DON’T WASTE YOUR VOTE (AGAIN!). THE ITALIAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT’S DECISION ON ELECTION LAWS: AN EPISODE OF STRICT COMPARATIVE SCRUTINY

With a single judgment (sent. 1/2014), the Italian Constitutional Court has almost revolutionized Parliamentary election law, the national political landscape, the types of controversies with which it deals, and the means through which it reviews domestic legislation. In order to do so, the Court drew from globalized concepts and levels of scrutiny such as the so-called “proportionality test,” making explicit references to foreign decisions, while downplaying the Constitutional Framers’ intention. Although this decision has brought Italy closer in line with the trends that characterize contemporary global constitutionalism, its concrete effects on Italian law and the political system are not so promising or clear. This paper investigates the explicit and implicit sources of inspiration for the decision, its hidden implications, and it resonates with globalized trends in constitutional law

Public Participation in Environmental Planning in the Great Lakes Region

The need for greater public involvement in environmental decision-making has been highlighted in recent high-profile research reports and emphasized by leaders at all levels of government. In some cases, agencies have opened the door to greater participation in their programs. However, there is relatively little information on what can be gained from greater public involvement and what makes some programs work while others fail. This paper addresses these questions through an evaluation of public participation in environmental planning efforts in the Great Lakes region. The success of participation is measured using five criteria: educating participants, improving the substantive quality of decisions, incorporating public values into decision-making, reducing conflict, and building trust. The paper then discusses the relationship between success and a number of contextual and procedural attributes of a variety of cases. Data come from a "case survey," in which the authors systematically extract information from previously published studies of 30 individual participation cases. The authors conclude that public participation can accomplish important societal goals and that success depends, in large part, on the actions and commitment of government agencies.

Production of Innovations within Farmer–Researcher Associations Applying Transdisciplinary Research Principles

Small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan West Africa depend heavily on local resources and local knowledge. Science-based knowledge is likely to aid decision-making in complex situations. In this presentation, we highlight a FiBL-coordinated research partnership between three national producer organisations and national agriculture research bodies in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Benin. The partnership seeks to compare conventional, GMObased, and organic cotton systems as regards food security and climate change

Financialising the State : Recent development in fiscal and monetary policy

Understanding the nature of state financialisation is crucial to ensure definancialisation efforts are successful. This paper provides a structured overview of the emerging literature on financialisation and the state. We define financialisation of the state broadly as the changed relationship between the state, understood as sovereign with duties and accountable towards its citizens, and financial markets and practices, in ways that can diminish those duties and reduce accountability. We then argue that there are four ways in which financialisation works in and through public institutions and policies: adoption of financial motives, advancing financial innovation, embracing financial accumulation strategies, and directly financialising the lives of citizens. Organising our review around the two main policy fields of fiscal and monetary policy, four definitions of financialisation in the context of public policy and institutions emerge. When dealing with public expenditure on social provisions financialisation most often refers to the transformation of public services into the basis for actively traded financial assets. In the context of public revenue, financialisation describes the process of creating and deepening secondary markets for public debt, with the state turning into a financial market player. Finally, in the realm of monetary policy financial deregulation is perceived to have paved the way for financialisation, while inflation targeting and the encouragement, or outright pursuit, of market-based short-term liquidity management among financial institutions constitute financialised policies

Conflicts between the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Legislature: Campaign Finance Reform and Same-Sex Marriage

[Excerpt] This article will examine recent interactions and dialogues between the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC” or “Supreme Judicial Court”) and the Massachusetts State Legislature. The interactions between courts and legislatures are often cordial, but sometimes these interactions are also highly conflictual. During the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between the Massachusetts legislature and the Supreme Court was indeed mainly cooperative. Recently, however, in several high profile cases the Supreme Court has been willing to challenge directly the decisions of the legislature and vice versa. Among other controversies, the Court’s 2002 decision requiring that the state legislature fund the campaign finance reform initiative known in Massachusetts as the Clean Elections law, and the Court’s 2003 decision that same-sex couples could not be denied marriage licenses under the state constitution, have created a great deal of friction between the Supreme Court and the legislature. This article will examine these controversies in some detail in order to gain a better understanding of the different institutional perspectives and different institutional wills that drive the relationship between these two institutions of government. My conclusion is that there needs to be greater communication between the legislative and judicial branches, and that each institution needs to have greater respect for the other body