Rule of law and institutional legitimacy : challenges of transition, challenges of Europe

Recent European events have revealed that some EU Member States, including some South Eastern European (see) States, still struggle with the rule of law. While certain rule of law challenges may be due to past legacies and insufficient (or insufficiently successful) transitions, others may be the result of the transition itself and of contemporary socio-economic problems that are experienced across Europe. This article will address the state of the rule of law in see, reflecting first on some pre-, mid-, and post-transition problems relevant for the rule of law in these countries. Next, it will address the legal and socio-psychological impact of the challenges posed by the mentioned problems, connecting the (mis) trust that can be observed on several levels (internally and externally) with the rule of law, thus demonstrating that mistrust as such has social as well as legal consequences. If trust (e.g. in the effectiveness of the rule of law safeguards or in those who are entrusted with safeguarding it) is lacking, this represents a problem not only for the Member State (e.g. for the functioning and perceived legitimacy of its judicial system) in question, but also for the EU (e.g. for the judicial cooperation in criminal matters). Lastly, the article will examine the EU'S perspective on rule of law, drawing on the recent EU Framework to Strengthen the Rule of Law, which aims to ensure an effective and coherent protection of the rule of law in all Member States, as well as on some other EU documents that may, in our view, help address the current challenges in European rule of law

Managing the Iatrogenic Risks of Risk Management

Analogizing to concerns that led the practice of medicine to shift from a specialist to a team-based approach, Dr. Wiener suggests that public and environmental health objectives would be better served if, e.g., regulatory jurisdiction were less atomized

State of Civil Society 2013: Creating an Enabling Environment

Welcome to the second edition of the State of Civil Society report produced by CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. This report is not ours alone. The 2013 State of Civil Society report draws from nearly 50 contributions made by people active in civil society all over the world -- from our members, friends, partners, supporters and others in the CIVICUS alliance. They contributed 31 new pieces of analysis and thinking on the state of civil society. Our analysis also benefits from 16 responses to a questionnaire from national civil society platforms that are members of either our Affinity Group of National Associations (AGNA), or the International Forum of National NGO Platforms (IFP). Together, their contributions, published at http://socs.civicus.org, form the full report. Our summary report is a synthesis of this impressive array of perspectives. We believe that together their contributions offer a body of critical, cutting edge thinking about the changing state of contemporary civil society. We thank them for their efforts and continuing support. It is also important to acknowledge in this report the work of coalitions such as the Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness and BetterAid, and the subsequent CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness, in bringing together many CSOs working in the development sphere in recent years to advance the debate on civil society's contributions to development effectiveness, including on the issue of the enabling conditions for civil society that are a necessary part of increasing CSO effectiveness. This report is also intended as a contribution to those wider efforts, in which we at CIVICUS are happy to be active partners

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN MORAL LEXICON AND VIOLENT PROTESTS

Various distinct, discrete, and dispersed factors can transform a non-violent social movement into a violent social movement, making such transitions extremely challenging to predict. In this thesis, I develop an analytical approach for predicting the mobilization of violent social movements using a newly expanded multilingual Moral Foundations Dictionary to quantify references to moral categories in geo-referenced social media feeds. This is combined with event data on the timing and location of violent protests in Africa to develop an analytic framework for large-scale, high-resolution assessment and predictions of violent political protests. The evidence shows that a significant relationship exists between social media messages with moral content and the probability of violent protest, which significantly increases the chances that a social movement becomes hostile and violent.Major, United States ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Green Guide to the Cayman Islands 3: Sustaining our ocean and islands

(pdf contains 32 pages

Regulating Complacency: Human Limitations and Legal Efficacy

This Article examines how insights into limited human rationality can improve financial regulation. The Article identifies four categories of limitations—herd behavior, cognitive biases, overreliance on heuristics, and a proclivity to panic—that undermine the perfect-market regulatory assumptions that parties have full information and will act in their rational self-interest. The Article then analyzes how insights into these limitations can be used to correct resulting market failures. Requiring more robust disclosure and due diligence, for example, can help to reduce reliance on misleading information cascades that motivate herd behavior. Debiasing through law, such as requiring more specific, poignant, and concrete disclosure of risks and their consequences, can help to correct cognitive biases. Requiring firms to engage in more self-aware operational risk management and reporting can reduce the likelihood that parties will over-rely on heuristics. And legislating backstop market liquidity and other stabilizing controls can help to minimize panics. Regulation, however, can only partly overcome these limitations. Effective financial regulation should therefore be designed not only to address these limitations but also to try to mitigate the harm of inevitable financial failures