Classic Debate Research Articles

Reversing the Two Wrong Turns in the Economic Analysis of International Law: A Club Goods Theory of Treaty Membership & European Integration

Research that uses economic concepts to analyze international law has generated an impressive body of insights but, as this article will argue, it has nonetheless been limited by a pair of methodological missteps. First, law-and-economics scholarship generally assumes that the standard dilemmas of international cooperation do not apply in the case of the European Union, on the grounds that the EU represents a single super-federation rather than an agreement among sovereign states. That position has proven implausible after Brexit, however, and cannot account for the current unraveling of legal coordination across Europe. Second, the literature assumes that treaties are designed to facilitate the provision of global public goods, and has not incorporated the related economic theory of club goods. That decision is also problematic because a vast body of international agreements concern joint investments in club goods, which raise a distinct set of design problems. Thus, the two “wrong turns” in the economic analysis of international law consist of a misinterpretation of European integration and a neglect of club theory. This article not only identifies these gaps in the scholarship but also further shows that they remedy one another when analyzed in parallel. On one hand, club theory supplies a framework that can be used to construct a unified explanation of the three recent waves of European disintegration: the Eurozone financial crisis, the collapse of Schengen Area border controls, and Brexit. This includes their underlying causes, the limits of available policy responses, and implications for the EU going forward. On the other hand, a close examination of the treaties underlying European integration proves useful for understanding how other international club good agreements work. Specifically, it reveals that the legal elements that regulate entry and exit in those agreements serve radically different functions than is otherwise predicted by the prevailing theories of treaty design. The result is to flip some classic debates in international law — such as whether treaties “screen or constrain” member states, and the extent to which “flexibility” in treaty obligations can promote international cooperation — on their heads.

Industrial Policy for a European Industrial Renaissance. A Few Reflections

This paper raises and attempts to address three questions that add to the recent debate on industrial policies to promote a European “industrial renaissance”. We ask (i) What type of de-industrialisation represents a threat for Europe? (ii) What type of structural change can industrial policy steer in a context of increasing international fragmentation of production, both across European countries and worldwide? (iii) What type of industrial policy shall we advocate, that goes beyond the manufacturing sectors? With no pretence to provide all the answers or yet another wish list of policy tools, we argue that we are “doomed to choose” what type of structural transformation is Europe in need of, in a context of harsher global competition from the emerging countries; of staggering income polarisation within Europe itself; of relentless international fragmentation of production processes. First, we claim that industrial policy should target sectors and segments of value chains that support the manufacturing sector and not necessarily represent a hollowing out of the industrial base. Second, industrial policy should target structural transformation alongside large “missions” and learn from classical debates on industrialisation-led development. Interventions should therefore go beyond the traditional vertical versus horizontal tools distinction and complement a “mission oriented” plea with other tools, to avoid yet another “one size fits all” approach.

El estatuto jurídico-político del diputado: entre la lealtad al partido y la lealtad a su electorado

The refusal of fifteen deputies of the Congress to abide by the discipline of vote of its parliamentary group, during the recent session of the investiture of the President of the Government, in October 2016, revived the classic debate on party discipline and the constitutional prohibition of the imperative mandate. This article aims to reflect on whether the unavailability of the seat for the party is sufficient guarantee for the representative mandate and freedom of vote of members, or if political, legislative and jurisdictional measures should be implemented in order to allow to overcome the conflict of loyalties in which members can be found when indications of vote of its group contradict election commitment.

How Can a Taxonomy of Stances Help Clarify Classical Debates on Scientific Change?

In this paper, we demonstrate how a systematic taxonomy of stances can help elucidate two classic debates of the historical turn—the Lakatos–Feyerabend debate concerning theory rejection and the Feyerabend–Kuhn debate about pluralism during normal science. We contend that Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos were often talking at cross-purposes due to the lack of an agreed upon taxonomy of stances. Specifically, we provide three distinct stances that scientists take towards theories: acceptance of a theory as the best available description of its domain, use of a theory in practical applications, and pursuit (elaboration) of a theory. We argue that in the Lakatos–Feyerabend debate, Lakatos was concerned with acceptance whereas Feyerabend was mainly concerned with pursuit. Additionally, we show how Feyerabend and Kuhn’s debate on the role of pluralism/monism in normal science involved a crucial conflation of all three stances. Finally, we outline a few general lessons concerning the process of scientific change.

