The following are the latest essays, review articles and notes published on Perspectives on Federalism, which will be collected in next issue. You can download also previous issues from the archive.
Essay
Published on 2021 Nov 18
The practice of federalism in Nigeria had undergone different stages of structuring to resolve salient political issues. However, despite each change to the structure, the clamour for further change has not aba...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Oct 21
Ever since the European Union came into existence many theories have addressed the state of European integration. This paper tries to offer a further interpretation building on the principal-agent concept. The ...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Sep 28
In this article I explore the judicial dimension of federal systems from a subnational perspective. The findings show that regardles of the type of federalism subnational courts of last resort underscore ...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Sep 20
Secession in a EU context analysed from a multilevel governance unravels that there is in fact room EU interference in secessionist conflicts. Nevertheless, a balance should be struck between such commitment ...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Sep 17
It has been years now that the scientific community is warning about the gravity of climate change consequences and about the need to effectively respond to it. However, the climate crisis just seems to get wor...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Jun 22
This study examines the interplay between federalism and interborder conflict between the Tigrai and Amhara regions of Ethiopia. To this effect, secondary data, both qualitative and quantitative, were collected...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Mar 30
By demonstrating the importance of the own source of EU revenue, rather than focusing solely on the size of its budget, we can understand that financing the EU is not a ‘zero-sum’ game. Therefore, we use th...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Mar 23
This article provides an analysis of the recent negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the representatives of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) for the signature of a new agr...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Jan 21
Immediately after the formation of the state of Kerala, general election was held to the Kerala State Legislative Assembly. In this election, the communists came to power in Ker...
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Essay
Published on 2021 Jan 19
In 1991, Colombia shifted from a territorial regime that combined shared rule with limited self-rule to the opposite configuration: extensive self-rule without shared rule. The radical shift between these two h...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Dec 18
Eight states in Africa that have federal or federal-type government systems and most of these federations emerged in the post-Cold War period. The African federations are in var...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Dec 18
Unlike most other federal states, the Belgian federation has kept the organisation of the judiciary as a federal competence. The reasons are historical, principled, practical as...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Dec 17
This article analyses the model of judicial federalism that has developed in the Federal Republic of Germany. As the constitutional history of Germany reveals, federal regulatio...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Dec 17
Political rhetoric aside, has Canada, 150 years after its foundation, achieved its goal of preserving pluralism? How is pluralism defined within the Canadian framework? What was the judiciary’s contribution t...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Dec 17
In Argentina the repercussions on the judicial system deriving from the territorial allocation of power are marked by peculiar features that make this experience not fully ascribable to what can be defined as ...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Dec 16
The thematic focus of this issue of Perspectives on Federalism shall analyse phenomena of pluralism in the judiciary of federal systems: ‘Jurisdiction and Pluralisms: Judicial Functions and Organisation in...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Dec 15
Judicial federalism has generally been neglected by scholars in comparative federalism. However, this topic is quite relevant for a proper understanding of the distribution of competences in a federal order and...
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Note
Published on 2020 Dec 15
The European Union is well known to be one of the most prominent international actors fighting against the climate crisis and, as the President of the European Council Charl...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Nov 09
This article provides a historical reconstruction of the normative dimension (principles, norms, values) of EU-ASEAN relations, with particular reference to the EU’s inclination and attempts to make them an i...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Oct 15
Horizontal intergovernmental forums that bring together the constituent units of a federation are increasingly common. This article examines the origin, organization and purpose of the premium horizontal interg...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Oct 09
In December 2019 the EU Commission presented the European Green Deal as directly connected with the Commission’s strategy to implement the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda. More recently, the Communication from ...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Oct 01
COVID-19 has posed several challenges at the national level with governments adopting various policies to counter its spread. Nonetheless, the transnational nature of pandemics ...
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Essay
Published on 2020 Sep 10
Does European integration impact on minority nationalism? Is there evidence that processses of European integration exacerbate or moderate minority nationalist tendencies in member states? Post-2010 developm...
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Essay
Published on 2020 May 21
Climate change will probably constitute the most serious security challenge that humanity will face in 21st century. The extreme complexity of both the causes and the consequ...
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Essay
Published on 2020 May 20
Most traditional federal theory remains rooted in the notion that asymmetrical constitutional arrangements within a state structure are somewhat exceptional. According to contemporary federal theory, however, r...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Dec 19
This paper examines the development of fiscal federalism in Somalia to reveal the challenges this unique country is facing and, based on the findings, propose and agenda for reform. Interviews, direct observati...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Dec 19
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role and place of oil and gas politics in the Iraqi Federation. This aspect is investigated in the relationship to ethnic conflict. These two features are considered ...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Dec 13
This paper aims at analysing the content of the PIF Directive and assessing its transposition into the Spanish Law. To achieve these objectives, this paper starts with a detailed study of the criminal law oblig...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Dec 12
Devolution and the associated mechanisms of governance, such as power-sharing, limited government, a reformed system of public administration and civic engagement, and its features that include the protection o...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Dec 11
Israel is a small nation, it features natural areas that are poor in resources, has a mixed population with different languages and religions, boats a strong army and hold a crucial geographical position: attri...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Nov 17
Food security is a hugely important and complex issue. Such complexity is demonstrated, inter alia, by the lack of a consistent definition of food security under the international policy framework. Of the vario...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Aug 29
The Euroscepticism that led to the result of the Brexit referendum is not new, but can actually be traced back hundreds of years. This article explores Euroscepticism by comparing the modern EU with the Europea...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Aug 23
In this paper, I examine the degree and causes of judicial activism in a German subnational constitutional court. This research goal entails two dimensions. On the one hand, I explore whether and to what extent...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Aug 21
The prime objectives of this study are to examine the perceptions and attitudes of Somalis toward federalism, as well as the challenges related to its adoption. The study gathered data via a self-administered o...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Jun 26
This Article addresses Congress’s prerogative to implement non-self-executing treaties. In construing Congress’s Necessary and Proper Clause authority in this area, most commentators have argued that it is ...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Jun 03
Nowadays, the European Integration process is challenged by a rise in anti-establishment parties proposing policies reactionary to globalization. Italy, one of Europe’s founding nations and largest economies,...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Apr 09
The 2019 European elections are characterised by many novelties and paradoxes: for the first time they have acquired a high political salience, also thanks to the cleavage between nationalist and pro-EU part...
