Shared Waters—shared Responsibility. Application of the Principles of Fairness for Burden Sharing in the Mediterranean

The paper addresses the issue of burden sharing within the context of the Barcelona Convention for the protection of the Mediterranean. The initial premise is that the perceived fairness of burden sharing rules is an important factor in the success of multilateral environmental agreements. We review briefly the basic ideas behind the fairness and equity debate in global environmental affairs before we apply a number of widely accepted equity rules in the case of Mediterranean marine protection. We derive arithmetic examples to illustrate the application of the rules and compare them in terms of their political attractiveness, cost-effectiveness and practical feasibility. It is shown that the simple rule of egalitarian justice scores high on all aspects.     

Korrespondenz

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Measuring Democratic Consolidation

The concept of democratic consolidation has become a pivotal concept in comparative politics. In its most widespread acceptation, a “consolidated” democracy is one that is unlikely to break down. For all its apparent thinness and simplicity, this conceptualization poses considerable problems of operationalization and measurement. As the article argues, cholars have been relying on three basic strategies to assess the survival prospects of democratic regimes. They have been studying either behavioral, attitudinal, or structural foudnations of democratic consolidation. This article briefly examines those approaches that rely on different kinds of empirical evidence as well as on different causal assumptions. On the basis of a quick revision of recent Latin American experiences, it concludes that in common judgments about democratic consolidation, behavioral evidence seems to trump both attitudinal and structural data. Andreas Schedler is professor of political science at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Mexico City. He also chairs the Research Committee on Concepts and Methods (C&M) of the International Political Science Association. His current research focuses on democratization and electoral governance in Mexico in comparative perspective. I am indebted to the Austrian Academy of Sciences for supporting work on this article through the Austrian Program for Advanced Research and Technology (APART). Also, I am most grateful to Ruth Berins Collier, Peter Burnell, David, Collier, Michael Coppedge, Larry Diamond, Graciela Ducatenzeiler, Francis Hagopian, Robert R. Kaufman, James Mahoney, Scott Mainwaring, Sebastián Mazzuca, Gerardo L. Munck, Martin Schürz, Richard Snyder, Kurt Weyland, and the anonymous reviewers ofSCID for their valuable comments. Many thanks, too, to Harold Waldrauch for sharing the New Democracies Barometer data. Naturally, though, all responsibility is mine.     

Wrongful birth,wrongful conception

Nach der dem Behandlungsvertrag zugrundeliegenden Wertung ist sowohl bei wrongful birth als auch bei wrongful conception eine Verrechnung ideeller Vorteile der Elternschaft mit dem Unterhaltsschaden ausgeschlossen. Aufgrund des von § 97 StGB vorgegebenen Schutzzwecks des Vertrags ist bei wrongful birth lediglich der behinderungsbedingte Mehraufwand und nicht auch der Basisunterhalt zu ersetzen. In den F?llen von wrongful conception ist hingegen für den gesamten Unterhaltsschaden zu haften.     

30-jährige Verjährungsfrist,um Nichtigkeit infolge Geschäftsunfähigkeit geltend zu machen

Wird die Nichtigkeit eines Vertrags wegen Handlungsunf?higkeit geltend gemacht, gilt die allgemeine Verj?hrungsfrist von drei?ig Jahren. Die analoge Anwendung der dreij?hrigen Frist nach § 1487 ABGB (des Falls der Anfechtung wegen Testierunf?higkeit) würde eine planwidrige Gesetzeslücke voraussetzen.