Supranational System Research Articles

A Just Response to Climate Change: Personal Carbon Allowances and the Normal‐Functioning Approach

One of the normative aspects of climate change that has received relatively little attention from philosophers is the proposal that states reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by issuing ‘personal carbon allowances’ (PCAs) – also sometimes called ‘domestic tradable quotas’ (DTQs), or ‘tradable energy quotas’ (TEQs) 1 – to each of their citizens. According to this proposal, citizens would be required to surrender PCAs in order to engage in various greenhouse-gas emitting activities. The number of PCAs issued each year would decline, so as to ensure a year on year reduction in national greenhouse-gas emissions. One version of the proposal holds that a supranational system of PCAs could provide a global solution to climate change, with everyone on the planet receiving PCAs equivalent to a per capita share of global emissions. Whilst a supranational system of PCAs could provide a global solution to climate change, it would be extremely difficult to implement a supranational system of PCAs, and unrealistic to expect global leaders to sign up to such a system. 2 On the other hand, a domestic version of the proposal suggests an attractive way for states to share out emissions among their own citizens, however emissions are to be shared out between states. The proposal domestically to issue PCAs was first developed in the 1990s by Meyer Hillman and David Fleming. 3 More recently, the proposal has been further developed by Richard Starkey and Kevin Anderson at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, 4

Global system: situation, contemporary tendencies and possible perspectives of the power potential distribution

This contribution deals with the set-up of global power differentiation and its contemporary and prospective changes. Primary attention is paid to construction of representative aggregate indicators of power potential on the level of states and of sub-global systems. Into account is taken their territorial, population and economic size and that in a differentiated way (different weights attributed to partial size characteristics). The results confirm the anticipated asymmetry in the distribution of power potential and its shifting among superpowers. Especially emphasized is not only the current distribution of power among states, but above all among supranational systems – including the distinct potential in possibilities of further expansion and integration of sub-global systems.

Bargaining Within the Shadow of Fairness: Economic Analysis of Article 4.109 of the Principles of European Contract Law

The problem of unequal bargaining power has been widely analyzed within the philosophical and economic literature. In this article I would like to concentrate on the issue of “excessive benefit or grossly unfair advantage” as envisaged in Article 4.109 (ex art. 6.109) of The Principles of European Contract Law (PECL). The normative significance of PECL indicates that the codification may be applied by parties as a supranational system of general principles of law or international commercial law (lex mercatoria). The economic analysis of European contract law will be divided in two parts. The first part will include the traditional economic analysis of contract law under an unrealistic assumption of zero transaction costs. It could be argued that even then contract failure may occur. This part concerns the so-called “contract failure”. The second will be focused primarily on contracts made in a positive transaction cost world, where the presence of transaction costs leads to a “market failure”. Both parts pertain to the regulation of contracts by courts within a framework of judicial governance. The main instrument of such judicial governance seems to be the concept of a hypothetical bargain or hypothetical contract. The most appropriate tool to be implemented in these cases seems to be game theory. Whether the benefit is excessive or not, it should be compared with the hypothetical division of surplus from the exchange stemming from the face-to-face ideal bargaining process. Thus the problem of a “market failure” may be analyzed from the perspective of a potential solution to the bargaining problem. In conclusion I would like to address the question of whether and under what conditions it is possible to construct any plausible and generally accepted criteria of fairness in order to restore contractual equivalence in case of gross inadequacy in bargaining power.

Lost in Translation? European Integration and Language Diversity

English is constantly moving forward and consolidating its role as lingua franca in the European Union. At the same time the Union has 23 official languages and promotes around 150 regional or minority languages under its official motto United in diversity; expressing the view that each member state should promote its national language and identity simultaneously as their citizens are to feel like Europeans. This may be regarded as a contradiction in terms because diversity may undermine unity. In this paper we reach the opposite conclusion by investigating the relationship between language, identity and the process of European integration. Taking as a point of departure the fact that language is a crucial part of our identity, we argue that language as such does not have to be an obstacle to the development of ‘an ever closer Union’ in Europe if the general discourses are made transparent on each level of political decision making, i.e. the regional, national and supra-national level as this maintains and strengthens the democracy in the Union. We see the Union as the individual languages' and hence identities’ advocate, defending democratic diversity in Europe at the same time as three main working languages – English, French and German – ensure its necessary unity under some kind of confederal or federal supra-national political system.

Polizeiliche Sicherheitsgewährleistung im Mehrebenensystem

Abstract In the Federal Republic of Germany and, even more so in the European Union, the term „police“ does not connote a single entity but rather a complex multilevel structure, in which decentralised police forces have to cooperate with one another, have to be coordinated on a central level and have to be supplemented by some police functions that have been shifted from the decentralised to the central level altogether. Working structures of – both horizontal and vertical – police cooperation are the key to successful policing in a federal or supranational system. The Federal Republic of Germany, in which police powers reside primarily with the Lander, has developed techniques of police cooperation that have worked successfully for a long time and can serve as an example of how problems of trans-border police cooperation in a multilevel system can be solved. More recently, in Europe, too, both within and outside of the legal framework of the European Union (EU), structures of multilevel police cooperati...

“The Birth of a European Public”: Migration, Postnationality, and Race in the Uniting of Europe

Europe appears to be in a unique position in this post-cold war, post 9/11 world, both with regard to its internal reconstruction and to its potential role in current world politics. At a time when the "post-national," "the end of the nation-state," have become buzzwords within academic and non-academic discourses of globalization, the European Union appears as the first supranational system fit for the 21st Century. The quest for an European identity however, seems to have fallen way behind the process of creating a common legal and economic system. While changes in national laws and the introduction of the Euro passed relatively smoothly, the rejection of a European constitution in a number of national plebiscites lead to renewed debates, a search for an existing “European consciousness” able to hold the Union together. All too often however, these debates devolve into an assessment of what, or rather who, is certainly not European. Migration in particular gains a central position here by functioning both as a threat uniting the beleaguered European nations and as a trope shifting the focus away from Europe’s unresolved identity crisis. In this essay, I briefly analyze discourses on the continent’s future and past as they pertain to memory, identity, and migration. In order to do so, I will trace some of the complicated interactions resulting from the simultaneous construction of a European space, both materially and discursively, in the contemporary global landscape and of a normative European historical memory. My starting point is the notion of an emerging European “public space” and its role in creating a common continental identity. I focus on two recent incidents of what could be defined as the emergence of a “transnational” European public: the widespread protests against the Iraq war in the spring of 2003 and the “riots” in the French banlieus in the winter of 2005. Both events also place the European public within the discursive space of two dominant tropes of current global politics, “the war on terror” and “the clash of civilizations,” tied to renewed attempts to create transatlantic Western unity. I will approach the events at the center of my analysis partly by way of their assessment by two of Europe’s foremost “public intellectuals,” Juergen Habermas and Jean Baudrillard. Habermas’ reflection on the meaning of the Western European resistance to the Iraq war and Baudrillard’s view of the uprising on the margins of French society can be seen as emblematic of two versions of post-war Europe – one in which the European Union stands for the successful construction of a civil society out of the ruins left behind by World War II, the other documenting the failure of this attempt. Ultimately however, I will argue, both interpretations are failing to place Europe’s post-war history in a global context as they remain caught up in an outdated, solipsistic perspective that continues to place racialized migrant and minority populations outside of the limits of “Europe.”

The legal position of framework decisions

The framework decisions, as the central legal act under the “third pillar” are some of the most significant non-typical documents from a dogmatic point of view within the EU law. The differences and specialities of this legislative act, correlated with the EC Treaty are available not only in the lawmaking process, but in juridical supervision as well. The main goal of this paper is to show the dogmatic and practical aspects of these two perspectives. First of all it is necessary to predict, why the framework decisions are not products of classic public international law (according to the position of the German Federal Constitutional Court), rather than special documents, and do they consequently belong to a supranational system. The missing infringement procedure within the police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters makes the judicial control of the Member State’s effective enlargement extremely difficult. Secondly it is important to demonstrate the alternative methods of the ECJ, which is based on case law from the Court of Luxembourg, in the field of the directives. In this context the study will analyze the consequences of the important “Pupino” Judgment.

