Supporting rule of law from abroad: a comparative assessment of two post-Arab Spring judicial reforms

In the Southern Mediterranean region, the European Union (EU) supports the establishment of rule of law, pressuring for both the adoption of institutional guarantees of judicial independence and the enhancement of court administration capabilities. Drawing on a set of interviews with key EU and domestic actors, this study compares Morocco and Jordan, examining changes adopted at the institutional and administrative level since the ‘Arab Spring’ broke out. The findings show that external incentives for change penetrated only the administrative level of domestic judicial systems, while a path-dependent effect persisted at the institutional level. The evidence confirms the thesis that in areas of low politics even a mere normative pressure is able to drive rule adoption, whereas in more sensitive policy areas, as in the case of institutional judicial guarantees, the higher costs of adaptation make veto players resistant to external influences for change

EU External Policy, Examples of Democracy Promotion in Tunisia and Morocco

As a result of the last enlargement the EU has become a democracy promoter developing a series of instruments that allowed a direct action with the implementation of the political conditionality; in the aftermath of the Eastern Enlargement the EU established the Neighbourhood Policy, ENP, in order to replicate the successful strategy of democracy promotion with the newly countries at the borders. After the enlargement, thus, the EU clearly became a democracy promotion international actor and the new challenges, nowadays, are those countries without membership perspective of the Union

Does consultation count for corruption? The causal relations in the EU-28

Consultation is a policy instrument geared toward stakeholder engagement in the formulation of primary and secondary legislation. It ensures certain categories of actors can access draft proposals, examine the evidence produced by government or regulators, provide comments and receive feedback. Using an original dataset of consultation design across the EU-28, we examine how variations in combinations of consultation design matter for perceptions of corruption. Using Ostrom’s Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT), we develop expectations about the causal effects of combinations of formal consultation rules together with the condition of social capital, which captures important attributes of the context in which consultation operates. We test our expectations using set-theoretic techniques. Our findings indicate: formal consultation rules are rarely sufficient for mitigating perceptions of corruption, legally prescribed procedures are often replaced by informal rules, and the limited effect of formal consultation rules on perceptions of corruption is due to an incomplete design of the procedures

Machine learning to identify ICL and BCG in simulated galaxy clusters

Nowadays, Machine Learning techniques offer fast and efficient solutions for classification problems that would require intensive computational resources via traditional methods. We examine the use of a supervised Random Forest to classify stars in simulated galaxy clusters after subtracting the member galaxies. These dynamically different components are interpreted as the individual properties of the stars in the Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) and IntraCluster Light (ICL). We employ matched stellar catalogues (built from the different dynamical properties of BCG and ICL) of 29 simulated clusters from the DIANOGA set to train and test the classifier. The input features are cluster mass, normalized particle cluster-centric distance, and rest-frame velocity. The model is found to correctly identify most of the stars, while the larger errors are exhibited at the BCG outskirts, where the differences between the physical properties of the two components are less obvious. We investigate the robustness of the classifier to numerical resolution, redshift dependence (up to z = 1), and included astrophysical models. We claim that our classifier provides consistent results in simulations for z 0.1 R-200) is significantly affected by uncertainties in the classification process. In conclusion, this work suggests the importance of employing Machine Learning to speed up a computationally expensive classification in simulations

Measuring Design Diversity: A New Application of Ostrom’s Rule Types

This is the final version. Available from Wiley / Policy Studies Organization via the DOI in this record.We draw on the Institutional Grammar Tool’s rule types to empirically analyze the design of four major procedural regulatory instruments in the 27 member states of the European Union and the UK. They are: consultation, regulatory impact assessment (RIA), freedom of information (FOI), and the Ombudsman. By adopting the IGT as conceptual lens to direct us towards a single measurement template applicable to a variety of action situations, we are able to derive measures that are conceptually robust and suitable for comparative analysis. With original data gathered on the official legal base in the 28 cases, we carry out principal components analysis. We identify design patterns across countries and instruments; the ‘specialization’ of each instrument in terms of rule type; and the components that best explain cross-country variation. In the conclusions we argue that to reframe the design features of the four instruments in conceptual, theoretical categories is not simply a taxonomical exercise but it extends to the territory of practice and reform.H2020 European Research Council (ERC