government resources or external aid, factionalist politics, repression and pre-colonial polities. This challenges structuralist explanations focusing on regime types and the resource curse, among other things, and opens up avenues for further research.
Some realists in political theory deny that the notion of feasibility has any place in realist theory, while others claim that feasibility constraints are essential elements of realist normative theorising. But none have so far clarified what exactly they are referring to when thinking of feasibility and political realism together. In this article, we develop a conception of the realist feasibility frontier based on an appraisal of how political realism should be distinguished from non-ideal theories. In this realist framework, political standards are feasible if they meet three requirements: they are (i) politically intelligible, (ii) contextually recognisable as authoritative, and (iii) contestable. We conclude by suggesting that our conception of realist feasibility might be compatible with utopian demands, thereby possibly finding favour with realists who otherwise refuse to resort to the notion of feasibility.
Within democratic orders, it is the declared aim of a state of exception to secure or restore the endangered foundation of democracy. The provided measures are, however, undemocratic insofar they directly affect individual rights as the principle on which democracy is based: By suspending rights, the state of exception treats individuals not as members of a democratic community (demos), but as parts of a population which has to be secured. Whereas individual rights enable individuals to be part of the demos, the state of exception – by restraining rights – enforces a politics of population. In my article, I show in what way individual rights, too, are used as a strategy of governing the population. Referring to the history of individual rights in the early modern period, I describe a specific form of alienation of individual rights. I argue that this alienation consists in the separation of a private from the political component of individual rights. This alienation is the reason for a dialectical shift from demos to population which occurs in an extreme form in the state of exception. Against this background, the question of the state of exception and the question of individual rights appear in an unfamiliar but crucial relation. In order to oppose the dialectical shift and the misuse of exceptional measures, I claim it necessary to insist on the inextricable link between the private and the political component of individual rights – that is to extend the domain of democracy.
A decorated pair of trousers excavated from a well-preserved tomb in the Tarim Basin proved to have a highly informative life history, teased out by the authors – with archaeological, historical and art historical dexterity. Probably created under Greek influence in a Bactrian palace, the textile started life in the third/second century BC as an ornamental wall hanging, showing a centaur blowing a war-trumpet and a nearly life-size warrior of the steppe with his spear. The palace was raided by nomads, one of whom worked a piece of the tapestry into a pair of trousers. They brought no great luck to the wearer who ended his days in a massacre by the Xiongnu, probably in the first century BC. The biography of this garment gives a vivid glimpse of the dynamic life of Central Asia at the end of the first millennium.
This article discusses the potential of a historical approach to sustainability transformations. Using environmental issues and governance structures as case studies, it first describes how historical “sustainability transformations” can be conceptualized. It then suggests that 19th-century constitutional reforms can be read as attempts at reaching fiscal sustainability, whereas some social reforms can be interpreted as attempts to render the capitalist economy sustainable. In conclusion, the article highlights that the primary value of historical approaches to sustainability transformations will not lie in models, but in encouraging more creative questions.
This article corrects the following: Hope in political philosophy,
Claudia Blöser Jakob Huber Darrel Moellendorf. Volume 15Issue 5Philosophy Compass First Published online: April 17, 2020.
It has come to the author's attention that the reference citation of ‘Meirav, 2009’ on page 2 of his published article entitled, ‘Hope in political philosophy’ does not provide bibliographical details regarding the article and does not include it in its list of works cited.
Here is the bibliographical information: Meirav, A. (2009). The nature of hope. Ratio, 22, 216–233.
Hope in political philosophy
(2020)
The language of hope is a ubiquitous part of political life, but its value is increasingly contested. While there is an emerging debate about hope in political philosophy, an assessment of the prevalent scepticism about its role in political practice is still outstanding. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of historical and recent treatments of hope in political philosophy and to indicate lines of further research. We argue that even though political philosophy can draw on recent analyses of hope in analytic philosophy, there are distinct challenges for an account of hope in political contexts. Examples such as racial injustice or climate change show the need for a systematic normative account that is sensitive to the unavoidability of hope in politics as much as its characteristic dangers.
