Chameleon pluralism in the EU: an empirical study of the European Commission interest group density and diversity across policy domains

This paper contributes to the discussion surrounding interest groups in the European Commission. We inspect the Commission's lobbying register and assess the density and diversity of the interest group population per policy domain. The results suggest that while at the system level élite pluralism with its preponderance of business interests is a credible hypothesis, this is not the case at the sub-system level, where chameleon pluralism better conceptualizes variation of the interest group populations as a function of the age of the Directorate General (DG), capacity of the DG, nature of the policy domain, and involvement of member states. Bridging theoretical considerations on input/output legitimacy with informational approaches, we argue that different policy domains demand different types of legitimacy that are supported by the provision of different types of information (technical/political)

Ab initio study of the CE magnetic phase in half-doped manganites: Purely magnetic versus double exchange description

The leading electronic interactions governing the local physics of the CE phase of half-doped manganites are extracted from correlated ab initio calculations performed on an embedded cluster. The electronic structure of the low-energy states is dominated by double exchange configurations and O-2$p_{\sigma}$ to Mn-3d charge transfer configurations. The model spectra of both a purely magnetic non-symmetric Heisenberg Hamiltonian involving a magnetic oxygen and two non-symmetric double exchange models are compared to the \textit{ab initio} one. While a satisfactory agreement between the Heisenberg spectrum and the calculated one is obtained, the best description is provided by a double exchange model involving excited non-Hund atomic states. This refined model not only perfectly reproduces the spectrum of the embedded cluster in the crystal geometry, but also gives a full description of the local double-well potential energy curve of the ground state (resulting from the interaction of the charge localized electronic configurations) and the local potential energy curves of all excited states ruled by the double exchange mechanism

Governance, accountability, and political legitimacy: who participates in the European parliament's committee hearings (ECON 2004–2014)

The Europeanization of economic and financial governance poses a legitimacy question for the European Parliament (EP). Drawing from theories on resource-exchange and institutional legitimacy, we argue that committee hearings allow the EP to demonstrate its relevance as a political authority. We test our argument, focusing on the Committee on Economic & Monetary Affairs (ECON). Through an unprecedented systematic analysis of its hearings; we provide a fine-grained identification of all participants across two legislatures (2004-2014). We observe a considerable shift in the use of hearings from the 6th to the 7th legislature, reflected in the increase of events and participants. While business interests retain a strong presence, the participants’ composition changes substantially. Research organizations and EU-level executive bodies saw the largest increase. Conversely, national level executive bodies saw a decrease in participation. Theoretically, we examine an understudied area of European governance, while contributing to discussions on interest group access, agency accountability, and deliberative procedures

Lobbying Systems in the European Union: A Quantitative Study

This paper presents and tests a micro-theoretical model of EU lobbying across policy domains. In particular, we focus on two questions: first, we want to know why the number of interest representatives differs across policy domains and, second, we investigate why we find institutionalized fora for interest representation in some policy domains but not in others. Our argument focuses on the Commission's need for expert information and its costs of managing contacts with a large number of interest representatives. Both factors provide incentives for the Commission to create restricted-access fora as the number of interest representatives increases. Using cross-sectional data on interest representation in a wide range of policy domains, we find some support for our hypotheses.In diesem Artikel entwickeln und testen wir ein mikrotheoretisches Modell, das zur Erklärung der Interessenvertretung in verschiedenen Politikfeldern in der Europäischen Union beiträgt. Dabei stehen zwei erkenntnisleitende Fragen im Vordergrund: Was beeinflusst die Zahl der Interessenvertreter in verschiedenen Politikfeldern? Und weshalb richtet die EU-Kommission in einigen Politikfeldern Foren mit beschränktem Zugang für Interessenvertreter ein? Unsere Erklärung basiert auf der Beobachtung, dass der Expertisebedarf der Kommission hauptsächlich durch Interessenvertreter gedeckt wird, dass aber die Interaktion mit einer großen Zahl von Interessenvertretern der Kommission Kosten (unter anderem Informationskosten) verursacht. Beide Beobachtungen führen unseres Erachtens dazu, dass die Kommission Foren mit beschränktem Zugang einführt, wenn die Zahl der Interessenvertreter ein bestimmtes Maß überschreitet. Wir vollziehen einen ersten Test unserer Hypothesen mit Querschnittsdaten der Interessenvertretung in verschiedenen EU-Politikfeldern, und finden unsere Erwartungen zumindest teilweise erfüllt.Introduction Micro and macro studies of lobbying Why are there more lobbyists in some policy domains than in others? Empirically testing the first two hypotheses Why are there more interest representation fora in some policy domains than in others? Empirically testing hypotheses three and four Discussion Conclusion Data Appendix Reference

