Elemente der direkten Demokratie im Vertrag von Lissabon

Der Vertrag von Lissabon führte erstmals einen eigenen Titel mit Bestimmungen über die demokratischen Grundsätze der Europäischen Union in das Vertragsgefüge ein (Art 9 bis 12 EUV). Darin enthalten sind sowohl die Grundsätze der repräsentativen als auch der partizipativen Demokratie. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die direktdemokratischen Elemente des deutschsprachigen Europa (Österreich, Deutschland, Schweiz) rechtsvergleichend dargestellt, um anschließend die (neuen) Aspekte der direkten Demokratie in der Europäischen Union zu beleuchten. Dabei steht die neue europäische Bürgerinitiative im Zentrum des Interesses.     

The aftermath of Heysel: The 1985 Belgian election

The institutional approach to generalised trust creation is based on the assumption that only institutions with certain features give people reason to trust strangers. This article offers a revised version of this approach by arguing that there is an indirect rather than a direct link between the properties of institutions and trust among strangers. Referring to a neo-institutional idea of institutions, it is suggested that the potential of institutions for enabling people to trust strangers rests on institutions' power to structure individual action. The endurance and efficacy of institutions rather than their normative principles give us significant clues that our anonymous fellow citizens think about institutions as we do and accordingly feel committed to the rules of action. This, in turn, provides good reasons to believe that most of them will behave in an ‘appropriate’ manner so that we can trust them even if they are strangers.     

Die Messbarkeit von Demokratiequalität als ungelöstes theorieproblem

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Variety of Language Signs in Legal Terminology: Linguistic and Extra-Linguistic Background

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - The article deals with diversity of language signs in legal terminology. The aim of the article...     

Russia,Europe and the Ontological Security Dilemma: Narrating the Emerging Eurasian Space

Abstract

The aim of this essay is twofold. First, it seeks to examine how Russia and the European Union understand the emerging Eurasian space. We will do this by looking at how the two narrate the space, the use of power and each other. Second, we want to argue that the narratives at the heart of the conceptual and normative maps that guide their actions and behaviour create an essentially ontological security dilemma; that is, behaviour aimed primarily at enhancing confidence in the identity and continuity of a political community threatens the ontological security of other actors.     

Vertrauen in Eliten und die politische Unterstützung der Demokratie

In modern polyarchies national elites are facing tremendous challenges caused by societal changes as well as the impact of internationalization. At the same time, conditions for producing political legitimacy have altered fundamentally. Against this background, the article devises an analytical category, termed “trust in elites”. In a first step, the paper provides an explanation for the theoretical relevance of the category’s vertical dimension, referring to transdisciplinary research on “trust” and “confidence” as well as to the concept of political support presented by David Easton. In a second step, suggestions on how the vertical dimension of “trust in elites” may be measured empirically are offered.