State Parliament Research Articles

Compliance effects of sovereign debt cuts

The controversy about sovereign debt cuts loomed prominently throughout crisis in the European Union (EU), as the EU legal rules were viewed to impose strict limitations on debt restructuring involving public creditors due to moral hazard concerns enshrined in the legal ban on bailouts. This analysis explores the economic plausibility of the legal regime, with the applicable legal standard capturing the impact of debt restructuring on the debtor's expected compliance with fiscal rules. Our theory shows that the effect of debt cuts on fiscal compliance depends on three effects, the direction of which determines the overall effect on expected fiscal compliance. We empirically review the plausibility of our theoretical results by exploiting survey data from members of state parliaments in Germany. Data limitations notwithstanding, our results offer some plausibility that haircuts can make fiscal compliance more attractive and likely.

USING CLASS ACTIONS IN BRAZIL TO PROTECT THE HOMELESS

This paper aims to demonstrate the activity of the Public Defender's Office of the State of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, in the protection of social right to housing, through legal aid services delivered to low income citizens, be it in an individualistic and traditional approach or, sometimes in a more effective way, in a collective perspective, by means of class actions and other mechanisms. It also explains the extrajudicial measures and proceedings taken by the public defenders, lobbying at the State Parliament, with the goal to revert a political decision of the Governor which - if not revoked - could have resulted in the extinction of the “social rent” program, that currently is indispensable to safeguard the right to housing to thousands of families in the State of Rio de Janeiro.

Политические стратегии демократической оппозиции в борьбе за власть в современной России

The research deals with the strategy of democratic opposition parties as an actor of the political pro-cess in modern Russia based on the concepts of hybrid regimes, electoral authoritarianism, and de-fective democracy. The system-based, institutional approaches and the analysis of relevant literature are employed. In the author’s opinion, Russian demo-cratic opposition parties and movements can be classified as parliamentary parties (Fair Russia, Lib-eral Democratic Party of Russia, Communist Party of the Russian Federation), non-parliamentary regis-tered (Yabloko (Russian United Democratic Party), Civic Platform) and non-parliamentary unregistered parties (Russia of the Future). The research looks at their priorities for the development of society and the state being of particular relevance to modern political science and practice. The author concludes that, firstly, the strategies of democratic opposition parties depend, as a rule, on whether they are em-bedded in the system of power or not, whether they are parliamentary or not. Secondly, today, the main Russian political strategy of the democratic opposi-tion in a power struggle is to support Western politi-cal values and strategies, criticize the current gov-ernment, focus on decommunization, and strive to build a parliamentary state.

Industrial legislation in Australia in 2018

It has been a quiet year like last year for the passing of federal industrial legislation (due to a number of factors, including the political turmoil of the federal coalition government and their lack of an overall labour law reform agenda). This article examines key federal industrial legislative developments including the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth). The article identifies that the federal Act contains much weaker compliance measures than the counterpart New South Wales legislation also passed in 2018 – the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (NSW). Also, although the Coalition government has attempted to continue to prosecute its case for further union governance measures, this agenda has been less successful than in previous years, with key government Bills not yet passed by the Parliament. The stagnation in the federal Parliament continues to motivate certain State Parliaments to address worker exploitation, and the article goes on to examine key State industrial legislation passed in 2018 including the Victorian labour hire licensing statute. In light of the continuing dominant position of the federal Labor opposition in opinion polls and an impending federal election in 2019, the article concludes by briefly considering the federal Labor opposition's agenda for industrial legislation.

Gobernanza global más democracia transnacional: la recomendación sobre convergencia legislativa del Parlamento del MERCOSUR como una alternativa a la dicotomía monismo-dualismo en derecho internacional

The purpose of this essay is to present the new procedure of legislative interconsultation established between the Parlasur and the parliaments of the national states of the Mercosur countries. Among the various forms and methods of relationship and interaction between international law and national law in general; and between international parliaments and national parliaments in particular, the legislative interconsultation procedure established by Parlasur is unique, original and innovative. The legislative interconsultation procedure of Parlasur establishes, first of all, a communication channel from the Parlasur downwards towards the national parliaments. But in addition - what is even more important - it also establishes a communication procedure upwards, from the national parliaments to the Parlasur. This reciprocal communication and interaction, “back and forth,” through a legal and formal procedure between two levels of legal production - the international level and the national level - introduces a new form of relationship between legal systems, since, perhaps, For the first time, the initiative and referral of standards is formally allowed from the national level to be considered at an international level. And still more, from a substantial point of view, this procedure guarantees, as it only happens exceptionally, the democratic legitimacy of the forms of legal production for the regulation of transnational problems.

Advancing to positions of power in parliament – does seniority matter?

ABSTRACTThis article examines whether or not legislatures in which strict adherence to seniority rule is uncommon nevertheless follow seniority conventions when positions of power in parliament are appointed. For this purpose, career data is gathered on each of the 4,961 legislators who served in the sixteen German state parliaments between 1990 and 2012. In order to understand the linkages that describe career patterns within parliaments, the study refers to delegation theory. Differentiating between the offices of president of parliament, committee chair and parliamentary group leader, logistic regression analyses provide evidence that being the incumbent means being in the absolute best starting position to become (re-)selected. This finding holds for every one of the offices distinguished. Other facets of seniority, such as being a long-standing parliamentarian, a long-standing party member or a former government official, show up as being relevant from time to time. Socio-demographic factors, however, play only a minor role.

Scrutinising European Union legislation in light of subsidiarity: the Maltese Parliament

ABSTRACTOne of the main objectives of the Lisbon Treaty was to increase the democratic legitimacy of the European Union (EU). Member state parliaments were, therefore, equipped with new tools for monitoring compliance of EU draft laws with the principle of subsidiarity. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the unicameral Maltese Parliament’s ex ante subsidiarity scrutiny of European legislation. Based on the island’s historical and cultural background, the Kamra tad-Deputati confers great importance to the application of subsidiarity, although it is still in its learning curve over the rapid and effective implementation of such procedures.

Der Eigenvorsorgebeitrag als Alternative zur beamtenrechtsähnlichen Versorgung für Abgeordnete. Zu den Ergebnissen der Kommission im Baden-Württembergischen Landtag

In 2018 the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg installed a commission of experts to inspect the existing retirement income system of its parliamentarians (Altersversorgung des Abgeordneten) . The commission report prompts a comparison between the existing retirement income system in Baden-Württemberg and a reflection on alternatives in other German states . Due to political, legal and economic reasons, one should opt against the system of civil servants-like pension schemes for members of parliament . Of all the alternatives, the system of a private pension contribution is most likely to reconcile the interests of all those involved . In order to do justice to the importance of the office and to secure sufficient retirement benefits, the amount of the contribution should be 2,000 Euro per month in the state parliaments and 2,500 Euro per month in the Bundestag .

Zur Größe von Landesparlamenten. Kriterien für eine sachliche Diskussion

Decisions on the size of a parliament are genuinely political . Insofar it seems only logical that the few studies dealing with this topic from a political science perspective fail to provide unequivocal criteria that would allow politicians to pick just the “optimal” size of a parliament . Nevertheless, political science can provide some yardsticks that should enable informed decisions . According to studies on the size of parliaments and some empirical findings, the number of seats of North Rhine-Westphalia’s parliament is not to be reduced as demanded by the right-wing populist AfD . To downsize this state parliament would result in further deficits of democratic representation . In this respect, the AfD’s demand to reduce the size of state parliaments is not just a “standard issue of symbolic politics” (Werner J. Patzelt) . Rather, this claim reflects the party’s skeptical, if not even outright negative stance towards basic principles of representative democracy .

Die isolierte Fraktion. Zwischenreaktionen, Zwischenrufe und die AfD im Baden-Württembergischen Landtag

How do the members of parliament use hecklings and other intermediate reactions in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament? Does the AfD as a new party in parliament differ from the other political groups? An automatic analysis of all interruptive actions recorded in the plenary protocols of the current and the previous legislative period as well as a manual content analysis of the hecklings used in 20 current debates (ten debates per legislative period) shows that the use of hecklings as well as other interruptive actions like applause or laughter mirrors the conflict between government and opposition parties . In the current legislative period, the AfD falls out of the ordinary in that the party is isolated from all other political groups by various means . For example, the other parties avoid applauding for AfD speakers and criticize them sharply through hecklings . The AfD and its members of parliament also distance themselves from the other parties by heckling and laughing maliciously about them . Thus, we can identify a clear polarization between the AfD and the other parties in the federal state parliament in Baden-Württemberg .

ПОЛІТИЧНА СИСТЕМА ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОГО СОЮЗУ ПІСЛЯ ВИБОРІВ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОГО ПАРЛАМЕНТУ 2019 РОКУ

The politics of the European Union are different from other organizations and states due to the unique nature of the EU. The common institutions mix the intergovernmental and supranational aspects of the EU. The EU treaties declare the EU to be based on representative democracy and direct elections take place to the European Parliament. The Parliament, together with the European Council, works for the legislative arm of the EU. The Council is composed of national governments thus representing the intergovernmental nature of the European Union. The central theme of this research is the influence of the European Union Political system the Results of May 2019 European Parliament Election. The EU supranational legislature plays an important role as a producer of legal norms in the process of European integration and parliamentary scrutiny of the activities of the EU executive. The European Parliament, as a representative institution of the European Union, helps to overcome the stereotypical notions of a “Brussels bureaucracy” that limits the sovereignty of EU member states. The European Parliament is a political field of interaction between European optimists and European skeptics. The new composition of the European Parliament presents political forces focused on a different vision of the strategy and tactics of the European integration process. European federalists in the “European People’s Party” and “European Socialists and Democrats” consider the strategic prospect of creating a confederate “United States of Europe”. The Brexit withdrawal from the EU could help the federalists win over European skeptics. Critics of the supranational project of European integration do not have a majority in the new composition of the European Parliament. But they are widely represented in many national parliaments of EU Member States. The conflicting interaction between European liberals and far-right populists is the political backdrop for much debate in the European Parliament. The result of this process is the medium term development vector of the European Union.

Let Me Vote in Your Country, and I’ll Let You Vote in Mine. A Proposal for Transnational Democracy

Technocratic forms of international governance have spurred the rise of populist nationalists in Europe and around the globe. Joachim Blatter argues that we should tackle these intertwined challenges to representative democracy by transnationalising national democracies. In his kick-off text for the GLOBALCIT forum, he illustrates the underlining general problematique with the example of the Euro crisis, describes concrete steps towards a system of overlapping and transnationalised national democracies and outlines the potential benefits that would arise from a horizontal expansion of national demoi, elections and representation for democratic parties, parliaments and peoples. Blatter proposes that democracies should sign “joint declarations of interdependence” in which they express their commitment to the democratisation of their joint forms of governance and reciprocally offer their citizens the status of “consociated citizens.” These consociated citizens enjoy the right to elect a limited number of “consociated representatives” in the parliaments of the consociated states. The elected and thereby directly authorised consociated representatives bring the perspectives and interests of the consociated citizens into the collective will-formation and decision-making process of the consociated states. According to Blatter, politicians and political parties would benefit since the current trade-off between being responsive and responsible would become weaker. National parliaments would regain their core place in the democratic process by serving as the central spaces for the necessary reconnect between international rule making and nationally embedded will-formation. Democratic nations would provide each other a legitimate pathway for getting involved in their domestic will-formation and decision-making processes. Citizens receive additional and constructive means for political participation and contestation. GLOBALCIT has invited eleven scholars to engage with Blatter’s proposal. Most see it as stimulating and constructive but raise further questions and some concerns. Is it focussing too much on institutional reform of democratic processes instead of tackling issues of socio-economic inequality that propel the rise of populism? Is the model grounded in a coherent theory of democracy? Do the envisioned multiple and overlapping demoi undermine the necessary clarity of membership boundaries of political communities? Do consociated citizenship and limited powers of consociated representatives undermine a core democratic norm of political equality? The proposal assumes that reciprocity would be a helpful stimulus for the proposed expansion of the electorate, but what about the motivations of individual actors? Politicians might not want to give up current opportunities to mobilise domestic voters by blaming the external others. Furthermore, many commentators point to alternative ways of democratising relations of interdependence between states, which they perceive as more feasible or desirable, such as the strengthening of the European Parliament, transnational citizen assemblies or transnational referenda. In his response, Blatter points to theoretical foundations of his proposal, emphasizes its conceptual innovations in imagining fuzzy boundaries and proportional equality, and argues that the proposed pathway towards a system of horizontally overlapping representative democracies offers many advantages compared to its alternatives.

Die hessische Landtagswahl vom 28. Oktober 2018: Fortsetzung der schwarz-grünen Wunschehe mit starken Grünen und schwacher CDU

Federal politics has often influenced elections to the Hesse state parliament . This was also true for the election 2018, which was not only decisive for the future of the incumbent black-green coalition government led by Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU), but also for the fate of the federal party chairs of CDU and SPD, Angela Merkel and Andrea Nahles, at the federal level . Compared to previous election campaigns in Hesse, the 2018 campaign was less polarized, visible also in the openness of CDU, SPD, Greens and FDP in terms of forming coalition governments . The election result continued the transformation of the German party system into one with six parliamentary parties . After some vote counting problems, the incumbent coalition, which won a small parliamentary majority, was - in line with established theories of government formation - renewed . As a result of their gains in votes, the Greens’ position was stronger than five years ago, which led to more offices and to a stronger bargaining power in the coalition negotiations .

Fraktionsausschluss. Zum Urteil des Verfassungsgerichtshofs Rheinland-Pfalz vom 29. Januar 2019 – VGH O 18/18

A member of the Rhineland-Palatine state parliament failed in his appeal to the state Constitutional Court against his expulsion from the parliamentary group AfD (Alternative for Germany) . His parliamentary group had excluded him due to his contacts to right-wing extremists . Expulsions of this type are subject to a decision by the political group assembly, which must be taken in accordance with a minimum procedure under the rule of law and must be free from arbitrariness . The Constitutional Court regarded these conditions as given and emphasized that the parliamentary group had considerable room for maneuver in this respect which is not subject to constitutional control . This applies both to the investigation and to the assessment of the facts underlying the expulsion from the group .

Compliance Effects of Sovereign Debt Cuts

The controversy about sovereign debt cuts loomed prominently throughout crisis in the European Union (EU), as the EU legal rules were viewed to impose strict limitations on debt restructuring involving public creditors due to moral hazard concerns enshrined in the legal ban on bailouts. This analysis explores the economic plausibility of the legal regime, with the applicable legal standard capturing the impact of debt restructuring on the debtor’s expected compliance with fiscal rules. Our theory shows that the effect of debt cuts on fiscal compliance depends on two effects, the direction of which determines the overall effect on expected fiscal compliance. We empirically review the plausibility of our theoretical results by exploiting survey data from members of state parliaments in Germany. Data limitations notwithstanding, our results offer some plausibility that haircuts can make fiscal compliance more attractive and likely. The results call for re-visiting the legal framework applicable to debt cuts EU rules.

The introduction of accrual accounting and budgeting in the city state of Hamburg: A qualitative analysis of the reform process and its benefits

Abstract In a multiple-step reform process, the city-state of Hamburg introduced a full accruals accounting and budgeting system. Based on a document analysis, this paper describes how the reforms were implemented, who the supporters were, and what the motivation behind their support was. It also analyses what benefits users of financial information have gained from the reforms by using responses resulting from semi-structured interviews. The authors find that the main actors were the state parliament and the state government, whose primary aim was to increase transparency about public resources and their consumption. These actors benefitted from the reforms because they now have information available that enables them to fulfil their respective roles within the budget process, and to achieve their political objectives. The authors conclude that under these conditions information use is encouraged and, thus, contribute to a better understanding of how reforms in public sector financial management succeed.

Inter-parliamentary cooperation as a means for reinforcing joint scrutiny in the EU: upgrading existing mechanisms and creating new ones

Abstract This special issue develops a contextual analysis of EU inter-parliamentary cooperation in the post Lisbon Treaty framework. Indeed, it is possible to claim that there are several sources and causes for renewed EU inter-parliamentary cooperation: first, a voluntary one, i.e. the connection with the Lisbon Treaty’s intent to facilitate a wider democratisation objective; second, this time more a reaction than an initiative, the need to counterbalance the institutional outcomes of the economic and financial crisis that shook the world but particularly the eurozone; and, third, the call for an improvement in existing rules and mechanisms to develop even further democratic (read: parliamentary) input in common policies. The special issue analyses whether current inter-parliamentary mechanisms are suited to react to these challenges. It specifically assesses the practical impact of interparliamentary cooperation on the numerous democratic gaps that still exist in the EU's multi-layered decision-making process. Its objective is to show, beyond the mere sharing of information and the comparison of best practices at a supranational and transnational level, whether existing inter-parliamentary practices contribute to joint parliamentary scrutiny by involving both the EP and the national parliaments of EU member states.

Individual Responses to Institutional Demands in Practice: The Case of Transparency

Scholars are increasingly interested in individual responses to institutional demands. Much attention has been paid to the role of gradual changes in the field position of organizations. However, we know little about how individual responses to institutional demands are affected by a radical change of field position. We address this gap by examining the institutional demands of transparency, an ambiguous institution that permeates ever more sectors of contemporary society. Taking a practice-theory lens, we studied the Pirate Party Germany, a political organization dedicated to maximum transparency that experienced a radical field position change after being elected into four German state parliaments. We found three practices that individual actors developed in response to this change, aiming at reducing transparency in their day-to-day operations: rerouting the time and place of actions, reclassifying the ground of actions, and recalling the monitoring of actions. These findings contribute to a better und...

Are political representatives more risk-loving than the electorate? Evidence from German federal and state parliaments

Political representatives frequently make decisions with far-reaching implications for citizens and societies. Most of these decisions are choices in situations in which the probabilities of gains and losses are hard to estimate. Although decision-making is crucial to politics, existing research has hardly ever addressed the political representation of traits that notably influence decision-making. One such trait is risk propensity; that is, an individual’s willingness to take risk. Using a unique dataset consisting of representative samples of the German Federal Parliament, four German State Parliaments, and the general German population, the present study investigates the degree to which political representatives’ risk propensity resembles their constituents’ appetite for risk. Not only descriptive results but even after using matching techniques and controlling for several potentially confounding variables, the study shows that political representatives are significantly more risk loving than the average citizen across several domains of risk taking. The implications of this finding are twofold. First, it points at a representation gap suggesting that politicians tend towards riskier choices than their voters, which not only affects politicians themselves but the entire polity. Second, it suggests a useful ‘division of labor’ according to which risk-loving politicians are prepared to take risks in exceptional situations, which their constituents would eschew.

The Role of Committees in Rights Protection in Federal and State Parliaments in Australia

This article offers a snapshot of how Australian parliamentary committees scrutinise Bills for their rights-compliance in circumstances where the political stakes are high and the rights impacts strong. It tests the assumption that parliamentary models of rights protection are inherently flawed when it comes to Bills directed at electorally unpopular groups such as bikies and terrorists by analysing how parliamentary committees have scrutinised rights-limiting anti-bikie Bills and counter-terrorism Bills. Through these case studies a more nuanced picture emerges, with evidence that, in the right circumstances, parliamentary scrutiny of ‘law and order’ can have a discernible rights-enhancing impact. The article argues that when parliamentary committees engage external stakeholders they can contribute to the development of an emerging culture of rights-scrutiny. While this emerging culture may not yet work to prevent serious intrusions into individual rights, at the federal level there are signs it may at least be capable of moderating these intrusions.