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Consensus plays an ambiguous role in deliberative democracy. While it formed the horizon of early deliberative theories, many now denounce it as an empirically unachievable outcome, a logically impossible stopping rule, and a normatively undesirable ideal. Deliberative disagreement, by contrast, is celebrated not just as an empirically unavoidable outcome but also as a democratically sound and normatively desirable goal of deliberation. Majority rule has generally displaced unanimity as the ideal way of bringing deliberation to a close. This article offers an epistemic perspective on this question of consensus versus disagreement. For ensuring the production of better decisions, we argue, the normative appeal of consensus varies depending on the deliberative task – whether it entails problem solving or prediction. We argue that in pure problem-solving contexts, consensus retains a strong normative appeal and forms the ideal deliberative outcome of deliberation. In contrast, on predictive tasks, consensus should generally not be used as a stopping rule noris it likely to be epistemically desirable as an outcome. Instead deliberators may be better served by ending the deliberation with a form of deliberative disagreement we call 'positive dissensus', which paves the way for more accurate aggregate predictions.

This essay explores the "social contract" of the digital humanities community. I argue that the social contract of the digital humanities is composed of two rules: 1) the notion of niceness or civility; and 2) the possession of technical knowledge, defined as knowledge of coding or computer programming. These rules are repeatedly raised within the public sphere of the digital humanities and are simultaneously contested and criticized. I claim that these rules and the social contract come from humanities computing, a field commonly described as the digital humanities' sole predecessor. Humanities computing has historically differentiated itself from media and cultural studies, defining itself as a field that uses computational methods to address humanities research questions rather than exploring the impact of computation on culture and the humanities. I call for a movement that would go beyond this social contract by creating multiple genealogies for the digital humanities; by arguing that current conceptualizations of the digital humanities have not only developed from humanities computing but also include additional fields such as new media studies, postcolonial science and technology studies, and digital research on race, gender, class, and disability and their impact on cultures around the world.

With gaining the independence and the emergence of a new state the linguistic situation in Kazakhstan has been changed. The restoration and return of historical names, the fi xing of unifi ed rules of the transferring of Kazakh toponyms into other languages became the basis of national onomastic policy of independent Kazakhstan. After the law "On languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan" adopted in 1997 the activity on improvement of orthographic norms and formulation of new rules of transferring geographical names from Kazakh into Russian started. As a result of these acts many distorted names of inhabited localities and administrative-territorial units are gradually being put into an appropriate norm. Many of them are still to be corrected according to new "Law on Administrative - Territorial Structure of the Republic of Kazakhstan" (December 8, 1993.) and Presidential Decree (December 29, 1995.), Government Resolution (March 5, 1996.) where the rules on Russian transferring of Kazakh onyms were approved. Due to such activity to former capital of Kazakhstan Alma-Ata was returned its original name Almaty. Thus, in our article we decided to give our point of view on some issues relating to grammatical adaptation of toponym Almaty in Russian language.

The rule of law is a standard measure of the extent to which government upholds constitutionally and subjects itself to the laws of the land as well as international law. Its reigns over government, protecting citizens against arbitrary state action and protects individual/private interests. The rule of law ensures that all citizens are treated equally and are subject to the law rather than to the whims of the powerful. Law is applied indiscriminately irrespective of race, gender, religion or political persuation. The independence of the judiciary is inextricably linked to the rule of law. In order to have a proper judiciary there is a need of technical competence, commitment to sound ideas and institutional (and personal) independence. The judiciary should be politically insulated from the legislative and the executive power. That is, courts should not be subject to improper influence from other branches of government, or from private or partisan interests. It is therefore, the purpose of this article, to explain the concept of judicial independence and its basis, give a background of complaints of possible threats of judicial independence in South Africa and determine whether judicial independence is threatened in South Africa. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p425

To date, tax scholars have responded to the proliferation of so-called temporary or sunset tax expenditure legislation by staking claims either for or against it, focusing on its relative merits and shortcomings. In this Article, I argue that these positions are analytically incomplete. Rather than address the underlying deficiencies in the budget process that have led to the preference for temporary tax provisions, the advocacy of the use (or non-use) of temporary provisions simply asks which type of provision will yield the least problematic results. This Article seeks to help fill a gap in the literature by focusing on remedies meant to address the source of many issues related to both temporary and permanent tax expenditure legislation. In particular, I propose the adoption of a bundle of new budget rules that will work as precommitment devices to restrain lawmakers from exploiting weaknesses in the existing process. I argue that these proposed rules would still give lawmakers the flexibility to adopt either temporary or permanent tax legislation as appropriate. However, the proposed rules would help to decrease opportunities for budget manipulations, impose more fiscal restraint on lawmakers, achieve greater legislative transparency, help loosen the hold of special interest groups on lawmakers, and enhance legislative stability.