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The 2019 European Parliament elections: politically crucial, but without clear institutional effects
Essay
Published on 2019 Mar 15
The elections for the European Parliament that will take place on 23-26 May 2019 will most probably disprove the second-order nature of the European elections and invert the steady decline in voter turnout, f...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Mar 15
At the end of May 2019, European citizens will be called to elect their representatives to the European Parliament. These elections are both uncertain, as the situation in which they intervene is unique, and cr...
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Review Article
Published on 2019 Mar 12
In order to understand the true essence of the existing federal structure in India, it is very much required that there should be a proper understanding of the events and circumstance which led to its progre...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Mar 12
The purpose of the present paper is to find a theoretical-legal basis for the recent innovative decisions by the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice and by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the issue...
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Essay
Published on 2019 Jan 23
This paper investigates the complex relationship between asymmetry and the principle of non-discrimination from the perspective of subnational fundamental rights. The research question of this paper concerns th...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Nov 05
Environmental protection and sustainable development are competences that the EU is entitled to integrate into the definition and implementation of its policies. However, shared competences in these areas are s...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Nov 03
For a long time considered, improperly, a sort of ‘nuclear’ option, Article 7 TEU is the key EU Treaty provision in the field of values enforcement. In the context of the Union’s current rule of law crisi...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Oct 24
In 2017, a new Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Group (JPSG) was created to enable members of the national parliaments of the EU and the European Parliament to exercise joint oversight of the EU agency for police c...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Oct 24
The provision of Article 13 TSCG to create an Interparliamentary Conference was the starting point for long discussions after which national parliaments and the European Parliament eventually reached a compromi...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Oct 24
This contribution proposes a framework of transnational parliamentarism to study inter-parliamentary cooperation, and applies it to the interparliamentary conference on CFSP/CSDP. It asks to what extent the IPC...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Oct 24
COSAC has played an active role in fostering and developing interparliamentary cooperation since it has proven to be an effective model that has helped shape a supranational layer of influence for NPs. The cent...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Oct 23
The EU Speakers’ Conference has experienced a ‘second youth’ after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon by playing a ‘quasi-constitutional’ role in inter-parliamentary cooperation, and in part...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Oct 23
The article draws comparisons between inter-parliamentary cooperation in the European Union and at the international level. It recognises that, notwithstanding a strong international imprint, inter-parliamentar...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Sep 26
When ethnic groups negotiate self-government arrangements, ‘ethnic sovereignty’ lies boldly at the heart of their security considerations. The constitutional nature of self-determination and the extent of t...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Sep 26
The aim of involving state members in reforming federal constitutions is to guarantee them the autonomy that they have been constitutionally granted. It also prevents reform from being carried out unilaterally ...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Sep 26
Parliamentary administrators have to cope with a complex and ever-changing procedural framework, as well as with conflicting demands from the policy side. Nevertheless, their role in inter-parliamentary coopera...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Sep 26
Interparliamentary conferences and other permanent forums for interparliamentary cooperation are blossoming in the European Union. Following more or less lengthy negotiations between national and European parli...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 27
The House of Lords is the world’s longest-established and probably best-known second chamber. Wholly unelected, with most members appointed for life, it appears a vestige of the ‘elite’ form of bicamerali...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 27
The Spanish Constitution defines the Senate as 'Chamber of territorial representation'. But in the Senate the provinces are represented, not the Autonomous Communities. The Senate is a Chamber of ‘sober secon...
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Bicameralism in Belgium: the dismantlement of the Senate for the sake of multinational confederalism
Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 27
Belgium was established in 1830 as a unitary state with a bicameral parliament, with symmetrical powers for the upper and the lower house. While federalism and bicameralism are often considered a pair, the Belg...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 27
The German Basic Law constitutes federalism as a unique political system which is characterised by intertwined decision-making of the Federation (Bund) and the component units (Länder). The executives of the t...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 27
According to many legal and political scientists the Austrian Bundesrat is generally considered to be a paradigmatic example of a politically and legally weak second chamber embedded in a strongly centralised f...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 27
This paper presents the Swiss Ständerat as a model of perfect bicameralism. It looks at the constitutional design of the second Chamber, examines the evolution of the Ständerat and critically assesses its cur...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 27
Discussions regarding the functional design of second chambers in federal or quasi-federal systems seem to focus mainly on legislative functions. Thus, extra- or non-legislative functions related to the executi...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jul 19
Contemporary U.S. federalism particularly since the late1960s has evolved over the course of pluralism alternating exercisable governmental powers between the federal and state governments. The complexity of th...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jun 07
Legislative functions of federal second chambers are not a homogeneous set of powers, but require comparison and classification. First, the paper will examine the legislative functions of the second chambers of...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jun 07
This article briefly explores the reasons why the Committee of the Regions (CoR) has only partially accomplished its representative function. It is divided into three parts. In the first part I argue that the a...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jun 07
The paper contends that bicameral systems, irrespective of their differences in composition and powers, are unfit to represent territorial interests in the national decision-making process, except in some resid...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jun 07
In federal and regionalised states, bicameralism constitutes shared rule between levels of governments. At the same time, second chambers serve as a safeguard protecting self-rule of decentralised governments a...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jun 07
An analysis of the structure of parliaments in European countries shows that a wide range of options developed across the centuries. However, many of these patterns (among which tetracameralism, tricameralism, ...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Jun 03
The aim of this contribution is to make some points on the distinction between ‘perfect’ (or equal) and ‘imperfect’ (or unequal) bicameralism and its relevance to contemporary discussions about second c...
