Regulatory Competence Research Articles

Maternal psychological distress in the first two years after very preterm birth and early intervention

Preterm delivery may have a strong impact on mothers. In a multicentre randomised controlled trial, including very preterm infants (<32 weeks and/or <1500 g), the effect of the Infant Behavioral Assessment and Intervention Program (IBAIP) on maternal psychological distress at 6, 12 and 24 (corrected) months after preterm birth was assessed. The programme is designed to assist parents to support and enhance their infants’ regulatory competence and development. Eighty‐six infants and their parents were randomly assigned to the intervention group and 90 to the control group. Maternal psychological distress was assessed with the General Health Questionnaire. In general, the mothers reported high levels of psychological distress, especially during the first six months after discharge from hospital when 56% had clinical scores. No differences were found in maternal psychological distress between the intervention and control group. Early intervention to decrease maternal distress in mothers of preterm infants is warranted.

Maternal attachment representations after very preterm birth and the effect of early intervention

ObjectiveFor very preterm infants the mother–infant relationship may be compromised. Maternal attachment representations 18 (corrected) months after very preterm birth and the effect of the post-discharge Infant Behavioral Assessment and Intervention Program (IBAIP) were studied. The IBAIP is designed to assist parents to support and enhance their infant's regulatory competence and development. The intervention consisted of 6–8 home visits during the first 8 months after birth. MethodSeventy-eight mothers of very preterm infants (<32 weeks and/or <1500g) were interviewed, who participated in a randomized controlled trial: 41 from the intervention group and 37 from the control group. Maternal attachment representations were assessed with the Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI). The interviews resulted in a classification of the attachment representations into balanced or non-balanced. Results30% of the mothers had non-balanced attachment representations. Qualitative content analysis of the answers showed that negative feelings when first seeing their baby and negative or ambivalent feelings in the first weeks at home with their baby are related to non-balanced attachment representations. The WMCI revealed no differences between the intervention and control group. ConclusionEarly support for mothers of very preterm born infants to develop a healthy mother–infant relationship is recommended especially for mothers who report negative first experiences.

Nanotechnology in molecular medicine

Nanotechnology in molecular medicine

The Transnational Investment Process from the Perspective of the New Haven School of Jurisprudence

The legal famework governing the transnational investment process may be characterised as being fragmented and loosely governed by bilateral or regional investment treaties, with the result that foreign investors receive unsatisfactory protection and host States fear that their regulatory competence will be challenged. This article attempts to illustrate the utility of the New Haven School offurisprudence in the study of the transnational investment process by applying a functional analysis to elaborate on some of the salient features of that process.

The SF-36 component summary scales and the daytime diurnal cortisol profile

Higher daytime cortisol output has been associated with higher levels of perceived stress and worse mental and physical health outcomes. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation, such as elevated secretion of daytime cortisol, occurs in many mental and physical illnesses. However, the nature of the association between functional health status and daytime cortisol production has not been established. Healthy adult volunteers (n=68, 45 females) provided saliva samples 3, 6, 9 and 12 h after waking, for two consecutive days, in everyday settings. Bivariate correlations between log salivary cortisol concentrations were calculated, and the SF-36 component summary scores were calculated. Latent growth curve modeling was used to model the daytime profile and adjust for covariates (age, sex and waking time). Higher PCS scores were not associated with cortisol three hours after waking (cortisol intercept), or the diurnal decline (cortisol slope). Higher MCS scores were correlated with faster cortisol decline across the day (r=-.31, P<.01) but not with cortisol intercepts. In a latent growth curve model adjusting for age, sex and waking time, the association was no longer statistically significant. Large scale epidemiological studies involving salivary cortisol would benefit from measuring SF-36 component summary scores. Cortisol intercepts and slopes may be differentially related to the PCS and MCS, although greater statistical power is needed to test this hypothesis more fully. Associations between daytime cortisol and the PCS or MCS could reflect the regulatory competence of bodily systems, common causes or unmeasured confounding factors.

Legal Feasibility of Schengen-Like Agreements in European Energy Policy: The Cases of Nuclear Cooperation and Gas Security of Supply

European energy policy is characterized by a complex allocation of authority between the European Union and its Member States which results in an intricate interplay of regulatory competence. Knowing the difficulties European countries face in coordinating and proposing common solutions in the energy area, there is the urgent need to question the legal foundations underlying the decision-making process. Institutional paralysis, low reactivity to events and changes as well as systematic political horse-trading across all questions call for an alternative framework allowing some pioneering Member States to promote ad hoc common policies escaping the formal and procedural requirements of EU law. Our paper assesses the legal feasibility of short-run differentiation by means of partial international agreements inspired by the Schengen regime, namely entirely outside the EU framework. The key challenge from a legal point of view is to assess the substantive compatibility of such agreements in energy with the existing rules of the Union. Short run differentiation in energy cannot indeed be assessed at a high level of generalities. We therefore take two areas where legally-binding coordination at the sub-Union level is often called for: nuclear policy and gas security of supply. The possible substantive content of such cooperation is derived from the economic and political literature before legal feasibility is assessed. Our findings suggest that the scope for such agreements is limited for security of gas supply whereas it could be an improved cooperation device in certain areas of nuclear policy.

Types and Systems of Actors in Regional Development: Their Function and Regulatory Potential

The evaluation of the actors in regional development is only one component/level within the regional research. However, it is a level which increases its significance and has or could have the key role in the sphere of regional development and at the same time reflects the problems on other levels. It is in fact the proportionality and balance of the whole system that determines the resulting effects of activities and regulatory competence of actors. If there is an imbalance - even an asymmetry - in this system, advocacy of only certain interests becomes understandably imminent, as well as a reduction of interactions (not only) in the organisation of regional society. Differentiation of actors derives primarily from the distribution of power and wealth in a society, and thus it has always played an exceptionally significant role. However, as a consequence of the hierarchical organisation of the society this differentiation was noticeably asymmetrical. The non-equivalence of partial subjects/actors of regional development has led to the understandable domination of ‘deterministic’ relations and the plurality of interests and then to the dominance of ‘competitive’ relations. Only gradually do interactions of a cooperative kind successively break through the growth of mutual interconnections, linkages and necessity of social elements and partial systems, and thus the increasing of organic nature of (geo)societal systems. This will be finally illustrated through the difference between ‘symmetric’ systems of actors in developed countries and the ‘asymmetric’ global system.

Conflict and Conflict Management in the Cross-border Provision of Healthcare Services

Welfare regulation in the European Union continues to crawl forward despite salient conflicts of interests. This article addresses the fundamental puzzle of how regulatory competences may expand into the core of the welfare state and how conflicts are, eventually, managed in such processes. It analyses the EU cross-border provision of healthcare services and argues that the interplay between the Commission and the Court constitutes a powerful dynamic in generating new regulatory activities and in finding ways to set conflicts aside. The Commission draws on formulations offered by the Court in finding ways to manage conflict, for example, by requiring ‘proportionate’ national policies which establish that national obstacles to free movement principles are ‘objectively necessary’. The article concludes that law and evidence-based policy-making serve as powerful resources for the Commission in managing conflict.

Die Zuordnung von Regulierungskompetenzen im deutschen Bankensektor. Eine vertragstheoretische Analyse

The paper applies the incomplete financial contract models of Repullo (2000) as well as Kahn and Santos (2005; 2006) to the German banking sector and discusses what consequences the current institutional allocation of bank regulatory powers has for the functionality of the banking sector. It asks whether bank regulatory competences in Germany should be concentrated on a single regulatory and supervisory authority or whether different regulatory institutions should be involved. The question which authority should do what task in the latter case is also addressed. The paper shows that, under weak conditions, Deutsche Bundesbank should act as lender of last resort. <bold>Zusammenfassung</bold> Der Beitrag verwendet die vertragstheoretischen Analysen von Repullo (2000) sowie Kahn und Santos (2005; 2006) und diskutiert, welche Konsequenzen die in Deutschland praktizierte Zuordnung von Regulierungskompetenzen auf verschiedene Träger für die Funktionsweise des Bankensektors hat. Es wird gefragt, ob man auch in Deutschland Regulierungskompetenzen im Bankensektor auf einen Träger konzentrieren sollte. Sofern verschiedene Regulierungsbehörden existieren, stellt sich die zweite Frage, wer welche Funktionen übernehmen sollte. Es zeigt sich, dass die in Deutschland praktizierte Aufgabenteilung in der Bankenaufsicht aus gesamtwirtschaftlicher Sicht nachteilig sein kann, weil eine stärkere Rolle der Bundesbank als lender of last resort geboten erscheint. <italic>JEL Classification: G21, G32</italic> Received: September 13, 2007 Accepted: November 4, 2008