Кто и за какую интеграцию? (Отношение населения стран ЕС и СНГ к интеграции)

Integration processes in the European Union and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are an element of a global tendency to form suprastate associations. Although such associations assume that supranational systems of authorities are created they are hardly antidemocratic. Nevertheless, each such integration process, although formally identical or highly similar, may have a completely different political or social significance which can be observed when their social support is compared. The European Union is practically unprecedented, and such a model of integration is being created for the first time in response to the requirements and needs of modern European society; it also has no determined borders. It mainly finds support among the young and educated social strata, who are interested in the benefits generated by such integration and who do not fear potential instability and indeterminacy that accompany such processes. The Post-Soviet countries do have recent experience of integration having followed a model of a state with a highly integrated social and political life. The experience of the Soviet Union in many respects determines the directions of integration of these states although the USSR collapsed and the historic circumstances that affected its foundation are radically different. The nature of such integration efforts is reflected by their social support. The main advocates of the integration processes in CIS are older and less educated people for whom the revival of Soviet reality seems more attractive whereas the present brings risk and threat. Thus being oriented to the past or to the future is among the main factors that differentiate the nature, efficiency and future prospects of these two integration processes.

Systems approaches and communication research. The age of entropy

Abstract This essay examines the contemporary approaches to systems theory, the strengths and limitations of these approaches, and how communication researchers can apply them creatively. It points out that using system approaches requires communication scholars to study the mutual interaction of both information inputs and matter/energy inputs. Overloads of these inputs coupled with storage problems could engender positive feedback loops and move the system away from the linear region of stability toward the edge of chaos (bifurcation). It could then self-organize as a more complex system in a new phase space of its trajectory. This complexity approach could be used to trace the trajectory of the global mass communication system or to conduct empirical research on all or any of the information-processing subsystems within the eight hierarchical levels of nested systems ranging from cell to supranational systems. Although systems thinking is writ large in the onto-cosmology of Eastern philosophies, its epistemological and methodological refinements did not occur until quantum physics challenged the ‘atomism’ of the dominant Newtonian-Cartesian model.

How to Sharpen a Dull Sword – The Principle of Subsidiarity and its Control

The Treaty Establishing a European Constitution seems to have failed. The problems continue to exist: a centralizing tendency is inherent in the European Union like in supposedly every federal or supra-national system. This is why, for years, there has been a growing demand for a barrier against the subtle loss of competence for the Member States and their sub-national units, which also potentially threatens the acceptance of the Union's legal acts and therefore the progress of European integration overall.

Mod en europæisk velfærds- og arbejdsmarkedsmodel

Towards a European welfare and labour market model: an analysis of the genesis of an institutional order During the past decade, cooperation in the European Union has intensified in the field of social- and labour mar-ket policy and has led to a supranational system of wel-fare and labour market regulation. This article analyses the establishment of a European industrial relations system as an ‘institutional order’ and discusses how and why the system has developed. Three crucial situations are ana-lysed as to their contribution to the development of this institutional order. The first is the EU Commission’s three proposals for directives on atypical work in the beginning of 1990. The second is from October 199l when negotiators from three labour market organisations: UNICE, ETUC, and CEEP signed an agreement concerning possibilities of negotiating collective agreements at the European level. The third crucial situation is from Novem-ber 1995 and concerns the first agreement these organi-sations signed concerning maternity leave. The article argues that these events make up crucial situations on the road to the establishment of a European labour market model.

Supranational Networks: States and Firms

The nation-state systems that seem to dominate the global landscape are not necessarily the pinnacle of evolution. A conglomeration of interacting factors spelled doom for the traditional colonialism of previous centuries while providing an ideal environment for multinational firms operating above the level of nation-states to play an important role in the generation of a new politico-socio-economic system better described by network models than by ordinary political models. Previously existing units and subunits, in the course of adjustment and adaptation to changing circumstances, change their relations with one another and are, sometimes, newly integrated in a novel manner such that new units or subunits are recognizable. It is puzzling that most scholars still see these changes as merely quantitative growth rather than as a qualitatively new system at a supranational level of integration. Because human beings start from concepts we already know, one really has to be strongly motivated to try to go beyond the cognitive concepts one uses regularly to attempt to conceive of something different. In the perspective of millions of years of evolution both states and business firms are relatively recent emergents out of the processes of adaptation that generate all social formations. Both business firms and nation states are kinds of corporations, and it is a mistake to deal separately with the international network of states when it seems perfectly obvious that the supranational system includes interacting states and corporations in a single complex network. Most countries are not "natural" nation-states, but are corporations whose control over some territory is recognized by some other states. States and companies should be treated similarly in analysis of the supranational system and the best model for studying the supranational system is a network model that begins with defining units and their relationships. In that mode, applying various mathematical algorithms, one can find clusters and equivalence sets representing different levels of organization in the network. At the same time as states are influencing firms, firms are busily influencing states.

A Comparative Analysis of OHADA's Uniform Business Laws in West Africa: A French Civilian Structure's Impact on Economic Development

Sixteen West African, mostly francophone countries have entered into a treaty pursuant to which they have adopted uniform business laws. The treaty also provides a mechanism for adopting new uniform business laws and modifying existing ones, and for a single judicial interpretation of these laws across the treaty territory. The articulated purpose is to attract foreign investment. All these uniform business laws, the first of which came into effect in 1998, reflect a common heritage with the French legal system. Contrary to earlier literature, recent comparative studies assert that the civil-law system's business laws, and in particular business laws based on the French legal system, are indeed compatible with economic development. Interviews with legal professionals in the region suggest that local consumers of the new, uniform business laws are optimistic about the laws' contribution to both foreign and domestic investment in the region. Although it is too early to confirm the outcome, these uniform laws have already begun to be change the discussion. There is evidence that the sophistication of the new uniform business laws, together with the supranational legislature and judicial system can facilitate commerce by increasing predictability and transparency.

Politics of Identity and Identity Policies in Europe: The Case of Peruvian Immigrants in Spain

This article focuses on the process of identity formation in migrant communities within the context of globalization. Cultural territorialization is understood as a contingent and complex result of historical and political processes; here, it is analyzed taking into account in the new politics of identity implemented in the country of reception and the previous historical cultural encounters between both societies of origin and of destination, as well as the "nomadic" mentality of migrants. Globalization is considered not only as crossing territorial boundaries, but also as drawing new borders. A new subjectivity was created for non-European newcomers in Spain in the 1990s, when it became a member of the European Union, which included the production of new universal categories such as "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant." However, literature on migration in Europe has usually taken these terms for granted. In this context, Peruvian migrants take a Spanish colonial institution imposed in the New World-the religious brotherhood-bring it back to the Old World, and redefine it. These Peruvian brotherhoods in Spain are devoted to El Se–or de los Milagros (The Lord of Miracles), a Peruvian cultural expression that reveals the links between local, national, and supranational systems of reference. The devotion to this image is a means for the Peruvian community in Spain to both create connections to their original imagined community and incorporate themselves in the new society while avoiding internal contradictions and external exclusionary categories of identity that are imposed on them.

A New Indicator of European Integration and an Application to Collaboration in Scientific Research

The goal of this study is to develop a comprehensive indicator of integration among countries within a supranational system. Integration is not analysed in terms of the growth in interactions among countries, but in terms of the matrix distribution of interactions among countries. Integration can then be indicated in terms of interaction biases among countries measured by the difference between the observed matrix distribution and the hypothetical random distribution. The indicator is applied to data on research collaborations among European research institutions (1993-2000). Evidence is found that the European science system has indeed become more integrated. The higher level of integration has resulted exclusively from a more evenly distributed pattern of European collaborations, while the strong bias towards intra-national collaborations persisted. The results point to the persistence of national science systems. A future research agenda and science policy implications are discussed.

A supranational party system and the legitimacy of the European Union

As the European Union enters a crucial period of institutional reform with the launch of the European Convention and the upcoming enlargement to 27 countries, how to increase the democratic legitimacy of the Union’s political system has become one of the central issues. In all democratic political systems, one of the main ways a polity is legitimised is via a “party system”. A democratic (that is “responsive”) party system has two essential elements: 1) organisation – internally hierarchical party organisations, and 2) competition – contestation, rather than collusion, between these organisations over public policies and political office.1 In most accounts of liberal democracy, these two elements go hand in hand: democracy works because parties with competing agendas and candidates for leadership organise to A Supranational Party System and the Legitimacy of the European Union

Governance Hotspots

Moving on after September 11 will require more than just eliminating organized terrorist networks and providing humanitarian aid, crucial as these two interventions are. There is a much larger landscape of multiple devastations in the global south that the global north cannot escape. While socio-economic devastation may not cause terrorism directly, it does promote extreme responses, such as trafficking in people, and can facilitate recruitment of young people for terrorist activity, both random and organized. These multiple devastations need to be addressed - by world and country leaders, by the supra-national system, by NGOs, by global civil society, by corporate economic actors. The article confines itself to the need for governments' action through new specialized multilateralisms and internationalisms. It argues that we can even make a narrow utilitarian case that it is in the global north's interest to address these issues. The particular cases through which the argument is developed are the growing hyper-indebtedness in the global south and the accumulation of contradictions in the immigration regime prevalent in the global north. Examining these is a way of dissecting the nature of the challenge and identifying specific governance deficits.

Editorial introduction: European migration: flows, structures and regulation

AbstractIt is now widely accepted, and commented on, that both within Europe and beyond, not only are millions on the move, but there have been fundamental changes in the very nature of migration and mobility. The large‐scale uprooting of people leading to forced migration, the rapid increase of legal and illegal migration of skilled and unskilled people to the growth poles of the global economy, the rapid increase in temporary mobility of both manual labour and service providers, and the growing significance of consumption‐led migration are all intimately linked to the processes of globalisation and restructuring in global and European political, economic, social and cultural relations since the late 1980s/early 1990s. It is not only the geography of flows which has been and is being transformed, but also the channels and structures – what Urry (2000) terms the ‘scapes’ – which mediate and are reshaped by these flows. The ‘scapes’ are being recast in part by technological changes in transport and communication, opening up new ways of travel and working, but they are also part of and subject to the systems which regulate migration and mobility. In part these are defined by national and supranational systems of regulation, including both the barriers to flows and the rights of permanent residence and citizenship. But they are also conditioned by the creation and renewal of informal migrant networks across space, and the ‘grey’ area of regulation constituted by the role of organised crime in the trafficking in people. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Global visions: global civil society and the lessons of European environmentalism

To illuminate the obstacles to the development of a global civil society, the experience of the most developed transnational social movement—the environmental movement—in the most developed supranational political system—the European Union—is considered. National differences are shown to be persistent and there is little evidence of Europeanization. It is argued that the impediments to the development of a global civil society are yet greater and that, despite the advent of antiglobalization protests, global civil society remains an aspiration rather thanan accomplished fact

Beyond nationalism: Three visions of the European Union and their implications for the linguistic regime of its institutions

The linguistic diversity in the European Union is generally viewed as an essential component of the European identity, but the linguistic regime of the EU institutions (with eleven official and working languages) is not undisputed. In addition, the upcoming enlargements will complicate greatly the continuation of the present practices as new Member States bring new official languages. As a result, the debate about possible reforms is likely to be boosted by the necessity to prepare EU institutions for further enlargment. The present regime of institutional multilingualism is criticised from different angles, resulting in three options for the future. In this paper the linguistic regime of EU institutions is discussed in relation to general ideas about the nature of this supranational political system. Supranationalism is treated here as a program to supersede nationalism. Three variants are distinguished: pacified nationalism, neo-nationalism and post-nationalism. The paper examines how these different visions of Europe shed different lights on the issue of multilingualism (in terms of communication, identity and power) and its institutionalisation in the linguistic regime of the core instituions of the European Union. Although the three models are compatible with several arrangements, they support or oppose them for different reasons. Besides, they differ regarding the significance of the linguistic regime of the EU institutions for the whole polity and their ability to steer linguistic practices.