Parliamentary Committees Of Inquiry Research Articles

EU: Applicability of Data Protection Law to Parliamentary Inquiry Committee in Member State

EU: Applicability of Data Protection Law to Parliamentary Inquiry Committee in Member State

Gestão empresarial, trabalho e um mercado urbano em disputa

Abstract This article retraces the conflicts that emerged during the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (PIC) of Feira da Madrugada to discuss the expansion of the entrepreneurial management of popular trade areas, as well as changes in workers' experiences. Considering the PIC event as an arena in which the management of this commercial area was viewed as a "public problem", it is argued that the center of the conflict was marked by tensions between two distinct perspectives on popular markets and legitimate uses of urban space: a perspective that recognizes a "social function" in these activities, and a market rationale that identifies urban popular trade areas as favorable for investment and to foster entrepreneurship.

Political Control and Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry: Strengthening the Quality of Democracy

In Austria and Germany’s parliamentary system, committees of inquiry represent the most comprehensive political control instruments. With the help of these committees, members of parliament can gain precise insight into the work of the government. These insights are necessary when suspicious cases are brought to public attention, from which the government’s actions and the abuse of power come to light. Based on a first-ever qualitative case study of investigative committees in Austria and Germany, this article focuses on the results of these parliamentary committees. By scrutinizing these authorities and institutions, the members of parliament acquire extensive knowledge of the actions. This assists in reforms and leads to innovative effects on the democratic quality of the political systems. By comparing these results and with the help of the central analytical framework of Hans Joachim Lauth’s 15-field matrix, this study discovers that committees of inquiry can influence all areas of politics, law, and society. This influence occurs primarily through knowledge generation on real political processes, and provides a significant contribution to knowledge democracy.

Agitadores e subversivos: repressão, perseguição e violações dos direitos indígenas pela ditadura militar

O presente artigo analisa as ações de espionagem e repressão dos governos militares brasileiros sobre as organizações dos povos indígenas e seus apoiadores na região Sul do Brasil. A política indigenista no período de 1964 a 1985, passou por diferentes processos de investigação, como as Comissões Parlamentares de Inquérito no Congresso Nacional (1964, 1968, 1977); o inquérito instaurado por Jader de Figueiredo Correia para investigar as ações do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios; a extinção desse órgão e a criação da Fundação Nacional do Índio; as mudanças nos direitos indígenas na Reforma Constitucional de 1968; e, a criação do Estatuto do Índio (Lei 6001/1973). Essas ações, no âmbito administrativo e legal, geraram profundas mudanças nos cotidianos das comunidades indígenas. Apesar do amparo legal aos indígenas, as relações promíscuas dos servidores públicos com setores econômicos e a estrutura de exploração dos recursos naturais das terras Indígenas provocaram violências sem precedentes. O movimento indígena passou a ser considerado “subversivo” e altamente perigoso para o regime. Na última década do governo ditatorial, os indígenas se tornaram os inimigos internos a serem combatidos, e a criação e aparelhamento da polícia indígena fazia parte da rotina de controle exercida nos Postos Indígenas e nos Presídios Indígenas. Porém, a partir de 1974 eles não estão mais sozinhos, além de estarem articulados nas assembleias indígenas contam com apoio de um importante setor da Igreja Católica que também passa a ser atacada e espionada pelo Regime.

Die Effektivität parlamentarischer Opposition. Überlegungen de lege lata et ferenda unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Urteils des Bundesverfassungsgerichts vom 3 . Mai 2016

Although the right to form and exercise parliamentary opposition has always been recognized as an essential part of the free democratic basic order, there is widespread disagreement within jurisprudence about the specific status of oppositional actors in the German Bundestag . The ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court of May 3, 2016 has provided little clarity in this respect . While the court rightly recognizes the principle of effective opposition, many issues remain unclear, particularly with regard to the constitutional derivation on the one hand and the practical consequences of the principle on the other . This contribution attempts to answer these questions and finally pleads for an opposition-sensitive design of the instruments of parliamentary committees of inquiry and abstract norm control in order to ensure the effectiveness of parliamentary opposition also by formal law .

La paralización de una comisión parlamentaria de investigación vulnera el derecho de sus miembros al ejercicio de las funciones representativas

La sentencia supone una nueva contribución al extenso proceso de construcción jurisprudencial del derecho al acceso a cargos públicos del artículo 23.2 CE, al concluir que la dilación excesiva e injustificada de los trabajos de una comisión de investigación creada en el seno de las Cortes de Castilla y León, equivalente a su paralización objetiva, afecta al núcleo esencial del ius in officium de los procuradores recurrentes porque pone en riesgo el cumplimiento de la finalidad para la que la comisión fue creada y restringe o impide el ejercicio del cargo por parte de los miembros de la misma.

