Diversity or Cacophony? The Continuing Debate Over New Sources of International Law

We have reached a point when lawyers\u27 commissions are summoned to discuss the consequences of legal proliferation as an ill threatening the standing of international law through incompatibility or irrelevance. Should this trend towards fragmentation be reversed? Should we devise a legal non-proliferation treaty? Or should we, conversely, welcome the current diversification in the sources of law as reflecting the realities of today\u27s world, as a reflection of the flexibility and adaptability of law when the norm of sovereignty on which it is based is itself undergoing considerable recalibration? In short: how should we deal theoretically as well as practically with the diversification of sources of law

Diversity or Cacophony? The Continuing Debate Over New Sources of International Law

We have reached a point when lawyers\u27 commissions are summoned to discuss the consequences of legal proliferation as an ill threatening the standing of international law through incompatibility or irrelevance. Should this trend towards fragmentation be reversed? Should we devise a legal non-proliferation treaty? Or should we, conversely, welcome the current diversification in the sources of law as reflecting the realities of today\u27s world, as a reflection of the flexibility and adaptability of law when the norm of sovereignty on which it is based is itself undergoing considerable recalibration? In short: how should we deal theoretically as well as practically with the diversification of sources of law

Equal voting power under scrutiny: Czech Constitutional Court on the 5% threshold in the 2014 European Parliament Elections.

This article analyzes the Czech Constitutional Court's decision concerning the legal threshold in European Parliament elections. It puts the decicion in the broader framework of European multi-level governance

EMU and sustainable integration

This paper considers what will be required to make Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) sustainable following the successive crises of recent years. It starts by laying out the policy benchmark, namely the successive ‘President Reports’ produced by EU institutions. It then suggests three dimensions of sustainable integration relevant to EMU, namely the pursuit of sustainable growth, the need to take into account what we call ‘varieties of modernisation’ and the ‘ownership’ of democratically sustainable reforms. It then evaluates the recasting of EMU governance against the benchmark of sustainable integratio

Differentiation, dominance and democratic congruence : a relational view

Posted: 5 Jan 2022This EU3D Research Paper tentatively explores ways of applying the differentiation lens from the EU to the global level of inter-state cooperation. Given the wide scope of this research agenda, its only ambition is to offer a few building blocks for further research on the basis of a relational view of differentiated cooperation, which starts with characterising the relations between actors rather than the actors themselves. The research paper is divided in four sections. (1) Whether differentiation is desirable and for whom if we seek to maximise democratic congruence, including vertical and horizontal non domination. (2) What types of differentiated relations constitute the landscape of forms of differentiation, presenting a relational typology consisting of selection, recognition, distinction and discretion. (3) Why delves into the many categories of causes or factors explaining why states engage in differentiation at the EU and the global level – reading functional and political drivers as indicators of patterns of relations, distinguishing in particular between states that are un-able, unwilling or unamenable when considering joining integration schemes. And finally the last section (4) How offers a few preliminary thoughts on how or under what conditions, DI/DC can pass the democratic congruence test

Reversing the gaze : can the EU import democracy from others?

Published online: 22 March 2023For over two decades, the EU has used a wide range of policy instruments to support democratic reform in third countries under the assumption that the rest of the world must learn from Europeans. This one-way democracy policy is out of tune with the times as political malaise spreads within the EU and as global geopolitics calls for genuine decolonial mindsets. In this contribution, we ask what it would take for the EU to reverse the democratic gaze. We argue that the EU could do more to open itself to the democratic innovations unfolding around the world where reformers have long been grappling with anti-democratic playbooks. We distinguish between three relevant realms, namely, that of power-sharing arrangements, democratic backsliding and regional mechanisms. We hope to offer a significant tweak to decolonization analysis and a political, normative supplement to this Special Issue's concern with outside influences on the EU.This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Wiley Transformative Agreement (2020-2023