Il n’y a pas de question idiote? Les questions des députés européens à la Commission européenne et au Conseil depuis 1979

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes questions from the European parliament (EP) to the Commission and Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU). The exponential increase in the number of questions since the first direct election of the EP in 1979 is testimony to the changing pattern of inter-institutional relations in the EU and to the growing involvement of the EP in a variety of policy areas. At the individual level, the members of the EP strategically use questions either for the purposes of specialization or in order to connect with their voters. Analyzing parliamentary questions is therefore relevant for a better understanding of representation in a supranational setting.     

Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economy of the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico

Mainstream analysis and commentary on drug trafficking and related violence in Mexico focuses overwhelmingly on the narco-cartels as sources of the problem and presents the US as a well intentioned player helping to conduct a ‘war on drugs’ out of concern for addiction, crime and violence. This article offers an alternative interpretation, grounded in critical political economy, showing that in addition to fuelling the narcotics industry in Mexico thanks to its large drug consumption and loose firearms regulations, the US shares much responsibility for its expansion thanks to its record of support for some of the main players in the drugs trade, such as the Mexican government and military, and by implementing neoliberal reforms that have increased the size of the narcotics industry. The war on drugs has served as a pretext to intervene in Mexican affairs and to protect US hegemonic projects such as nafta, rather than as a genuine attack on drug problems. In particular, the drugs war has been used repeatedly to repress dissent and popular opposition to neoliberal policies in Mexico. Finally, US banks have increased their profits by laundering drug money from Mexico and elsewhere; the failure to implement tighter regulations testifies to the power of the financial community in the US.     

European Media Coverage of Argentina’s Debt Default and Recovery: distorting the lessons for Europe

In 2001 Argentina defaulted on its debts and then devalued its currency by abandoning the peso–dollar peg. The economy rebounded and has grown relatively strongly since then. This paper uses a critical political economy approach to first show that the Argentinian strategy finds support in the literature examining the effects of sovereign debt default, currency devaluation and fiscal consolidation on economic growth. Argentina is thus relevant to Europe’s ongoing crisis. The article then investigates European media coverage of the Argentinian experience through an examination of major newspapers’ stories between 2008 and 2013. It argues that the media have distorted the lessons of the Argentinian recovery by focusing on the negative consequences of default rather than its benefits; by emphasising the role of rising commodity export prices over domestic policy decisions in stimulating the economy; by opposing some aspects of government intervention in the economy even if the latter played a beneficial role; and by exaggerating the negative consequences of inflation. This distorted coverage is explained through reference to the media’s ideological role in the implementation of austerity policies in Europe.     

Several liability with sequential care: an experiment

European Journal of Law and Economics - By a laboratory experiment, we investigate the incentives of potential tortfeasors to make investments in order to reduce the probability of a given harm...     

Rethinking neo-liberal state building: building post-conflict development states

In attempting to rebuild post-conflict failed states, the international community has drawn heavily on neo-liberal development paradigms. However, neo-liberal state building has proved ineffectual in stimulating economic development in post-conflict states, thus undermining prospects for state consolidation. This article offers the developmental state as an alternative model for international state building, better suited to overcoming the developmental challenges that face post-conflict states. Drawing on the East Asian experience, developmental state building would seek to build state capacity to intervene in the economy to guide development, compensating for the failure of growth led by the private sector to materialise in many post-conflict states. The article concludes that such an approach would, in the first instance, require the international community to accept more honestly its developmental responsibilities when it decides to intervene to rebuild failed states.     

Evaluation of the IDS One-Step™ ELISA kits for the detection of illicit drugs in hair