The judgment of April 14 2014 in the Virginia G case gave the opportunity to ITLOS to rule for the first time that the bunkering activity is part of the sovereign rights that the coastal State may exercise in the EEZ. In addition to this expected clarification, the Hamburg court offers a fragmented conception of certain rules of the Law of the Sea on issues which are covered by general international law. This is notably the case of inadmissibility objections relating to the nationality of ships and exhaustion of domestic remedies. By retaining the theory of " ship constituting a unit", the court prevents the exercise of diplomatic protection, even though its disappearance is not provided by the rules in force. On the merits, the court recognizes, in particular, the coastal State is responsible under Article 73 of the Convention by exercising large control over domestic law and provides extensive reparations to the flag State, while there is reasonable doubt as to the fault of the owner and the causal link. Ultimately, the judgment reveals an
intense imperium from the law of the sea judge that stretches out to all stages of the trial.

The mobilization of ethnic groups during elections is seen by many as one of the greatest threats to democracy in ethnically diverse societies. Two important questions are: Why does ethnicity become politicized in some elections, but not in others? and Why do particular ethnic categories become politicized, while others do not? Two arguments in the literature offer explanations. The first argument posits that groups are mobilized along ethnic lines when voters have strong emotional allegiances to their ethnic group; in effect, the ethnic politicization of elections is viewed as a reflection of societal ethnic cleavages. A second argument focuses on electoral rules and asserts that proportional representation politicizes ethnicity by enabling small ethnic parties to compete. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence to support these arguments is limited. This dissertation takes a more dynamic approach by focusing on individual candidates and their incentives to make ethnic appeals. I argue that under party-centric electoral rules, a candidate's ethnic appeals are influenced from above—by their party's stance on ethnic issues. In contrast, under candidate-centric rules, a candidate's ethnic appeals are influenced from below; in particular, by the size of ethnic groups within the candidate's electoral district.

"A Finer point with Marshall Hill: Significant progress in Reciprocity for Distance Education Regulation" is a follow up with Marshall Hill, Executive Director of National Council – State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (NC-SARA) discusses significant progress of the organization that insures institutional quality for distance education offerings across the states and regions. In January 2014 the initiative began. As of July of 2014, 7 states are full participants, legislation has passed in I4 additional states, 3 more states have legislation pending and 4 states have determined statuary changes are not necessary in order to participate in the NC SARA initiative. In order for an institution to participate, the state must have statutory authority to do so. The recent negotiated rules panel was not able to reach agreement on all proposed rules, therefore the department has the authority to rule on the matter as it will. Under the leadership of Ted Mitchell, undersecretary of education, who oversees post secondary education, the department has decided to take a "pause" on the topic of reciprocity for distance education. Presentations on the topic, and the value it has brought various states by Marshall HIl continues. It is hoped that by the end of 2015 40-45 states will have decided to participate.

The use of framework laws or 'skeleton' bills with lots of open texture and far-reaching delegation of rule-making powers to the executive, to independent agencies and to private rule-makers has started a process of the creeping 'deparliamentarisation' of legislation both at the national and the European level. In the Netherlands the position of Parliament as a co-actor in the legislative process is enshrined in the Constitution but that does not seem to protect citizens against the outsourcing of legislative tasks to non-elected bodies. At the European level a primacy of the parliamentary legislature appears to be emerging. Especially Article 290 TFEU lays down conditions for the delegation of regulatory powers and provides the European Parliament and Council with some tools for monitoring and control. How do framework directives relate to these conditions and does the choice for framework legislation at the EU level also affect the primacy of the national legislature? The central claim of this contribution is that the concept of the primacy of the legislature, which is supposed to guarantee the democratic legitimacy of legislation, is itself poorly protected by the current constitutional rules and practices. Three ways to move forward will be sketched.

Some developed countries have used unilateral trade sanctions against governments that have allegedly been engaged in gross violations of human rights as a tool to force such governments to comply with basic human rights standards. Even though unilateral trade sanctions might be targeted against governments that grossly violate human rights, such measures have unintended consequences on the general population who live in the target country. In many cases, the general population suffers as a result of such sanctions rather than the public officials who are the targets. Hence, the effectiveness of such measures in meeting the desired result is questionable. Such measures have been utilized by countries that are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) thereby raising the issue of the legality of such measures under the WTO rules. The two main issues that surround unilateral trade sanctions are thus the legality of such measures under the WTO rules and the effectiveness of the measures to meet the desired result. I argue that unilateral trade sanctions on grounds of human rights violations are neither permissible under the WTO rules nor effective weapons to achieve the goals (i.e. forcing governments to comply with basic human rights standards).

