EU agencies' involvement in transboundary crisis response: Supporting efforts or leading coordination?

EU agencies have emerged as entities offering technical coordination to member states and support to the European Commission in different policy areas. Their expertise may play a role in responding to unexpected crises. Against this backdrop, we examine under which circumstances EU agencies, through their specialized expertise, are involved in transboundary crisis responses, and when they acquire a leading position in coordinating those responses. To do so, we study four agencies which faced crises: the EBA and the 2012 banking crisis; the ECDC and the 2014 Ebola outbreak; EFSA and the 2011 E. coli outbreak; and Frontex and the 2015 refugee crisis. Our findings discuss to what extent agencies' involvement in transboundary crises is related to functional (sector characteristics) and institutional (delegation of authority) variables. We also identify that under certain political conditions EU agencies' coordination capacity is activated, allowing them to emerge as leading institutions in transboundary crisis resolution.     

A turning point in Argentine politics: demands for change and territorial cleavages in the 2015 presidential election

The 2015 national, subnational, executive and legislative elections marked a turning point for Argentina's democratic history. For the first time, a non-Peronist centre-right coalition won the presidency. These elections also inaugurated the first non-Peronist governor of the Province of Buenos Aires in almost 30 years. This article tries to make sense of these elections, which represent a significant shift in the country's political direction. We argue that the incumbent left-party (Peronist Frente para la Victoria) faced a combination of electoral fatigue and mounting economic challenges. Sluggish economic growth and unabated inflation created an anti-incumbent demand for change, alienated the middle class and deepened territorial cleavages between the agricultural central region and the peripheral provinces. Against this backdrop, the combination of a unified opposition and a fragmented Peronism led to Mauricio Macri's victory. We also explore the challenges that the newly elected president faces, including minority in Congress and among governors.     

Congressional Institutionalization: A Cross‐National Comparison

This article explains variations in levels of institutionalization across legislatures of the world. It construes institutionalization as an equilibrium outcome that emerges from beliefs and investments made by political actors. Drawing insights from work on US congressional institutionalization and congressional organization, and on comparative party system institutionalization, it provides an index to measure congressional institutionalization. Using this index, it explores the constitutional factors that affect levels of congressional institutionalization. The empirical results raise a warning with respect to building comparative implications from an excessive focus on one particular case.     

Environmental management by law in China: The Guangzhou experience∗

Taking enviornmental management in Guangzhou as an example, this article explores the theory and practice of Communist China's idea of “environmental management by law.” Based on the Guangzhou experience, it argues that environmental management by law in China is mainly an administrative system of environmental management which takes law strictly as a tool for efficient and effective environmental protection. This system is operated on the principle of ‘rule by law’, and is the antithesis of the Maoist practice of “rule by person.” Contrary to its Western counterpart, China's environmental management system is built on a state‐centered conception of administrative law instead of a ‘right‐centered’ one which is the core of the ‘rule of law’ tradition.     

Adoption of Performance Measurement: Evidence of Mexican Municipalities

In this article we define and estimate empirical models to study the determinants of adoption of performance indicators by Mexican municipalities. Building upon previous studies, we prove whether the adoption decision depends on the locality size, variables related to resources, and the political/cultural differences. We implement the empirical models using the data from 300 municipalities for the year 2000. Unlike related literature that relies on surveys applied to local officials, our data from independent and dependent variables were obtained from different sources in order to avoid common-source bias. The estimated logit and probit models confirm the hypotheses.     

From support to pressure: The dynamics of social and governmental influences on environmental law enforcement in Guangzhou City,China

This paper examines how changes in governmental and social influences affect environmental enforcement in Guangzhou city, China, between 2000 and 2006. The paper finds that a form of “decentered regulation” has developed. Regulatory enforcement is no longer the sole affair of the government and the regulatory bureaucracy, but has been increasingly influenced by societal forces. The transformation over time shows the promises and limits of decentered regulation in Guangzhou's dynamic authoritarian setting. Analyzing a set of longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews, the paper finds that by 2006, the rise of civil society and its increased support for protecting the environment had a double‐edged impact on the enforcement of environmental regulations. The paper demonstrates that on the one hand, by 2006, when government support for enforcement was low, societal forces developed an ability to counterbalance such lack of governmental support and positively influence enforcement. However, it also shows that when government support was high, a concurrent rise in societal support created a negative effect on enforcement. Thus too much societal support can become an enforcement burden.