Conceptualizing throughput legitimacy: Procedural mechanisms of accountability,transparency, inclusiveness and openness in EU governance

This symposium demonstrates the potential for throughput legitimacy as a concept for shedding empirical light on the strengths and weaknesses of multi‐level governance, as well as challenging the concept theoretically. This article introduces the symposium by conceptualizing throughput legitimacy as an ‘umbrella concept’, encompassing a constellation of normative criteria not necessarily empirically interrelated. It argues that in order to interrogate multi‐level governance processes in all their complexity, it makes sense for us to develop normative standards that are not naïve about the empirical realities of how power is exercised within multi‐level governance, or how it may interact with legitimacy. We argue that while throughput legitimacy has its normative limits, it can be substantively useful for these purposes. While being no replacement for input and output legitimacy, throughput legitimacy offers distinctive normative criteria—accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness—and points towards substantive institutional reforms.     

Failures for Consideration: Re-Analysing Jurisdiction in Unjust Enrichment Claims

There has been little attempt to provide a full and coherent analysis of the rules governing service of a claim form out of the jurisdiction in claims concerning unjust enrichment. This lacuna has grown more noticeable since the rules were reformed in 2015, with the continuation of an excessively wide approach that had overrun the older, overly restrictive rules. This article attempts not only to provide such an analysis but also one which is able to reconcile the wording of the rules with their underlying principles and the substantive law of unjust enrichment claims – significant constraints that have received insufficient consideration in both the case law and the literature.     

Is Early Start a Better Start? Evaluating California State University's Early Start Remediation Policy

Remediation has long been a costly way to address the misalignment between K-12 and higher education. In 2011, the California State University (CSU), the nation's largest public four-year university system, enacted Early Start, requiring students needing remediation to enroll in such courses in the summer before their freshman year. We estimate the impact of Early Start summer remediation relative to both traditional fall remediation and relative to no remediation at all. Our results suggest Early Start summer remediation has not improved student performance or persistence relative to either alternative. As many states move away from remedial courses altogether, there is continued need for both innovation and for evidence in policy and practice to improve college readiness and success.     

Why are African American Governors and U.S. Senators so Rare? Exploring White Voters’ Responses to African American Statewide Candidates

Political Behavior - Despite making notable gains at the local level, very few African Americans have been elected to the high-profile statewide offices of governor or U.S. senator. Previous...     

Why bother campaigning? Campaign effectiveness in the 2009 European Parliament elections

This paper explores the effectiveness of European Parliament candidates' campaigns. We analyze the relationship between candidates' spending and their likelihood of success, controlling for a range of relevant co-varying factors. We then investigate whether the effects of electoral spending are conditioned by two variables: ballot design and incumbency. We find that, ceteris paribus, spending was positively related to a candidate's likelihood of electoral success in the 2009 campaign, though this effect is small in scale. We also reveal that the electorally positive effects of spending are observable across both 'party-centered' and ‘candidate-centered’ ballot structures, and that there is some evidence that incumbent spending is less effective than challenger spending.     

Engineering inclusion: Assessing the effects of pro-minority representation policies

In democracies, a constant tension exists between the stability and integrity of the community as a whole, and the desire to ensure minorities a voice in politics. Reserved seats and reduced thresholds are two common means by which ethnic minorities gain legislative seats, though little or no empirical work exists testing their efficacy in this regard. Combining multivariate analysis with in-depth case studies, this article shows that both reserved seats and lower thresholds increase minority representation, though reserved seats accomplish that goal more consistently. Reduced thresholds tend to increase the share of votes and seats won by ethnoregional parties but reserved seats do not. Additionally, Mauritius' unusual best-loser system aids both minorities and ethnoregional parties.     

All Glory is Fleeting: Sigint and the Fight Against International Terrorism

This article discusses the important role that Signals Intelligence (Sigint) has played, and continues to play, in the war against international terrorism. It sets out what is known or can be authoritatively established about the role that Sigint played in the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, especially the performance of America's Sigint organization, the National Security Agency (NSA). The article also analyzes what the potential future role of Sigint may be in the war on terrorism given the ever changing nature of terrorist operations, the growing number of technological impediments to effective Sigint collection against terrorist targets, and shifting geostrategic considerations on the part of the nations engaged in the fight against the international terrorists.     

When Politics Fails: Hyper-Democracy and Hyper-Depoliticization

Although declining political engagement has been identified as a key problem for advanced liberal democracies, this article suggests that a more profound tension needs to be addressed. Specifically, it identifies interdependences between growing political pressures on national governments, and the tendency to delegate decisions away from control by elected politicians. These processes of “hyper-democracy” and “hyper-depoliticization” arguably create and re-enforce political tensions, magnifying a risk of central government “overload.” Through analyzing the arguments of prominent scholars of democracy, the article picks apart these interdependencies and argues for a more balanced approach to democratic governance.