Power and changing modes of governance in the euro crisis

Which European Union actors are most powerful in the governance of the euro crisis? The euro crisis has reignited the classic debate between intergovernmentalists, who tend to stress the coercive power of dominant member states in the European Council, and supranationalists, who maintain that through the use of institutional power, the Commission, and the European Central Bank turned out the “winners” of the crisis. This article argues that euro crisis governance is best understood not just in terms of one form of power but instead as evolving through different constellations of coercive, institutional, and ideational power that favored different EU actors over the course of the crisis, from the initial fast‐burning phase (2010–2012), where the coercive and ideational power of Northern European member states in the European Council was strongest, to the slow‐burning phase (2012–2016), when greater influence was afforded supranational actors through the use of ideational and institutional power.

Potential natural vegetation and pre‐anthropic pollen records on the Azores Islands in a Macaronesian context

AbstractThis paper discusses the concept of potential natural vegetation (PNV) in the light of the pollen records available to date for the Macaronesian biogeographical region, with emphasis on the Azores Islands. The classical debate on the convenience or not of the PNV concept has been recently revived in the Canary Islands, where pollen records of pre‐anthropic vegetation seemed to strongly disagree with the existing PNV reconstructions. Contrastingly, more recent PNV model outputs from the Azores Islands show outstanding parallelisms with pre‐anthropic pollen records, at least in qualitative terms. We suggest the development of more detailed quantitative studies to compare these methodologies as an opportunity for improving the performance of both. PNV modelling may benefit by incorporating empirical data on past vegetation useful for calibration and validation purposes, whereas palynology may improve past reconstructions by minimizing interpretative biases linked to differential pollen production, dispersal and preservation.

Modelos científicos: significado y papel en la práctica científica- Scientific models: meaning and role in scientific practice

El propósito de este artículo es contribuir a una mejor comprensión de los modelos científicos como uno de los componentes clave de la naturaleza de la ciencia. Para ello se aborda, en primer lugar, el significado epistemológico de los modelos científicos y su papel en la práctica científica. A continuación, se trata la función de los modelos científicos como intermediarios o mediadores entre una teoría y el mundo real, la cual está relacionada con el carácter parcialmente autónomo de los modelos respecto de ambos. Se incluyen varios ejemplos de modelos científicos para ilustrar la exposición sobre el funcionamiento de los modelos científicos. El artículo concluye con una breve referencia a las concepciones epistemológicas semanticista e instrumentalista sobre los modelos, que discurren paralelas al debate clásico entre el realismo y el pragmatismo acerca de la interpretación de las teorías científicas.

The Paradoxes of Codifying Islamic Criminal Law in the Maldives

Utilizing the codification of Islamic Criminal law in the Maldives, this article argues that the process of codifying Islamic law often ignores classical conceptualizations of Islamic criminal law and judicial procedures established as preventative measures against the widespread implementation of Islamic criminal punishments (ḥudūd). Instead of recognizing the legal nuance in classical debates, reliance is placed on a narrow body of texts, and extracted rules are reformed for easy implementation and compliance with modern human rights standards. By ignoring classical discussions of Islamic criminal law, and adopting a singular conception of codification, a paradox emerges wherein the resulting criminal code is less punitive, but more enforceable than its classical counterpart. A second paradox is that on one hand religious legitimacy and moral credibility is desired through the implementation of an Islamic penal code, but on the other, controversial criminalized actions are assumed to be non-prosecutable.

Estado de bienestar: susto o muerte

“Estado de bienestar: susto o muerte” es el segundo artículo de una trilogía sobre el reto de reformar el estado de bienestar para garantizar los derechos civiles y políticos y la sostenibilidad del bienestar social básico. En el primero, “Hamburguesas y eficiencia, del estado de bienestar a la sociedad del bienestar”, se explicaban las causas de la ineficiencia crónica y sistémica del sector público y se proponía la teoría de las tres eses (suprimir, sustituir, simplificar) como única solución. En este se exponen las razones motivadoras del cambio, así como las convicciones, conveniencias y coacciones que responden a cuatro debates clásicos: el debate ético (libertad vs. igualdad), el debate político (democracia liberal vs. socialdemocracia), el debate económico (Keynes vs. Hayek) y el reciente debate jurídico. Asimismo, se exponen las normas de estabilidad presupuestaria y el control del déficit en España.

