Duverger, semi-presidentialism and the supposed French archetype

The concept of semi-presidentialism was first operationalised by Maurice Duverger. There are now 17 countries with semi-presidential constitutions in Europe. Within this set of countries France is usually considered to be the archetypal example of semi-presidentialism. This article maps the main institutional and political features of European semi-presidentialism on the basis of Duverger’s original three-fold schema. The most striking feature is the diversity of practice within this set of countries. This means that semi-presidentialism should not be operationalised as a discrete explanatory variable. However, there are ways of systematically capturing the variation within semi-presidentialism to allow cross-national comparisons. This diversity also means that France should not be considered as the archetypal semi-presidential country. At best, France is an archetypal example of a particular type of semi-presidentialism. Overall, Duverger’s main contribution to the study of semi-presidentialism was the original identification of the concept and his implicit insight that there are different types of semi-presidentialism. In the future, the study of semi-presidentialism would benefit from the development of theory-driven comparative work that avoids a reliance on France as the supposed semi-presidential archetype

On the new economic philosophy of crisis management in the European Union

This essay attempts to go beyond presenting the bits and pieces of still ongoing crisis management in the EU. Instead it attempts at finding the ‘red thread’ behind a series of politically improvised decisions. Our fundamental research question asks whether basic economic lessons learned in the 1970s are still valid. Namely, that a crises emanating from either structural or regulatory weaknesses cannot and should not be remedied by demand management. Our second research question is the following: Can lacking internal commitment and conviction in any member state be replaced or substituted by external pressure or formalized procedures and sanctions? Under those angles we analyze the project on establishing a fiscal and banking union in the EU, as approved by the Council in December 2012

'Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place': Anti-discrimination Legislation in the Liberal State and the Fate of the Australian Disability Discrimination Act

This article offers a critical analysis of some of the practical implications for disabled people of the Disability Discrimination Act of 1992. Specifically, it raises questions about politics and the role of the law as an instrument of social change?taking greater account of the interests of disabled people?on the one hand, and of the reliance of the social model of disability on a strategy based upon legal rights on the other. The article also suggests that the constraining effects of Australia's constitutional protections of rights and its federal system of government hinder the mildly progressive elements of the Disability Discrimination Act. To illustrate this, the paper employs empirical evidence to suggest that these effects have been exacerbated by the passage of the Human Rights Legislation Amendment Act in 1999

Anatomy of STEM Teaching in American Universities: A Snapshot from a Large-Scale Observation Study

National and local initiatives focused on the transformation of STEM teaching in higher education have multiplied over the last decade. These initiatives often focus on measuring change in instructional practices, but it is difficult to monitor such change without a national picture of STEM educational practices, especially as characterized by common observational instruments. We characterized a snapshot of this landscape by conducting the first large scale observation-based study. We found that lecturing was prominent throughout the undergraduate STEM curriculum, even in classrooms with infrastructure designed to support active learning, indicating that further work is required to reform STEM education. Additionally, we established that STEM faculty’s instructional practices can vary substantially within a course, invalidating the commonly-used teaching evaluations based on a one-time observation

The Epigenetic Trans-Silencing Effect in Drosophila Involves Maternally-Transmitted Small RNAs Whose Production Depends on the piRNA Pathway and HP1

BACKGROUND: The study of P transposable element repression in Drosophila melanogaster led to the discovery of the Trans-Silencing Effect (TSE), a homology-dependent repression mechanism by which a P-transgene inserted in subtelomeric heterochromatin (Telomeric Associated Sequences, "TAS") has the capacity to repress in trans, in the female germline, a homologous P-lacZ transgene located in euchromatin. Phenotypic and genetic analysis have shown that TSE exhibits variegation in ovaries, displays a maternal effect as well as epigenetic transmission through meiosis and involves heterochromatin (including HP1) and RNA silencing. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we show that mutations in squash and zucchini, which are involved in the piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) silencing pathway, strongly affect TSE. In addition, we carried out a molecular analysis of TSE and show that silencing is correlated to the accumulation of lacZ small RNAs in ovaries. Finally, we show that the production of these small RNAs is sensitive to mutations affecting squash and zucchini, as well as to the dose of HP1. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: Thus, our results indicate that the TSE represents a bona fide piRNA-based repression. In addition, the sensitivity of TSE to HP1 dose suggests that in Drosophila, as previously shown in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, a RNA silencing pathway can depend on heterochromatin components

