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Domestic Level (domestic + level)
Selected AbstractsReferendums and the Political Constitutionalisation of the EUEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2008Min Shu One is the revision of national constitutions to accommodate the integration project at the national level. The other is the construction of transnational rules to regulate novel inter-state relationships at the European level. EU referendums are contextualised in such a duel constitutionalisation process. At the domestic level, EU referendums handle the debates on national constitutional revision. At the transnational level, these popular votes ratify supranational constitutional documents. The article comparatively analyses three types of EU referendums,membership, policy and treaty referendums,according to this analytical framework, exploring the campaign mobilisation of voters, national governments, and transnational institutions, and examining the legal and political interaction between referendums and European integration. A key finding is that, as the dual constitutionalisation process deepens and widens, entrenched domestic players and restrained transnational actors are under increasing pressure to ,voice' themselves in EU referendums. [source] International Regimes, Domestic Veto-Players, and Capital Controls Policy StabilityINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2003Scott L. Kastner States' decisions about regulating international capital movements are shaped in part by institutions and partisanship at the domestic level, but the effects of domestic-level variables are themselves contingent on the constraints imposed by the international system. We amend the veto-players hypothesis to account for the effects of international regimes on the political influence of domestic players in state decision-making. The history of changes in international financial regulations over the past four decades provides an ideal case to study the interaction of international regimes and domestic decision-making systems. We create a data set of all capital controls policy changes that 19 OECD parliamentary democracies made during the years 1951,1998. Using these new data, we find that states with a higher number of veto-player parties in government enact fewer capital controls policy changes. Furthermore, ideologically right-of-center governments in these industrialized countries are more likely than others to enact capital controls liberalizations. We also find, however, that the independent effects of these domestic-level variables disappear after the mid-1980s, when the systemic constraints imposed on individual states increased substantially. [source] Explaining Europe's Monetary Union: A Survey of the LiteratureINTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2009Tal Sadeh This article offers a survey of the literature on European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), in particular works that deal with the question why EMU happened and, based on this literature, what one might be able to conclude about its sustainability. It reviews the literature by dividing up the analyses into four categories: those that explain EMU at the global and at the European Union (EU) levels of analysis, explanations at the national level, and explanations at the domestic level of analysis. The review suggests that EMU was a particular European response to global developments, which was possible because of existing EU institutions. EMU was causally motivated by a Franco-German deal, balancing national interests. Domestic motives reflect essentially opportunistic motives, and thus, cannot explain EMU. In our judgment the review suggests that Europe's single currency will remain sustainable as long as the Franco-German political deal sticks, the belief in the "sound money" idea remains hegemonic in Europe, and the losers from EMU are underrepresented in national and EU institutions. While opportunistic domestic motives cannot explain embarking on a long-term project, they can definitely be sufficient to derail such a project. [source] Governance ,to Go': Domestic Actors, Institutions and the Boundaries of the PossibleJCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 4 2001Laura Cram How to ,bring Europe closer to the people' has long been a preoccupation of the policy-maker at the EU level and has recently been restated as a goal of the member governments in the Treaty of Nice. Currently, the Commission is addressing this issue through the White Paper on European Governance. Here, it is argued that the focus on ,governance' as a strategy for inclusion was ill founded and underestimated the likely conflict with existing ,governance' regimes at the domestic level. Moreover, the pursuit of ,heroic' Europeanism with a concomitant emergence of a sense of ,Europeanness' or a European ,identity' as advocated in the Commission's work programme for the White Paper on European Governance was misguided. Drawing on empirical research into the activities of women's organizations in Greece, Ireland and the UK, it is argued that the extent to which EU level action may [source] Natural gas in India's energy managementOPEC ENERGY REVIEW, Issue 1 2007Muhammad Azhar Thanks to the continuous implementation of liberalisation and reforms, the Indian economy has become a significant energy consumer. Further, the fast growing economy is expected to result in massive and unprecedented growth in energy consumption in India. This is sure to have important ramifications for the domestic energy sector, as well as global energy market. At the domestic level, this resulted in new discoveries of hydrocarbon resources. However, the growth in energy consumption is so high that the old, as well as newly discovered hydrocarbon resources would not be able to fulfil the growing demand for energy in the Indian economy. Hence, Indian economy would remain dependent on the global market for the supply of hydrocarbon resources. India has been adopting various strategies to manage her energy requirement and Natural gas is slated to play an important role in India's energy management. This paper therefore, attempts to study the importance of natural gas in this context. [source] Externalised Justice and Democratisation: Lessons from the Pinochet CasePOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2006Madeleine Davis The attempt to try Pinochet in Spain exemplified and publicised a trend to use ,externalised justice' to tackle impunity for human rights crimes. It also demonstrated the possibilities and limitations of externalised justice initiatives, in terms of securing democracy at the national level, and of advancing accountability for serious crimes under international law. In Chile, Argentina and Spain the Pinochet affair served to restart stalled impulses towards accountability, accelerate democratic reform and challenge the legitimacy of compromises conceded during earlier democratic transitions. With regard to the wider role of international law in limiting impunity, expectations for rapid or consistent replication of ,the Pinochet precedent' have not been met. Despite some notable achievements, the exercise of universal jurisdiction by