The use of framework laws or 'skeleton' bills with lots of open texture and far-reaching delegation of rule-making powers to the executive, to independent agencies and to private rule-makers has started a process of the creeping 'deparliamentarisation' of legislation both at the national and the European level. In the Netherlands the position of Parliament as a co-actor in the legislative process is enshrined in the Constitution but that does not seem to protect citizens against the outsourcing of legislative tasks to non-elected bodies. At the European level a primacy of the parliamentary legislature appears to be emerging. Especially Article 290 TFEU lays down conditions for the delegation of regulatory powers and provides the European Parliament and Council with some tools for monitoring and control. How do framework directives relate to these conditions and does the choice for framework legislation at the EU level also affect the primacy of the national legislature? The central claim of this contribution is that the concept of the primacy of the legislature, which is supposed to guarantee the democratic legitimacy of legislation, is itself poorly protected by the current constitutional rules and practices. Three ways to move forward will be sketched.

This paper explores a number of procedural and substantive considerations arising from ongoing attempts to craft a plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) among the so-called "Really Good Friends of Services" coalition of WTO Members. The paper suggests that considerable scope exists to move forward a multilateral negotiating agenda on services that both the digital revolution and a continued surge of preferential rule-making has rendered increasingly obsolete. As the most significant attempt to date to craft a GATS Article V-compatible PTA in services, TISA offers considerable promise. The paper, however, cautions that the case for embedding TISA into the architecture of WTO rules alongside the General Agreement on Trade in Services or in its place is weak on both procedural and substantive grounds to the extent that the ongoing talks take place behind doors that remain closed even to the WTO Secretariat, let alone to many of the world's leading developing country suppliers of services, and involve potentially significant departures from GATS rules liable to complicate any hoped for multilateral migratory journey. Key words: WTO, GATS, trade in services, plurilateral agreements, critical mass negotiations, preferential trade liberalization.

Research has shown that government spending can affect GDP growth rates, yet there is no comprehensive study that looks at how a country's choice of political institutions affects government spending. This article focuses on how the choice of regime type (presidential, parliamentary, or mixed), legislative chamber structure (bicameral or unicameral), legislative chamber size, and electoral rules affect the level of government spending. The methodology used is pooled ordinary least squares for an unbalanced panel of 92 democracies between 1975 and 2007. The results show that the relationship between legislative chamber size and government spending is linear in unicameral countries but nonlinear in bicameral countries, plurality electoral rule is always associated with less spending than any other type of electoral rule, and unicameral and bicameral countries should not be modeled together. While countries that have long-standing political institutions are less likely to change the characteristics of those political institutions in order to change the level of government spending, the results of this article suggest that countries that are establishing new political institutions (e.g., South Sudan and Libya) stand to benefit from knowing what types of institutions are conducive for growth. Adapted from the source document.

This work examines the dynamic relationship among elites, media, and the public during authoritarian rule. Using Brazil's military regime (1964-85), it investigates whether changing press censorship influenced public support for military rule during the period of political liberalization. This paper uses the exposure-resistance model of opinion formation, in which a person's probability of supporting a position depends first on her probability of exposure to and reception of an elite cue advocating that position, and secondarily on the probability that she resists that position once exposed. Her likelihood of exposure to and reception of elite cues increases with her attention to news media and the extent of her political awareness; her odds of accepting the positions advocated by elites depends on her political ideology and her critical capacity to evaluate the content and source of the cue. Using three public opinion surveys carried out between 1972 and 1982, and an analysis of newspaper content during the dictatorship, this research demonstrates that censored media convinced Brazilians to support military rule initially, only later during political liberalization, to expose them to increasingly critical coverage of the regime, convincing many to abandon their support for the regime. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Inc.]

Democratization studies have proven that the main difference between autocracy and democracy is, counter-intuitively, not the basic regime structure, but rather, the function and validity of democratic formal institutions defined as rules and norms. In 'defective democracies', or in the grey zone between authoritarian regimes and consolidated democracies, formal institutions disguise specific informal institutions which are usually 'the actual rules that are being followed'. Moreover, scholars have investigated the issue of stateness: 'without a state, no modern democracy is possible'. This article sheds light on this grey zone, particularly, on the type of state whose coercive state apparatus is autonomous. Its autonomy results primarily from the interplay between formal and informal institutions in post-transitional settings where 'perverse institutionalization' creates and fosters undemocratic informal rules and/or enshrines them as formal codes. If the military autonomy reaches a threshold ranging from high to very high, constitutional institutions become Janus-faced and can enforce a sui generis repertoire of undemocratic informal institutions. Thus, the state exerts formal and informal 'domination', Herrschaft in a Weberian sense. This modality of dual domination is what I call 'deep state'. Adapted from the source document.