Recent developments in German corporate governance

This paper provides an overview of the German corporate governance system. We review the governance role of large shareholders, creditors, the product market and the supervisory board. We also discuss the importance of mergers and acquisitions, the market in block trades, and the lack of a hostile takeover market. Given that Germany is often referred to as a bank-based economy, we pay particular attention to the role of the universal banks (Hausbanken). We show that the German system is characterised by a market for partial corporate control, large shareholders and bank/creditor monitoring, a two-tier (management and supervisory) board with co-determination between shareholders and employees on the supervisory board, a disciplinary product–market, and corporate governance regulation largely based on EU directives but with deep roots in the German codes and legal doctrine. Another important feature of the German system is its corporate governance efficiency criterion which is focused on the maximisation of stakeholder value rather than shareholder value. However, the German corporate governance system has experienced many important changes over the last decade. First, the relationship between ownership or control concentration and profitability has changed over time. Second, the pay-for-performance relation is influenced by large shareholder control: in firms with controlling blockholders and when a universal bank is simultaneously an equity- and debtholder, the pay-for-performance relation is lower than in widely held firms or blockholder-controlled firms. Third, since 1995 several major regulatory initiatives (including voluntary codes) have increased transparency and accountability.     

Results of Y-SNP typing in three different populations

Y-SNPs are additional markers which came in the focus of forensic scientists since several years. The presented study uses 29 of these polymorphisms to detect the distribution of the haplogroups. Samples of three different European populations (one population is located in Far East, the Primorye Region of Russia) previously typed with Y-STRs were investigated. The results show the high potential of these markers to get information about the geographic origin of the paternal line.     

Exchange rate volatility and regional trade agreements in Southern Africa

Economic Change and Restructuring - Exchange rate volatility is often perceived to cause a reduction in the overall level of trade. In view of the proliferation of rapid regional trade agreements...     

The webs of belief around ‘evidence’ in legislatures: The case of select committees in the UK House of Commons

A wide‐ranging literature has explored the relationship between research, knowledge and policy. However, legislatures have often been overlooked in this research. While some studies have looked at ‘who has access’, the literature on how parliaments seek to engage with knowledge claims is particularly scarce. This article addresses this gap through a case study of UK select committees. By adopting an interpretive lens, the article explores how MPs and officials make sense of evidence in committee settings. It finds that legalistic definitions around ‘evidence’ shape wider beliefs in how to engage with knowledge claims and the practices of undertaking inquiries, and are underpinned by a distinctly political function of knowledge use in politics. Beliefs around evidence have significant repercussions and highlight tensions (i) around the authority of committee reports, (ii) between epistemic and democratic claims and (iii) with respect to who is included and who is excluded.     

The Politics–Bureaucracy Interface in Developing Countries

The political–bureaucratic interface has been the subject of much academic interest. However, research has tended to focus exclusively on wealthy institutionalized democracies, with little attention given to the political–administrative relationship in developing countries. However, recent evidence from reform processes in poorer nations increasingly highlights the importance of interactions between politicians and bureaucrats. This paper provides a systematic overview of the political–bureaucratic relationship in developing countries and in doing so makes two key contributions. First, it introduces a typology of political–bureaucratic relations based on four models—collaborative, collusive, intrusive, and integrated—discussing examples of each. Second, it analyses the main factors associated with different models of political–bureaucratic relations and considers how countries can move from one model of relations to another. The paper provides a much‐needed entry point for scholars and policymakers to better understanding the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats in developing countries. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multiwinner approval voting: an apportionment approach

Public Choice - To ameliorate ideological or partisan cleavages in councils and legislatures, we propose modifications of approval voting in order to elect multiple winners, who may be either...     

Parliamentary immunity in imperial Russia 1906–1917

SUMMARY

In this article Valeria Ferrari analyses the conflict between the executive and the parliamentary majority during the nine-month period referred to as the nonimestre costituzionale (1820–21), in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in terms of the future institutional organization of the periphery. Indeed, the deputies who were militant members of the Carbonari movement intended to subject this issue to radical revision because of their refusal of the centralist model, introduced into the Kingdom by the French sovereigns Joseph Bonaparte and Joachim Murat, and maintained by the restored Bourbon dynasty. This explains the provincial Carbonari members' preference for the Spanish Constitution of 1812 which, in contrast with the centralized model of Napoleonic origin, called for a significant margin of autonomy for local administrations. Based on this Constitution, a decree of July 1820 abolished the Provincial and District Councils and established the Deputations—collegial bodies elected directly by citizens without property-related limits—which had broad and important functions. An entirely different configuration emerged unequivocally quite rapidly between the parliamentary majority and the executive as regards the actual role to be attributed to the provincial Deputations. Indeed, while these local institutions were to represent for most of the deputies adhering to the Carbonari movement the first important step towards a complete form of administrative decentralization, from the point of view of the majority of the government, these new peripheral institutions would instead have to coexist with the administrative system already in place.