Jurisdiction and the Internet. Regulatory Competence over Online Activity

Jurisdiction and the Internet. Regulatory Competence over Online Activity

Horizontal Effect of Fundamental Freedoms and the Right to Equality after Viking and Mangold, and the Implications for Community Competence

Normal 0 21 false false false HR X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Table Normal; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The judgments in Viking and Laval confirm the Court’s previous case law on the horizontal effect of Articles 39, 43 and 49 EC, and extend the horizontal effect of Articles 43 and 49 EC to cover collective action of trade unions by way of strikes, boycotts and the like. A significant knock-on effect is an extension of Community regulatory competence to cover this same subject matter, despite the contrary indications in Article 137(5) EC. The judgment in Viking implies that Article 28 EC is also capable of horizontal effect, at least in cases where collective action of individuals produces regulatory effects similar to those resulting from State action. The Court’s reasoning leaves room for future incremental increases in the horizontal effect of fundamental freedoms in cases which involve contractual rules, in particular rules regulating employed or self employed activities. The approach to horizontal effect in Viking supports, for example, the argument that provisions of a corporate constitution could amount to a restriction on freedom of establishment, as could action taken by the board of a company to frustrate a takeover bid. Advocate General Maduro in Viking argues that the Treaty rules on freedom of movement apply directly to any private action that is capable of effectively restricting others from exercising their right of freedom of movement. The present writer suggests further considerations as being relevant to determining the extent of the horizontal reach of fundamental freedoms. Normal market behaviour on the part of one market operator should not in principle be held to amount to a restriction on the fundamental freedom of another. But discriminatory conduct by market operators, or other conduct which falls outside the range of normal market behaviour, would seem capable of falling within the horizontal effect of a fundamental freedom, at any rate where it restricts access of other market operators, or consumers, to the market, or places market operators or consumers at a disadvantage because they have exercised a fundamental freedom. Account must be taken of the aims and wording of the freedom in question, along with the policy questions of whether it would be excessively burdensome to make private operators subject to the obligation to comply with the fundamental freedom in question, and whether any consequential extension of Community regulatory competence would unreasonably limit that of the Member States. A related issue to be taken into account is the possible horizontal effect of the fundamental principle of equality, as articulated in the Mangold case. Even a restrained reading of this much criticised case would suggest that the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of nationality in Article 12 EC might have horizontal effect in circumstances falling within the scope of Community law, such as the supply of goods, services, business accommodation and housing. A similar conclusion could be reached as regards discrimination in the sale of goods, services and real property to non residents. It would not be excessively burdensome to impose on private market operators the obligation not to depart from their normal terms and conditions of sale in the case of non-nationals or non-residents, unless such departure represented normal market behaviour. A possible example of discriminatory service provision contrary to the general principle of equality is that of excessive ‘roaming’ charges, which have been recently regulated by Regulation (EC) No 717/2007. A key question which arises in this context is the extent to which a market operator can, or should be able to be, justify discrimination against out of state operators, or discrimination against customers solely because they have crossed a national frontier, on grounds of normal market behaviour, when market conditions are not normal, and the market is not fully competitive.

Moderate adolescent drug use and the development of substance use self-regulation

This article presents a re-conceptualization of moderate adolescent drug use. It is argued that experimentation with alcohol and other drugs during the teenage years may play an important role in the development of regulatory competency in relation to drug consumption in adulthood. When such regulatory skills fail to emerge in young people, during the transition to adulthood, the likelihood of serious alcohol- or drug-related harm is increased. The article reviews the empirical evidence of poor self-regulation as a predictor of long-term alcohol- and drug-related problems, places self-regulation within a broader theoretical framework, and considers the policy and practice implications of this conceptualization.

