Banking Union's accountability system in practice: A health check-up to Europe's financial heart

The Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) form the Banking Union, which comprises EU authorities (ECB and SRB) and national authorities (NCAs and NRAs) with vast powers. Although crucial for its legitimacy, the Banking Union’s accountability is flawed, and not for the (stereo)typical reasons: accountability is a visible concept in SSM and SRM regulations, and political, administrative and judicial bodies are knowledgeable, engaged and thorough. Rather, this article posits that the SSM and SRM work very well because the legislature focused on practical details such as information flows, planning and continuity and coordination, while there has been no comparable effort to ensure the functioning of accountability tools. The result is a “system” characterised by limited access to crucial information, lack of continuity, and uncoordinated functioning. Changing this should not be hard but requires replacing blanket criticism and stereotypical views with greater attention to detail.     

Economic crisis and the variety of populist response: evidence from Greece,Portugal and Spain

Abstract

Greece, Portugal and Spain are among the countries worst hit by the 2008 Great Recession, followed by significant electoral and political turmoil. However, one of the dimensions in which they differ is the presence and varieties of populism in parties’ political proposals. Drawing on holistic coding of party manifestos, we assess the varying presence of populist rhetoric in mainstream and challenger parties before and after the 2008 economic downturn. Our empirical findings show that populism is much higher in Greece compared to Spain and Portugal. We do not find a significant impact of the crisis as the degree of populism remains rather stable in Greece and Portugal, while it increases in Spain, mainly due to the rise of new populist forces. The study confirms that populist rhetoric is a strategy adopted mainly by challenger and ideologically radical parties. In addition, inclusionary populism is the predominant flavour of populist parties in new Southern Europe, although exclusionary populism is present to a lesser extent in the Greek case. We contend that the interaction between the national context – namely the ideological legacy of parties and the main dimensions of competition – and the strategic options of party leadership is crucial for explaining cross-country variation in the intensity of populism and the specific issues that characterise populist discourse.     

Great Expectations: The Implementation of the Rome Statute in Italy

This article first explores whether Italy is under an obligationto implement the Rome Statute that it ratified in 1999. It thenidentifies the general sets of inconsistencies between Italianlegislation and the Rome Statute and analyses whether and towhat extent the former needs to be amended or integrated inorder to implement the substantive provisions of the latter,in particular in relation to the definition of crimes, generalprinciples of criminal responsibility, defences and other barsto prosecution. Finally, the exercise of jurisdiction by Italiancourts over crimes in the Rome Statute is discussed in the lightof the principle of complementarity on which the jurisdictionof the International Criminal Court is based.         Mere dreams,mere dreams!         W.B. Yeats,Meditations in Time of Civil War, I (1928)     

A case of fatal intoxication from metformin

A case of fatal intoxication from metformin is presented. The decedent was an obese 58-year-old-woman with type II diabetes, in whom severe lactic acidosis secondary to metformin accumulation was precipitated by acute renal failure. She had been on metformin 500 mg twice a day. Postmortem blood was deproteinated with acetonitrile, washed with dichloromethane, and the resulting supernatant injected into high-performance liquid chromatography system. Separation was performed on a analytical 125 x 4 mm i.d. RP-8 column. The wavelength was set at 235 nm. The mobile phase was acetonitrile (40%), sodium lauryl sulfate, and sodium dihydrogen phosphate adjusted to pH 5.1 (60%) at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The concentration of metformin in postmortem blood was 77.3 microg/mL. The qualitative result was also confirmed by LC/APCI/MS/MS analysis.     

