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9 Regulation of direct democracy: international comparisons and patterns Referendums – and especially initiatives – are rare in most Western democracies. They have only become centrepieces of the political systems in Switzerland and – since the 1970 – Italy. The legislative initiative is practically unknown outside America, though as we have seen above, it has begun to play a role in Germany, New Zealand and a couple of former communist countries. The Swiss can merely propose constitutional amendments, but these are often defeated (the voters have endorsed a
very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world” 3 . The aim of this chapter is to determine if there are ways in which regulation can (and has) helped rescue the “objective truth”. Referendums should be about deliberation, about open debate before a vote is taken. In short, to quote the legal scholar Ron Levy, “widespread citizen involvement is therefore only a
. Sabine Verheyen MEP 1 This chapter first considers the 2013 Proposal and Trilogue in 2014/15, then the 2015 Regulation’s net neutrality aspects, before finally looking at the details of BEREC’s implementation of its Guidelines. European law upheld transparency on a mandatory basis, and minimum QoS on a voluntary basis, under provisions in the 2009 electronic communications
2 Patterns of regulation Following the historical overview of the first chapter, this chapter employs a more analytical perspective on the main characteristics of the EU environmental policy field. The discussion is organized by a decreasing level of abstraction, i.e. starting with general principles, via regulatory approaches and instruments, going down to an overview of concrete policies and measures. First, the main principles of making environmental policy in the multi-level system of the EU are presented, such as the precautionary principle, the principle
, however, one excepted use stood out: pesticides could still be deployed on the province’s golf courses . In a curious wrinkle, a law banning pesticides earned support from the pesticide-reliant golf industry. To fully understand the Cosmetic Pesticides Ban Act and golf’s positioning within it, it is necessary to turn first to Canada’s evolving system of environmental (and especially pesticide) regulation. This, as we shall see, is an exercise in accounting for nuance: environmental regulation has in
3 Regulation and resistance: Wayward apprentices and other ‘evil disposed persons’ at London’s fairs1 M iddlesex and Westminster justices and London Aldermen spent a good deal of the late seventeenth through mid-eighteenth centuries attempting to pass legislation they believed would conform London to their idea of an orderly and productive commercial centre. Seasonal fairs that disrupted commercial order in the metropolis concerned London officials working to establish productivity and commerce in the city. Urban legislation and reform discourse sought to
anchoritic guidance and regulation that featured in the first half of this volume. These late medieval developments – of official examination, approval and licensing, supervision and regulation – together bring an inevitable paradox: as hermits gained new levels of regularity and structure for their way of life, with the respectability and security that they brought, so they simultaneously lost some of the
15.1 Introduction Bank regulation has seen significant change as a consequence of the 2007–8 global financial crisis. One development that was evident before the crisis but which has come more to the fore since is global harmonisation of regulation. After the crisis, the G20 group of leading economies established the Financial Stability Board
16.1 Introduction The rules concerning the regulation of non-bank financial institutions have mainly originated from the European Union (EU), 1 in contrast with the regulation of banks, where the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has been the driving force. Because the regulations are detailed and lengthy, we discuss only the main
Integrity issues have become an important item on the British political agenda since the 1990s when ‘sleaze’ prompted John Major to set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The book analyses the range of ethical problems which confront the political system and the efforts to address them. It addresses the tightening of standards in response to misconduct in Parliament, in central and local government and in the devolved systems. It also addresses perennial ethical questions such as lobbying and party funding which continue to trouble the United Kingdom as they do other major democracies. The chief purpose of the book is to understand the regulatory dilemmas which face policy-makers as they struggle to produce new machinery and codes to tackle the risk of misconduct. Thus we examine, for example, the choice between self-regulation and independent regulation, decisions about the amount of transparency required of office-holders, and how to achieve proportionality in the balance between perceived problems and regulatory burdens. We also attempt to assess the impact of more than two decades of ethical engineering on the office holders and the public.