Law After the Welfare State: Formalism, Functionalism, and the Ironic Turn of Reflexive Law

This paper analyzes the contemporary emergence of neo-formalist and neo-functionalist approaches to law-making at a time when the state is seeking to reassert, reformulate and reconceptualize its regulatory competence, both domestically and transnationally. While the earlier turn to alternative regulation modes, conceptualized under the heading of “legal pluralism,” “responsive law,” or “reflexive law” in the 1970s and 1980s, had aimed at a more socially responsive, contextualized, and ultimately learning mode of legal intervention, the contemporary revival of functionalist jurisprudence and its reliance on “social norms” embraces a limitation model of legal regulation. After revisiting the Legal Realist critique of Formalism and the formulation of functionalist regulation as a progressive agenda, this paper reflects on both the American and German justifications of market regulation and the Welfare State in order to trace the different evolution towards ‘responsive law’ and legal pluralism in the U.S. and ‘post-interventionist’ and ‘reflexive’ law in Germany. This comparison allows for an identification of the emerging transnational qualities of legal normativity in the face of a declining welfare state paradigm, which – at the beginning of the 21st century – appears to provide the stage for turning the progressive gains of the former era into a set of market-oriented justifications of private autonomy and de-regulation.

Services and Investment Chapters in Free Trade Agreements: Liberalisation, Regulation and Law

While economics, politics and even culture are keys to the free trade agreements, legal design is also important. The design of the legal structure involves strategic choices, aimed primarily to promote as much liberalisation as possible, but also, in doing so, to manage or mediate the relationship with the regulatory competence which governments wish to retain. This paper examines the options and traps in working through the key legal components to these services and investment chapters. They will be: the definitions of its scope, the parties' norms and obligations, the listing of commitments or reservations, the allowance for exceptions, the standards which domestic regulation must meet, and the dispute resolution processes.

Images of Agency Governance in the European Union

Diagnosis of the transformation of executive governance in Europe should incorporate the diverse dynamics of EU-level agencies. Recent years have witnessed comprehensive reform efforts in the European Commission aimed partly at increasing institutional effectiveness and efficiency. One constituent ingredient thereof has been the institution of non-majoritarian EU-level agencies with regulatory and non-regulatory discretionary competences beneath the Community institutions. This article conceptualises theoretically and explores empirically three complementary images of agency governance in the EU. Based on a rich body of survey (N = 265) and interview (N = 29) data among three regulatory and four non-regulatory EU-level agencies, the article demonstrates that EU-level agencies tend to combine the roles as autonomous administrative spaces, multilevel epistemic networks and Community institutions. EU-level regulatory and non-regulatory agencies blend all three images of agency governance. This article thus demonstrates that agency governance is only marginally affected by the regulatory–non-regulatory dichotomy.

Fashioning Entitlements: A Comparative Law and Economic Analysis of the Judicial Role in Environmental Centralization in the U.S. and Europe

This paper identifies and evaluates, from an economic point of view, the role of the judiciary the steady shift of environmental regulatory authority to higher, more centralized levels of government in both the U.S. and Europe. We supply both a positive analysis of how the decisions made by judges have affected the incentives of both private and public actors to pollute the natural environment, and normative answers to the question of whether judges have acted so as to create incentives that move levels of pollution in an efficient direction, toward their optimal, cost-minimizing (or net-benefit-maximizing) levels. Highlights of the analysis include the following points: 1) Industrial-era local (state or national) legislation awarding entitlements to pollute was almost certainly inefficient due to a fundamental economic obstacle faced by those who suffer harm from the over-pollution of publicly owned natural resources: the inability to monetize and credibly commit to repay the future economic value of reducing pollution. 2) When industrial era pollution spilled across state lines in the US, the federal courts, in particular the Supreme Court, fashioned a federal common law of interstate nuisance that set up essentially the same sort of blurry, uncertain entitlements to pollute or be free of pollution that had been created by the state courts in resolving local pollution disputes. We argue that for the typical pollution problem, a legal regime of blurry interstate entitlements - with neither jurisdiction having a clear right either to pollute or be free of pollution from the other - is likely to generate efficient incentives for interjursidictional bargaining, even despite the public choice problems besetting majority-rule government. Interestingly, a very similar system of de facto entitlements arose and often stimulated interjursidictional bargaining in Europe as well as in the U.S. 3) The US federal courts have generally interpreted the federal environmental statutes in ways that give clear primacy to federal regulators. Through such judicial interpretation, state and local regulators face a continuing risk of having their decisions overridden by federal regulators. This reduces the incentives for regulatory innovation at the state and local level. Judicial authorization of federal overrides has thus weakened the economic rationale for cooperative federalism suggested by economic models of principal-agent relationships. As a result of the principle of attribution, there is less risk in Europe that (like in the US) courts would enlarge the federal purview and thereby limit the powers of the Member States. Despite this principle, the power of the European bureaucracy (that is, the European Commission) has steadily increased and led to a steady shift of environmental regulatory competencies to the European level. This shift is only sometimes normatively desirable, and yet there is little that the ECJ can or will do to slow it.

Maternal ratings of infant regulatory competence from 6 to 12 months: Influence of perceived stress, birth-weight, and intervention: A randomized controlled trial

Mothers’ reports of preterm and term infants’ temperament from 6 to 12 months of age were studied, with intervention and stress as predictors. Preterm infants with a birth weight <2000 g were randomized to an intervention (71) or a control (69) group. A control group of healthy term infants (74) was also established. The intervention was a modified version of the “Mother–Infant Transaction Program”, aimed at sensitizing caregivers to the infants’ individual characteristics. Temperament was measured with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, and stress with the Parenting Stress Index. There were no group differences in temperament at 6 or 12 months or in change during the same period. There was a strong association between stress and negative reactivity in the preterm control group at 12 months. In the preterm intervention group, there were strong negative correlations between stress and regulatory competence at 6 months. The intervention seemed to change the relationship between stress and temperament. The strength of this association indicates that the intervention sensitized mothers to the temperamental regulatory competence of their preterm infants.

Central versus Local Service Regulation: Accounting for Diverging Old‐age Care Developments in Sweden and Denmark, 1980–2000

Abstract In Sweden and Denmark, the development of old‐age care has followed markedly divergent paths over the past 20 years. In both countries, the level of old‐age care universalism was exceptionally high in the early 1980s. Since then it has dropped sharply in Sweden, while remaining constantly high in Denmark. These divergent trends are clearly irreconcilable with the common image of a coherent Scandinavian welfare state model, and they seem hard to explain with reference to traditional approaches of comparative social policy. This article attempts to account for the divergent developments by focusing on the balance of old‐age care regulation between central and local government. The main finding is that only in Sweden has the central regulation of old‐age care been weak and unspecific. As a consequence, Swedish municipalities have enjoyed sufficient autonomous, regulatory competence to exercise certain local retrenchment measures in times of austerity, thereby eventually causing a nationwide weakening of old‐age care universalism. By contrast, municipalities in Denmark have been much more tightly bound by central state regulations which have prevented them from imposing similar retrenchment measures in the old‐age care sector; consequently, Denmark's level of old‐age care universalism has remained comparatively high.

Sharpening the Separation of Powers Through a Hierarchy of Norms? Reflections on the Draft Constitutional Treaty's Regime for Legislative and Executive Law-Making

European Union - born in 1958 with the genetic code of an international organization - could hardly be viewed to reproduce the trias politica of a nation state. Article 4 of the EEC Treaty modestly provided: The tasks entrusted to the Community shall be carried out by the following institutions: an Assembly, a Council, a Commission, a Court of Justice. Each institution shall act within the limits of the powers conferred upon it by this Treaty. When the European Community was established, its regulatory competences were not immediately conceived of as of a legislative quality. nature of the Community in general, and its legal instruments in particular, defied parliamentary conceptions of legislation: law-making function was until the SEA (almost)exclusively in the hands of the Council with the European Parliament playing, at most, a consultative function. From a (national) democratic perspective, it seemed that all decision-making powers of the European Community were executive in character. Only the subsequent ascendancy of the European Parliament to become co-legislator with the Council under the co-decision procedure - today applicable to the majority of legal competences of the European Union - has cleared the way for the gradual emergence of a parliamentary definition of legislation in the Union legal order.

The Colombian Constitutional Court versus the International Monetary Fund: Economic Reforms, Social Rights, and Sovereignty

Iberoamericana – Revista Nórdica de Estudios de Latinoamérica y el Caribe, es una revista académica arbitrada, interdisciplinaria y bilingüe. Es administrada por el Instituto de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Estocolmo en colaboración con otras universidades nórdicas con el objetivo de presentar investigación de alta calidad sobre América Latina.La revista publica artículos originales enfocados en temas relacionados con las ciencias sociales y humanidades. Investigadores de todo el mundo son bienvenidos a enviar sus manuscritos en inglés o español.