Regionalism in the Global South: Mercosur and ECOWAS in trade and democracy protection

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyse the performance of regionalism in the Global South through a comparative analysis of Mercosur and Ecowas with regard to the trade and democracy protection agendas, by contrasting their institutional design and regional leadership concerning the two issues. Firstly, it analyses the evolution of intra-regional trade as well as the trade agenda of each bloc concerning international negotiations with other states or economic blocs. Secondly, it discusses the relevance of democratic stability in the two regional organisations and how each organisation has performed in cases of democratic rupture in member states. When comparing the dynamics of the two organisations, we argue that differences in terms of institutional design and regional leadership have meant that Ecowas has been less ambitious than Mercosur in its trade agenda, but more decisive vis-à-vis the region’s democratic stability. Thus, this article aims to contribute to the comparative regionalism literature, setting out an analytical comparative framework for assessing the performance of regional organisations, which remains a difficult task for this particular research agenda.     

Does social capital increase political accountability? An?empirical test for Flemish municipalities

Social capital has been shown to positively influence government performance. Boix and Posner (Br. J. Polit. Sci. 28:686–693, 1998) suggest a possible explanation: social capital makes citizens monitor the government more closely. Such monitoring will be more explicit to the extent that instrumental voting motivations outweigh expressive considerations. We identify social capital as a source that facilitates instrumental voting and thus political accountability. We present an empirical test of the Boix and Posner hypothesis and find a positive link between perceived quality of government and election results of the incumbent parties. Crucially, we find this link to be stronger in municipalities high in social capital.     

How Reliable are Parenchymal Tissues for the Evaluation of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning? A Pilot Study

Dealing with burnt bodies, the forensic pathologist must first of all answer the question whether the victim was alive at the moment of the fire. This study aims at clarifying whether some human solid tissues may be reliably used for the forensic diagnosis of Co poisoning on burnt bodies providing no collectable blood during the autopsy. From 34 selected cases, both cardiac blood and parenchymal samples were collected to perform CO‐oxymeter, spectrophotometry, and gas chromatography tests: blood CO estimations (blood COHb% and blood[CO]) and parenchymal[CO] values have been compared with special focus on R values. The solid tissues having the best correlations with blood CO amount turned out to be the lung (R 0.84), the liver (R 0.83), the kidney (R 0.79), and the spleen (R 0.92).     

Islamic faith-based development organizations in former Soviet Muslim environments: the Mountain Societies Development Support Programme in the Rasht valley,Tajikistan

This article aims to examine the modus operandi of the Aga Khan Foundation and its Mountain Societies Development Support Programme (MSDSP) in Tajikistan's Rasht valley. As one of the few non-governmental development programmes from the wider Islamic world in an area where the Sunni beneficiary base is of a different Islamic tradition than the Ismaili Shi'ite community the Foundation is connected with, the MSDSP gained importance and legitimacy as a rehabilitator and provider of public services and social infrastructure that were once provided by the state. The article pays particular attention to the ways of transcending the Sunni–Ismaili divide between aid providers and beneficiaries, as well as to more recent social changes which increasingly challenge the MSDSP's use of traditional local institutions for programme implementation.     

The Effects of Regional Sizing on Growth

In this paper, a micro-founded model dealing with the effects of regional sizing on economic growth is developed. Departing from bigger sizes, reduction involves more efficient public choices because of proximity to individual preferences and needs, but also creates the risk of underestimation of the real profitability of public expenditure by local governments due to cross border spillovers and “predator” behaviors. Hence the optimal size depends on the relative strength of both effects. Moreover, we show that different institutional arrangements between fiscal tiers involve different results for each possible size. Using data from the Spanish regions during the period 1984–1996, the relationship between productive spending and jurisdiction size is then analyzed.     

Tinker, Tailor, Policy-maker ... ... ... The Wider Context of Prosecution Service Work

This article explores the wider ambit of prosecutorial work outside classic criminal proceedings in 11 European criminal justice systems. It provides an overview of the roles a prosecutor is expected to play, e.g. whether a contribution to national or local crime prevention policy or to act in victim’s interest is expected. It further provides detail as to the setting within which prosecutors work, describing in how far they are politically accountable and/or subject to orders in their daily work.     

Negotiated Case-ending Settlements: Ways of Speeding up the (Court) Process

The subject of this article is a special type of fast-tracked case-ending decisions called “negotiated case-ending settlements”. Those proceedings are based on a kind of agreement between the parties, end with a real conviction of the offender and their legal consequence is a true but mitigated punishment. They can be found in six of 11 countries studied, namely, in England & Wales, Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland and Spain. The English guilty plea procedures, the French appearance before a court after prior admission of guilt and the Polish prosecutor’s application for a conviction to be rendered without a trial as well as the voluntary submission to penalty are examined more closely here. The comparative study focuses on the stage, where the negotiation is made, the conditions for the use of these settlements and the PPS’s role therein.