Health insurance in a democracy: Why is it public and why are premiums income related?

Many democracies have public health insurance systems which combine redistribution from the rich to the poor and from the healthy to the sick. This paper shows that such systems can be in the interest of the poor and the rich from a constitutional perspective. Necessary conditions are that insurance markets are incomplete and that income inequality is neither too low nor too high. Then even the rich can prefer a public health insurance system financed by income-dependent contributions compared to a system financed by a flat fee or a private health insurance system.     

Occasional Papers, hrsg. von Peter J. Opitz und Dietmar Herz in Verbindung mit dem Eric-Voegelin-Archiv an der Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München und dem Eric-Voegelin-Archiv e.V. München

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

EUROSUR: saving lives or building borders?

This article analyses the origins and development of the European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR) in order to better understand its functioning in view of its stated objectives. Particular attention will be devoted to the European Commission’s recurring claim that one of EUROSUR’s main goals is to save lives at sea. This contribution questions that assertion. It rather considers EUROSUR as representative of the steady, technocratic development of a European system for border management. The reliance on the exchange of information, the reinforcement of FRONTEX, the European Union’s agency for the coordination of operational cooperation between national border guards and the emphasis on cooperation with third countries support this claim.     

Pre-parliamentary party career and political representation

Abstract

Members of parliament are accountable to both their district and party. Consequently, they have to balance their responsiveness to these competing principals when their preferences diverge. Existing research on this representational dilemma focuses mostly on the role of political institutions, whereas this article offers a new individual-level explanation: pre-parliamentary party careers. Using sequence analysis, three ideal-typical pre-parliamentary career paths are identified: the party local, the party functionary, and the party civilian. The share of party locals increases over time at the expense of party civilians in the Danish parliament, and these party locals are more likely to diverge from the party’s position when it is unpopular among their constituents. These findings corroborate existing evidence of political professionalisation in parliamentary democracies, but they also suggest that professionalisation may be associated with a localisation of politics leading to more rather than less constituency representation.     

Bottom-up market-facilitation and top-down market-steering: comparing and conceptualizing green finance approaches in the EU and China

Asia Europe Journal - To address environmental problems, efforts to green financial systems are proliferating across the globe. However, green finance policy approaches differ substantially and in...