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The referenda for more autonomy in Veneto and Lombardia: constitutional and comparative perspectives
Essay
Published on 2018 Apr 11
In a global context where popular referenda are increasingly used to decide contested issues, this paper aims at exploring the framework in which, in October 2017, two referenda took place in the Italian northe...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Apr 11
This paper evaluates the second-generation theory (SGT) of fiscal federalism. It spells out the main arguments of the theory and discusses the fiscal architecture of Nigerian federalism with a view to using the...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Apr 11
The Council is a crucial intergovernmental institution of the European Union. However, the complex, opaque and consensual character of the decision-making process in the Council puts its legitimacy into questio...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Apr 10
The Treaty of Lisbon introduced a new system of weighted votes in the Council, which radically departs from the principles on which the distribution of votes between the Member States of the EU was based for mo...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Apr 10
The European Social Dialogue, and its output, the European collective agreements, are intended to implement minimum standards of working conditions that bind all Member-States, in a logic of legal harmonisation...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Mar 27
For the last forty years, the European Union has been pursuing the goal of a unified system of patent law, which would make it possible for an invention to be protected, by EU law, throughout the territory of t...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Mar 27
The Council is a crucial intergovernmental institution of the European Union. However, the complex, opaque and consensual character of the decision-making process in the Council puts its legitimacy into questio...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Mar 26
This paper explores the similarities between the EU’s system of administrative implementation of its legislative acts, and the German and American systems of administrative implementation of their respective ...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Mar 26
The EU has not yet found effective answers to constitutional crises in its Member States, in particular Hungary and Poland. Due to systemic problems of compliance with the common values of Art. 2, the legitimac...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Mar 26
In recent political debate, the association between national souverainisme and Euroscepticism is considered a natural one. From Marine Le Pen to Matteo Salvini, there is a unanimous affirmation of the necessity...
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Essay
Published on 2018 Mar 26
This article is inspired by the 2017 discussions on the future of Europe (in particular some of the ideas debated in the White Paper on the Future of Europe, published by the European Commission) and the events...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 18
After a discussion of the impact of the principle of equality, entrenched in the Charters approved in Canada since the 1867 British North American Act, this essay then focuses on the related Supreme Court’s a...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 18
The Canadian constitution is to some extent characterised by its focus on equality, and in particular gender equality. This development of women’s rights in Canada and the greater engagement of women as polit...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 17
Since it was passed, the Clarity Act has been at the core of any secessionist debate in Canada and abroad. Although contested at home, the Clarity Act has earned worldwide prestige as the democratic standard th...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 17
In constitutional theory, the referendum is an instrument that allows for the expression of the popular will in government decisions and through which people are asked to vote directly on an issue or policy. Ov...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 17
This paper starts with a general contextualisation of how Canadian constitutional law acquired an important role in global constitutional conversations in recent decades. It then considers, in particular, the w...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 07
The paper focuses on Canadian Provinces’ role in migrant selection. After an asymmetric approach, that benefited only Quebec, the federal government granted devolutionary powers in migrant selection to the ot...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 05
Constitutional scholarship in Canada since Confederation has been characterized by two primary narratives. The dualist narrative, which characterized constitutional scholarship between the late-nineteenth and m...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Dec 05
This paper examines the interaction between constitutional design and practice through a case study of Canadian federalism. Focusing on the federal architecture of the Canadian Constitution, the paper examines ...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Oct 25
This article explores the particular tensions surrounding judicial review in EU external relations. The tensions are classified using a two-dimensional framework. Firstly, a distinction based on policy domains ...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Oct 25
In this article, I compare constitutional and administrative models in terms of their implications for the EU legal order’s interaction with other legal regimes. I aim to make a twofold argument on the implic...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Oct 25
This paper analyses the ways in which the Unfair Contract Terms and Unfair Commercial Practices Directives try to steer a path between imposing a common European standard and allowing national variation. The op...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Sep 14
The EBU represents a clear investment in administrative integration with clear implications for the constitutional features of the EU. This paper aims to give an analysis of the administrative arrangements, thr...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Sep 14
The paper deals with the validity of constitutional pluralism as a constitutional theory for the European Union and a paradigm for the understanding of EU law in the current times of crisis. It reconstructs the...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Sep 13
The robustness of the EU’s constitutional framework – and its ability to accommodate democratic politics – is challenged as never before. The growing disconnect between formally democratic procedures and ...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Sep 12
This article provides an analysis of the functions performed by constitutional identity in constitutional discourses of both the EU and its Member States, in the context of emerging post-Westphalian and suprana...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Sep 12
This article questions the idea that the EU is a pure regulatory power based on supranational delegation of competence from the Member States. It claims the insufficiency of this single paradigm to explain the ...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Sep 11
Public power has been justified by resorting to two different kinds of legitimation: one coming from above, the other emerging from the governed. While legitimation “from above” implies that those who are v...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Sep 01
As is broadly recognized, the realm of administrative power greatly expanded over the course the twentieth century (particularly after 1945). This essay argues that this expansion, along with differential conce...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Jul 24
Canada and the United States of America are examples of how two constitutional systems in the same region may adopt substantially different solutions in respect of the powers of the head of state. While the Uni...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Jul 21
In this essay the question of what kind of conflicts are at stake in the context of European pluralism will be considered, with special focus on the shift from “conflicts by divergence” to “conflicts by c...
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Essay
Published on 2017 May 29
International and constitutional law, originally distinct realms with limited areas of intersection, are getting closer and closer, particularly in the European landscape within the human rights protection fiel...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Mar 14
Party capability theory assumes that governments, due to their immense resources and status as repeat players, hold a great advantage over individuals and organizations pursuing litigation in courts. Less known...
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Essay
Published on 2017 Feb 01
The difference between ASEAN and EU in the political and economic realm has an interesting parallel in the system of values and “rights” that are sustained by the two organisations. In effect if we look to ...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Dec 19
The international bailout granted to Portugal between 2011 and 2014 was conditional on the adoption by the Portuguese State of austerity measures included in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the ...
