Reform: economic policy administration

Beginning in 1992, Italy has undergone a dramatic process of fiscal consolidation. Within that framework, the policy strategy has covered a broad range of objectives and addressed the main structural imbalances of the Italian economy. This paper describes how the new policy course has been reshaping the role of the State within the Italian economy, with a view of reducing the State's weight and direct involvement in the management of businesses. This has also implied a profound transformation at the decisional and administrative levels, as testified by the ongoing merge of two separate administrations, the former Ministry of the Treasury and Ministry of the Budget, into a single entity.     

Ist das neue Umwelt-Rechtsbehelfsgesetz europarechtskonform?

Zusammenfassung Das Umwelt-Rechtsbehelfsgesetz ist am 15.12.2006 in Kraft getreten. Damit kam der deutsche Gesetzgeber seinem Auftrag zur Umsetzung des Gemeinschaftsrechts – wenngleich sehr versp?tet – nach. Schon vor dem Erlass des Gesetzes war die Umsetzung der v?lker- und europarechtlichen Vorgaben ein hei? diskutiertes Thema und auch nach der Umsetzung in deutsches Recht erhitzt die Frage nach der Europarechtskonformit?t des Gesetzes weiterhin die Gemüter. In diesem Beitrag sollen einige der umstrittenen Bestimmungen des Gesetzes n?her beleuchtet und auf ihre Vereinbarkeit mit dem Gemeinschaftsrecht geprüft werden.     

Unity, Diversity and the Fragmentation of International Law: How Much Does the Multiplication of International Organizations Really Matter?

It seems to be presumed by many that the simple multiplicationof international organizations (IOs) weakens the unity and integrityof international law. There is, in reality, nothing obviousin this assumption. First, there needs to be evidence of duplicationor overlaps in the various competences of IOs. Second, it needsto be proven that, in the instances in which the activitiesof IOs do overlap, such overlap translates into competition,divergence or conflict. Last, and most importantly, rival orcompeting activities must be of normative significance. Thisessay proposes to address the preliminary question which, infact, precedes and underpins all the others as regards the multiplicationof IOs and international legal unity: how do IOs matter in themaking of international law? IOs, we argue, are more shapersthan makers of international law and their multiplication istherefore not a source of increased chaos in the internationalnormative puzzle.     

Radicalization as a reaction to failure: An economic model of Islamic extremism

This paper views Islamist radicals as self-interested political revolutionaries and builds on a general model of political extremism developed in a previous paper (Ferrero, 2002). Extremism is modelled as a production factor whose effect on expected revenue is initially positive and then turns negative, and whose level is optimally chosen by a revolutionary organization. The organization is bound by a free-access constraint and hence uses the degree of extremism as a means of indirectly controlling its level of membership with the aim of maximizing expected per capita income of its members, like a producer co-operative. The gist of the argument is that radicalization may be an optimal reaction to perceived failure (a widespread perception in the Muslim world) when political activists are, at the margin, relatively strongly averse to effort but not so averse to extremism. This configuration is at odds with secular, Western-style revolutionary politics but seems to capture well the essence of Islamic revolutionary politics, embedded as it is in a doctrinal framework.