Responsibility for increasing mitigation ambition in light of the right to sustainable development
(2020)
The international community is currently in the midst of a facilitative dialogue about how to increase mitigation ambition under the terms of Paris Agreement. This dialogue concerns centrally considerations of equity, which includes matters of both justice and responsibility. I defend the importance of the right to sustainable development in this regard. I argue that if the right of states to pursue poverty eradicating human development is to be respected, then there is plausible interpretation of responsibility for mitigation in which a state’s ability to pay is the central consideration, where that ability is measured by its human development level. That conception of responsibility should be applied to considerations of how increase mitigation ambition.
Through digitalization, the social importance of copyright law has grown considerably. Moreover, the culture of exclusivity established by copyright law conflicts fundamentally with the culture of access prevalent on the internet. An example for this is the dispute over the EU’s latest copyright directive. Does it ring in the end of the internet as we know it, or does it »only« see to fair remuneration for those working in the creative economy?
What motivates welfare attitudes during economic crises? While existing research highlights self-interest, this conclusion rests on a predominant conceptualization of citizens’ crisis experiences as personal job loss. However, during economic downturns, people are likely to also witness colleagues or distant others being laid off, which might affect welfare attitudes for reasons beyond self-interest. This article analyses how personal job loss as well as that of colleagues and acquaintances during the Great Recession is related to welfare attitudes in the UK, Germany and Sweden, where welfare regimes and crisis policies differ systematically. Based on Eurobarometer data from 2010, the findings reveal that the importance of personal job loss as well as that of colleagues and acquaintances varies cross-nationally. In the liberal UK – with its modest crisis response – demand for greater public welfare provision is associated with personal job loss. In social-democratic Sweden – with its active crisis management – demand for greater welfare provision is associated with acquaintances’ job loss. In conservative Germany – with its labour market insider-focused crisis response – no clear picture emerges. These findings support a sociological perspective emphasizing the importance of other-regarding concerns for welfare attitudes and the role of institutions in structuring people’s self-interest and normative orientations.
The pointed commentary published on Verfassungsblog over the last week—coming from different perspectives and informed from different experiences—shows the potential of such debates. In the case of Greece, they are an important addition to a discourse focusing too much on austerity or debt sustainability.
The illiberal turn in Europe has many facets. Of particular concern are Member States in which ruling majorities uproot the independence of the judiciary. For reasons well described in the Verfassungsblog, the current focus is on Poland. Since the Polish development is emblematic for a broader trend, more is at stake than the rule of law in that Member State alone (as if that were not enough). If the Polish emblematic development is not resisted, illiberal democracies might start co-defining the European constitutional order, in particular, its rule of law-value in Article 2 TEU. Accordingly, the conventional liberal self-understanding of Europe could easily erode, with tremendous implications.
The Polish government is stepping up its repression. The freedom of political speech is a main target. A national judge has not just the right but an outright duty to refer a case to the CJEU whenever the common value basis is in danger. Thus, a Polish judge faced with a case concerning the silencing of critics, must refer the matter to the CJEU and request an interpretation of Article 2 TEU in light of the rights at stake.
Does the Polish development concern us — the European citizens and the European institutions we have set up? There is a functional and a normative argument to state that it does. The normative argument is that the European Union organizes a community of states that profess allegiance to a set of fundamental values—among others, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. The functional reason is that the European legal space presupposes mutual trust. European law operates on the presumption that all institutions are law-abiding. Otherwise, the legal edifice crumbles.
The application of the EU Commission’s Rule of Law Framework in the current Polish case is a step in the right direction. It seems a good instance to develop the Framework as an EU mechanism to protect European constitutional values in a European legal space which is rife with constitutional crises, but short of instruments to address them. Its pertinence appears even more clearly in comparison to the Council’s (in)activity under its own rule-of-law mechanism, hastily put forward after the Commission’s Framework. The activation of the Framework has shown its potential to mobilize European public opinion and orient public discourses to the current condition of EU values
In 2007, the Treaty makers ennobled the former fundamental principles of the Treaty on European Union as European values. Respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and the protection of human rights have henceforth transcended the sphere of ‘merely’ legal matters. They have been posited as widely shared and deeply rooted normative orientations and thus the true foundations of the common European house. This step was probably meant to tap a new source of legitimacy and stability.
A new virus, SARS-CoV-2, emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019. Infected persons developed an atypical form of pneumonia, later known as COVID-19. The pathogen created a pandemic, with fatalities throughout the world, and also led to the adoption of restrictive measures which were, until recently, unthinkable, as well as fostering new political conflicts. Even the path of the multilateral order in its current form is at stake. For a take on these issues under international law, the legal regime of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its response to the pandemic provides an insightful access. ...