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Note
Published on 2016 Dec 17
In Gauweiler v. ECB, the German Constitutional Court referred for the first time a case to the European Court of Justice. The BVerfG openly doubted the legality of the OMT program of the European Central Bank, ...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Dec 17
Progressive ideology has slowly eroded American principles for over a century, declaring social control its ultimate goal. Social control is not possible while American principles, such as individual freedoms a...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Nov 21
While most students of federalism feel satisfied with defining it as involving self-rule and shared rule, there is an inherent laxity in that definition because several institutional forms have dual components ...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Nov 21
Constitutional politics seemingly corroborate the assumption that Germany is a Grand Coalition state. In this perspective German cooperative federalism and the supermajority required for any amendment to the co...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Nov 21
This paper aims to provide a brief assessment of the legal framework of the newly established metropolitan cities in the Italian domestic legal order. After an historical overview of previous attempts to set up...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Nov 08
The European integration process has long been characterised by the predominance of national executive powers. National parliaments were recognised as European actors after several decades only, in the Maastric...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Oct 07
This paper provides a general overview of the EU’s own resources system, and of the debate on its possible reform within the current legal framework. Two alternative reforms are discussed, along with their...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Sep 13
Eight years after the outbreak of the crisis, the Eurozone (EZ) fiscal policy remains fragmented at the national level. This paper fills the structural gap between the monetary and fiscal dimensions of EZ econo...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Sep 13
The Euro Area (Eurozone, or EZ) is navigating uncharted waters; it has started, in slow motion, to slide towards a fiscal federation, while still lacking both the fiscal capacity and the democratic qualificatio...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Sep 13
By the end of 2016 the European Commission is expected to present its mid-term review of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020. The results of the review may open the way for a revision of the MFF...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Sep 13
From 1992, after the UN “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, sustainable development has become a priority of many countries and international organizations, including the European Union. After the crisis of 2...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Sep 13
Contributions in this special issue argue make a number of points with regard to the urgent need to change the economic governance of the Eurozone, pointing at some tools to increase its spending capacity. Th...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Apr 20
The article looks at fiscal constraints adopted by the U.S. States. It questions the ability of those rules to determine sound budgetary policies. To assess this point it analyses, in the general part, the majo...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Apr 20
The processes of deepening economic integration and regional development contribute to the intensification of inter-regional disparities. The EU’s efforts to achieve cohesion are intended to contribute to lif...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Apr 07
In contrast to U.S. Federal Indian law, which has classified indigenous tribes as “domestic dependent nations” since the early 19th century, Mexican law has only recently begun to define the political and t...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Mar 21
EU and EMU are facing a hastened phase of structural rather than episodic crisis, following the progressive shift of the world order from a bipolar toward a multi-polar system. From the sovereign debt trap to m...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Feb 15
European Union, and criminal, laws had been interacting in many ways even before explicit competence in criminal matters was acquired by the Union in the Treaty of Maastricht. Such intersections between suprana...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Jan 11
The current financial problems of some Euro-area Member States have been tackled by ad hoc financial institutions, formed outside of the EU as international institutions and aimed at granting financial assistan...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Jan 10
This note analyses a peculiar feature of the ESM, namely the lack of an acceptable set of standards for the fundamental democratic principle of transparency. Moving from the particular nature of this mechanism,...
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Essay
Published on 2016 Jan 04
This paper evaluates the impact of austerity measures on national social protection mechanisms and on the European Social Model. The study is based on an in-depth analysis of austerity measures adopted in Italy...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Dec 29
In this article I argue that the EU budget is (slowly) moving from a budget based on the rationale that richer EU countries help poorer EU countries in exchange for their engagement to the process of economic i...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Dec 28
This article examines the evolution of the EU ‘redistributive’ policies in the (post-) crisis EU era. By reviewing the EU cohesion policy, the financial assistance mechanisms, the new economic governance me...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Dec 24
Criticism of European solidarity relies on three cornerstone arguments with mythological features. First is the “Myth of the Beggar”: it is believed that supranational solidarity is self-defeating, as it pr...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Dec 24
This paper analyses the case-law of the European Court of Justice on the scope and limits of cross-border access of economically inactive Union citizens to national systems of social assistance. The author de-c...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Oct 30
European Movement International (EM) was founded in October 1948 after the Hague Congress held in May to coordinate the initiatives of the major European movements and political forces in favour of the unificat...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Oct 27
The question at hand is located at the intersection of EU law and national constitutional law, and aims to answer the following problem: namely, how to mitigate federal concerns in the context of infringement p...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Oct 23
In the series Neither Victims Nor Executioners (1946) the Franco-Algerian writer Albert Camus argued for the need of a relative utopia that would allow man, who refused the logic of murder and violence, to revo...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Oct 21
This paper analyses the case-law of the European Court of Justice on the substantive scope of ne bis in idem in transnational cases and evaluates the findings in light of the different concepts of legal interes...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Oct 15
This article analyzes the degree of convergence between the United States and the European Union regarding the structural role of administrative agencies. As will be argued, the United States and European Union...
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Essay
Published on 2015 May 19
This paper highlights the most important institutional evolutions of Belgian federalism stemming from the implementation of the sixth state reform (2012-2014). This reform inter alia included a transfer of powe...
