Hague Case Law: Latest Developments

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Government Selection and Executive Powers: Constitutional Design in Parliamentary Democracies

Provisions for a parliamentary investiture vote have become increasingly common in parliamentary democracies. This article shows that investiture provisions were largely introduced when new constitutions were written or old ones fundamentally redesigned. It also shows that the constitutions that endowed executives with strong legislative agenda powers also endowed parliaments with strong mechanisms to select the executive. It is argued that constitution makers’ decisions can be seen in principal–agent terms: strong investiture rules constitute an ex ante mechanism of parliamentary control – that is, a mechanism to minimise adverse selection and reduce the risk of agency loss by parliament. The findings have two broad implications: from a constitutional point of view, parliamentary systems do not rely exclusively on ex post control mechanisms such as the no confidence vote to minimise agency loss; parliamentarism, at least today and as much as presidentialism, is the product of conscious constitutional design and not evolutionary adaptation.     

Using myths: Former Yugoslav perpetrators and violence

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, increased levels of east to west immigration in Europe partly explains the delinquent activities among a growing number of Eastern Europeans in western cities. Young people from te former Yugoslavia have a reputation for being particularly violent. In this article we argue that the alleged violence among Yugoslav delinquents is not so much a reflection of reality, but rather a myth used instrumentally by Yugoslav delinquents themselves to establish a position on the criminal scene – as doorkeepers, bodyguards, money collectors or other so-called `specialists in violence'.     

Sequelae to torture. A controlled study of torture victims living in exile

Twenty-eight Turkish refugees living in Denmark were examined by the authors in the period 1984-85. Fourteen of the persons alleged having been tortured in Turkey during the period 1980-83. The remaining 14 persons reported that they had not been tortured and thus acted as controls. All the testimonies were found valid according to a method previously used by us. The most common forms of violence reported were blows and electrical torture. Blindfolding, solitary confinement and threats were also frequent. At the time of examination the main mental complaints were sleep disturbances with nightmares and impaired memory. Emotional lability and concentration disturbances were also frequent. Physically the torture victims suffered from headache, various cardio-pulmonary and muscular pains, dyspepsia and reading disturbances. All reported that they had been healthy before torture. The clinical examination revealed only a few signs related to torture, although examples of minimal scars, fractured or missing teeth, discrete neurological disorders and mental depression were found. The 14 controls had significantly fewer complaints, and almost no abnormalities were found during the clinical examination. The present study clearly demonstrates the traumatic effects of torture.     

Gender Equality and Intrastate Armed Conflict

In this article, I examine to what extent gender equality is associated with lower levels of intrastate armed conflict. I use three measures of gender equality: (1) a dichotomous indicator of whether the highest leader of a state is a woman; (2) the percentage of women in parliament; and (3) the female-to-male higher education attainment ratio. I argue that the first two measures in particular capture the extent to which women hold positions that allow them to influence matters of war and peace within a state. I further argue that all three measures, but especially the last two, capture how women are valued relative to men in a society, that is, the relative degree of subordination of women. Whereas female state leadership has no statistically significant effect, more equal societies, measured either in terms of female representation in parliament or the ratio of female-to-male higher education attainment, are associated with lower levels of intrastate armed conflict. The pacifying impact of gender equality is not only statistically significant in the presence of a comprehensive set of controls but also is strong in substantive terms.     

The Importance and Limits of Party Government: Problems of Governance in Denmark*

Pluralist democracies face the dilemma of reconciling representation of interests and government control. The tension between representation and governance is a problem for political parties in particular and has presumably become more important in recent years, at least in Denmark. Using data from questionnaire surveys of Danish political elites it is shown that interest organizations and bureaucrats indeed pose problems for party government. Some institutional changes might lighten the tasks of parties, but there is no way of avoiding the basic democratic dilemma.     

The Local Political Business Cycle

Although local political leaders have fewer policy instruments available than national politicians, they nevertheless engage heavily in the creation of political business cycles, i.e. they try to locate and time the costs and benefits of government policies in such as way as to optimize voter support. The study, which is based on data from the four Nordic countries and Italy and France, shows that expenditures tend to grow faster the closer the local election, while political action to increase local taxes is generally taken only in mid-term years. If one wants to predict how local tax rates and expenditures change, it is as important to know the number of years' to the next election as it is to know the change in the fiscal capabilities of local governments.