Change and Continuity in the European Union's Political Conditionality: Aims,Approach, and Priorities

The EU's political conditionality has acquired increasing importance with successive enlargements; this also goes for the period since 2004 compared with that before. The focus here is on change and continuity in conditionality policy with respect to its aims, approach, and priorities. The article presents and applies a three-dimensional analysis concerning the challenge to, the process of, and the management of that policy. Given the need for assessing it in a broad and dynamic context, the discussion revolves around three relationships: between conditionality and post-communist democratization; between conditionality and the enlargement process; and between conditionality and the EU itself in terms of institutional responsibility for enlargement and conditionality matters. This explains how the policy since 2004 has been driven by four factors: more difficult democratization cases from the West Balkans; lessons from the earlier 2004 enlargement involving East–Central Europe; the policy outlook of Commissioner Olli Rehn; and ‘enlargement fatigue’ and stronger pressures from EU actors other than the Commission. As a result, political conditionality has become broader in its scope, much tighter in its procedures, and less easy to control within a less enlargement-friendly environment in the EU and against less certainty about enlargement prospects.     

Case Survey

This section of the Journal deals with recent case law. The cases are listed in alphabetical order by case name.     

Nonhuman remains and relics encountered by the medical examiner: Fulton County, Georgia, 2003-2004

BACKGROUND: Medical examiner and coroner offices occasionally respond to "death scenes" which, after investigation, are found to involve nonhuman remains or other relics not requiring further investigation or certification of death. This report describes such cases encountered by the Fulton County medical examiner during 2003 and 2004. METHODS: The electronic database used by the office contains check boxes to indicate whether a reported case involved nonhuman remains or other relics, in which case the name of the "deceased" is listed as "nonhuman remains" by selecting those words from a pull-down menu. Subject cases were identified during the 2-year period by searching the database for any case in which one of the boxes was checked or in which the name of the deceased was listed as nonhuman. RESULTS: Four thousand five hundred fifty-four deaths were investigated during the 2-year period, and 23 cases (0.5%) involved nonhuman remains or relics. Thus, the observed rate was about 5 cases per 1000 death investigations. Nineteen cases involved nonhuman bones. One case involved 2 human fetuses that had been teaching specimens. The other 3 cases involved a nonhuman fetus, a large decomposing dog that had been wrapped and dumped in residential area, and a sheep heart found in a bag which was a medical teaching specimen. CONCLUSIONS: Nonhuman remains and other relics are uncommonly seen in death investigation work and usually involve nonhuman bones, although a small variety of other atypical cases present themselves occasionally. Knowledge of these types of encounters is helpful so that the "unexpected" may become more "expected" and office policy and procedures tailored accordingly to facilitate case management.     

Effects of face-to-face restorative justice on victims of crime in four randomized,controlled trials

The growing use of restorative justice provides a major opportunity for experimental criminology and evidence-based policy. Face-to-face meetings led by police officers between crime victims and their offenders are predicted to reduce the harm to victims caused by the crime. This prediction is derived not only from the social movement for restorative justice, but also from the microsociology of interaction rituals (Collins, 2004). Four randomized, controlled trials of this hypothesis in London and Canberra, with point estimates disaggregated by gender, tested the prediction with measures of both successful interaction ritual (apologies received and their perceived sincerity) and the hypothesized benefits of the ritual (on forgiveness of, and reduced desire for violent revenge against, offenders, and victim self-blame for the crime). The meta-analyses of the eight point estimates suggest success (as victims define it) of restorative justice as an interaction ritual, and as a policy for reducing harm to victims.