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Essay
Published on 2015 May 19
This paper will deal with EU competence over patent law, especially in the context of the TRIPS Agreement with reference to the ruling of CJEU in the Daiichi Sankyo case (CJEU case C-414/11 Daiichi Sankyo v DEM...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Apr 17
People are usually born into their political communities, and only a minority of them become member of the given community by naturalisation. Sovereign states enjoy a great margin of appreciation in defining th...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Apr 15
This paper presents the case of Pakistan, which is also broadly illustrative of the issues concerning federalism and subnational empowerment in developing countries characterized by unconsolidated political sys...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Apr 14
This special issue of Perspectives on Federalism collects papers mostly presented at the General Conference of the European Consortium of ...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Mar 31
The article analyses constitutional politics in the German Länder in the field of minors’ rights. Since this issue seems a purely legal matter dealt with at the federal, European and international level, we ...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Mar 23
Austria’s federalism is determined by an apparent contrast between formal and real constitution having its roots in foundational defects shaping the system to the present day. As for the formal dimension, Aus...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Mar 23
This paper discusses recent developments in Scottish nationalist constitutional thought during the period of 2002 to 2014, showing how the Scottish constitutional conversation has diverged from, but continues t...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Feb 01
There is a long standing debate on the reform of the EU budget. According to the final agreement on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020 signed in December 2013, the Commission will present, by t...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Feb 01
The article explores the present role of the ECB in European economic governance and point at the required steps to make such governance effective in tackling the challenges of the Eurozone and of the European ...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 31
This special issue is the result of a long project started within the activity of one of the working groups created at the Centre for St...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 31
Political Parties at the European level (Europarties) have traditionally been regarded as weak actors in the EU political system. Yet, this assessment fails to correctly describe the role that the Europarties p...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 29
This article focuses on the impact of the Eurocrisis on Regions and the role played by the European Regional Policy. Budget constraints and austerity measures determine to a large extent social policies, which ...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 24
This contribution studies the question of governmental accountability in the crisis. It looks at how three Member State’s parliaments – French, German and Spanish– have exchanged on European Council meeti...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 24
This contribution deals with the role of the European Council in the institutional framework of the European Union, as it has been laid down by the Lisbon Treaty. It focuses on its rising influence, even beyond...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 23
This contribution focuses on the need of fostering a European political space and more in particular on the role and the design of the Commission needed to attain that aim. It is submitted that to increase true...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 23
This article addresses the role of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in possible scenarios of EU reforms. Despite its crucial role in the EU integration process the CJEU has been neglected in many of the pr...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 17
The reform of the economic governance in the EU, as a reaction to the Eurozone crisis, has increased the asymmetries in the Union. Although formally respected, the principle of equality of the Member States bef...
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Essay
Published on 2015 Jan 08
The aim of this article is to review the European partnership with Egypt under the European Neighbourhood Policy, in order to assess the effectiveness of the EU policy in the promotion of democratization and hu...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 17
This special issue of the journal, which collects some of the papers presented at the latest World Congress of the International Association of Constitutional Law in Oslo, is entirely devoted to subnational con...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 08
Considering their dynamic and asymmetric character, the Spanish and British territorial constitutions seem particularly suitable for a comparative analysis. As regards the framework for intergovernmental relati...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 08
This paper examines the constitutional morphogenesis of New England and New Zealand to determine the effects on their respective economic development—specifically in terms of economic complexity. New England ...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 08
Although Belgian federated entities do not have constituent power, Flanders has recently envisaged the adoption of a “proto-subnational Bill of Rights”, called the Charter for Flanders. This study briefly r...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 08
Looking at federalism (Belgium), quasi-federalism (Spain) and devolution (United Kingdom), this paper shows that regional autonomy of Flanders, Catalonia and Scotland may be strengthened through a strong empowe...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 04
Are sub-national constitutional politics shaped by multilevel structures or by sub-national factors? That is the question I am tackling with in this paper. In order to answer this question I will examine 23 dec...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 04
The developing debate in Spain about its conversion into a federal State has now acquired an even greater relevance. Federalism, as a process of federalization, is subject to several descriptions with different...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 02
A Constitution for Flanders has been preoccupying Flemish politicians and scholars for over twenty years. On 23 May 2012, the majority parties presented in the Flemish Parliament the Charter for Flanders. Si...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Dec 02
In Spain, over the last thirty years, the powers of “Autonomous Communities” to guarantee welfare and social rights have witnessed exponential proliferation. Such expansion has occurred within the wider pro...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Nov 25
The aim of this article is to offer an account of the centralization and compression of subnational spaces of autonomy triggered by the economic crisis. Scholars have already produced sound and detailed researc...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Nov 14
The federal Constitution of Ethiopia provides the regional states - the constituent unit of the federation –with the power to draft, adopt and amend their own constitutions, thereby allowing each of the re...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Nov 07
In this essay, the author explores the way in which courts have played an important role in defining the shape of Mexico’s federal system and state constitutionalism in that country’s emerging multi-party d...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Nov 05
The transformation of a patchwork of Westphalian nation-states into a multi-level legal order where competences and responsibilities interlock, brings about the fundamental question as to who should do what?...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Nov 01
The embedment of states in a multilevel government environment created by rule-based international organizations, also impacts upon the position of subnational entities in federal and quasi-federal states. I...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Oct 28
This paper analyzes the impact of courts and different systems of judicial review on subnational constitutional autonomy. Focus is put on the question on which interpretive guidelines courts may draw when they ...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Sep 10
In 2001, constitutional amendments significantly changed the Peruvian Constitution’s chapter on decentralisation. A distribution of competencies was introduced and various organic laws were enacted in this...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Sep 03
The aim of this paper is to evidence the benefits of a coordinated and symmetrical policy approach in the reduction of macroeconomic imbalances among Eurozone countries by analysing the exploitation of the t...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Aug 04
This article discusses the role of national supreme courts in the development of the European legal order, moving from a hierarchical to an interaction account of the relationship between legal systems. It firs...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Aug 04
Earlier this year, the UK Parliament passed an Act aimed at redesigning the legislative landscape in the field of anti-social behaviour. It is no secret that, when anti-social behaviour legislation first came ...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Jun 12
While the study of federalism has in many respects reached an advanced stage today, there nevertheless remains a troubling absence of agreement as to the precise meaning of the concept. It is subject to multipl...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Apr 06
Since 1957, the European Economic Community (EEC) has undergone profound constitutional changes, dictated by the geographic and functional expansion of the EU, but also by the need to heal its original sin: the...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Feb 10
The need to reduce the vulnerability of society against disasters has fostered the introduction of regulatory instruments which can anticipate protection before a danger is imminent and an emergency phase start...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Feb 08
This article examines the nature, purpose and effect of constitutional dialogues between the Court of Justice of the European Union and constitutional courts taking as example the difficulty encountered in t...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Jan 21
The 2001 constitutional reform in Italy has promoted a more active participation of the Italian Regions in the law-making process and, even more significantly, also in the implementation of EU law. However, the...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Jan 20
The early warning mechanism represents an opportunity for building new and direct relationships between regional councils and the national parliament, which to date have been substantially lacking in Italy. Rel...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Jan 16
This contribution focuses on the Italian experience of the ‘collective representation of regional interests through the State-Regions Conference and the other ‘horizontal’, interregional Conferences re...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Jan 16
The balance sheet of having had the early warning procedure for two years shows that the active role developed by some regional parliaments, like the Basque Parliament, has reached a point of lack of efficac...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Jan 16
The purpose of this article is to offer a practical approach to the new European dimension for regional parliaments signified by the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. The parliamentary scrutiny of su...
