The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

Previous studies of the electoral consequences of corruption in Spanish local elections (Jiménez Revista de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociológicas, 6(2):43–76, 2007; Fernández-Vázquez and Rivero 2011, Consecuencias electorales de la corrupción, 2003–2007. Estudios de Progreso, Fundación Alternativas; Costas et al. European Journal of Political Economy: 28(4):469-484, 2012) have found that voters do not necessarily punish corrupt mayors. As has been pointed out in the comparative literature, the average loss of electoral support by corrupt incumbents is small and does not prevent their reelection most of the times (Jiménez and Caínzos 2006, How far and why do corruption scandals cost votes? In Garrard, J. and Newell, J. (eds.) Scandals in past and contemporary politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press). What remains unsolved, however, is the remarkable variability in this pattern. This article explores some of the micro-level variables that may mediate the effect of corruption scandal on the votes. We focus on three factors: ideological closeness to the incumbent party, political sophistication, and employment status. Our results provide only partial support for our hypotheses, suggesting that the effects of corruption are much more complex than what may seem at first sight.     

Marketization as a context for crime: The scandals in further education colleges in England and Wales

The paper outlines the marketization of further education in England and Wales in 1993 and the scandals which followed these market reforms. The case study supports theories that predict market societies provide a cultural and structural context for crime.     

Party unity in parliamentary democracies: A comparative analysis

The level and causes of party unity are under-researched topics in parliamentary democracies, particularly in comparative perspective. This article presents a non-formal model explaining party unity in legislative voting as the result of individual legislators' decisions reacting to the incentives and constraints created by their respective institutional environments. Hypotheses derived from the model are tested against empirical data on party unity in 11 western parliamentary democracies since 1945. On the system level, central party control over nominations and intra-parliamentary resources as well as the strength of parliamentary committees with regard to policy decisions are shown to affect party unity as expected by the model. On the level of individual parties, governing parties are less unified than opposition parties and larger parties show higher unity than smaller ones. Both results shed doubt on frequent claims in the literature.     

Environmental-agreement design and political ideology in democracies

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Does the political ideology of negotiating parties influence the design of international environmental agreements? This article...     

The self-selection of democracies into treaty design: insights from international environmental agreements

Generally, democratic regime type is positively associated with participating in international environmental agreements. In this context, this study focuses on the legal nature of an agreement, which is linked to audience costs primarily at the domestic level that occur in case of non-compliance and are felt especially by democracies. Eventually, more legalized (“hard-law”) treaties make compliance potentially more challenging and as democratic leaders may anticipate the corresponding audience costs, the likelihood that democracies select themselves into such treaties decreases. The empirical implication of our theory is that environmental agreements with a larger share of democratic members are less likely to be characterized by hard law. Results from quantitative analyses strongly support our argument, shed new light on the relationship between participation in international agreements and the form of government, and also have implications for the “words-deeds” debate in international environmental policy-making.     

Political but not partisan: Marketing parliaments and their members

Parliaments are difficult institutions to market and promote to their publics, partly because of their political nature and their institutional complexity. However, because good promotion requires a good ‘product’, thinking about parliaments in terms of their promotion can also focus attention helpfully on how they are actually structured and operated, thereby contributing to the improvement in their effectiveness, both internally and in relation to the wider polity. The Westminster and Scottish Parliaments can be usefully and conveniently compared and contrasted, both in terms of their parliamentary product, and in its promotion. such a comparative analysis highlights some of the defining characteristics of an effective parliament, such as an underlying vision and purpose, substantive institutional autonomy (especially in relation to the executive), and genuine public engagement. It also emphasises that both the operation and the promotion of a parliament are multi-layered tasks for parliamentarians and parliamentary staff.     

Plurinational democracies in Europe: the quest for a profane constitutionalism

How should we understand the claims on the right to decide on status made within plurinational member states of the European Union by actors and institutions seeking to protect the self-government of sub-state nations or peoples, or at least their right to consent to their ascribed status? Peaceful solutions to conflicts involving contested claims over territory, citizenship, and national sovereignty (authority) can be found when a conceptual or cultural transformation takes place towards a pluralist and bottom-up or federal concept of plurinational democracy, recovering the centrality of self-determination as the self-assertion of a political community. Constitutional law based on the popular sovereignty of a majority nation within plurinational democracies often neglects the question of the definition of the demos as the prefigured constituency, and the existence of national or territorial minorities. If constitutions are interpreted as precluding any claim to self-determination by a constituency, and any debate about that claim, then an undemocratic, sacralized model of militant constitutionalism may emerge. That model is not so much about protecting democracy as it is about imposing a national mould, a pre-defined demos. This article revisits the claims of sovereignty made by national territorial minorities in Spain, against the background of the constitutional doctrine of the Spanish judiciary that precludes these constituencies from engaging in political debates on the right to decide. The resulting sacralization of the Constitution leads to a new version of the model of ‘militant democracy’, a militant nationalist constitutionalism, which can be countered by an alternative, secular, even profane approach to the Constitution.     

