Let's Agree to Agree: Regional Interest Representation in the Negotiations for the 2007–13 and 2014–20 Structural Funds in Germany

The negotiating powers of regional authorities in the European Union (EU) have become more evident, especially with decentralization and regionalization happening across Europe. This empirical case study of regional interest representation offers a comparative analysis of the negotiations for the 2007–13 and 2014–20 EU Structural Funds. Based on qualitative interviews with German subnational officials, this paper explores how the German federal states (Länder) represented their interests at the federal and supranational level. It will be shown that the modes of interest representation changed which can largely be attributed to social learning. This article contributes to existing literature by illustrating the move towards co-operative interest representation with intra-state subnational mobilization.     

Orchestrating peace in South Sudan: exploring the effectiveness of the European Union’s mediation support

ABSTRACT

Previous research has primarily focused on the EU’s high-profile involvement as direct mediator in peace negotiations. Conversely, less attention has been devoted to the EU’s support to third parties’ mediation efforts, which is a significant component of its mediation activities. Addressing this research gap, this article develops a conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of EU mediation support, identifying key mediation support techniques and the conditions for their success. In terms of mediation support techniques, the EU may rely on “endorsement”, “coordination”, “assistance”, and “lending leverage” to empower and steer third party mediators in line with its mediation objectives and values. We illustrate the utility of the conceptual framework for the EU’s support to IGAD in mediating in South Sudan’s civil war. We find that the EU has contributed significantly to IGAD’s empowerment in terms of endorsement, coordination, assistance, and lending leverage. Simultaneously, our analysis also points to important challenges in the EU-IGAD relationship, which relate to challenges concerning strategic engagement with IGAD’s internal politics that are marked by diverging interests and ties of its member states to the conflict parties.     

Effects of funding mechanisms on participation in multilateral environmental agreements

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The “rational design approach” to studying international agreements holds that policy-makers evaluate costs and...     

Postmodern Professions? The Fragmentation of Legal Education and the Legal Profession

This article considers the institutional dimensions of professionalism and the legal profession's struggle with the challenges of post-modernity. An aspect of this is the Law Society's Training Framework Review (TFR) which promises changes to solicitors' education from 'cradle to grave'. The first part of the article analyses the structure and drivers of the TFR, their origins, and how they will be articulated. Secondly, the TFR is considered in the context of the political economy of higher education and its role in the new capitalism. Finally, we examine the potential effects of the TFR for the legal profession in the context of increasing practice segmentation and the threat of deprofessionalization, and also for the Law Society itself, whether it can retain a key role in the life course of the legal profession.     

News media influences on public views of sentencing

Opinion polls in Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and elsewhere suggest that most members of the public would like their criminal courts to be harsher. Does media coverage of criminal sentencing contribute to a preference for harsher sentencing? Most people derive their information about sentencing from the news media and content analyses of news stories in Canada and the United States demonstrate that crimes of violence and sentences of imprisonment are overrepresented. Moreover, the news media provide little systematic information about the sentencing process or its underlying principles. This article reports the results of three studies examining the effects of media coverage on public opinion about sentencing. Subjects who read actual newspaper stories about sentencing that appeared in Canadian newspapers rated most reported sentences as too lenient. However, the specific account they read influenced their leniency judgments. Furthermore, in one experiment, participants assigned to read a newspaper account of a sentencing decision supported harsher sentences than participants who read a summary of actual court documents from the sentencing hearing.     

Temporal Limits on the Legislative Mandate: Entrenchment and Retroactivity

According to the general wisdom, legislatures lack both the power to "entrench" their enactments against alteration by their successors and the power to "retroactively" undo the efforts of their predecessors. The author argues that, rather than being in conflict, these principles share a common theme. Legislatures operate as agents of the people under constitutionally defined mandates that are limited in time as well as scope. Actions that transcend—either forward or backward in time—the temporal delegation of authority conferred by periodic elections do not bind the electorate. In the first half of the article the author suggests that an understanding of the rationale behind the entrenchment prohibition can help shed light on a diverse group of issues including congressional power to prescribe internal rules of operation, constitutional amendment procedures, and legislative impairment of contracts. In the second half of the article the author takes issue with the traditional objection to retroactivity grounded on vested rights and unfulfilled expectations. In its place he proposes a theory of retroactivity embodied in republican principles concerning the temporal relationship between the people and their legislative agents.