Freedom of Speech in Union Representation Elections: Employer Campaigning and Employee Response

In 1977 the National Labor Relations Board announced that it would no longer probe the truth or falsity of statements made in the course of representation campaigns. This decision, Shopping Kart Ford Market, overruled longstanding Board policy and was itself overruled the following year. Now, in August of 1982, the Board has again made a commitment to nonprobing and has reinstated the Shopping Kart standard (Midland National Life Insurance Co.,___ N.L.R.B.____, 110 L.R.R.M. 1489 (1982)). Such seesawing of Board positions suggests the difficulty of attempting to protect freedom of speech while simultaneously supporting other national labor policy goals, including employee freedom of choice and the integrity of representation elections. Critical to determining the appropriate standard for campaign speech is an understanding of how employees respond to misrepresentations or coercion in an employer's campaign rhetoric. This paper investigates the relationship between employer campaigning and employee response. Both employer and labor organization will have incentives to prevent coercive or misrepresentative speech at certain levels of violation severity. But in an intermediate range of speech in which that is not the case, the Board has a unique role to play in protecting the rights of individual employees and the public interest in the integrity of elections.     

Regional Technological Differences: The Case of Southern European Union

This paper examines the spatial spillover effects and the productivity rate of patents in southern European Union. It provides a systematic analysis of the relationship between productivity of patents and the factors that generate economically useful new technological knowledge. An applied spatial econometric framework is employed since this approach is particularly useful in the study of the spatial patterns of patents productivity, at the lowest possible levels of spatial aggregation.     

Building the Union: The Nature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europe

The debate on the nature of the European Union hasbecome a test case of the kind of political andinstitutional arrangements appropriate in an age ofglobalization. This paper explores three views of theEU. The two main positions that have hithertoconfronted each other appeal to either cosmopolitan orcommunitarian values. Advocates of the former arguefor some form of federal structure in Europe and areconvinced that the sovereignty of the nation statebelongs to the past. Proponents of the latter make acase on both socio-political and normative grounds fora Europe of nations. However a third position,favoured by the authors, is gaining ground. This viewcombines cosmopolitan and communitarian conceptions.It emphasises the mixed nature of the European polityand conceives the constitutionalization process asopen-ended. The paper concludes that from this perspectivea bricoleur's Europe of bits and piecesmay not necessarily lack justification and legitimacy.     

A Political Economy Perspective of Judicial Review in the European Union: Judicial Appointments Rule, Accessibility and Jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice

The paper examines the benefits the sovereign member states of the EU expect to derive by granting the European Court of Justice the power to review the collective policy making decisions of the EU legislative bodies. Using the methodology of constitutional political economy it investigates the one-country one-judge rule of judicial appointments in the ECJ, the restrictions imposed on litigants to access the ECJ and the limits on the jurisdiction of the ECJ to review EU legislation. It also analyses how the presence of judicial review affects the size of the policy measures taken by the policy makers.     

Assessing the President's Role as Party Agent in Congressional Elections: The Case of Bill Clinton in 2000

Presidents have become their parties' chief fund‐raisers and thus have the capacity to further their parties' collective fortunes by imposing a more efficient distribution of campaign resources than might otherwise prevail. In order to succeed, presidents must, first, accurately target their efforts where they will best improve candidates' prospects for winning seats, and second, either directly or indirectly (through signaling to other donors) generate sufficient new resources to affect the election outcome. Analyses of Bill Clinton's extensive fund‐raising efforts during the 1999–2000 election cycle confirm that presidents can indeed use their unmatched fund‐raising ability to help their parties win congressional contests they might otherwise lose. But analysis of the Clinton record also shows that presidential fund‐raising activities may be shaped by other purposes that lead to a distribution of effort that is suboptimal for the party.     

The Political Economy of Green Taxation in OECD Countries

This paper addresses the role of politics in environmental policymaking in OECD countries. The public interest theory of regulation assumes that politicians pursue the public good and employ economically efficient instruments such as Pigouvian taxes to discourage polluting activities. Alternative theories of regulation, however, explain more realistically the environmental policymaking process. The theory developed in this paper argues that the goals of raising revenue and industry competitiveness overwhelm the goal of improving environmental quality when politicians set green taxes. This theory is empirically tested with a political economy model using data on OECD countries. The results suggest that policymakers do not set taxes with a specific concern for the environment, but to generate revenues. The model also demonstrates the concavity of the revenue function with respect to emissions; taxes are raised up to an optimal point beyond which raising them would discourage emissions, and thus revenues. Harmful behavior is not discouraged through the imposition of the taxes, since less healthy populations are taxed less. Emissions generated by industries that are exempted from taxation are offset by the industries that are taxed. When polluting products constitute a high share of the exported products, revenues from environmentally related taxes drop. These results help explaining the lack of environmental orientation of green taxes in the OECD countries.     

近代中国社会地方民主政治实践的历史考察——以民初湖南省地方议员选举为例

民主所具有的普世价值,历来为人们所重视并进而成为整个人类孜孜以求的价值目标。理想的民主政治,不但需要民主的"民"具有"众"的属性,而且需要民众具有丰富的民主政治经验和较高的民主政治素养。然而"民"的范围是随着民众的逐渐觉醒而不断增大的,民众的民主政治经验和素养也不是与生俱来的,需要民众在社会政治实践中不断地参与,持续地积累和提高。民主是理想与经验的统一。     

Constitutionalising Subsidiarity in Integrated Markets: The Case of Tobacco Regulation in the European Union

Abstract:  The article establishes three propositions. First, if a constitution establishes the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality as legal principles, questions of competencies are closely tied up with questions of regulatory policy. This means that the Treaty carves out a powerful role for the Court of Justice to assess the jurisdictional reasonableness of market intervention when reviewing whether the EU was legally competent to act. Second, general scepticism about courts being able to play such a demanding role in policing jurisdictional boundaries in federal systems are unjustified in the EU. The new procedure established in the Constitutional Treaty, which is likely to be included in any renegotiated constitutional settlement, involves national Parliaments and the Commission building a written record addressing the relevant policy issues on which the court can base its review. Additionally national courts serve as an external check on the Court of Justice, disciplining the Court of Justice to focus on taking competencies seriously or facing the prospect of national courts disapplying EU law on the grounds that it was enacted ultra vires. Third, even though there are some promising points of departure in its case law, the Court of Justice has not yet adopted a doctrinal framework that effectively operationalises the Treaty's commitment to subsidiarity and proportionality in the context of the common market.     

共享经济的法律规制问题——以互联网专车为例

随着互联网技术的发展和普及,依托互联网平台的共享经济得到长足发展。以互联网专车为代表的共享经济冲击着传统出租车行业,引发诸多规制难题。对于互联网+这一新兴业态,规制者不应简单地将之视为传统行业的互联网化,并依据全有全无的规制策略,以类比方式施加传统规则。为鼓励市场创新,规制者应践行《行政许可法》所规定的回应型规制策略,探讨规制的深层理据和价值,减少行政干预。     

The legal framework of private universities in Spain

The setting up of Universities in Spain is considered to be part of the fundamental right to establish private educational institutions. For a long time there have only existed Church Universities alongside Public Universities, and these have had their legal basis in Agreements between Spain and the Vatican. As of 1991 there has been an on-going process of setting up purely private Universities, to the point that there are now eleven besides the Church Universities. This article examines their legal framework from the point of view of their organisation, the system governing their teaching staff and their effective autonomy with regard to the Public Authorities. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Economic Effects and Spin-offs in a Small Space Economy: The Case of Canada

Canada, through a well-focused space program (telecommunications, earth observation, robotics), has succeeded in developing a space industry largely based on SMEs. The result has been significant economic benefits and technological spin-offs. In this article, the results of two programs, the ESA (European Space Agency) and the STEAR (Strategic Technologies in Automation and Robotics), are compared.The ESA program has generated significant indirect effects and spin-offs for Canadian exports. ESA's reputation and network have enabled SMEs to increase export sales of both space products and other commercial products derived from space technologies. The STEAR program has been highly successful in promoting a new generation of SMEs for space robotics, encouraging both spin-in and spin-offs of technologies. The analysis highlights the complementarity of mission- and diffusion-oriented programs in the technology transfer process.     

The Political Economy of Water Effluent Charges in France: Why are Rates Kept Low?

The French water effluent charge was set up thirty years ago. However, its design differs significantly with the Pigovian tax envisaged in economic textbooks. In particular, various studies have shown that the tax rate is too low to significantly affect the polluters' behaviour. The paper is a case study of this charge and aims to understand why rates are low. It consists of a careful political economy analysis of the institutional setting through which the water effluent charge is implemented using both historical evidence and simple modelling. The fact that the charge is combined with regulation plays a crucial role in explaining its rate.     

行政权力的政治监督——以美国行政法为视角

探讨美国联邦政府不同部门对行政权力的政治制衡,主要包括议会、行政首长以及行政部门的自我监督。美国经验表明,政治监督是防止行政滥用权力的重要保障。事实上,有效的政治监督是行政法治的必要条件。     

Large Firms and Catch-up in a Transitional Economy: The Case of Shougang Group in China*

This study examines the possibility of catch-up of the Chinese steel industry, in particular the Shougang Group, with the leading global steel giants. Shougang is one of the four steel companies that have been selected by the Chinese government to constitute the core of the future Chinese steel industry. The contract system at Shougang, which operated from 1979 to 1995, unleashed an extraordinary entrepreneurial energy in the formerly traditional state-run steel plant. In the post-contract system, Shougang's range of decision-making independence in respect to the purchase of inputs, its production structure and product marketing has increased substantially compared to the contract system, when the government still controlled many of the key decisions. As a result of institutional constraint, the low value-added steel products dominate Shougang's portfolio. To challenge the established giants in the steel industry, Shougang has to divest the loss-making non-core businesses, slowly downsize employment in the core business, raise capital on the stock market and generates the resources for continued upgrading of its steel technology and diversifying its product portfolio.