REFLEXÕES TEÓRICAS SOBRE JUSTIÇA INTERNACIONAL: REVISITANDO HEDLEY BULL

O artigo tem o objetivo de apresentar uma reflexão sobre a influência do racionalismo grociano no debate sobre justiça internacional. O desafio da realização de uma justiça comum entre atores estatais soberanos perpassa debates clássicos da história e da teoria da constituição da sociedade internacional no período pós-guerra. Trata-se de uma pesquisa teórica que visa aprofundar o debate sobre justiça e apresentar um diálogo entre autores de diferentes campos de estudo que não têm sido confrontados em um ambiente interdisciplinar que permita o aprofundamento de conceitos de justiça para pesquisadores de temas jurídicos e políticos internacionais. O argumento do artigo é que a contribuição teórica de Hedley Bull, ao enfrentar as possíveis contradições entre os valores da ordem e da justiça no contexto da anarquia internacional, corrobora com o debate sobre os conceitos e limites de uma justiça internacional. O artigo está dividido em três partes. A primeira parte foca no enquadramento da reflexão de Bull em relação aos debates sobre teoria da justiça. A segunda parte traz a reflexão sobre a subjetividade da justiça internacional. A terceira parte apresenta os problemas conceituais de justiça sob o prisma do argumento da relatividade das prioridades e metas a serem alcançadas. A conclusão orienta a reflexão final sobre a relevância da contribuição de uma perspectiva racional que busca conciliar a prevalência da igualdade jurídica e soberania dos atores estatais com a possível ameaça da ordem. Ficando inconclusa a exploração do tema, pela sua própria natureza, o artigo busca contribuir para uma visão interdisciplinar sobre a combinação das características de sociedade e de anarquia da ordem internacional, ao mesmo tempo, e as vantagens de uma ordem mínima, sob o ponto de vista racional.

La delación premiada en España: instrumentos para el fomento de la colaboración con la justicia

Junto con los clásicos debates jurídicos referidos a la atribución o no al Ministerio Fiscal de la fase de investigación, junto con la introducción en nuestro sistema procesal del principio de oportunidad penal, cada vez cobra mayor atención en España la conveniencia de articular medidas legales que incentiven la colaboración con la Justicia, y en especial, las confesiones y delaciones de criminales arrepentidos, como instrumentos que favorecerían la obtención de valiosa información y fuentes de prueba, sobre todo en lo que se refiere a la delincuencia económica. El presente estudio expone las distintas figuras jurídicas utilizadas actualmente como incentivos para premiar la delación de colaboradores, testigos y acusados, y examina su evolución de cara a su futura incorporación a la normativa procesal española.

Public service in popular culture: the administrative discretion of commissioner gordon and harvey dent

To examine how public servants are depicted in film, I discuss the changes over time of Batmanʼs Commissioner Gordon, particularly his character arc in the contemporary The Dark Knight trilogy. An important aspect of Gordonʼs evolution is in contrast to the filmsʼ other prominent public servant, District Attorney Harvey Dent. The Gordon-Dent contrast illustrates aspects of the Friedrich-Finer debate over administrative discretion, a classic debate in public administration. The trilogyʼs verdict on public service is mixed: the flawed, rule-bending, expedient public servant survives while the fabricated hero is a sham. Commissioner Gordon is far more interesting than he had been for decades, but is he just an expedient bureaucrat ultimately pursuing self preservation? In contrast, the (pre-villain) Harvey Dent, who refuses to compromise his principles, is ultimately undone by his absolutism. For the complexity of his character and its centrality to the plot, I judge the depiction of Commissioner Gordon-warts and all-to be better than simplistic caricatures of bureaucrats and promising for future public servants in film.