This work presents the validation of a new immunological assay, the One-Step™ enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests from International Diagnostic Systems Corp. for the screening of drugs of abuse (cannabis, amphetamines, opiates, and cocaine) in human hair, with subsequent GC–MS confirmation. After decontamination and segmentation into small pieces, 50 mg of hair sample were incubated in 1 ml of methanol during 16 h at 40 °C. A 100 μL aliquot was collected and evaporated to dryness in presence of 100 μL of methanol/hydrochloric acid (99:1, v/v) to avoid amphetamines loss. The dried extract was dissolved in 100 μL of the “sample and standard diluent” solution included in the kit. This solution was submitted to analysis according to the recommended instructions of the manufacturer. During the validation phase, GC–MS confirmations were conducted according to our fully validated and published methods for opiates, cocaine, cannabis, and amphetamines determinations in hair. In a last development step, these procedures were slightly modified to directly confirm ELISA results by GC–MS using the methanolic extract. Ninety-three specimens were simultaneously screened by the ELISA tests (103 for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)) and confirmed by GC–MS. Twenty were found positive for cannabis (THC: 0.10–6.50 ng/mg), 21 for cocaine (0.50–55.20 ng/mg), 24 for opiates (6-acetylmorphine (6-AM): 0.20–11.60 ng/mg, MOR: 0.20–8.90 ng/mg, codeine (COD): 0.20–5.90 ng/mg), and 13 for amphetamines (AP: 0.20 and 0.27 ng/mg, methamphetamine (MAP): 0.30 and 1.10 ng/mg, methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA): 0.22–17.80 ng/mg). No false negative results were observed according to the Society of Hair Testing's (SoHT) cutoffs (0.5 ng/mg for cocaine, 0.2 ng/mg for opiates and amphetamines, and 0.1 ng/mg for THC). The One-Step™ ELISA kits appear suitable due to their sensitivity and specificity for drug of abuse screening in hair. This technology should find interest in workplace drug testing or driving license regranting, especially when many samples have to be tested with a high rate of negative samples, as ELISA is an easy and high-throughput method.     

Different ways of blowing the whistle: Explaining variations in decentralized enforcement in the UK and France

The factors explaining decentralized enforcement – the monitoring and reporting of illegalities in organizations by employees – remain poorly understood. This article contributes to filling this gap by presenting a study of employee reports to regulatory authorities of incidents that have taken place in British and French high hazard industries. The article distinguishes between two different registers of “quiet” and “loud” reporting, reflecting the varying echo of employee reports, as intended either by employees themselves or by other stakeholders. The study finds quiet reporting to be widespread in the UK, while loud reporting was salient in France only. The contrast can be explained by making reference to the relationships between unions, regulators, and managers, and the history and institutions of industrial relations that shaped them in particular ways in each country. The comparison suggests also that whistleblower protection legislation has played little role in encouraging reporting.     

The development of an automatic recognition system for earmark and earprint comparisons

The value of earmarks as an efficient means of personal identification is still subject to debate. It has been argued that the field is lacking a firm systematic and structured data basis to help practitioners to form their conclusions. Typically, there is a paucity of research guiding as to the selectivity of the features used in the comparison process between an earmark and reference earprints taken from an individual. This study proposes a system for the automatic comparison of earprints and earmarks, operating without any manual extraction of key-points or manual annotations. For each donor, a model is created using multiple reference prints, hence capturing the donor within source variability. For each comparison between a mark and a model, images are automatically aligned and a proximity score, based on a normalized 2D correlation coefficient, is calculated. Appropriate use of this score allows deriving a likelihood ratio that can be explored under known state of affairs (both in cases where it is known that the mark has been left by the donor that gave the model and conversely in cases when it is established that the mark originates from a different source). To assess the system performance, a first dataset containing 1229 donors elaborated during the FearID research project was used. Based on these data, for mark-to-print comparisons, the system performed with an equal error rate (EER) of 2.3% and about 88% of marks are found in the first 3 positions of a hitlist. When performing print-to-print transactions, results show an equal error rate of 0.5%. The system was then tested using real-case data obtained from police forces.     

Economic Effects and Spin-offs in a Small Space Economy: The Case of Canada

Canada, through a well-focused space program (telecommunications, earth observation, robotics), has succeeded in developing a space industry largely based on SMEs. The result has been significant economic benefits and technological spin-offs. In this article, the results of two programs, the ESA (European Space Agency) and the STEAR (Strategic Technologies in Automation and Robotics), are compared.The ESA program has generated significant indirect effects and spin-offs for Canadian exports. ESA's reputation and network have enabled SMEs to increase export sales of both space products and other commercial products derived from space technologies. The STEAR program has been highly successful in promoting a new generation of SMEs for space robotics, encouraging both spin-in and spin-offs of technologies. The analysis highlights the complementarity of mission- and diffusion-oriented programs in the technology transfer process.