The Italian parliamentary committee of inquiry on brigandage in the Neapolitan provinces. Political practices and institutional dynamics (1862–63)

ABSTRACT The study of brigandage in Italy has been a popular historical topic. The works of Franco Molfese, Giorgio Candeloro, Roberto Martucci and Alfonso Scirocco – just to name a few – have largely investigated the tangles of this phenomenon. They have attempted to explain the nature and features of brigandage. Despite this, it is notable that to date none of the efforts made on the subject by the literature has sought to shed light on the role played by the parliamentary committee of inquiry on brigandage in the Neapolitan provinces, established by the Italian Parliament on 17 December 1862. This historiographical gap is one of the most widespread lack of historical-institutional and historical-juridical studies of the Italian area related to the institutionalization of the parliamentary committees of inquiry. This article aims to investigate the creation, composition, organization, assignments and activities carried out by the parliamentary committee of inquiry on brigandage. It will do so by analyzing a selection of correspondence kept in the Historical Archive of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, the Archive of the Royal Chamber, as well as by examining the relevant contemporary literature on the subject.

Las comisiones de investigación del Parlamento Europeo. Un instrumento de control necesitado de reforma

It should be recognized the existence of too many limits in the European regulation on the parliamentary committees of inquiry. It should be appealed to the European Parliament, now empowered by art. 226.3 TFEU, to exercise its own initiative to promote, with the assistance of the Commission and the Council, a new regulation to that effect. Thereby it is urgent to correct the most important shortcomings observed in the current legislation in order to improve the functioning and efficiency of the committees activities. The main goal to achieve should be to broaden and strengthen the powers of the European Parliament, which is, after all, the most democratic institution in the Union, but which, nevertheless, still has restricted instruments of political control. In that sense it should be desirable to promote the full equivalence of those instruments with those already enjoyed by their counterparts in the Member States.

Argumentative Patterns in the Political Domain: The Case of European Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry

In this paper, close attention is paid to the argumentative patterns resulting from combining pragmatic argumentation in which a recommendation is made with arguments in which the majority is invoked. I focus on such argumentative patterns as employed by European parliamentary committees of inquiry conducting inquiries into the activity of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. By incorporating legal and political insights about the activity of these parliamentary committees of inquiry into a pragma-dialectical argumentative approach, an analysis will be given of the selected argumentative pattern. This analysis will reveal which standpoints are supported by which arguments and how these arguments relate to each other to increase the acceptability of the recommendation made. In addition, the analysis will explain the arguer’s argumentative choices in the pattern employed.

The analysis and containment of organized crime in Europe: an interview with Cyrille Fijnaut

This email interview with Cyrille Fijnaut was conducted during 2013 and 2014. It discusses Fijnaut’s background, influences, career and current thinking and activities from his early career in the Dutch police in the 1960s, through to his work as a criminologist for academia and governments. His main research interests are related to organized crime and terrorism, international police and judicial cooperation, comparative criminal procedure and police law, the history of European and American criminology and of policing in Europe, and police and judicial cooperation in the Benelux. In these fields he has written and edited some 75 books and published hundreds of articles in national and international journals and edited books. In 2004 he edited together with Letizia Paoli, Organized Crime in Europe: Concepts, Patterns and Control Policies in the European Union and Beyond. In addition he has worked in the last 20 years as an expert for a number of governmental and parliamentary committees of inquiry in Belgium and the Netherlands with regard to organized and professional crime problems and in relation to security issues. Currently he is working on a book on the future of police and judicial cooperation in the framework of the internal and external security policies of the European Union.

O monstro contemporâneo: notas sobre a construção da pedofilia como "causa política" e "caso de polícia"

Baseado em uma etnografia da Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito (CPI) da Pedofilia, no Senado Federal brasileiro, e das investigações da Polícia Federal em torno das redes de pornografia infantil na internet, o objetivo do artigo é analisar as correlações entre a construção da "pedofilia" como causa política e caso de polícia e a consequente produção do "pedófilo" como novo monstro contemporâneo. Na arena pública da CPI, especial atenção é conferida à centralidade das emoções e ao uso político das imagens de pornografia infantil. Nas investigações policiais, por sua vez, o foco é direcionado para a ação policial de identificação dos "fatos" e incriminação do "culpado". Por fim, é discutida a hipótese de que os principais "alvos" da "cruzada antipedofilia" são responsabilizados não tanto pelo que eles fazem (divulgar, trocar, distribuir ou adquirir, possuir, armazenar imagens pornográficas envolvendo menores de idade), mas pelo que suas ações revelam sobre seus desejos e os perigos que estes representam, sugerindo que esse é um dos principais motivos que explicam a frequente confusão e sobreposição das categorias "pornografia infantil na internet" e "pedofilia" nos discursos públicos.