行政法学二十年来的反思与前瞻

中国行政法学二十年的发展,经历了一个恢复、初步发展、快速发展、趋于成熟的发展过程。虽然取得的成就是巨大和令人瞩目的,对于促进我国行政法制的建设和发展发挥了重要的作用。但是,行政法学的理论研究还存在着一些缺陷和不足,有待于在未来行政法学的发展中予以解决,并面对一些新的行政法学研究领域有所突破和创新。     

政治文明的宪政维度

政治文明是个历史的范畴 ,不能无指向、无语境地空谈。如果以近现代意义上的宪法诞生为界限 ,那么 ,在此之前的“政治文明”即古典政治文明 ,与宪政似无太大联系 ;但宪法诞生后 ,政治文明就与宪政形成了不可分割的结构性关联。从历史理性的角度看 ,宪政是近现代政治文明的必然选择 ,是近现代政治文明的基础与标志 ;从功能分析的角度看 ,宪政比民主更契合近现代政治文明的核心内容 ,更适合充当近现代政治文明之“核心”这一角色 ;从价值理性的角度看 ,宪政的“真”、“善”、“美”内质使其鹤立于一般的政治要素群 ,宪政乃近现代政治文明之灵魂。     

SNPs in paternity investigation: The simple future

Based on the 52 SNP-plex developed by the SNPforID Consortium, we designed two 10-plex to study single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for human identification and to establish its usefulness in paternity casework. This 20 autosomal SNP set was studied in 56 paternity investigation cases from South Portuguese resident population, also analyzed with 17 Short Tandem Repeats (STRs). Results obtained with both methodologies were consistent with each other, except for one case where the alleged father could not be excluded by SNPs. No mutation was found in the SNP loci, whereas a mismatch in STRs was detected. The use of SNPs as a complement to the analysis of autosomal STRs in paternity casework can result in paternity index and paternity probability values equivalent or higher than those obtained with more STR loci, but with lower costs. This study shows that instead of using additional STR loci, the analysis of 20 autosomal SNPs, as a complement technique to standard methodologies, is an appealing alternative in paternity investigation cases.     

The enactment of national health insurance: a Boolean analysis of twenty advanced industrial countries

The scholarly literature on health care politics has generated a series of hypotheses to explain U.S. exceptionalism in health policy and to explain the adoption of national health insurance (NHI) more generally. Various cultural, institutional, and political conditions are held to make the establishment of some form of national health insurance policy more (or less) likely to occur. The literature is dominated by national and comparative case studies that illustrate the theoretical logic of these hypotheses but do not provide a framework for examining the hypotheses cross-nationally. This article is an initial attempt to address that void by using Boolean analysis to examine systematically several of the major propositions that emerge from the case study literature on the larger universe of twenty advanced industrial democracies. This comparative analysis offers considerable support for the veto points hypothesis while still finding each of the factors examined to be relevant in certain scenarios. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for future research and for advocates of national health insurance in the United States.     

政治冲突的司法解决与宪法裁判的政治化倾向——谈宪法诉讼的性质

社会在不断地变动和发展,反映并用以调整社会关系的宪法也必然要相应地作出调整.从实用主义的视角来看,当旧的宪法规范已经不能够解决当前所面临的政治冲突的时候,以立宪主义为诉求的我们就应该探索新的解决方法.     

法治型政治文化与当代中国的政治发展

同步于第三波民主化浪潮、受益于冷战后全球化发展的改革开放,不仅使中国成功地经受住了由西方发起并主导的全球化与民主化的双重冲击,而且还极大地促进了中国的政治稳定、经济发展和社会进步。作为中国政治发展的重要思想来源,当代中国政治文化既与传统政治文化一脉相承,又深受西方政治文化的影响,其在转型过程中保持了极大的主动性和渐进性。在全面推进依法治国的新时期,中国政治文化的转型将以契合法治中国建设为动力,在不断地向法治型政治文化转变和发展的过程中,有力促进中国的政治发展。这种主动性与渐进性的法治型政治文化的转型,既是维护中国改革开放成果的重要保证,也是推动中国政治发展现代化的重要基石。     

The Negligence Standard: Political Not Metaphysical

This contribution distinguishes two kinds of responsibility: the basic (or ‘metaphysical’) kind that we all inescapably have as functioning human beings; and the assignable (or ‘political’) kind that connects each of us with some particular tasks, and not with others. Having explored some differences between the two, and in particular the role of law's authority in connection with each, the discussion turns to the negligence standard, especially but not only as it figures in tort law. Recently, several philosophers have attempted to find a role for the negligence standard in the metaphysics of basic responsibility. This contribution resists that development and stands up for the traditional lawyer's view that the negligence standard belongs to the pliable politics of assignable responsibility. Basic responsibility, it is argued, is fundamentally strict.     

再殖民化与抵抗政治——国际知识产权保护的后现代性剧场

国际知识产权法的保护体系正以一种新形式的等级组织结构渗透到全世界，形成再殖民化的浪潮。与之相对应，发展中国家正寻找一种适当的知识产权政策，既在现有体制下遵循规则，又能保证自身国家利益，由此形成了抵抗政治。在这一系列冲突下，揭示了现有国际知识产权保护体系充满不公正的等级权利关系，并成为其不公正的结构性法律工具。以后现代性的视角看，国际知识产权保护制度需要进一步改革。     

Power in Paradise: The Political Implications of Santos's Utopia

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
—Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections