How do professionals perceive the governance of public–private partnerships? Evidence from Canada,the Netherlands and Denmark

In public–private partnerships (PPPs), the collaboration between public and private actors can be complicated. With partners coming from different institutional backgrounds and with different interests, governing these partnerships is important to ensure the projects' progress. There is, however, little knowledge about the perceptions of professionals regarding the governance of PPPs. This study aims to exlore professionals' viewpoints about governing PPPs, and to explain potential differences using four theoretical governance paradigms. Using Q methodology, the preferences of 119 public and private professionals in Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark are explored. Results show four different viewpoints regarding the governance of PPPs. Experience, country and the public–private distinction seem to influence these viewpoints. Knowledge of these differences can inform efforts to govern PPPs and contribute to more successful partnerships.     

High‐tech Start‐ups in Europe: The Effect of Regulatory Competition on the Emergence of New Business Forms

This paper will examine the theoretical arguments for and against the importance of new business forms for the growth of start‐ups. Part I briefly reviews the recent history of business organisational law and reform within Europe. Our review of extant European business forms reveals that the absence of new business entities (and structural reforms) may be due to status quo bias and other network effects. Turning to the importance of new business forms, Part II addresses the question which organisational and legal structures are favourable for the growth of start‐ups. It is suggested that the introduction of an efficient organisational form for start‐ups is crucial to further stimulate the development of a successful venture capital market in Europe. In Part III we give consideration to the possibility of developing new business forms, based on US mechanisms, which could lead to an increase in the level of high‐tech start‐ups. The prospect for the emergence of new business forms depends in part on the removal of legal and non‐legal barriers. The final section evaluates whether we can project a pattern of regulatory competition in the business organisation context that could prompt lawmakers to innovate by introducing new legal entities.     

Bringing European Democracy Back In—Or How to Read the German Constitutional Court's Lisbon Treaty Ruling

This article critically examines the democratic theory that informs the German Federal Constitutional Court's Lisbon Treaty ruling. This is needed because the ruling is ambiguous with regard to which type of democracy applies to which type of Union. In order to analyse the ruling we establish three models of what European democracy possibly can amount to: audit democracy based on the EU as a derivative of the Member States; a multinational federal state; or a regional cosmopolitan polity? The court's depiction of the EU does not fit as well as we would expect when labeled as a derivative entity due to the important legislative role of the European Parliament. The EU's legal supranationalism points in the direction of a federation, but the court's argumentation does not lend support to this notion. The court models democracy on a rather specific set of institutional presuppositions that are derived from the parliamentary model of democracy associated with the sovereign nation state. At the same time, the court operates with a conception of a changing state sovereignty that unfolds more in line with cosmopolitan rather than with classical Westphalian statist principles.     

Japanese police and Korean resistance in prewar China: The problem of legal legitimacy and local collaboration

Based on the records of Japanese Foreign Ministry police forces, this article describes a failed attempt by Japanese consular police in south Manchuria during the early 1920s to suppress the Korean independence movement in exile through the employment of local collaborators. Implemented because the Chinese government did not recognize the legal legitimacy of Japanese consular police operations on Chinese soil, this counter-insurgency program reveals the lengths to which Japanese consular authorities were willing to go in the search for solutions to their perceived national security threats in Northeast Asia long before the outbreak of full-scale war with China in the 1930s.     

Beyond the multiple‐choice v. essay questions controversy: Combining the best of both worlds*

The increasingly diverse cohorts of students studying at new generation universities pose new curriculum challenges for disciplines such as law. These challenges are most visible in written assignments and thus interpreted as “writing problems”. As a consequence, much of the advice available to assist students focuses on “elements of good writing”, advising them primarily on expression and grammar and, in some instances, on the different purposes of legal writing. This paper offers, however, a quite different perspective on what underlies the writing problems of these students, arguing that students need to be knowingly inducted into the different positions or identities embodied in these written tasks, as well as instructed in the language required to “realise” these identities. This approach is explored through analysis of a standard problem scenario assessment task and student responses to the task. Finally, the paper suggests that designing a curriculum to assist these students' entry into the disciplinary practices of the law rests on more collaboration and mutual learning between law lecturers and language and learning lecturers.     

The Plots that Failed: Intelligence Lessons Learned from Unsuccessful Terrorist Attacks Against the United States

While much of the focus of terrorism research is on successful terrorist attacks, the most significant lessons for terrorism prevention may come from examination of terrorist plots and attacks that do not succeed. This article analyzes 176 terrorist plots against American targets that have been thwarted or otherwise failed during the past 25 years. It considers what kinds of intelligence and security measures are most useful in counterterrorism, and argues that the conventional wisdom about why intelligence fails—because analysts and agencies are unable to “connect the dots”—is wrong. Most plots, especially domestic terrorist plots, are not foiled through imaginative analysis, but through conventional law enforcement efforts and aggressive domestic intelligence collection that reveal to authorities just what the plotters are up to.     

Italy and the Euro in the Global Economic Crisis

As Italian policymakers argue about the best way to respond to the global economic crisis, the importance of the euro to Italian economic stability seems to have dropped out of the debate. This is a problem for three reasons: it dulls the memory of Italian efforts to get into the single currency in the mid-to-late 1990s; it allows critics of the euro to shape perceptions of how eurozone membership affected Italy during the past decade; and it obscures the trade-offs that Italians would face if they were to make different choices in the future -- including the choice to leave. As a result, while it has been relatively easy to argue that Italian politicians would have to be crazy to try to take Italy out of the euro, it may become more difficult to make that case with the same level of confidence as time goes on. Italian perceptions of the merits of being in the euro are changing and the real possibilities available to Italian policymakers are changing as a result. Italy will pay a high price for opening up the possibility of leaving the eurozone whether or not Italian policymakers are serious about taking that step.