Institutional reform and public attitudes toward EU decision making

In the face of the discourse about the democratic deficit and declining public support for the European Union (EU), institutionalist scholars have examined the roles of institutions in EU decision making and in particular the implications of the empowered European Parliament. Almost in isolation from this literature, prior research on public attitudes toward the EU has largely adopted utilitarian, identity and informational accounts that focus on individual-level attributes. By combining the insights from the institutional and behavioural literature, this article reports on a novel cross-national conjoint experiment designed to investigate multidimensionality of public attitudes by taking into account the specific roles of institutions and distinct stages in EU decision making. Analysing data from a large-scale experimental survey in 13 EU member states, the findings demonstrate how and to what extent the institutional design of EU decision making shapes public support. In particular, the study finds a general pattern of public consensus about preferred institutional reform regarding powers of proposal, adoption and voting among European citizens in different countries, but notable dissent about sanctioning powers. The results show that utilitarian and partisan considerations matter primarily for the sanctioning dimension in which many respondents in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden prefer national courts to the Court of Justice of the EU.     

Erzählungen des Kindes‐ und Erwachsenenschutzes: Eine Anwendung und Erweiterung des Narrative Policy Frameworks

The Child and Adult Protection Authorities (KESB) have been the subject of controversial discussion since their establishment in 2013. The reform of the Guardianship Law provided for an institutional shift away from local guardianship authorities to regional specialist authorities. This article uses the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine the history of today’s controversy, simultaneously proposing an analytic strengthening of said framework. Previous NPF studies summarize policy actors into opponents and proponents. As a result, we do not know whether different actors use different narratives. We therefore separate the expert from the MP discourse. The analysis shows that the experts' arguments for a new institutional arrangement and a person‐oriented narrative dominated, which put the fundamental rights of the persons affected by guardianship measures up front. The study contributes to the understanding of the current controversy, in which a person‐oriented narrative seems to be dominant again, directed against the new authorities.     

European Union civil society support and the depoliticisation of Turkish civil society

Despite growing critical literature on external funding, the link between EU funding to Turkish civil society organisations (CSOs) and their depoliticisation remains understudied. This article fills this gap. This article explores EU funds in Turkey and shows the incentives it creates for a depoliticised civil society. Drawing on an original set of interviews with 45 CSOs, this article analyses how Turkish CSOs interact with EU funding and how this support impacts on Turkish civil society. This article argues that EU funding’s short-term, activity-based, measurable outcome and visibility-oriented structure contributed to the depoliticisation of those CSOs benefited from EU funds.     

Canadian Concerns of a Different Kind of Brexit: Britain’s First Application to the EEC and Canada’s Commonwealth Appeal

Recent debates on Brexit have made several attempts to connect the current situation with Britain’s first attempt to gain entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961. In both 2016 and 1961, questions were raised about what role the Commonwealth would take and how the relationship with Britain would adapt to their then-entry and current exit of a union with Europe. This article seeks to examine how Canada reacted to Britain’s decision to enter the EEC and sheds light on the vociferous opposition it raised within the Commonwealth. Using both British and Canadian cabinet minutes and Commonwealth memoranda, the article follows the Canadian campaign against British entry to the EEC and its fervent defence of the Commonwealth as an economic-focused community. Ultimately, the Canadian-led protest against British entry into the EEC derived from a fear that Britain would drift from the Commonwealth towards Europe, leading to the complete dissolution of the economic bonds that tie the community together.     

Revisiting Transnational European Consociationalism: The European Union a Decade After Lisbon

This article discusses the notion of consociationalism as applied to the EU and assesses whether the institutional and procedural changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) and by the management of the Euro and refugee crises still warrant considering the EU as a case of consociational democracy. Our contention is that the changes introduced by the ToL bore the promise to strengthen the consociational structural traits of the Union but that the further institutional and procedural changes engendered by the management of the Euro and refugee crises have made the behavioral dimension of consociationalism all the more necessary just as the accommodating orientation of the political elites had begun to evaporate. We support this argument by looking at empirical evidence which allows us to offer a set of propositions on the effects of the recent crises on the attitudes of the European elites towards the future of EU democracy.     

Environmental Stressors and Food Security in China

This article considers the immediate forces influencing China’s food system and food security. By immediate is meant events of the reform period, from the late 1970s to 2008. It begins by asking the question that has preoccupied specialists since the publication of Lester Brown’s Who Will Feed China? in 1995: How much arable land does China have? Is that land area sufficient to insure grain sufficiency? To insure food security? The article focuses on the human pressures on the food production environment, and then treats the effects of socioeconomic change: land, air, and water degradation. The core of the article examines six responses of the state to both perceived and actual environmental stressors: policy restricting arable land conversion, China’s one-child policy, investment in irrigation systems, the South–North Water Diversion Project, large-scale afforestation and reforestation campaigns, and the program to convert marginal agricultural lands to forests and grasslands.     

第一代独生子女婚姻生育选择及对未来人口和家庭结构的影响——兼与庄渝霞商榷生育政策调整的可行性

随着第一代独生子女进入婚育年龄,产生大量的双独家庭、单独家庭,不同家庭类型的变化将引起政策生育率自然回升,如果考虑到有部分家庭放弃生育二孩,则意愿生育率会低于政策生育率。本文从独生子女婚育选择的角度出发,使用相关调查数据分析,发现由双独家庭所产生"4-2-1"家庭的数目受政策微调生育的影响较小,政策微调可以大幅度降低一孩家庭的比例,二孩家庭比例的增加无疑会降低家庭风险,且不会大规模地增加出生人口数量,因此,中国应当对生育政策进行微调,增强人口结构的合理性。     

青年的政策觉识与支持老年父母的关系:一项香港与上海的比较研究

这项研究探讨香港与上海两地青年的公共政策或社会责任、子孙或家庭责任、个人责任的觉识对其照顾、接纳和承担照顾父母的意愿的效应.研究结果显示:(1)对政府或社会的养老政策责任的觉识愈高者则照顾父母的意愿明显地愈高;然而,对老年人的自立生活具愈高的觉识者,其照顾父母的意愿却愈低;(2)对倡导尊敬老年人的觉识愈高和对老年人的自立生活的觉识愈低者,其接纳照顾父母的意愿愈高;(3)对政府责任的觉识愈高者和对个人责任的觉识愈低者,其承担照顾父母的意愿愈高.文章同时就倡导两地照顾或供养父母的政策启示进行讨论.     

马英九“软实力”思想评析

在马英九以大陆为主要对象的“国家安全政策”中,“软实力”是一个十分重要的概念。他企图以政治价值观的漫洇,推动大陆民主化;以文化、教育理念的扩散,输出价值观;以“活路外交”塑造“民主台湾”、“文化台湾”的形象,最终达到对大陆实施“软制约”、“软制衡”的目标。虽然,由于岛内外种种原因的限制,马英九的“软实力”思想尚未对大陆产生明显的影响力,但这一切是在“没有硝烟的战场”上实施的,应引起我们足够的重视。     

欧盟非正规就业对工会的挑战

欧盟国家非正规就业的迅速发展,使工会面临着严峻的挑战。非正规就业的增加直接冲击了传统工会的基础,使工会会员的绝对和相对人数都有很大降低;同时,工会领导的劳工运动长期忽略对非正规就业的权利保护,非正规就业工人难以获得与正规就业平等的待遇。因此,欧盟国家工会需要在增加非正规就业会员和就业监管策略两方面做战略性调整,以应对非正规就业的挑战。