Sign Language and the Foundations of Anaphora

Sign language anaphora is often realized very differently from its spoken language counterpart. In simple cases, an antecedent is associated with a position or “locus” in signing space, and an anaphoric link is obtained by pointing toward that locus to recover its semantic value. This mechanism may sometimes be an overt realization of coindexation in formal syntax and semantics. I discuss two kinds of insights that sign language research can bring to the foundations of anaphora. First, in some cases the overt nature of indices in sign language allows one to bring overt evidence to bear on classic debates in semantics. I consider two: the availability of situation-denoting variables in natural language and the availability of binding without c-command. Second, in some cases sign language pronouns raise new challenges for formal semantics. Loci may function simultaneously as formal variables and as simplified depictions of what they denote, requiring the construction of a formal semantics with iconicity to analyze their properties.

Compression in Philosophy

This essay superimposes technical definitions of data compression onto philosophical discussions of aesthetics. Two basic approaches are addressed: abstract compression and generic compression. The first, outlined well in the work of Bernard Stiegler, concerns the classic phenomenological and metaphysical debates around expression, revealing, representation, mimesis, and the “extensions of man.” The second, rather ill-defined thus far, deals with a different set of concerns: encryption, obliteration, unilateral determination, irreversibility, and generic humanity. With the theme of compression in hand, this essay offers an alternative reading of Stiegler's aesthetic theory on the grounds that it is not yet compressive enough.

Ingredients of intelligence: From classic debates to an engineering roadmap.

We were encouraged by the broad enthusiasm for building machines that learn and think in more human-like ways. Many commentators saw our set of key ingredients as helpful, but there was disagreement regarding the origin and structure of those ingredients. Our response covers three main dimensions of this disagreement: nature versus nurture, coherent theories versus theory fragments, and symbolic versus sub-symbolic representations. These dimensions align with classic debates in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, although, rather than embracing these debates, we emphasize ways of moving beyond them. Several commentators saw our set of key ingredients as incomplete and offered a wide range of additions. We agree that these additional ingredients are important in the long run and discuss prospects for incorporating them. Finally, we consider some of the ethical questions raised regarding the research program as a whole.

Where Have All the Peasants Gone?

By revisiting earlier debates around the definition of peasantries and new issues around farming in present-day agricultural regimes, this review underlines the uneven forms of capitalist surplus extraction. After revisiting the classic debate, I explore present-day issues such as market-led agrarian reforms, land grabs, and transnational peasant movements that recenter the peasant debate. The following sections address two expressions of small-scale agricultural production: contract farming and agroecological short-circuit food provisioning. These two varieties of contemporary peasantries express different forms of dependent autonomy and are integrated in value accumulation circuits in different ways. A final section of the article attempts to compare aspects present in agriculture with similar ones present in other sectors of production to show the theoretical value of these discussions.

The Social and Professional Structure of International Justice: From Scholarly Insiders to the Pull of Multinational Corporate Law Firms

Where does international justice draw its authority in an international scene largely driven by self-regulated professional markets for the settlement of transnational disputes? To revisit this classical debate, this article connects the professional and social structure of dispute settlement mechanisms to their social credibility among users of international justice. Drawing on extensive biographical databases, it suggests that the growth of investor-state disputes is favoring a shift from a professional market shaped by scholarly insiders to one dominated by corporate legal elites. It links this dynamic of the field to the contrasted development of the scholarly meritocracy of international adjudicators, and the model of the Wall Street law firm that sustains the expansion of private arbitration. These changes are further reflected in growing alignments within the wider marketplace of users of international justice to structural changes in the global economy that favor the expansion of flexible strategies of dispute settlement.

Assessing the effect of the European elections’ Spitzenkandidaten procedure on the constitution of the European Commission

ABSTRACTIn 2014, Commission President Juncker was elected because he was Spitzenkandidat of the winning party in the European elections. Observers agree that the procedure’s impact on the turnout was low, but that it had an effect on the inter-institutional power play. This paper investigates whether the more legitimised Commission President and the European Parliament (EP) had a greater influence on the constitution of the Commission, understood as the selection of Commissioners and the internal organisation. It is based on the classic debate between supranational and intergovernmental approaches. The paper analyses data on Commissioners, press reports and official documents. It concludes that the Spitzenkandidaten procedure had mixed effects. The selection of Commissioners still follows national logics. Member states aim to maximise their interest by sending loyal politicians, who might secure an important portfolio. The selection of Commissioners follows national, rather than European party-politics. Juncker exerted a limited influence on the selection of Commissioners regarding his quest for more female candidates. The President’s power is limited to the influence prescribed by the Treaty, namely the organisation of the Commission and the allocation of portfolios. Here, his close relation to the EP and his legitimacy derived from his role as Spitzenkandidat played a significant role.

