The political economy of local government financialization and the role of policy diffusion

By analyzing why English local governments have made extensive use of long-term market loans with embedded derivatives, this paper seeks to contribute to the growing literature on local government financialization. Using an original, large-N panel dataset for the period from 1998 to 2014, we show that the configuration of the local political economy is an important driver of financialization processes: a Labour Party majority as well as fiscal and economic stress make it more likely that councils adopt risky financial instruments. As the use of financial innovations has also diffused geographically, policy diffusion impacts local governments as well. Highlighting the conditional effect of finance sector power, which only increases the use of financial innovations in very large councils, as well as the temporal dimension of fiscal and economic stress, we create ample avenues for further research.     

Access and allocation in global biodiversity governance: a review

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Access and allocation is one of the five analytical themes of the science plan of the Earth System Governance (ESG) project....     

Direkte Demokratie in Europa: Erträge,Probleme und Perspektiven der vergleichenden Forschung

In recent years, the number of publications investigating national referenda in Europe on both a theoretical and a comparative basis has considerably grown. The review essay takes stock of this literature, focusing on three questions: What are the main reasons for introducing and using direct-democratic institutions? How can the results of referenda and initiatives be explained? What effects do they have on parliamentary democracy? The critical review sheds light on important achievements as well as persistent gaps and problems of the existing scholarship.     

The deployment of conditional probability distributions for death time estimation

The temperature based algorithm known as the Nomogram Method for the determination of a 95.45% death-time interval can be combined with non-temperature based (NTB) findings in the so called Compound Method (CM). The impact of such integration on the probability yielded by the resulting interval has however neither been described nor exploited. In fact the interval after integration of NTB findings rarely yields 95.45% probability. We present a method, based on the conditional probability distribution that can be calculated if the NTB findings are taken into account, which ensures the probability inside the interval to be 95.45%. The method was successfully applied to a set of 53 cases published by Henssge et al. and led to a reduction of the interval width up to more than 15% compared to the CM interval, whereas in other cases the interval width increased due to probability content of the CM intervals below 95.45%. A spreadsheet file in which the method proposed in this paper is implemented can be obtained upon email request from the authors.     

Contingent fees meet the British rule: an exploratory study

Compensation schemes in which lawyer’s fees are contingent on winning the suit are becoming increasingly popular throughout Europe. At the same time, the British rule of legal cost allocation is applicable in many European countries. As a result, it is of policy relevance how their coexistence may be harmonized. This paper uses the litigation-contest framework to analyze the consequences of three different cost-allocation regimes if a plaintiff’s attorney is compensated on a contingent fee basis. We compare the equilibrium contest effort, justice, and payoffs for affected parties in the different regimes and find arguments in favor of not reimbursing contingent fees.     

Managing elopement on the mobile phone: continuity and change in Woɗaaɓe te’egal marriage

Based on extended fieldwork among Ful?e Wo?aa?e in Niger and by analysing an ethnographic case, this paper discusses aspects of continuity and change in the practice of a culture-specific form of elopement marriage, called te’egal, in which a married woman leaves her husband to marry a man from another clan. The discussion focuses on two major aspects: (1) the extensive use of mobile phone communication in arranging and logistically managing elopement, and (2) the increasing police involvement in the settlement of te’egal cases. Mobile phone use in the context of elopement is interpreted as a modern means of achieving cultural ends. It acts as a catalyst, making elopement more dynamic. In the wider context of globalization and urbanity, however, this leads not simply to continuity but also to contradictions, as the moral and legal institutions of the state increasingly interfere with the normative framework of customary law.