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Essay
Published on 2014 Jan 14
The European Union affects not only the competences of the Governments and Parliaments, but also of all public authorities, in particular the powers of sub-state entities of compound states, who saw how deci...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Dec 30
The Treaty of Lisbon increased the role of National and Regional Parliaments in the EU decision-making process, in order to compensate for some of the weaknesses of the European institutional architecture. N...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Oct 01
This article theorises the territorial solidarity and fiscal federalism and compares Switzerland with the European Union. While inter-territorial solidarity is a prerequisite for legitimate fiscal equalisati...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Sep 25
Dominated since its early beginning by the Member States, the Common Foreign and Security policy (CFSP) has long been criticized for its lack of democratic legitimacy. The entering into force of the Lisbon Trea...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Jul 17
This paper analyses the impact on regional and local authorities of Articles 117 and 119 of the Italian Constitution (hereafter referred to as “IC”) as amended by Constitutional Law no. 1/2012. In particula...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Jun 25
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) as a powerful trade policy instrument increasingly play an important role in Asian economic growth. Asian countries have sought to deepen their economic integration to achieve su...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Jun 04
This article examines the interpretation of indirect taxes by the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter, “CJEU” or “the Court”) by means of the preliminary reference procedure. It is ar...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Jun 04
Courts use the proportionality principle to ensure the legitimacy of their decisions. According to Harbo (2010), the CJEU is interpreting the principle in different ways, determined by the different areas of...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Apr 03
UN Security Council resolutions lack direct effect, as they are not intended to oblige States in terms of means but just of results. This statement by the ECJ in the Kadi judgment has recently been used by t...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Apr 01
Since 2010 the Italian central government has embarked on a challenging program of fiscal consolidation, which is hugely affecting sub-central government finances. Sub-national governments are involved in reach...
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Essay
Published on 2013 Apr 01
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Essay
Published on 2013 Feb 12
On 30 March 2007, Italy signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and ratified it by Law 18/2009. Through this, Italy has committed itself to reforming the structure of its...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Oct 24
The eurozone crisis has made budgetary issues the focal point of political and public debates about the European Union. Besides the pessimistic context and conflictive nature of the ongoing negotiation of th...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Oct 06
This paper aims to analyse a specific dimension of the progressive transformation of the territorial/nation-state law by using the particular lens of cross-border cooperation as regulated under EU law.
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 07
In this paper I will focus on the role of national common judges (“giudici comuni”) in systems that are not characterized by a dual court system (one of the elements indentified by Gardner as peculiar to fu...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 07
Foreign affairs have been traditionally seen as an exclusive competence of central governments. However, over the last 30 years, European paradiplomacy has been progressively developing not least because of the...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 07
Even though there have been some revaluations of the Länder in the last two decades German debates on federalism hardly take subnational constitutional politics into account. For example, textbooks on federali...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 07
Not a single federation has been successful in demarcating the territorial matrix of the federation into ethnically pure subnational units. This includes federations that are primarily designed to accommodate e...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 07
The article aims to underline firstly the trend towards the homogenization of the subnational forms of governments, at regional level, across regional States, focusing on Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 07
This paper analyses the process of reform of the Statutes in Spanish Comunidades Autonomas, which began in 2006, in order to stress the role that an identity narrative takes in it. Almost every Statute inserts ...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 06
Regional legislative power carries the same title as national legislative power. However, it is obviously different in nature. If Acts are general and impersonal – characteristics that distinguish them from r...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 06
Macau and Hong Kong Special Administrative Regions of the People’s Republic of China enjoy, via a complex web of constituent legal instruments (international treaties, norms of the PRC Constitution and, last ...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 06
Argentine federalism and sub-national constitutionalism is a very interesting case study for anybody trying to establish a federal system in any country around the world. Not because of its success, but precise...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 06
Which is the meaning of constitutional review for a proper assessment of subnational constitutionalism? The essay tries to answer this question by means of comparative analysis. To do so, it considers both fede...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 05
Comparative constitutional scholarship identifies sub-national constituent power as one of the defining features of federal systems. Moreover, according to public choice theory, devolutionary federal systems ar...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Jul 05
This special issue of the journal is entirely devoted to subnational constitutionalism. To do so, it tries to adopt a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective and to identify constitutional patterns in tho...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 10
This article is the result of an ongoing research into a variety of features of Spanish local government . It aims, in particular, at providing a profile of the tools implemented by local authorities to improve...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 10
This article focuses on the analysis of the regulatory framework of citizen participation in the local government, which organises direct and participatory democracy at the local level, and identifies the laws ...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 10
The increasing complexity of our society requires mechanisms of democratic innovation that enrich the system of representative democracy to increase citizens’ knowledge and experiences, thus improving the qua...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 10
In the Bill of Rights of the Andalusian Statute of Autonomy, right to participation is extremely well-developed and is not restricted to the traditional rights to political participation, but rather is extended...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 10
Participatory democracy is a theme of growing interest in Italy, in both cultural debate and administrative practice. Some Regions have felt a need to provide a legislative framework in order to facilitate and ...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 10
This study offers a reflection on the current developments in participatory democracy at the regional level. Besides providing a descriptive analysis of the instruments put into practice through different legal...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 09
The homogeneity of the regulations governing the electoral systems of autonomous communities derives from their desire to imitate the system adopted for the Spanish Chamber of Deputies, and from their...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 09
The referendum is a poorly used mechanism for direct participation in the Spanish system, at both state and regional level. The discussion on the feasibility of this system at regional level has been examined b...