Fundamental rights protection, once a side show, has become important for the EU, as proved by the newfound treaty recognition of the EU fundamental rights charter (CFREU), and the upcoming accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). At the same time the fundamental rights situation in a considerable number of Member States is an increasing cause for concern. This has mostly been illustrated with reference to minorities and asylum seekers. However, recent reports of organizations like the Council of Europe, the OSCE and various NGOs have also highlighted serious problems with regard to media freedom, such as overt political influence, media concentration, disproportionate sanctions on journalists, misuse of counter-terrorism legislation against the press, deficient protection of journalistic sources and failure to investigate violence against reporters. ...
Rule is commonly conceptualized with reference to the compliance it invokes. In this article, we propose a conception of rule via the practice of resistance instead. In contrast to liberal approaches, we stress the possibility of illegitimate rule, and, as opposed to critical approaches, the possibility of legitimate authority. In the international realm, forms of rule and the changes they undergo can thus be reconstructed in terms of the resistance they provoke. To this end, we distinguish between two types of resistance—opposition and dissidence—in order to demonstrate how resistance and rule imply each other. We draw on two case studies of resistance in and to international institutions to illustrate the relationship between rule and resistance and close with a discussion of the normative implications of such a conceptualization.
The article presents a brief overview of research and publication in the history of international law in Europe today. The upsurge of interest in historical studies is traced back to a sense of present transformation, with historical studies seeking to explore both aspects of continuity and change in the international legal system. The article outlines three tasks for the discipline in the future: to begin work for international law’s Ideengeschichte, to focus on the relationship between the West and its "Other", and to undertake studies in the historical sociology of international law.
In The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, I suggested that international law began in the 1860’s as part of liberal entrenchment in Europe as the clouds of nationalism, racism and socialism were rising in the political horizon. It began as a project of practicalmen, attorneys and lawyers active in politics and parliament, and not out of philosophical contemplation or system-construction. University professors were involved, but these were professors of something that was seen more as a craft than a science. What they aimed at was to "civilize" the behaviour of their nations, but also the colonies, and to do this by coordinating liberal legislative reform in Europe, by supporting formal empire in the colonies, and by doing all this as part of a set of cosmopolitan legal projects they grouped into their "international law" (Droit international, diritto internazionale, Völkerrecht). ...
How to write (international) legal histories that would be true to their protagonists while simultaneously relevant to present audiences? Most of us would also want to write "critically" – that is to say, at least by aiming to avoid Eurocentrism, hagiography and commitment to an altogether old-fashioned view of international law as an instrument of progress. Hence we write today our histories "in context". But this cannot be all. Framing the relevant "context" is only possible by drawing upon more or less conscious jurisprudential and political preferences. Should attention be focused on academic debates, military power, class structures or assumptions about the longue durée? Such choices determine for us what we think of as relevant "contexts", and engage us as participants in large conversations about law and power that are not only about what once "was" but also what there will be in the future.
Political theology’s recent rise to academic prominence has, no doubt, been inspired by the sense of a certain staleness of standard (read: Anglo-American) analytical political and legal theory. Especially postcolonial and postmodern philosophy has resuscitated debates about the reality of secularization in Europe, pointing out that much of our shared political metaphysic is indeed that – a metaphysic – with close historical links to debates in theology. That should be no surprise. For almost half a millennium theology stood as the primus inter pares among the three "higher faculties" at European universities. The best minds at work in Europe explained the social and political changes to European audiences within a fully God-centric intellectual universe. Awareness of that fact, as Wim Decock points out in this massive and brilliant work, not only assists us in understanding the development of our political and legal vocabularies. It also enables us to grasp the contingency of our present debates, the way opposite standpoints on political and legal obligation refer back to assumptions about human nature, the roles of individual and society and the nature of "law" that are hard to detach from religious speculation. ...
