Search results for "Law and economics"

Elections ordinaires et aménagements constitutionnels

2001

It is widely held that voting in the course of ordinary elections has no significant influence on the constitutional regime or order of a country. At least three powerful arguments are provided in support of that view. First, to claim that, at the same time as they play, players can change the rules is, to say the least, logically puzzling. A second argument refers to the motivations and possibilities of voters : voters, this argument says, are not really interested in constitutional issues and, even if they were, are particularly ill-equiped to understand their implications. The third argument rests on the observation of what obtains in practice : as a matter of fact, constitutional issues…

Challenges for Further Development

2014

After discussion of the EU law on IGOs, including applicable Regulations within the EU direct protection system and legal acts within the EU indirect protection system, it would be appropriate to finish the discussion in Part II of the book by providing a critical overview of the existing regulatory framework of the regulation of IGOs in the EU law, as well as pointing out possibilities for further development of the EU law in this field.

Comment on the editorial ‘The secret ways of scientists’ in EMBO reports , December 2000

2001

I read ‘The secret ways of scientists’ with much interest and in principle I closely share the view expressed there. However, I am rather suspicious that such a view no longer reflects the truth. It appears to me that the tendency among scientists to start their own biotech companies may lead to a corruption of values and create a rather strange mixture of attitudes. The editorial states that ‘our …

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: ADAM SMITH’S THEORY OF SENTIMENTAL LAW AND ECONOMICS

2020

For Adam Smith, a crime is not the result of a rational calculation of loss and gain but the consequence of envy and a vain desire to parade wealth to attract the approbation of others, combined with a natural systematic bias in overestimating the probability of success. Similarly, Smith does not conceive of legal sanctions as a rational deterrent but as deriving from the feeling of resentment. While the prevailing approach of the eighteenth century is a rational explanation of crime and a utilitarian use of punishment, Adam Smith instead builds his theory of criminal behavior and legal prosecution consistently on the sentiments. A well-functioning legal system is thus an unintended consequ…

Raymond Williams on culture and society: essential writings

2015

Jim McGuigan’s (2014) collection of the ‘most sociological writings’ of Raymond Williams is entitled Raymond Williams on Culture and Society: Essential Writings. The volume consists of 20 chapters ...

Integración: una cuestión de derechos

2010

This article achieves a comparative analysis between the Citizenship and Integration Programme (2007-2010) and the spanish Migration Bill Project. Firstly, it aims to analyze whether the concept of integration, as it was introduced as a general principle within the Migration Bill, is consistent with the concept of the Programme. Secondly, it is about to examine how the notion of integration affects some of the provisions, which are introduced by the law reform, especially on fundamental rights. Finally, this leads to assess the implications and strains between migration control policies and integration policies about migrants’.

Enduring the Autoimmune Aporia of Democratic Sovereignty

2021

The aim of this article is to read Rogues, in order to show that Derrida is neither a philosopher of democracy nor a critic of sovereignty , but rather a thinker of democratic sovereignty. Taking my cue from his Aporias, I argue that democratic sovereignty is aporetically in excess over itself, for it is based on articulating the path through the im-possible passage from the unconditional injunction of the ‘promise’ to the exigency of sovereignty. That is why it can neither be absorbed into the conditions of any existing democracy nor abstracted into any pure identity of sovereignty. Political trends today fail in enduring the aprioricity of aporia, as neoliberals valorize the posited condi…

Book Review: Dialectics in Social Thought

2014

Peace as a Priority

2012

Chapter 9 underlines how since its inception the European Union has presented itself to the world as a great “peace project”. The European project consists in creating a “community of peace and democracy” based on the conviction that peace does not emerge from dissuasion but rather out of cooperation. Europe attempts to remodel the world by realising the Kantian dream of “perpetual peace”, which is not based on the balance of military powers (or the supremacy of one of them) but rather on the universal recognition of the dignity of the human being, on the universal guarantee of human rights, and on sustainable human development, which means superseding the current neoliberal model of global…

Split-ticket voting in German Federal elections, 1953–90: an example of sophisticated balloting?

1999

Abstract Though the German electoral system has provided the opportunity of split-ticket voting since 1953, until now there has only been mere speculation concerning the rationality of ticket-splitting. In this paper we examine the rationality thesis empirically, using data provided by the official representative electoral statistics of the Federal Republic. Modifying the Downsian notion of rational voting, rational ticket-splitting is defined in terms of coalition building and of voters' expectations of the electoral success of candidates and parties. Applying this conceptual framework, it will be shown that the combinations of first and second votes actually chosen by a majority of the Ge…