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Note
Published on 2012 May 09
The mechanisms of citizen participation in lawmaking can be considered as mechanisms of participatory democracy. These institutions enable citizens to submit proposals or opinions in the process of decision-...
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Note
Published on 2012 May 09
Participation is a fundamental principle of the Italian Constitution (art. 3). Nonetheless its enforcement was rather weak in the first decades of Italian Republic. Only from the nineties on – especially afte...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 09
Up to 15 years ago the Constitution entrusted State law with the task of regulating the election system of regional councillors. Since the nineties there have been radical changes in the provisions (constitutio...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 09
The right to petition is an instrument of popular participation whereby citizens are allowed to apply to an authority for the purpose of representing certain needs or to seek the adoption of specific actions. W...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 09
The Spanish Constitution has strict regulations regarding direct and participatory democratic mechanisms (referendum, popular legislative initiative). The Constitution has adopted the most restrictive popular l...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 05
The instruments of people’s participation found in the “first generation” Statutes (1971) were initially perceived as a further possible link between politics and civil society, in line with the overall f...
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Note
Published on 2012 May 05
The Author analyses the normative framework and the use of the referendum in Italy, at regional and local level. According to the Author, this level of the analysis could even be used as a preliminary phase for...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 05
The new ordinary statutes of Italian Regions attempt to reconcile the more traditional instruments of representative and direct democracy with the new instruments of participatory democracy. While no original a...
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Essay
Published on 2012 May 05
This article reviews the new approaches to citizen participation introduced by the statutes of autonomy reformed from 2006 onwards. The reform process included the introduction of participatory values and princ...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Apr 16
This paper assesses European cooperation in counter-terrorism, which was prompted by the terrorist attacks at the beginning of this century. The first part of the paper will provide a description of the main fe...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Apr 02
The paper endorses a dynamic rather than a static analysis of the EU at super-systemic level of analysis. It sketches a toolkit to analyse the actors and contents of constitutional politics, exploiting the insi...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Mar 31
The goal of this paper is to draw attention to a critical issue regarding the decline in the traditional doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom. Devolution has proven to be a serious threat...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Mar 02
This paper analyses the regulation of standard costs in Legislative Decree No. 68/2011. It begins with an examination of some concepts that are often confused in the scientific and political debate, such as f...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Feb 17
According to the ‘Defense Strategic Guidance’ (2012), the growing military capabilities of US allies will create new opportunities for sharing responsibilities in world affairs. The US strategic document co...
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Review article
Published on 2012 Feb 16
What should the European Union do to challenge the Eurozone crisis? Examining the recent debate, one can identify the following options to overcome the EU’s institutional crisis:
1. reform of...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Feb 16
After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights has found a place among the formal sources of EU law, and has become a standard of review for the validity o...
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Essay
Published on 2012 Feb 16
The aim of this article is to analyse one of the main features of asymmetry in the EU legal order: enhanced cooperation. After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, two enhanced cooperation schemes (on div...
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Review article
Published on 2011 Nov 26
This special issue of Perspectives on Federalism offers a multidisciplinary collection of pieces dealing with some (selected) issues in the field of citizenship studies.
In order to investigate how citizen...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Nov 13
This essay discusses the dubious premises of ‘repressive liberalism’ underlying the policies of cultural ‘integration’ that have been adopted by a number of otherwise liberal democracies around the worl...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Nov 10
The wide range of disasters that has recently hit third countries has shown that not even the Member States with the widest network of consular and diplomatic representation can ensure on their own the protecti...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Nov 01
The concept of ‘citizenship’ has significantly evolved since the work by Thomas Marshall in 1950: the emergence of various kinds of ‘identity/difference’ politics, the transformation of political rep...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Oct 26
This paper critically assesses the EU’s anti-piracy operation Atalanta in the light of the protection of Union citizens. The main question is to which extent a Union citizen threatened by pirates off t...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Oct 16
This paper aims to provide a brief analysis of the Ruiz Zambrano judgment (Case C-34/09). Traditionally, the EU citizenship has been mainly construed as a status of integration into the Membe...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Aug 02
The financial crisis revealed the inadequacy of the European Economic and Monetary Union. The response of the EU and of the countries of the Eurozone has been slow and weak, due to the substantially confederal ...
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Review article
Published on 2011 Jul 20
According to many scholars, the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty and the disappointment caused by the contents of the Lisbon Treaty –- defined by Somek (2007) as a mere post-Constitutional Treaty – ma...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Jul 19
This essay proposes that the emergence and failure of the debate on the EU constitutional reform depends, amongst other things, on the rise of what it calls ‘publicity’ as public policy and governance fun...
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Note
Published on 2011 Jul 19
The judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU in the El Dridi case clarifies the scope of application of the Returns Directive, in particular with regard to the difference between criminal detention and pre...
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note
Published on 2011 May 23
In a union of states such as the EU or the US, should immigration policy be decentralized or should it be a federal policy? Experience and economic logic offer a simple argument against decentralization. Beca...
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Economics is based on the assumptio...
Note
Published on 2011 Apr 08
In June 2010 the Spanish Constitutional Court rendered a very important judgment on the constitutional legitimacy of the new fundamental charter (Estatut) of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia. Faced with a ...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Apr 08
Most of the existing literature on judicial interpretation of federal constitutions focuses either on individual federations or on comparative studies of specific judicial techniques and/or specific fields. Thi...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Feb 22
For decades the US has had a hegemonic position in the Middle East. A key country in this respect has been Egypt. However, in recent decades the EU has made itself increasingly felt in the region. Due to enlarg...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Feb 22
The article argues that regionalism in East Asia since the end of the Cold War has been largely shaped by the interactions of China-US relations, influencing and determining the development and transformation o...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Feb 22
The article looks at federalism as applied in Africa in the dual sense of a devolution of power from what would otherwise be unitary and centralised states to lower levels of governance and a transferral of aut...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Feb 22
Sub-national regions (micro-regions) and supra-national regions (macro-regions) appear as disconnected concepts in the academic literature. They are studied by distinct academic communities between which there ...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Feb 22
The purpose of this article is to propose a draft for an analytical frame for analyzing regional integration consisting of federalism theory and neo-functionalism. It starts out discussing the concept of region...