Introduction to research on immigrant and ethnic minority families in Europe

1.IntroductionResearch on immigrants and ethnic minorities has two broad objectives. First, the study of people who move from one societal context to another offers a unique opportunity to gain a better understanding of how various factors influence individuals' choices and actions. The research on immigrants and their descendants thus contributes to wider social science discussions on the role of structure and human agency and economy and culture in human action and social phenomena (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984). These discussions are closely related to the classical methodological dilemmas of social science research, the roots of which extend back to ancient Greek philosophy. Should social scientists explain social phenomena from 'bottom up' or from 'top down' (individualism versus holism) and should they look for universalistic (science-based) explanations or (context-) specific accounts (Bhaskar 1978; Hollis 1994; Von Wright 1971)?Second, research on immigrants and ethnic minorities is very much driven by the desire and need to improve our understanding of the factors that promote or hinder successful integration of immigrants and their descendants (Kulu and Gonzalez-Ferrer 2014). While conventional research has considered assimilation of immigrants to be the expected outcome, recent literature has emphasised the importance of immigrant integration and cultural diversity (Alba and Nee 1997; Berry 1992; Gordon 1964; Portes and Zhou 1993). It is normally desired that immigrants and ethnic minorities achieve a high level of structural assimilation or integration, i.e., they should have the same educational, employment, and housing opportunities and outcomes as natives, but they may maintain their cultural distinctiveness, e.g., practise their own religion or speak their own language at home. The recent literature on transnationalism has challenged the classical debate of assimilation/integration versus separation/marginalisation, arguing that immigrants and their descendants may wish to live 'in-between' old and new home countries and that this practice should be supported (Glick Schiller 2010; Vertovec 2004). However, it remains far from clear whether living in 'transnational space' is a new form of successful integration in our globalised world, or rather reflects marginalisation (or incomplete integration) in a world where nation states are still important.There is a large literature investigating the employment and educational patterns of immigrants and their descendants (Adsera and Chiswick 2007; Kogan 2007; Rebhun 2010; Rendall et al. 2010). Decent educational and employment prospects are seen as critical for the successful integration of immigrants and their descendants and are assumed to significantly shape other domains of their lives. Research on family dynamics among immigrants and their descendants is equally important in this context. Family patterns of immigrants and ethnic minorities provide another perspective on their integration or the lack of it; family lives are also interwoven with both structural and cultural dimensions of the integration process. Further, research has argued that the prevalence of inter-ethnic marriages is the ultimate litmus test of immigrant integration in a society (Coleman 1994; Feng et al. 2012; Kalmijn 1998). The spread of mixed marriages can be seen as a signal that there are no (more) borders between groups that cannot be crossed in society, leaving a free choice in the marriage market for both majority and ethnic minority populations. Besides the choice of partner, the timing and type of union are also important indicators of changing social norms and behaviour among immigrants. These changes often depend on the time spent in the host country, or only become visible in the following generations.The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the special collection of Demographic Research on partnership dynamics among immigrants and their descendants in five selected European countries. …

Sampling Assumptions Affect Use of Indirect Negative Evidence in Language Learning.

A classic debate in cognitive science revolves around understanding how children learn complex linguistic patterns, such as restrictions on verb alternations and contractions, without negative evidence. Recently, probabilistic models of language learning have been applied to this problem, framing it as a statistical inference from a random sample of sentences. These probabilistic models predict that learners should be sensitive to the way in which sentences are sampled. There are two main types of sampling assumptions that can operate in language learning: strong and weak sampling. Strong sampling, as assumed by probabilistic models, assumes the learning input is drawn from a distribution of grammatical samples from the underlying language and aims to learn this distribution. Thus, under strong sampling, the absence of a sentence construction from the input provides evidence that it has low or zero probability of grammaticality. Weak sampling does not make assumptions about the distribution from which the input is drawn, and thus the absence of a construction from the input as not used as evidence of its ungrammaticality. We demonstrate in a series of artificial language learning experiments that adults can produce behavior consistent with both sets of sampling assumptions, depending on how the learning problem is presented. These results suggest that people use information about the way in which linguistic input is sampled to guide their learning.