Out of Malta,Beginning Anew

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Malta witnessed high drama in the election of Patricia Scotland as the organisation’s new Secretary-General. This article notes, among other things, that it once again demonstrated the myth that the Secretary-General is chosen on the basis of consensus. In the view of the author, although the conference discussed a number of issues of substance and importance, there is an urgent need to give the Secretariat new collective purpose and vision. Malta, argues the article, provided an important point of departure, and the next CHOGM, to be held in Britain in 2018, offers Commonwealth organisations and civil society an opportunity to make their own unique and enhanced contributions.     

Constrained majoritarianism: Westminster constitutionalism in Malta

This article discusses Malta's constitutional system as a variation on the ‘Westminster model’. Despite proportional representation, Malta maintains a strictly majoritarian (Lijphart, 1999 Lijphart, A. (1999). Patterns of democracy: Government forms and performance in thirty-six countries. Yale: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]) core of ‘delegation and accountability’ (Strøm et al., 2005), from the people, through Parliament, to the Government, structured through a two-party system. This majoritarian core is balanced, however, by peripheral institutions (such as the Constitutional Court, Ombudsman, President, and Electoral Commission), which partially constrain the exercise of majoritarian power. Using a typology developed by Glover and Hazell (2008 Hazell, R. (2008). Conclusion: Where will the Westminster model end up? In R. Hazell (Ed.), Constitutional futures revised: Britain's constitution to 2020 (pp. 285–300). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Malta is presented as an example of a ‘Westminster Constitutionalised’ polity, combining majoritarian rule and concentrated powers with entrenched, legal constitutionalism.     

Small States and Nonmaterial Power: Creating Crises and Shaping Migration Policies in Malta,Cyprus, and the European Union

This article examines how the power relationships between Malta and the Republic of Cyprus, on the one hand, and the European Union, on the other, shape irregular immigration policies in these two sovereign outpost island states in the Mediterranean. As member states on the EU's southern periphery, Malta and Cyprus have faced new institutional structures since their accession in 2004 within which they now construct their migration policies. Here, I examine how the new structures influence the discourse and logic of migration policies and politics and also how the seemingly small and powerless states affect regional policies. My contention is that, within this EU framework and with limited material power, the two outpost states have developed strategies based on nonmaterial power in order to defend and promote their interests. Such strategies have resulted in treating irregular immigration as a crisis in order to attract support. The new dynamics have thus resulted in more barriers to migration, and in negative consequences for the individual migrants and refugees on the islands. Although the strategies of Malta and Cyprus have been surprisingly successful in influencing regional migration governance, their long-term effectiveness is questionable, and their effects on the migrant and local population problematic.