In the last few decades the concept of self-regulation accompanied the process of dismantling the welfare state. In this context, in central countries—Europe and North America—the importance given to private regulations versus public action increased, thus requiring new mechanisms of legitimacy. To this end, appeals to the principles of economy and technical efficiency to legitimate private regulations have been made by several researchers. However, these principles acquired a negative view in Argentina because they were used to use to legitimate processes that led to various crises, especially taking into consideration the neo-liberal experience of the 1990s. Against this historical background, this paper seeks to show a particular case of legitimizing the self-regulation of non-state organizations (social clubs) by using classic topoi, which had been historically used to legitimize state action. In order to do so, this text focuses on the analysis of “Luna de Avellaneda” Act of 2007, by which the government of Buenos Aires sought to legitimize the self-regulation of clubs appealing to the classical values of democracy, participation, and solidarity. For this, the historical experience of the Argentinean political community will be observed from the perspective of the history of these clubs, thus recovering the social function they played in the diverse political and economic crises.
On February 20 at the Max Planck Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, the Legal Historian and member of the Constitutional Court of Peru, Dr. Carlos Ramos Núñez, presented a crucial intervention on the problems that face the current constitutionalism in Latin America. Faced with a heterogeneous group of historians, philosophers and theoreticians of law, interested in the vicissitudes of Latin American juridical evolution, the political-juridical tensions of the Peruvian present served him as a framework to raise various constitutional problems and controversies. ...
In this article, we hypothesize, and then demonstrate, that experiences of embarrassment have significantly increased in the United States, due in part, to the current situation in American politics under President Donald Trump. We provide support for our hypothesis by conducting both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Twitter posts in the U.S. obtained from the Crimson Hexagon database. Next, based on literature from social psychology, social neuroscience, and political theory, we propose a two-step process explaining why Trump's behavior has caused people in the U.S. to feel more embarrassment. First, compared to former representatives, Trump violates social norms in a manner that seems intentional, and second, these intentional norm violations specifically threaten the social integrity of in-group members—in this case, U.S. citizens. We discuss how these norm violations relate to the behavior of currently represented citizens and contextualize our rationale in recent changes of political representation and the public sphere. We conclude by proposing that more frequent, nation-wide experiences of embarrassment on behalf of the representative may motivate political actions to prevent further harm to individuals' self-concepts and protect social integrity.
This article analyzes how cultural translation was carried out in Manuel Quintín Lame’s interpretation of Law 89 of 1980 during the indigenous revolt that took place in Tierradentro – Cauca (Colombia) between 1914 and 1916: riots that were popularly referred to as La Quintiada. The main focus here is on Lame and his contemporaries’ visions of justice regarding the possession of the land as a way to account for the richness and complexity of the »cultural baggage« behind legal transfer processes. The purpose of this exercise is to detail the extrajuridical elements involved in legal transfers and the opportunities that a cultural translation of law approach can bring in order to understand this process.
In their study on "The modern anthropology of Southeast Asia", Victor King and William Wilder raise the question in how far the region can be taken as a field of anthropological enquiry. After their initial discussion of cultural and social trends as well as anthropological studies, they conclude that the common issue of the region is its diversity. They come to the rather pragmatic solution that "South-East Asia constitutes a convenient unit of study, ... but ... we should not think of it in terms of a bounded, unified and homogenous socio-cultural area" (King/Wilder 2003: 24). We doubt that there are homogenous socio-cultural areas anywhere else. These are usually constructed through the invention of traditions and ideological simulations. The interesting case with regards to Southeast Asia is, why no such homogeneity has been constructed, not even by anthropologists or sociologists. ...
The paper addresses the problem of justifying ethically sound dimensions of poverty or well-being for use in a multidimensional framework. We combine Sen’s capability approach and Rawls’ method of political constructivism and argue that the constitution and its interpretative practice can serve as an ethically suitable informational basis for selecting dimensions, under certain conditions. We illustrate our Constitutional Approach by deriving a set of well-being dimensions from an analysis of the Italian Constitution. We argue that this method is both an improvement on those used in the existing literature from the ethical point of view, and has a strong potential for providing the ethical basis of a conception of well-being for the public affairs of a pluralist society. In the final part, we elaborate on the implications for measuring well-being based on data, by ranking Italian regions in terms of well-being, and pointing out the differences in results produced by different methods.
With its broad spectrum of cults and coexisting religions Graeco-Roman antiquity seems, at first glance, to be the embodiment of religious freedom. Yet, a closer analysis shows that a concept of tolerance or the idea of religious freedom did not exist. Political institutions could easily suppress religious practices that were regarded as offensive. Fighting against the oppression of Christians appears to have increased under the influence of oecumenical paganism during the reign of the Severans. In this time, the Christian thinkerTertullian discovered and articulated the concept of religious freedom. However, he did not do so emphatically and the concept was not very successful in antiquity. With the Christianization of the Roman Empire it disappeared soon, although its rediscovery in later epochs contributed heavily to the formation of the European norm of religious freedom.