national courts remains inconsistent and controversial. The International Criminal Court (ICC) provides a new mechanism for external justice. An aggressive US campaign to undermine it, and to reverse progress in international law, is a serious obstacle to fulfilment of the ICC's enforcement role. However, at the domestic level the ICC may have similar indirect effects to the Pinochet litigation, boosting domestic enforcement prospects and strengthening democratic commitment. In both cases the key role for externalised justice is as stimulus or back-up. This suggests that progress in tackling impunity depends on incremental and dynamic interaction between domestic and international law, and between national and transnational actors. [source] Developing Conceptualisations of Europeanisation: A Study of Financial ServicesPOLITICS, Issue 1 2004Kerry E. Howell In its most explicit form Europeanisation is conceptualised as the process of downloading European Union (EU) directives, regulations and institutional structures to the domestic level. However, this conceptualisation of Europeanisation has been extended in the literature in terms of up-loading to the EU shared beliefs, informal and formal rules, discourse, identities and vertical and horizontal policy transfer. This article undertakes a study of banking, investment and insurance directives to analyse the impact of Europeanisation on the UK financial services sector. [source] Crisis, Continuity and Change: Neoliberalism, the Left and the Future of CapitalismANTIPODE, Issue 2010Noel Castree Abstract:, This essay's point of departure is the coincident economic and environmental "crises" of our time. I locate both in the dynamics of capital accumulation on a world-scale, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O'Connor. I ask whether the recent profusion of "crisis talk" in the public domain presents an opportunity for progressive new ideas to take hold now that "neoliberalism" has seemingly been de-legitimated. My answer is that a "post-neoliberal" future is probably a long way off. I make my case in two stages and at two geographical scales. First, I examine the British social formation as currently constituted and explain why even a leading neoliberal state is failing to reform its ways. Second, I then scale-up from the domestic level to international affairs. I examine cross-border emissions trading,arguably,the,policy tool for mitigating the very real prospects of significant climate change this century. The overall conclusion is this: even though the "first" and "second" contradictions of capital have manifested themselves together and at a global level, there are currently few prospects for systemic reform (never mind revolution) led by a new, twenty-first century "red-green" Left. [source] The ,Feminisation of Poverty' in Costa Rica: To What Extent a Conundrum?BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 1 2009SYLVIA CHANT Quantitative data from Costa Rica suggest that poverty is ,feminising', especially in respect of female-headed households, who, since the early 1990s, have constituted a progressively greater share of the population classified as poor. This presents something of a conundrum given significant attempts on the part of the state to promote gender equality and to direct public expenditure to low-income women. Some light on this apparent paradox is shed by qualitative fieldwork undertaken in Guanacaste province where female headship seems to have become a more viable, and sometimes, preferred, option among women on account of its role in enhancing well-being. This is largely on account of social and legal changes that have contributed to making women less inclined to tolerate gender inequalities at the domestic level. The findings underline the importance of embracing gendered subjectivities in analyses of the ,feminisation of poverty' and invite caution about the latter being a unilaterally negative phenomenon. [source] Lawyers, trees and money: British Columbia forest policy and the convergence of international and domestic trade considerationsCANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 4 2005Christopher J. Kukucha At the domestic level, the BC government maintains significant control over softwood lumber as a result of provincial land ownership, executive dominance, and the role of the Ministry of Forests. This is reinforced by a close relationship between the bureaucracy and key industry associations. Under the New Democratic Party government of the 1990s, however, the policy relevance of environment, labour, and aboriginal groups increased. The election of the BC Liberals, however, diminished these interests, with the possible exception of First Nations groups. It is also important, however, to acknowledge the significance of international developments. Institutionally, these pressures contributed to bureaucratic restructuring and a changing "culture" within the Ministry of Forests. Industry relations have also been influenced by consolidation of ownership, bilateral lumber disputes with the United States, and the increasing role of non-elected legal representatives. In addition, environment and labour interests were empowered by external funding, high export demands, and a low Canadian dollar. Although these developments have created an increasingly complex policy process, it is apparent that domestic considerations remain dominant, especially traditional participants, such as the Ministry of Forests and other specific setoral interests. Sommaire: Les developements nationaux et internationaux ont des répercussions directes sur la politique forestière en Colombie-Britannique. À l'échelle nationale, le gouvernement de la C.-B. maintient un important contrôle sur le bois d'evre en rai-son de la propriété foncière provinciale, de la dominance de I'exécutif, et du rôle du ministere des ForCts. Ceci est renforcb par des liens étroits entre la bureaucratie et les associations clés de l'industrie. Cependant, sous le gouvernement du Nouveau Parti Démocratique des années 1990, la pertinence des politiques des groupes environne-mentaux, syndicaux et autochtones s'est accrue. L'élection des Libéraux et C.-B. a réduit ces intéréts, a l'exception des groupes des Premières Nations. Cependant, il faut aussi reconnaître l'importance des développements intemationaux. Sur le plan institutionnel, ces pressions ont contribuéà une restructuration bureaucratique et a l'évolution de la « culture » au sein du ministère des Forê Les relations indus-trielles ont aussi été influencées par une consolidation de la propriété, les conflits bilatéraux avec les États-Unis au sujet du bois, et le rde croissant des mandataires légaux non élus. En outre, les intér& environnementaux et de main-d'aeuvre ont vu leurs pouvoirs accrus par le financement externe, les demandes d'exportation Plevees et la faiblesse du dollar canadien. Quoique ces changements aient Créé un processus de politiques de plus en plus complexe, il est évident que les considérations nationales dominent, en particulier celles qui sont préconisées par les participants traditionnels, comme le ministére des Forêts et d'autres intérêts sectoriels particuliers. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||