Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities

Describes nine communities using organized deliberation to consider public issues over several years and their accomplishments and analyzes how public deliberation addresses deficits in local democratic governance. Includes benchmarks and strategies

How Do Research Projects Influence the Design of Local Policies for Environmental and Natural Resource Management?

This paper documents and analyzes interactions between environmental and natural resource (ENR) management research and local governance. It draws from the experiences of the Philippine-based Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP) to address the following questions: How do research projects influence ENR policy and design? What are the institutional arrangements necessary to sustain interactions between research and governance? The authors offer important methodological insights as well as lessons for practical efforts to link research and policy.environmental and natural resource management, research-policy relationship

Deliberative Democracy in the EU. Countering Populism with Participation and Debate. CEPS Paperback

Elections are the preferred way to freely transfer power from one term to the next and from one political party or coalition to another. They are an essential element of democracy. But if the process of power transfer is corrupted, democracy risks collapse. Reliance on voters, civil society organisations and neutral observers to fully exercise their freedoms as laid down in international human rights conventions is an integral part of holding democratic elections. Without free, fair and regular elections, liberal democracy is inconceivable. Elections are no guarantee that democracy will take root and hold, however. If the history of political participation in Europe over the past 800 years is anything to go by, successful attempts at gaining voice have been patchy, while leaders’ attempts to silence these voices and consolidate their own power have been almost constant (Blockmans, 2020). Recent developments in certain EU member states have again shown us that democratically elected leaders will try and use majoritarian rule to curb freedoms, overstep the constitutional limits of their powers, protect the interests of their cronies and recycle themselves through seemingly free and fair elections. In their recent book How Democracies Die, two Harvard professors of politics write: “Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves” (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018)

The Democracy-Forcing Constitution

During my freshman year in college, I was told not to judge a book by its cover. The book in question - Lolita; the cover suggested something quite salacious. My professor explained that a soldier, who had purchased Lolita to work out some of the kinks of military life, found himself tossing the book out, proclaiming in disgust Literature! Well, I cannot claim precisely the same reaction to Cass Sunstein\u27s One Case at a Time (my expectations were lower than the soldier\u27s). Nevertheless, for those expecting a lefty defense of judicial restraint, One Case at a Time is not your book. Rather, Sunstein very much wants the Supreme Court to play an active role in abortion, affirmative action, the right to die, and much more. But Sunstein\u27s brand of activism is minimalist. Rather than look to the judiciary to settle these issues once and for all, Sunstein sees the Court as a democracy forcing facilitator, encouraging elected government and the people to engage in constructive constitutional dialogues. As rallying cries go, Sunstein\u27s plea for judicial minimalism has broad appeal. After all, social conservatives still complain about judge-made rights and the left, smarting from several Rehnquist Court defeats, increasingly sees elected government as more apt to embrace their agenda than the judiciary. With both sides ready to jettison judicial activism, judicial minimalism seems an idea whose time has come

Made in the USA? The influence of the US on the EU's data protection regime. CEPS Liberty and Security, November 2009

Recent developments have shown that the EU’s border security policy is greatly influenced by the US. This influence simultaneously has implications for other EU policies, including those on data protection. This paper highlights that policy-making at the transatlantic level is increasingly taking place through informal networks, such as the High-Level Political Dialogue on Border and Transportation Security and the High-Level Contact Group on data protection, which allow US involvement in EU policy-making. This tendency stems from the growing personal relationships among policy-makers, the gradual substitution of formal instruments with less formal contracts and informal understandings shaping the content of formal agreements. Drawing from empirical examples of EU–US cooperation on data protection in the context of homeland security, the paper analyses the repercussions of these developments and the issues that remain unresolved, and offers policy recommendations

The Democracy-Forcing Constitution

During my freshman year in college, I was told not to judge a book by its cover. The book in question - Lolita; the cover suggested something quite salacious. My professor explained that a soldier, who had purchased Lolita to work out some of the kinks of military life, found himself tossing the book out, proclaiming in disgust Literature! Well, I cannot claim precisely the same reaction to Cass Sunstein\u27s One Case at a Time (my expectations were lower than the soldier\u27s). Nevertheless, for those expecting a lefty defense of judicial restraint, One Case at a Time is not your book. Rather, Sunstein very much wants the Supreme Court to play an active role in abortion, affirmative action, the right to die, and much more. But Sunstein\u27s brand of activism is minimalist. Rather than look to the judiciary to settle these issues once and for all, Sunstein sees the Court as a democracy forcing facilitator, encouraging elected government and the people to engage in constructive constitutional dialogues. As rallying cries go, Sunstein\u27s plea for judicial minimalism has broad appeal. After all, social conservatives still complain about judge-made rights and the left, smarting from several Rehnquist Court defeats, increasingly sees elected government as more apt to embrace their agenda than the judiciary. With both sides ready to jettison judicial activism, judicial minimalism seems an idea whose time has come