According to international and national constitutional law, indigenous peoples in most Latin American countries have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions. As a consequence of this and of a long and ongoing process of political debate and recognition, ever more indigenous peoples are practicing their own laws, following their own cultural traditions and customs. In doing so, they often draw on history, recreating their identities and reconstructing their distinct legal pasts. At the same time, historical research has increasingly pointed out the intense interaction between indigenous peoples and European invaders during colonial period. It has become clear that it is difficult to draw a clear line between purely ‘indigenous’ and ‘colonial’ legal traditions due to the hybridisation of indigenous and colonial laws and legal practices. The aim of this paper is to introduce this historiography and its relevance to law and to present some methodological challenges in writing the history of indigenous rights in Latin America resulting from this shift in (legal) historiography.
This article addresses concerns that the growth in global governance may be bringing with it a decline in the significance of democratic sources of political legitimacy. One approach in evaluating such concerns is to ask whether the respective patterns of legitimation for private and public authority differ or whether they refer to a similar set of normative standards. Private transnational governance regimes provide useful contexts in which to assess the presumed democratic erosion. They seem, almost of themselves, to make the case for such a decline: in them regulatory authority is exercised by non-state actors who, by their very nature, lack the kind of authorization afforded by the democratic procedures that legitimize state-based regulation; in addition, they are intrinsically linked to the notion of politics as a form of problem-solving rather than as the exercise of power. Given these characteristics, when governance arrangements of this kind are subjected to criticism, one would expect justificatory responses to relate primarily to performance, with normative criteria such as fundamental individual rights and the imperative for democratic procedure playing only a minor role. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis, the study tests three ideal-type patterns of legitimation for plausibility. The case selected for examination is the recent controversy surrounding the hybrid governance regime that operates to prevent the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport. The debate offers the possibility of a ‘nutshell’ comparison of the respective patterns of legitimation used in criticizing and justifying state and non-state regulatory authority. This comparison yields two findings. The first is that the values used to appraise the state-based components of the sporting world’s hybrid regulatory regime do not differ systematically from those used to appraise the private elements: contestation and justification in both cases are founded on normative criteria relating to fundamental individual rights and democratic procedure and not just on performance-related considerations. The second finding is that justificatory grounds of the first type do not appear to be diminishing in importance vis-à-vis those of the second.
Corporatist regulation has a hybrid structure in that it covers state regulation, regulated self-regulation as well as private-public co-regulation. Notably diverging from the standard mode of state regulation, such arrangements required a higher degree of legitimation. Corporatist concepts flourished in the Weimar Republic. This paper deals with three legal scholars’ considerations regarding how to legitimize corporatist models, namely Edgar Tatarin-Tarnheyden, Heinrich Herrfahrdt, and Friedrich Glum. Their institutional touchstone was the Imperial Economic Council, as provided for by article 165 of the Weimar Constitution. This article envisioned a multi-level system of economic councils ranging from regional economic councils up to the Imperial Economic Council and involving representatives of all occupational groups in the performance of state tasks. However, only a Provisional Imperial Economic Council, with a restricted consultative remit, was ever actually established. Based on this model, Tatarin-Tarnheyden, Heinrich Herrfahrdt, and Friedrich Glum conceptualized organizational structures aiming at the comprehensive inclusion of non-state actors. They were legitimized primarily with reference to their output; that is, these organizational forms were supposed to enable a more appropriate and efficient realization of public interests. The input-based argument was basically a question of participation, which implies considerable proximity to typical topoi of democratic legitimation. This similarity is perhaps counter-intuitive, given that corporatist concepts are traditionally associated with anti-democratic ideologies due to their anti-parliamentarian slant. The numerous points of convergence between corporatist and democratic thought simultaneously reflect the heterogeneity of democratic reasoning in the Weimar period and the openness for ideas that were sceptical of—or even hostile to—parliamentary democracy and the party-based state.
