Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The original task of the European Parliament was democratic control of the supranational executive, the European Commission. Among the EP¡¯s various powers for the job, this paper focuses on the power of the EP to grant a discharge to the Commission regarding the implementation of the EU budget. By releasing the assumption on the EP and the Commission as unitary actors, it attempts to answer the question ¡®which MEPs are more likely to show their support for the Commission in the votes of the budgetary discharge and why?¡¯ It tests propositions on the MEPs¡¯ behavior based on the calculation of the costs and benefits produced from each voting outcome in the 4 roll call votes from 1994 to 2001. The result shows three findings: (1) the thesis of the EU without permanent government and opposition is confirmed. Depending on political circumstances of the vote, different factors determine the behavior of the MEPs. (2) national parties influence the behaviour of the MEPs significantly in the votes of the discharge (3) the connection between the Commissioners and the MEPs through the national partisanship influences the MEPs¡¯ attitude to the Commission at least when it is under threat.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Increasingly, in the Europeanization literature researchers are attempting to formalize relations among several layers of actors (national, subnational and supranational) who are involved in European decision-making. Several academics (Marks, Hooghe) describe a process of decision making that is shifting towards the subnational level, while others (Caporaso, Borzel) argue that changes in decision-making depend largely upon the goodness of fit between the European level and the national structures. This paper argues that smaller unitary EU member states have changed very little administratively as a result of their membership. In fact, a closer look at the administrative structures of states such as Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Denmark present an interesting puzzle for Europeanists. My case studies (four smaller EU member states) have different historical administrative trajectories and diverse administrative practices, yet they have one thing in common: when it comes to their national administrative decision making they are highly centralized. When tested on regional policy and over the entire span of years of membership these states show remarkable resilience and, with the exception of some window dressing, have kept much of the regional decision-making part of the national agenda. In fact, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Denmark have divulged very little administrative decision-making in regard to regional policy to the supranational level or to the sub-national one. What accounts for this resilience? Most importantly, what do these findings tell us about the process of Europeanization for smaller member states which comprise at least half the EU membership? I hypothesize in this paper that small European member states prefer not to develop sub-national decentralization schemes because of historical path dependency, their size and the ability of central state institutions to co-opt the regionalization process. Details will be provided for the reasons of this actor-network related preference.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Varieties of Capitalism
literature would benefit from more coherence and a model of firm
preferences will allow the many moving parts of this branch of
scholarship to more convincingly hang together. I offer a critical
review that calls for a mapping scheme that would orient and redirect a
broad swath of the literature. This review will include scholarship
that positions the firm as its core unit of analysis to trace and model
the vertical and horizontal junctures of strategic interaction. Local,
state, national, and supranational institutions and the dense webs that
tether them together comprise the vertical junctures. The cross-firm
intersections comprise the mainstay of the horizontal junctures.
Importing this simple, compact vertical and horizontal mapping scheme
braids the panoply of writing on the firm into four strands of
patterned activity. I propose a typological model of firm preferences
in (1) social and (2) competition policy arenas, which comports rather
snuggly with much of the extant writings with in the VOC branch within
these two policy spheres. This model hones in on variation in firm
level lobbying strategies, recruitment, frame, and changing repertoire
of resources throughout European integration since 1986 (Single
European Act). This mapping scheme and preference model also has
purchase on questions of agenda setting, malleable veto points, and the
configurations of corporatism and pluralism at the EU level. The paper
will include discussion of a down-stream enterprise - likely my
dissertation - that would chart the intersection of national and EU
social and competitive policy spheres through the lens of business
interest intermediation since 1986. Some regression analysis will
hopefully be presented, but my primary desire is feedback on the
precision of my critical literature review and tweaking of the
model.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As Moroccans became the largest minority in Belgium they concentrated in Brussels, where they became dramatically over represented in correctional drug statistics. I present a brief overview of a fifteen year sentencing research project that among other things focused on the sanctioning of non-Belgians. My paper will mainly concentrate on whether any disparity exists at different levels: prosecution, detention before trial, length of imprisonment, community sentence, and incarceration in/out decisions. Explanations for observed differences in sanctioning are offered. Subjective factors, i.e. judges' personal appraisals of the offender-situation-crime pattern seem to account for most of the decisions taken. In addition to the statistical approach, qualitative data buttress the conclusions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: On 20 October, 1996, 300,000 people participated in a ‘White March’ through the streets of Brussels to protest against the criminal justice system in Belgium, following the Marc Dutroux-case. Exactly eleven years later, on 20 October, 2007, between ten and twenty thousand protesters marched through the streets of Jena, Louisiana, in what was described as the ‘largest civil rights demonstration in years’. These protests were a reaction to the events in the ‘Jena Six’-case. In this paper I will argue that the events in Brussels, in Jena and in many similar cases cannot be fully understood using familiar concepts like ‘legal mobilization’, ‘legal culture’ or ‘legal consciousness’. Instead, the analysis of both Brussels and Jena will benefit greatly if we consider both cases in terms of ‘legal alienation’ (understood as alienation or estrangement from law).

The concept of ‘legal alienation’ is occasionally used in the socio-legal literature. Generally speaking, however, most usages of ‘legal alienation’ in the present literature are either too wide or too narrow to be of any use for empirical socio-legal research. Most theoretical studies, for example, use a rather vague and general concept of ‘legal alienation’ to describe a general feeling of social discomfort. By contrast, many empirical studies of ‘legal alienation’, use the concept as one among many different indicators to measure the level public support for the law in large scale surveys, but this (narrow) approach is less useful in ethnographic and other qualitative studies. This paper seeks to accomplish two tasks: to explore the relevant literature and unpack the concept of ‘legal alienation’; and to provide a way in which different dimensions of legal alienation may be included and tested in empirical research.