Search results for "Public Administration"

Performing transnational family with the affordances of mobile apps : a case study of Polish mothers living in Finland

2020

Affordances provided by digital technologies and mobile apps (WhatsApp, Skype, Messenger) help in maintaining familyhood. These mobile apps enable the creation of in-app family groups. They also afford image sharing, which is used for phatic purposes. Digital connectivity provides the illusions of togetherness and belonging, and allows for performing family in a transnational context (emotional transnationalism). However, it also generates the feelings of guilt through infrequent communication. In the auto-driven visual elicitation interviews, the study looks at family constellations and technologically mediated communication from the perspective of five Polish mothers living in Finland. Ap…

Impact of the Agent’s Environment on Discretion in the Field of EU Conflict Resolution

2017

Employing an agent–principal perspective on EU conflict resolution and focusing on the politics of discretion, we argue that the context in which the agent acts affects the principal–agent relation. Our conceptualization draws on the agent’s actions as a source of discretion, which can be either an unintentional product of the characteristics of the external environment in which the agent performs (structure-induced discretion) or a product of intentionally pursued agent action (interest-induced discretion). Focusing particularly on the European External Action Service, we find that the agent can exploit urgency and third party interplay as characteristics of EU conflict resolution in order…

It’s a matter of confidence. Institutions, government stability and economic outcomes

2021

In this paper we analyse the effect of constitutional structures over policy outcomes. In particular, we exploit the heterogeneity in parliamentary systems deriving from the presence and the use of the confidence vote to investigate whether stable and unstable parliamentary systems behave differently in terms of the policies they implement. This finer partition of parliamentary systems allows us to identify effects that are more robust than the ones previously discussed in the literature. We show that the difference between presidential and parliamentary systems documented in previous works is driven by a difference between presidential and stable parliamentary systems. We suggest that poss…

Mediation and Private International Law: Improving Free Circulation of Mediation Agreements Across the EU

2016

This paper, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs upon request by the JURI Committee, examines the issues arising in the context of cross-border mediation. Cross-border litigation has increased steadily in recent years in Europe as a consequence of the consolidation of the European unification process. The enactment of Directive 2008/52/EC has certainly led to the presence of mediation legislation in the EU Member States. But many important differences can still be ascertained in relation to the legal framework developed, which affect key aspects of mediation. For mediation to obtain full endorsement by citizens in the fu…

An Undying Breed? The Electoral Mobilization of Supporters’ Networks by the Conservative and Labour Parties in the UK

2020

International audience

Horizontal Cooperation in the Autonomous State: The Conference of Autonomous Presidents

2013

One of the most important constitutional problems in our country, and one that has not yet been solved, is precisely the territorial distribution and organisation of power. Our Constitution defined a State that could be territorially decentralised, leaving it to the Autonomy Statutes and other laws on development to give it its final shape. The State has now reached decentralisation levels that were unthinkable at the time when the Constitution was adopted. The Autonomous Communities have a consolidated institutional organisation, and they have undertaken numerous powers successfully. However, important deficiencies still exist in vertical cooperation relations—between the State and the Aut…

Reforms and decentralization: friends or foes

2013

Systemic concerns about markets, capitalism and the role of the state in the economy are salient again. Relatively large-scale reforms of economic and social arrangements are seriously considered. Historical experience suggests that reforms of that kind are sometimes associated with important changes in institutional arrangements pertaining to political decentralization. To explore the relationship between economic reforms and decentralization, the paper argues that a reform has two dimensions. It is a process and it is a design. The organization of the paper is inspired by that distinction. For economists, it seems natural to reason in terms of design -- that is, to perceive reform as the …

Language Planning in Latvia as a Struggle for National Sovereignty

2018

Focuses in particular on the language policies of the Second Independence period, directed at ensuring the Latvian language the status of sole official language of the country. The chapter also examines the Russian-Latvian ethno-linguistic ‘cleavage’ in the context of the new language policies.

Journal of Economics and Management Research, Volume 7

2018

Green and Greenback

2003

The low-cost hypothesis predicts that the strength of effects of environmental concern on environmental behavior diminishes with increasing behavioral costs. Thus, environmental concern influences environmental behavior primarily in situations and under conditions connected with low costs and little inconvenience for individual actors. In a first step, we develop and specify this hypothesis. Referring to two procedures, we then test it on the basis of an environmental survey of a random sample of 2307 respondents from the German population. The empirical evidence is positive. The low-cost hypothesis is not confined to the area of environmental research. It points to general limits of attit…