This thematic issue brings together research from political science and legal history about legitimacy discourses covering different forms of public–private co-regulation and private self-regulation, domestic and transnational, past and present. These forms of governance highlight the important role of non-state actors in exercising public authority. There has been a growing debate about the legitimacy of non-state actors setting and enforcing norms and providing public goods and services. However, the focus of this thematic issue is not on developing abstract criteria of legitimacy. Rather, the authors analyze legitimacy discourses around different cases of privatized or partly privatized forms of governance from the early 20th century until today. Legitimacy is subject to empirical and not normative analysis. Legitimacy discourses are analyzed in order to shed light on the legitimacy conceptions that actors hold, what they consider as legitimate institutions, and based on what criteria. The particular focus of this thematic issue is to examine whether the significance of democratic legitimacy is decreasing as the importance of regulation exercised by private actors is increasing.
Does the rotten child spoil his companion? : spatial peer effects among children in rural India
(2014)
This paper identifies the effect of neighborhood peer groups on childhood skill acquisition using observational data. We incorporate spatial peer interaction, defined as a child's nearest geographical neighbors, into a production function of child cognitive development in Andhra Pradesh, India. Our peer group definition takes the form of networks, whose structure allows us to identify endogenous peer effects and contextual effects separately. We exploit variation over time to avoid confounding correlated with social effects. Our results suggest that spatial peer and neighborhood effects are strongly positively associated with a child's cognitive skill formation. Further, we explore the effect of peer groups in helping to provide insurance against the negative impact of idiosyncratic shocks to child learning. We find that the data reject full risk-sharing, but cannot rule out the existence of partial risk-sharing on behalf of peers. We show that peer effects are robust to different specifications of peer interactions and investigate the sensitivity of our estimates to potential misspecification of the network structure using Monte Carlo experiments.
On 15 August 2005, when the Republic of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Helsinki, Finland, it was considered yet another uncertain attempt at putting an end to Indonesia's thirty years of conflict in its westernmost province, Aceh. After a historically unprecedented reconstruction process that followed the tsunami of December 2004 and two orderly elections in 2006/2007 and 2009, Aceh’s peace process is not only still on track, but widely considered a role model for ending protracted civil wars by means of political participation and autonomy regulations. This article reviews past developments that have led to the reconfiguration of Aceh's political landscape and seeks to illustrate the most recent developments in GAM's transformation from an independence movement to an Indonesian local political party.
This note offers reflections on qualified market access (QMA) - the practice of linking trade agreements to values such as human rights, labour standards, or environmental protection. This idea has been suggested by political theorists as a way of fulfilling our duties to the global poor and of making the global economic system more just, and it has influenced a number of concrete policies, such as European Union (EU) trade policies. Yet, in order to assess its merits tout court, different perspectives and disciplines need to be brought together, such as international law, economics, political science, and philosophy. It is also worth reflecting on existing practices, such as those of the EU. This note summarises some insights about QMA by drawing such research together and considers the areas in which further research is needed, whilst reflecting also on the merits of interdisciplinary exchanges on such topics.
The aim of the following paper is to examine the complementarities (and divergences) between the paleoliberal Adam Smith and the ordoliberal Walter Eucken. Following the hypothesis that Smith is among the forerunners and predecessors of Ordoliberalism and Social Market Economy, we try to provide the reader with an insight into the socio-political philosophy of Smith and Eucken pointing at similarities and differences alike. Therefore, we base our examination on a systematic primary source text analysis comparing the books and essays written by Eucken and Smith. The paper tackles these questions in two main steps: The first part highlights Smith's and Eucken's complex and interdependent system of natural liberty. The second section reviews Smith's and Eucken's philosophy of the state.
As recent newspaper headlines show the topic of patents/patent laws is still heavily disputed. In this paper I will approach this topic from a theoretical-historical and history of economic thought-perspective. In this regard I will link the patent controversy of the nineteenth century with Walter Eucken’s Ordoliberalism – a German version of neoliberalism. My paper is structured as follows: The second chapter provides the reader with a historical introduction. At the heart of this paragraph are the controversy and discourse on patent laws in nineteenth century Europe as well as the pro and contra arguments presented by the anti-patent/free-trade movement respectively by the advocates of patent protection. The focus of my paper is on the struggle for the protection of inventions and innovations in nineteenth century Germany, since Walter Eucken, main representative of the Freiburg School of Law and Economics, picks up the counter-arguments presented in the national debate and in particular by the Kongress deutscher Volkswirthe. The third chapter deals intensively with the question whether patent laws are just ‘nonsense upon stilts’ from an ordoliberal perspective. Here, Eucken’s arguments against the current patent system are elaborated in great detail. The paper ends with a summary of my main findings.
While the general elections in Myanmar in November 2010 were widely condemned, both national and international actors approached the by-elections of April 2012 as a political rite-de-passage to improve relations between the government and the opposition inside, and between the former pariah state and the international community outside the country. An undercurrent to the government-led transition process from an authoritarian to a formally more democratic regime was the development of a politically oriented civil society that found ways to engage in the electoral process. This article describes the emerging spaces of election-related civil society activism in the forms of civic and voter education, national election observation, and election-related agency in the media. Noting that, in particular, election observation offers connections for civil society to regional and international debates, the paper draws preliminary conclusions about further developments ahead of the general elections in Myanmar expected for 2015.
In its admissibility decision in the Al-Saadoon case the ECtHR held that the United Kingdom had jurisdiction over the applicants, who had been arrested by British forces and kept in a British-run military prison in Iraq. Just before the respective mandate of the Security Council expired on 31 December 2008, the applicants were transferred to Iraqi custody at Iraqi request and thereby exposed to the risk of an unfair trial followed by capital punishment. In this respect, the case resembles the Soering case, although the applicants were, unlike Soering, not on British territory but on occupied Iraqi soil before they were handed over. This aspect raises the question of Iraqi sovereignty as a norm competing with the UK's human rights obligations. The authors trace back the ECtHR's case law concerning the extraterritorial application of the Convention and analyse the UK judgments and the ECtHR's admissibility decision in the Al-Saadoon affair from this angle. Furthermore they consider the doctrinal consequences of the ECHR's extraterritorial effect in cases like Soering and Al-Saadoon, where contracting parties violate guarantees of the Convention by exposing a person within their jurisdiction to a risk of a treatment contrary to these guarantees by a third state. Finally, they test the argument brought forward by the UK that not transferring the applicants would have violated Iraqi sovereignty and establish patterns how the ECtHR and the UK Courts did cope in the past with international law norms potentially competing with the Convention.
One of the current trends in international law scholarship is the question of which influences specific legal cultures have on the understanding of international law. This contribution will trace the conditions of a German perspective and analyse the debate against the background of positive law. We will try to assess what the debate adds to the general theory of international law, how it fits into demands of legitimacy of international governance, and whether it contributes to a sensible reconstruction of current law. Furthermore, we try to develop our own perspective that matches the system of international law and is plausible in terms of international legal theory. For that purpose, we will first take It is probably in this context that the contention has to be understood that the ongoing debate on the constitutionalisation of public international law is particularly European, if not German. Whether or not this is the case is difficult to investigate with a lawyer’s tools. However, the idea that international law is the constitution of mankind has found many adherents in German legal writings. This contribution will trace the conditions of a German perspective and analyse the debate against the background of positive law. We will try to assess what the debate adds to the general theory of international law, how it fits into demands of legitimacy of international governance, and whether it contributes to a sensible reconstruction of current law. Furthermore, we try to develop our own perspective that matches the system of international law and is plausible in terms of international legal theory. For that purpose, we will first take up the debate and find its place in the landscape of international legal theory. In this context, we try to shed light on the central concepts used or presupposed when constitutionalisation is discussed by German-speaking scholars (see below, section B). Furthermore, we will discuss structures in positive law which are used as arguments in the debate (section C). Finally, we will try to give an account of constitutionalisation in terms of both sources doctrine and legal theory (section D), before drawing conclusions from the discussion (section E).
This essay examines the foreign policy discourse in contemporary Germany. In reviewing a growing body of publications by German academics and foreign policy analysts, it identifies five schools of thought based on different worldviews, assumptions about international politics, and policy recommendations. These schools of thought are then related to, first, actual preferences held by German policymakers and the public more generally and, second, to a small set of grand strategies that Germany could pursue in the future. It argues that the spectrum of likely choices is narrow, with the two most probable-the strategies of "Wider West" and "Carolingian Europe"---continuing the multilateral and integrationist orientation of the old Federal Republic. These findings are contrasted with diverging assessments in the non-German professional literature.Finally, the essay sketches avenues for future research by suggesting ways for broadening the study of country-specific grand strategies, developing and testing inclusive typologies of more abstract foreign policy strategies, and refining the analytical tools in examining foreign policy discourses in general.