The Democratic Costs of Constitutionalisation: The European Case

There is little doubt that the European Union suffers from a legitimacy deficit. However, the causes of this deficit and, as a consequence, the remedies are contested. This article wants to show that an important, but often overlooked, cause for the legitimacy deficit lies in the overconstitutionalization of the EU. The European Treaties have been constitutionalized by the ECJ, but are full of provisions that would be ordinary law in states. Constitutionalization means de‐politicization. What has been regulated on the constitutional level is no longer open for political decision‐making. Thus, in the EU political decisions of high salience are not only withdrawn from the democratically legitimized institutions, but also immunized against political correction. Therefore, the consequences from the constitutionalization have to be drawn: The Treaties should be reduced to those norms that reflect the functions of a constitution, whereas all the other parts have to be downgraded to the level of secondary law.     

Die Entwicklung des Föderalismus und der Föderalismus ‐ diskussion in der Schweiz von 1874 bis 1964

Before 1874 and after 1964, the evolution of federalism and related political discourses is well known. Between these years, however, stretches a terra incognita, which this political‐historical essay tries to explore. This period was characterised by a steady shift of power from the Canton's to the Confederation, resulting in the frequent re‐grouping of federalists and centralists. Before the First World War, traditionalists from central and occidental Switzerland fiercely defended a confederalist vision. During the interwar years, things quietened down. The modern federal State organisation was no longer fundamentally questioned, and the debate focused on technical questions. The “geistige Landesverteidigung” (moral defence of the country against fascism) secured an enduring yet problematic place for federalism in Swiss culture by transforming it into the “unity in diversity” principle. After the Second World War, modernising forces resulted in the “executive and co‐operative federalism” that we know today.     

From Unfulfilled Wants to the Experience of Injustice: Women's Sense of Injustice Regarding the Lopsided Division of Household Labor

The present research deals with factors that contribute to women's sense of injustice regarding the lopsided division of household labor. The proposed model of perceived injustice combines elements of the distributive justice framework of Major (1993) and Thompson (1991), the two-factor model of relative deprivation (Crosby, 1982), and the attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice (Mikula, 1993). The results of a study with 132 employed women are consistent with the proposed model and show that unfulfilled wants, perceived violations of entitlement, and attributions of blame directly affect women's perceptions of being unjustly treated by their partners. Beyond that, women's judgments of injustice were indirectly affected by the outcomes of various comparison processes through their impact on perceived violations of entitlement. Finally, attributions of responsibility and perceived lack of justifications contributed indirectly to the experience of injustice through their impact on the amount of blame attributed to the partner. The findings provide evidence for the usefulness of the theories considered in this study to understand and predict women's sense of injustice, and their integration into a single model of perceived injustice.     

Judicial detection skill and contractual compliance

Mutually beneficial agreements might fail if the parties fear contractual opportunism. Litigation is supposed to be a remedy, but it gives scope for another kind of opportunistic behavior, which we call litigational opportunism: Even known that the opponent has fulfilled his obligations, a party might bring suit. We introduce a new concept, called judicial detection skill, and show that positive judicial detection skill is a prerequisite if the court system is to deter opportunistic suits and simultaneously induce bilateral contractual compliance. The traditional literature on litigation either assumes judges with zero detection skill, or simply neglects that opportunistic suits might be successful. We prove that those models are unable to provide an answer to the question of how to prevent both types of opportunism simultaneously.     

Compulsory Voting Rules,Reluctant Voters and Ideological Proximity Voting

Political Behavior - Political theorists have argued that democracies should strive for high turnout, leading to an argument for the introduction of compulsory voting, one of the surest ways to...     

Additional variability at the D12S391 STR locus in an Austrian population sample: sequencing data and allele distribution

The highly polymorphic STR locus D12S391 was investigated in an Austrian population sample (N=150) by PCR-amplification, comparative detection on native and denaturing polyacrylamide gels and solid phase single stranded sequencing of three size variant alleles and several additional alleles. A total of 15 alleles, distinguishable by size under denaturing conditions, could be detected. No deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were observed in the population investigated (P=0.52). Sequencing of size variants designated 17.3 and 18.3 showed an incomplete (GAT) repeat unit at position two of the tandem region. Additional new sequence variants due to varying compositions of the number of (AGAT) and (AGAC) repeats could be identified. Due to distinct electrophoretical mobilities of alleles of the same size but different sequence structures, denaturing detection conditions should be employed when the aim is standardization.     

Forest certification as a global environmental governance tool: What is the macro-effectiveness of the Forest Stewardship Council?

Sustainable forest management is a key challenge for local and global governance. The Forest Stewardship Council has emerged as one of the solutions to global forest deterioration and is generally regarded as the prime example of certification as a global governance tool. This article examines the macro-effectiveness of certification on halting deforestation and examines the relationship between certification and governance institutions. The article finds that the macro-effectiveness of certification on halting deforestation is still limited due to the “stuck at the bottom” problem of developing countries, which are kept out of the certification process, and the market-driven nature of certification initiatives. The article does not find a relationship between certification and governance institutions at the macro level. It does find, however, significant variation in certification uptake between countries, pointing to the potential of this policy tool. The implications of the results are discussed.