"Obedient Servant or Runaway Eurocracy? Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the European Community"

Do supranational institutions matter - do they deserve the status of an independent causal variable - in EC policymaking? Does the Commission matter? Does the European Court of Justice? Does the European Parliament? Is the European Community characterized by continued member state dominance, or by a runaway Commission and an activist Court progressively chipping away at this dominance? These are some of the most important questions for our understanding of the European Community and of European integration, and have divided the two traditional schools of thought in regional integration, with neofunctionalists [Haas 1958; Lindberg & Scheingold 1970] generally asserting, and intergovernmentalists [Hoffmann 1966; Taylor 1983; Moravcsik 1991, 1993] generally denying, any important causal role for supranational institutions in the integration process. By and large, however, neither neofunctionalism nor intergovernmentalism1 has generated testable hypotheses regarding the conditions under which, and the ways in which, supranational institutions exert an independent causal influence on either EC governance or the process of European integration. This paper presents a unified theoretical approach to the problem of supranational influence, based largely on the new institutionalism in rational choice theory. Simplifying only slightly, this new literature can be traced to Shepsle's [1979] pioneering work on the role of institutions in the US Congress. Beginning with the observation by McKelvey [1976], Riker [1980] and others that, in a system of majoritarian decisionmaking, policy choices are inherently unstable, "cycling" among multiple possible equilibria, Shepsle argued that Congressional institutions, and in particular the committee system, could produce structure-induced equilibrium, by ruling some policy alternatives as permissible or impermissible, and by structuring the voting and veto power of the various actors in the decisionmaking process

The New Institutionalisms and European Integration

The European Union is without question the most densely institutionalisedinternational organization in the world, with a welter of intergovernmental andsupranational institutions and a rapidly growing body of primary and secondarylegislation, the so-called acquis communautaire. Small wonder, then, that the body ofliterature known under the rubric of the new institutionalism has been applied withincreasing frequency and with increasing success to the study of the Union as a polityand to European integration as a process. In fact, however, the new institutionalismin social theory has evolved into plural institutionalisms, with rational-choice,sociological and historical variants, each with a distinctive set of hypotheses andinsights about the EU. This chapter examines the new institutionalisms in rationalchoice and historical analysis and their contributions to EU studies, briefly summarizingthe core assumptions of each approach before discussing specific applications to thestudy of the European Union and the question of EU enlargement, and concluding withan analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of institutional approaches to the study ofEuropean integration.

The Orientation of Unsymmetrical Molecules at Interfaces

A function giving the distribution of the angles of orientation of the molecular axes from the normal to the interface can be obtained if one makes use of a number of special assumptions regarding the forces of orientation. This is compared with the distribution calculated on assuming an extreme form of Langmuir's principle of independent surface action. The importance of having such a function is pointed out

Coevolutionary Dynamics in a Minimal Substrate

One of the central difficulties of coevolutionary methods arises from 'intransitive superiority' - in a two-player game, for example, the fact that A beats B, and B beats C, does not exclude the possibility that C beats A. Such cyclic superiority in a coevolutionary substrate is hypothesized to cause cycles in the dynamics of the population such that it 'chases its own tail' - traveling through some part of strategy space more than once despite apparent improvement with each step. It is often difficult to know whether an application domain contains such difficulties and to verify this hypothesis in the failure of a given coevolutionary set-up. In this paper we wish to elucidate some of the issues and concepts in an abstract domain where the dynamics of coevolution can be studied simply and directly. We define three simple 'number games' that illustrate intransitive superiority and resultant oscillatory dynamics, as well as some other relevant concepts. These include the distinction between a player's perceived performance and performance with respect to an external metric, and the significance of strategies with a multi-dimensional nature. These features alone can also cause oscillatory behavior and coevolutionary failure

Mutualism, Parasitism, and Evolutionary Adaptation

Our investigations concern the role of symbiosis as an enabling mechanism in evolutionary adaptation. Previous work has illustrated how the formation of mutualist groups can guide genetic variation so as to enable the evolution of ultimately independent organisms that would otherwise be unobtainable. The new experiments reported here show that this effect applies not just in genetically related organisms but may also occur from symbiosis between distinct species. In addition, a new detail is revealed: when the symbiotic group members are drawn from two separate species only one of these species achieves eventual independence and the other remains parasitic. It is nonetheless the case that this second species, formerly mutualistic, was critical in enabling the independence of the first. We offer a biological example that is suggestive of the effect and discuss the implications for evolving complex organisms, natural and artificial

Land landing couch dynamics computer program

Computer programs perform landing stability studies of mechanical impact system designs for advanced spacecraft. The programs consider variation in spacecraft vertical and horizontal velocity, attitude and orientation, shock strut load-stroke characteristics, and ground coefficient of friction

Modeling Building Block Interdependency

The Building-Block Hypothesis appeals to the notion of problem decomposition and the assembly of solutions from sub-solutions. Accordingly, there have been many varieties of GA test problems with a structure based on building-blocks. Many of these problems use deceptive fitness functions to model interdependency between the bits within a block. However, very few have any model of interdependency between building-blocks; those that do are not consistent in the type of interaction used intra-block and inter-block. This paper discusses the inadequacies of the various test problems in the literature and clarifies the concept of building-block interdependency. We formulate a principled model of hierarchical interdependency that can be applied through many levels in a consistent manner and introduce Hierarchical If-and-only-if (H-IFF) as a canonical example. We present some empirical results of GAs on H-IFF showing that if population diversity is maintained and linkage is tight then the GA is able to identify and manipulate building-blocks over many levels of assembly, as the Building-Block Hypothesis suggests

Sources of Guns to Dangerous People: What We Learn By Asking Them

Gun violence exacts a lethal toll on public health. This paper focuses on reducing access to firearms by dangerous offenders, contributing original empirical data on the gun transactions that arm offenders in Chicago. Conducted in the fall of 2013, analysis of an open-ended survey of 99 inmates of Cook County Jail focuses on a subset of violence-prone individuals with the goal of improving law enforcement actions. Among our principal findings:Our respondents (adult offenders living in Chicago or nearby) obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft.Only about 60% of guns in the possession of respondents were obtained by purchase or trade. Other common arrangements include sharing guns and holding guns for others.About one in seven respondents report selling guns, but in only a few cases as a regular source of income.Gangs continue to play some role in Chicago in organizing gun buys and in distributing guns to members as needed.The Chicago Police Department has a considerable effect on the workings of the underground gun market through deterrence. Transactions with strangers and less-trusted associates are limited by concerns over arrest risk (if the buyer should happen to be an undercover officer or a snitch), and about being caught with a "dirty" gun (one that has been fired in a crime)

Implications of microwave spectroscopy for the water-vapor content of the Venus atmosphere

Brightness temperature spectra of Venus computed to determine amount of water vapor in lower atmospher