Reflections on the entrepreneurial state, innovation and social justice

The state and its role in technological innovation and social justice have become, once again, fashionable topics of political and economic debate. A number of innovation theorists argue that never more than today, it is necessary to rethink the state’s entrepreneurial role in society and welfare. Their argument provides justification for the existence of the state, going beyond classical political theory and especially contractarian accounts of legitimacy and obligation. It emphasises the ability and willingness of the state to take risks and reduce uncertainty of economic agents for the sake of innovation that can make everyone better off. This paper insists that although the risk-taking argument of innovation theorists deserves further attention and analysis, it should not be abstracted from a holistic politico-theoretical approach to the state. Such an approach is necessary for a critical understanding of the complex set of predominantly political institutions which compose the state and which have been historically developed to guarantee social evolution. Any risk-taking for innovative enterprise and mission-oriented investment ought to be justified and legitimised on the grounds of principled democratic procedures. This implies that innovation itself is a value-laden political process, requiring participation in the decision-making and standards of fairness

The New Legal Pluralism

Scholars studying interactions among multiple communities have often used the term legal pluralism to describe the inevitable intermingling of normative systems that results from these interactions. In recent years, a new application of pluralist insights has emerged in the international and transnational realm. This review aims to survey and help define this emerging field of global legal pluralism. I begin by briefly describing sites for pluralism research, both old and new. Then I discuss how pluralism has come to be seen as an attractive analytical framework for those interested in studying law on the world stage. Finally, I identify advantages of a pluralist approach and respond to criticisms, and I suggest ways in which pluralism can help both in reframing old conceptual debates and in generating useful normative insights for designing procedural mechanisms, institutions, and discursive practices for managing hybrid legal/cultural spaces

Effective Demand in the Recent Evolution of the US Economy

We present strong empirical evidence favoring the role of effective demand in the US economy, in the spirit of Keynes and Kalecki. Our inference comes from a statistically well-specified VAR model constructed on a quarterly basis from 1980 to 2008. US output is our variable of interest, and it depends (in our specification) on (1) the wage share, (2) OECD GDP, (3) taxes on corporate income, (4) other budget revenues, (5) credit, and the (6) interest rate. The first variable was included in order to know whether the economy under study is wage led or profit led. The second represents demand from abroad. The third and fourth make up total government expenditure and our arguments regarding these are based on Kalecki's analysis of fiscal policy. The last two variables are analyzed in the context of Keynes's monetary economics. Our results indicate that expansionary monetary, fiscal, and income policies favor higher aggregate demand in the United States

Micromechanical Properties of Injection-Molded Starch–Wood Particle Composites

The micromechanical properties of injection molded starch–wood particle composites were investigated as a function of particle content and humidity conditions. The composite materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction methods. The microhardness of the composites was shown to increase notably with the concentration of the wood particles. In addition,creep behavior under the indenter and temperature dependence were evaluated in terms of the independent contribution of the starch matrix and the wood microparticles to the hardness value. The influence of drying time on the density and weight uptake of the injection-molded composites was highlighted. The results revealed the role of the mechanism of water evaporation, showing that the dependence of water uptake and temperature was greater for the starch–wood composites than for the pure starch sample. Experiments performed during the drying process at 70°C indicated that the wood in the starch composites did not prevent water loss from the samples.Peer reviewe

Defective number module or impaired access? Numerical magnitude processing in first graders with mathematical difficulties

This article was published in the serial, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology [© Elsevier]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2010.09.003This study examined numerical magnitude processing in first graders with severe and mild forms of mathematical difficulties, children with mathematics learning disabilities (MLD) and children with low achievement (LA) in mathematics, respectively. In total, 20 children with MLD, 21 children with LA, and 41 regular achievers completed a numerical magnitude comparison task and an approximate addition task, which were presented in a symbolic and a nonsymbolic (dot arrays) format. Children with MLD and LA were impaired on tasks that involved the access of numerical magnitude information from symbolic representations, with the LA children showing a less severe performance pattern than children with MLD. They showed no deficits in accessing magnitude from underlying nonsymbolic magnitude representations. Our findings indicate that this performance pattern occurs in children from first grade onward and generalizes beyond numerical magnitude comparison tasks. These findings shed light on the types of intervention that may help children who struggle with learning mathematics