The Perks of Being a Lawmaker: Returns to Office as a Legislative Goal

Extant literature demonstrates that holding public office is financially lucrative. Yet little is known about which sitting legislators profit from office. Relying on original data of members of the Florida legislature, I estimate predictors of income growth among sitting legislators. I find that legislators whose vote share increases by 10 percentage points between elections report income growth of nearly $20,000. This finding is robust to estimation technique and model specification, indicating that electoral safety is tied to income growth. Lawmakers appointed to legislative posts with agenda‐setting power do not obtain additional income. These data demonstrate the market values of electorally dominant legislators.     

Administrators and professionals in local government

This article evaluates the shift to an executive and scrutiny model in local government by assessing the changes at Devon County Council. Interviews were used to evaluate support for the changes and identify the key issues and problems. Most members had little enthusiasm for the reforms, support for the changes was dependent on the loyalty of Liberal Democrat backbenchers towards the leadership and central government's legislative agenda. The analysis revealed substantial problems with the operation of the reformed structure and suggested that the changes might fail to deliver the benefits expected by central government.     

Does Country-Level Social Disorganization Increase Terrorist Attacks?

This study examines the effects of a measure of country-level social disorganization on levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities in 101 countries from 1981 to 2010. We measure social disorganization as the presence of state instability: revolutionary and ethnic war, adverse regime change, and genocide. The classic social disorganization perspective posits that individuals experiencing these types of rapid social change will be freed from the institutional and informal restraints that bind them to society, and keep them conforming to social norms and laws. We examine the extent to which this reasoning applies to the number of terrorist attacks and fatalities from terrorist attacks occurring in countries. To control for the possibility that better functioning states are better able to prevent terrorist attacks, we include two measures of state capacity. We find that controlling for state capacity and a wide variety of other variables, social disorganization is consistently associated with increases in terrorist attacks and fatalities. We consider implications of the results for future research and policy.     

Does the Emperor Have Financial Crisis Clothes? Reflections on the Legal Basis of the European Banking Authority

The European Union institutional package launched in response to the financial crisis used Article 114 TFEU as its legal basis. The author explores the legal basis for one of the European Supervisory Authorities recently established – the European Banking Authority (EBA). The use of Article 114 TFEU, the main Treaty basis used to harmonise laws in order to further the internal market, as the foundation for the EBA, is considered in detail. A paradox of contemporary EU institutional law is assessed here, considering whether on the one hand, the EBA is functionally both too narrow and too broad as a matter of law, while on the other hand, it may prove to be central to restoring confidence in EU regulatory powers, rendering it ‘too big to fail,’ despite its slender foundations in Article 114 TFEU.     

Characterization of gunpowder samples using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS)

Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) was utilized to obtain characteristic mass spectra from three different smokeless powders and six different black powder samples. In these mass spectra, peaks indicative of both the organic and inorganic additive constituents in the gunpowders were observed. TOF-SIMS was able to successfully differentiate between the different black and smokeless gunpowder samples analyzed with the aid of principal components analysis (PCA), a multivariate statistical analysis approach often used to reduce the dimensionality of complex data. TOF-SIMS was also used to obtain information about the spatial distribution of the various additives contained within the gunpowder samples. SIMS imaging demonstrated that that the samples could potentially be characterized by their 2-D structure, which varied from sample to sample. These results clearly demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing TOF-SIMS as a tool for the characterization and differentiation of gunpowder samples for general forensic applications.     

On the Use of Law in Transatlantic Relations: Legal Dialogues between the EU and US

Law plays a significant role in contemporary transatlantic relations outside of the bilateral context which, from the perspective of EU external relations law, might seem neither conventional nor apparent. Non‐bilateral transatlantic relations increasingly deploy law as a communication tool between the two legal orders. For example, in 2011, the US intervened informally and anonymously in the formulation of EU legislation, while the US House of Representatives passed legislation to prohibit the impact of EU law upon the US legal order. Another example is constituted by EU amicus curiae submissions before the US Supreme Court in death penalty cases. The so‐called Brussels effect is also the subject of recent scholarship, assessing the perceived spillover effect of EU regulatory standards onto US rules. The paper provides many vivid examples of the variable institutional and legal components of transatlantic relations not usually accounted for in scholarship on transatlantic relations.