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Essay
Published on 2011 Jan 06
Federalism, neo-functionalism and realism-intergovernmentalism offer different visions of European unity, evident in different European organizations such as the Council of Europe to the ECSC, EEC/EC/EU, and EF...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Dec 13
The present article examines the process concerning the transfer of State Property to Regions and Local Authorities, recently introduced in Italy pursuant to Decree 85/2010. The transfer of State owned assets a...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Nov 01
Antonio Mosconi
The wars in western Asia and the financial crisis of 2007-2008 spelt the end of the American attempt to global suprema...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Oct 16
This paper aims to analyze comparatively EU’s, China’s and India’s diverging designs for the governance of Africa. The paper addresses one fundamental research question: to what extent do the Chinese and ...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Oct 16
There is barely any agreement in the literature on the way one should compare the political parties defending the interest of a specific community on a particular territory – the ethno-regionalist parties ...
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Note
Published on 2010 Oct 01
The International Court of Justice gave its Advisory Opinion on the “Accordance with international law of the unilateral declaration of independence in respect of Kosovo” few months ago. It found no prohibi...
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Note
Published on 2010 Sep 25
In Kücükdeveci judgment, the European Court of Justice declared that national judges must set aside national norms that are at variance with the general principle of non discrimination on grounds of age, by v...
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Note
Published on 2010 Sep 02
Dominic HeinzRecently Germany experienced yet another federal reform shortly after a previous modification to the German federal sys...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Jul 09
If one looks at the rapid growth of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) since the Blair-Chirac meeting of Saint-Malo in 1998 and in particular at the launch of several crisis management missions it is...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Jul 04
What impact did Europeanization have on the governmental capacity of Italian regions? Are the regions successful in addressing the challenges and the opportunities of European integration? Is the participation ...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Jun 02
The view prevailing among legal scholars - and endorsed in this paper - is that the coming into force of the reform of Title V, Part 2, of the Constitution introduced a multi-polar institutional framework in ...
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note
Published on 2010 May 13
The debate on federalism in Iraq is interrelated with the identity conflict which has dominated Iraqi politics since the regime change in 2003. Federalism was proposed and became constitutional in 2005 as a way...
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note
Published on 2010 May 13
This short note aims at providing an analysis of the Schuman Declaration focused on the following points: 1) the genesis of the Schuman Declaration; 2) its federalist content; 3) its topicality
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note
Published on 2010 May 13
The author questions the influence of the creation of a single currency on the formation of European citizenship. Whereas the transnational dimension of such citizenship (which affects the citizen of one Member...
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Essay
Published on 2010 Feb 05
This article investigates some of the causes of the financial crisis – global imbalances and unsatisfactory regulation of world liquidity – and supports the need to reform the present asymmetric internation...
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note
Published on 2009 Dec 23
This note analyses the legal reasoning and the motivations of the recent judgment of the German Constitutional Court on the Lisbon Treaty and considers the possible impact of this ruling on the future of ...
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Note
Published on 2009 Dec 14
This brief note provides an overview of some recent documents regarding the Indian position in the current world economy and its key role in a context of international cooperation.
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Note
Published on 2009 Dec 14
This note deals with the Chinese proposal for a new international monetary architecture. The Chinese proposal was the last of a series which suddenly appeared on the international diplomatic scene last March: s...
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Review article
Published on 2009 Oct 28
In the latest years, the Spanish constitutional system has been characterized by a proliferation of sub-national fundamental charters (“Estatutos de las Comunidades Autónomas”, hereinafter CAs): in fact, m...
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Essay
Published on 2009 Oct 08
This article examines law no. 42 of 2009 which, in accordance with art. 119 of the Constitution, opens the way to the introduction of “fiscal federalism” in Italy. The new law falls within the sphere of the...
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Note
Published on 2009 Sep 28
These are hard times for fiscal federalism. Although many political parties consider it a sort of flag, despite always being present on the political agenda, the implementation of article 119 of the Italian Con...
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Essay
Published on 2009 Jul 07
From a “formalistic” point of view the Regions are and have been neglected (especially in the past) in the EU law context. To express such a situation the German constitutional lawyers used the formula "Lan...
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Essay
Published on 2009 Jun 15
This essay aims at giving an overview on the role of the European and national Parliaments in the dynamics of integration. After resuming the main issues that such a subject present, the author analyses the ...
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Essay
Published on 2009 Jun 15
The reaction of the European Union to the financial crisis consisted mainly in uncoordinated national plans. A real European recovery plan would have been more effective, but it was not possible because the ...
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Review article
Published on 2009 May 12
The aim of this paper is to offer a brief overview of the international literature regarding the European Constitutional Law.
It is possible to identify five groups of studies which will serve as guid...
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Note
Published on 2009 May 11
With the order of April 15, 2008, the Constitutional Court of Italy requested, for the first time, the intervention of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, enabling the mechanism of preliminary def...
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Note
Published on 2008 Dec 19
This note analyses the new Charter of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, adopted in 2008.
link: http://www.oic-oci.org...
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Essay
Published on 2008 Nov 11
After the end of the Cold War, peacekeeping operations have increasingly been launched by new actors (such as regional organizations and ad hoc coalitions) despite the continued and important role of the United...
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Note
Published on 2008 Jul 30
On the fourth of July, an initiative presented by the Nayarit State Congress proposing the addition of a second paragraph to Article 135 of the Mexican Constitution was published in the Senate Gazette. The purp...
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Note
Published on 2008 Jul 10
The Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano, and former Minister Tommaso Padoa Schioppa recently urged for the re-launch of the European unification process.
This short note analyses and comments their i...
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Review article
Published on 2008 Jun 26
The article analyses the issue of monetary integration in Asia taking into account the most recent literature and the main contributes of the last decades both in economics and IR.
It locates the deba...
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