A new method of reproduction of fingerprints from corpses in a bad state of preservation using latex

In view of the problems arising while fingerprinting corpses in a bad state of preservation, especially in case of mummification and carbonization, the authors propose an innovative technique which uses latex film. To better illustrate the potential of the method, two cases where the latex technique was applied successfully are reported: the first one is a mummified body discovered in a shack on the outskirts of Milan and the second one is the case of a burnt corpse found in a car boot. Such a technique is versatile, easy to apply, and allows the operator to work quickly on cadavers without amputating parts, except in rare cases (i.e., burnt bodies with muscle retraction). By the latex technique, a perfect and enduring negative copy of the fingerprint is obtained, ready to be inked and photographed. The numerous copies produced this way can be inked several times allowing for the repeatability of the procedure and this is crucial in cases of problematic legal identification of corpses. In both the cases illustrated, the fingerprints obtained by the latex technique were useful for identification. The quality was good enough for the automatic fingerprint identification system research system to be applied.     

Delay of clinical manifestation and medical malpractice in a serious vascular complication of proximal locked tibial nailing

We are reporting on a case of complex lesion of the popliteal neurovascular bundle in a young woman, resulting from an operation for reduction and synthesis of a closed spiroid fracture of the mid-distal third of the left tibia by means of a Grosse-Kempf nail, with significant delay of clinical manifestation. Determining whether this is an "unavoidable complication" or "medical malpractice" is the target of the forensic investigation. In this case, the investigation leads to the conclusion that medical malpractice was the only explanation of the damage.     

Evidence of Haldol (haloperidol) long-term intoxication

A case of intoxication by haloperidol is reported. Haloperidol is a butyrophenone derivative commonly used in many hospital units as an antipsychotic agent. Adverse reactions due to haloperidol intoxication include drowsiness, blurred vision, extrapyramidal effects, tardive dyskinesia, tachycardia, hypotension and muscular rigidity. In August 2008, a 49 year-old female nurse started feeling various symptoms such as muscular rigidity, drowsiness and buccal dyskinesia. After 3 months, she was hospitalized for the worsening of these symptoms. Four months later, she showed once more the same symptoms. Two open water bottles from which the nurse used to drink in the hospital were confiscated and analyzed. Moreover, the nurse was asked to give a sample of her hair for executing the inherent toxicological analyses. Haloperidol was found in both bottles 1 and 2 at a concentration of 31.5 μg/mL and 43.6 μg/mL, respectively. Based on segmental hair analysis, it was deduced that the nurse consumed haloperidol in the approximate period from August 2008 to March 2009. The higher levels of haloperidol in hair were found in accordance with the periods of most severe appearance of symptoms, requiring the hospitalization of the nurse. The analysis of preservatives and excipients led us to conclude that the pharmaceutical drug was probably added to the water bottles as "Haldol 2mg/mL oral solution".     

Looking to the future: Prospective economic voting in 2008 Presidential Elections

Despite the economic turmoil of the time, a typical study of vote choice in the 2008 US Presidential Election would (falsely) find little evidence that voters’ opinions about the future state of the economy affected their vote choice. We argue that this misleading conclusion results from serious measurement error in the standard prospective economic evaluations survey question. Relying instead on a revised question, included for the first time in the 2008 American National Election Study, we find that most respondents condition their prospective economic evaluations on potential election outcomes, and that these evaluations are an important determinant of vote choice. A replication in a very different political context – the 2008 Ghanaian election – yields similar results.     

Machiavelli and the Problem of Dictatorship

Machiavelli is the first modern political thinker who pays great attention to the magistracy of dictatorship. “Dictatorial authority,” as he puts it, is fundamental to the survival and prosperity of republics: It is the magistracy, the “ordinary mode,” to which they turn to deal with “extraordinary accidents,” political and military emergencies. Machiavelli's gaze is cast both on the Ancient and the Modern world: Although he concentrates on the Roman magistracy, he also pays attention to magistracies of the modern world that were in some way similar, such as the Council of the Ten in the Republic of Venice. In my paper, I will attempt to reconstruct the essential points of Machiavelli's discussion on dictatorship; in the concluding remarks, I will briefly tackle the more general question of the relationship between politics and law in his work as a whole.