Signals to their parliaments? Governments’ use of votes and policy statements in the EU Council

Does parliamentary oversight of governments’ decisions in the international arena matter? This article finds that it does: governments with strong parliamentary oversight behave differently when negotiating policies at the EU level compared with governments with less powerful parliaments. Where parliaments have formal powers to oversee and restrict their government's positions we see a significantly higher use of opposing votes and formal policy statements by those governments. This behaviour intensifies depending on the governments' standing vis‐à‐vis other political parties at home. When governments are under pressure in their national parliaments they are more likely to go on record and take a stand against the majority in Brussels. These results make it clear that in EU legislative politics, governments not only consider their policy priorities and negotiation tactics with their European counterparts, but also make use of EU decision records to send signals to domestic audiences, including their national parliaments

Toward a Solution of the “Peruvian Puzzle”: Pelagic Food-Web Structure and Trophic Interactions in the Northern Humboldt Current Upwelling System Off Peru

The northern Humboldt Current upwelling system (HCS) belongs to the most productive marine ecosystems, providing five to eight times higher fisheries landings per unit area than other coastal upwelling systems. To solve this “Peruvian puzzle”, to elucidate the pelagic food-web structure and to better understand trophic interactions in the HCS, a combined stable isotope and fatty acid trophic biomarker approach was adopted for key zooplankton taxa and higher trophic positions with an extensive spatial coverage from 8.5 to 16°S and a vertical range down to 1,000 m depth. A pronounced regional shift by up to ∼5‰ in the δ15N baseline of the food web occurred from North to South. Besides regional shifts, δ15N ratios of particulate organic matter (POM) also tended to increase with depth, with differences of up to 3.8‰ between surface waters and the oxygen minimum zone. In consequence, suspension-feeding zooplankton permanently residing at depth had up to ∼6‰ higher δ15N signals than surface-living species or diel vertical migrants. The comprehensive data set covered over 20 zooplankton taxa and indicated that three crustacean species usually are key in the zooplankton community, i.e., the copepods Calanus chilensis at the surface and Eucalanus inermis in the pronounced OMZ and the krill Euphausia mucronata, resulting in an overall low number of major trophic pathways toward anchovies. In addition, the semi-pelagic squat lobster Pleuroncodes monodon appears to play a key role in the benthic-pelagic coupling, as indicated by highest δ13C’ ratios of −14.7‰. If feeding on benthic resources and by diel vertical migration, they provide a unique pathway for returning carbon and energy from the seafloor to the epipelagic layer, increasing the food supply for pelagic fish. Overall, these mechanisms result in a very efficient food chain, channeling energy toward higher trophic positions and partially explaining the “Peruvian puzzle” of enormous fish production in the HCS

Smoke with Fire: Financial Crises and the Demand for Parliamentary Oversight in the European Union.

The handling of the 2008 financial crisis has reinforced the conviction that the European Union (EU) is undemocratic and that member states are forced to delegate overwhelming power to a supranational technocracy. However, European countries have engaged with this alleged power drift differently, with only a few member states demanding more parliamentary scrutiny of EU institutions. This article develops a political economy explanation for why only some states have enforced mechanisms to monitor the EU more closely. Our theory focuses on the role of the crisis and the impact of fiscal autonomy in countries outside and inside currency arrangements such as the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). We argue that, in the aftermath of a severe economic shock, member states outside the EMU possess more monetary and fiscal resources to handle the crisis. These would then demand oversight of EU decision-making if their fiscal sustainability depends on the Union. By contrast, Eurozone states that need policy changes cannot address the crisis independently or initiate reforms to scrutinize the EU. Hence, we argue that during the heated moments of severe economic downturns, parliaments in Eurozone countries discuss supranational supervision rarely. As these legislatures have nevertheless to give in to the popular demand for EU control, they express support for more EU supervision in the infrequent times of debate. We provide evidence for our theory with a cross-national analysis of EU oversight institutions, and a new original dataset of parliamentary debates during the Eurozone crisis. Our findings highlight the political consequences that financial nosedives have across the diverse membership of a supranational organization

Introduction: Connecting with the Electorate? Parliamentary Communication in EU Affairs

ational parliaments have often been described as latecomers to European integration, but there is little doubt that they have developed the institutional means to become more involved over the last few years – and especially since the Lisbon Treaty. Accordingly, the main focus of the literature has been on this institutional adaptation and thus on the relationship between the parliament and the government in European Union (EU) affairs. Other parliamentary functions, and in particular those that relate to their citizens such as the communication function, by contrast, have been largely neglected. Yet democracy depends on a viable public debate on policy choices and political alternatives to allow citizens to make informed political (electoral) choices and to exercise democratic control. This collection therefore investigates whether, and how, individual members of parliament, political parties, or legislatures as institutions ‘link’ with their electorates in EU politics. This introduction discusses why engaging with the public in EU affairs is – or at least should be – an important aspect of parliamentary work, introduces parliamentary means of communication and assesses parliamentary incentives and disincentives ‘to go public’ in EU politics. (author's abstract

Open Problems on Central Simple Algebras

We provide a survey of past research and a list of open problems regarding central simple algebras and the Brauer group over a field, intended both for experts and for beginners.Comment: v2 has some small revisions to the text. Some items are re-numbered, compared to v

Dominant features in three-dimensional turbulence structure: comparison of non-uniform accelerating and decelerating flows

The results are presented from an experimental study to investigate three-dimensional turbulence structure profiles, including turbulence intensity and Reynolds stress, of different non-uniform open channel flows over smooth bed in subcritical flow regime. In the analysis, the uniform flow profiles have been used to compare with those of the non-uniform flows to investigate their time-averaged spatial flow turbulence structure characteristics. The measured non-uniform velocity profiles are used to verify the von Karman constant κ and to estimate sets of log-law integration constant B r and wake parameter П, where their findings are also compared with values from previous studies. From κ, B r and П findings, it has been found that the log-wake law can sufficiently represent the non-uniform flow in its non-modified form, and all κ, B r and П follow universal rules for different bed roughness conditions. The non-uniform flow experiments also show that both the turbulence intensity and Reynolds stress are governed well by exponential pressure gradient parameter β equations. Their exponential constants are described by quadratic functions in the investigated β range. Through this experimental study, it has been observed that the decelerating flow shows higher empirical constants, in both the turbulence intensity and Reynolds stress compared to the accelerating flow. The decelerating flow also has stronger dominance to determine the flow non-uniformity, because it presents higher Reynolds stress profile than uniform flow, whereas the accelerating flow does not