"All against pedophilia": ethnographic notes about a contemporary moral crusade

Based on an ethnographic fieldwork carried out within the Brazilian Senate's inquiry committee on Pedophilia and in the Federal Police Department, the aim of this paper is to analyze the strategies and the effects of the conceptualization and the combat of the phenomenon of sexual violence against children as "pedophilia" and with focus on child pornography on the internet. The text consists of a historical approach to the emergence of the problem, an analysis of the political strategies of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Pedophilia and an ethnographic description of the police investigations into child pornography on the internet. The hypothesis is that this "anti-pedophilia crusade" pivoting on the threats of a sexual perversion, is not as effective in the protection of the real child victims of violence as it is in the defense of an ideally innocent childhood.

Dylematy i doświadczenia funkcjonowania sejmowych komisji śledczych w Polsce

The practice of political life often indicates that the implementation of the control function is one of the most important elements of the Polish parliament's competency. The possibility of appointing parliamentary commit- tees of inquiry guaranteed by the Constitution is undoubtedly the clearest, and the most spectacular form of its exercise. However, It would seem that the clear form of the accepted political solutions does not eliminate various doubts of procedural, political and legal nature relating to their functioning. It is no wonder that parliamentary committees of inquiry, becoming media phenomena, are increasingly seen as a weak link in the process of political reality. The main objective of this paper is to show the form and the position of committees of inquiry, arising not only from the accepted legal and constitutional solutions, but also non-formal conditions shaped by political, media as well as social culture. The intention of the authors is an attempt to present the actual importance of parliamentary committees of inquiry in view of the perception of their activities by the electorate of particular parties.

Security Agencies and Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry in Germany: Transparency vs. Confidentiality

Security Agencies and Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry in Germany: Transparency vs. Confidentiality

Judicialization of Politics, Judicial Power and Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry in Brazil

Judicialization of Politics, Judicial Power and Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry in Brazil

Het Lumumba-onderzoek

The Lumumba inquiryIn his reply, E. Gerard, one of the experts of the parliamentary inquiry committee, comments on four aspects dealt with in the reviews of the Lumumba affair. One should distinguish between the judgment of the committee and the experts’ report as to their respective nature. The experts want their conclusions, which are the result of historical research, to be part of an ongoing scientific debate. When carrying out their research they focussed on the professional standards of their metier, not the considerations of the raison d’état. By conducting a careful and thorough analysis of written and oral sources, they tried to bridge the gap between fact and fiction to lay a solid foundation for assessing the events around this controversial case. They put forward the concept of “moral responsibility’ to make it clear that the Belgian government, although not actually an accomplice in a murder plot, cannot be exempted from any responsibility in the developments that led to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. In this way, they try to escape the deadlock created by a structural approach towards history.

Samuel Parkes: Chemist, author, reformer—A biography

Summary Samuel Parkes, an early nineteenth century chemist, combined in his remarkable career the role of chemical manufacturer, author, and man of affairs. His Chemical Catechism, which appeared between 1806 and 1825 in twelve successive editions, attracted large numbers of students to the pursuit of chemical sciences by its lively and attractive-yet-rigorous presentation. His important Chemical Essays contributed significantly to the progress of chemical technology. Both works exerted wide influence by their publication in several editions in America and, in translation, in France, Germany, and Italy. Parkes was the principal chemical witness before Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry, and was one of the chief movers in the long and eventually successful campaign aimed at abolishing the oppressive Salt Duties which had exerted a very harmful effect on the national economy. In company with eminent chemists of the day, he gave evidence in important civil trials. Parkes' enthusiastic championship of chemistry at all levels, and his colourful personality, made him an outstanding figure on the contemporary scientific scene.

BUSINESS RECORDS AS A SOURCE OF ECONOMIC HISTORY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THEIR SELECTIVE PRESERVATION IN LIBRARIES

During the last thirty years there has been an increased use of business records as a source for the writing of economic history. Before 1920 a great deal of our knowledge of British economic life during the preceding 250 years came from the archives of government departments, the reports of parliamentary committees of inquiry, and the blue books of Royal Commissions. Such material inevitably conveys a distorted picture, because governments in the past did not usually consider themselves called upon to interfere in economic life, except for the purpose of raising money or in order to investigate and endeavour to correct serious social maladjustments.