Commission Newsletter: 1995

SUMMARY

In this article, M. Manolova examines the provisions in the Bulgarian Constitution of 1879 which concern the responsibility of government ministers. It is shown how these provisions were unusually explicit in establishing that ministers were both individually and collectively responsible for their actions in government and in insisting that the power to institute proceedings lay exclusively with the parliament. The article compares the Bulgarian provisions with those in similar liberal constitutions of the period and notes the several instances down to 1919 when the provisions were implemented, in order to suggest that the principal of ministerial responsibility had a special importance in Bulgarian constitutional theory and practice.     

Regulating Lobbyists: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, Canada, Germany and the European Union

Lobbying is central to the democratic process. Yet, only four political systems have lobbying regulations: the United States, Canada, Germany and the EU (most particularly, the European Parliament). Despite the many works offering individual country analysis of lobbying legislation, a twofold void exists in the literature. Firstly, no study has offered a comparative analysis classifying the laws in these four political systems, which would improve understanding of the different regulatory environments. Secondly, few studies have analysed the views of key agents—politicians, lobbyists and regulators—and how these compare and contrast across regulatory environments.
We firstly utilise an index measuring how strong the regulations are in each of the systems, and develop a classification scheme for the different 'ideal' types of regulatory environment. Secondly, we measure the opinions of political actors, interest groups and regulators in all four systems (through questionnaires and elite interviews) and see what correlations, if any, exist between the different ideal types of system and their opinions. The conclusion highlights our findings, and the lessons that can be used by policy-makers in systems without lobbying legislation.