Update of the Devonian lithostratigraphic subdivision in the subsurface of the Campine Basin (northern Belgium)

The continental and mainly conglomeratic Booischot Formation is formally introduced for the strata intersected close to the base of the Booischot borehole from the Campine Basin. It is nearly 400 m thick and its upper part is Upper Givetian to Upper Frasnian in age whereas its lower part has not been dated so far. The Booischot borehole is overlain by the Upper Devonian marine Aisemont and Falisolle Formations which are capped by Famennian sandstones assigned to the Evieux Formation. These latter three lithostratigraphic units are also present in the Heibaart borehole, above a few metres of the Middle Frasnian Huccorgne Formation which rest directly on the Caledonian basement of the Brabant Massif, without any trace of the Booischot Formation. It appears that in the Campine Basin, the Devonian transgression arrived very late during the Frasnian. The Devonian succession at the northern margin of the Brabant Massif is very different from that of the north side of the Namur Basin and the Vis area characterized more particularly by the occurrence of Givetian marine deposits. Some rugose corals of this stage are figured for the first time from the Vis area. The conglomerates of the Booischot Formation are also compared to similar thick strata from the Givetian of NW Germany

Mapping Global Climate Change Governance

Climate change is one of the most daunting global policy challenges facing the international community in the 21st century. This mapping paper takes stock of the current state of the global climate change regime, illuminating scope for policymaking and mobilizing collective action through networked governance at all scales, from the sub-national to the highest global level of political assembly. It provides an unusually comprehensive snapshot of policymaking within the regime created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), bolstered by the 2015 Paris Agreement, as well as novel insight into how other formal and informal intergovernmental organizations relate to this regime, including a sophisticated EU policymaking and delivery apparatus, already dedicated to tackling climate change at the regional level. It further locates a highly diverse and numerous non-state actor constituency, from market actors to NGOs to city governors, all of whom have a crucial role to play. Page 4 from 7 Keywords: global governance, climate change, global public policy, global public goods, multi-level governance, policy transfer, implementation, Paris Agreemen

Efficient Large-scale Trace Checking Using MapReduce

The problem of checking a logged event trace against a temporal logic specification arises in many practical cases. Unfortunately, known algorithms for an expressive logic like MTL (Metric Temporal Logic) do not scale with respect to two crucial dimensions: the length of the trace and the size of the time interval for which logged events must be buffered to check satisfaction of the specification. The former issue can be addressed by distributed and parallel trace checking algorithms that can take advantage of modern cloud computing and programming frameworks like MapReduce. Still, the latter issue remains open with current state-of-the-art approaches. In this paper we address this memory scalability issue by proposing a new semantics for MTL, called lazy semantics. This semantics can evaluate temporal formulae and boolean combinations of temporal-only formulae at any arbitrary time instant. We prove that lazy semantics is more expressive than standard point-based semantics and that it can be used as a basis for a correct parametric decomposition of any MTL formula into an equivalent one with smaller, bounded time intervals. We use lazy semantics to extend our previous distributed trace checking algorithm for MTL. We evaluate the proposed algorithm in terms of memory scalability and time/memory tradeoffs.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure