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More than 90% of EU legislation is negotiated in so-called trilogues. In this specific institutional setup, representatives of three legislative institutions – the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament – come together to negotiate EU legislation behind closed doors. Applying different theoretical perspectives on negotiations, this study analyses the interaction between institutional actors in the negotiation process. Focusing on the interaction of negotiators, the institutional venue of negotiations and the negotiation mode, the study finds that the way the negotiation process develops has clear repercussions on the legislative outcome. First, the more negotiators personally interact, the more trust develops between them. This has three consequences: it shifts negotiations to more informal venues (including less actors), and the negotiations become more cooperative. This increases the degree to which initial institutional positions can be found in the final agreement. Moreover, delegation of the negotiation – to hierarchically lower level staff and administrators – also leads to more cooperative negotiations, and, furthermore, to more technical expertise of those actors involved. It does, hence, not only increase the inclusion of initial positions in the outcome but also increases the overall legal quality of legislation. In sum, this study shows that the negotiation process in trilogues – and especially a shift to ever more remote venues of negotiations – has an impact on the outcome. And while, from a democratic point of view, these procedural aspects might be seen critically, they by and large have a positive impact on the results of the negotiations.

AbstractBoth quantitative and qualitative research has provided evidence of a fashion system with principled aesthetic transitions. Previous theories of coordination have been proposed at the level of collective behavior, but monopolistic competition at the industry level looms large. Designers and suppliers around the world have the difficult task of anticipating uncertain consumer demand. How are multiple layers of futurework coordinated through global value chains? Drawing on 11 months of ethnographic data from first-tier suppliers in India, I document the role of forecasting in buyer–supplier coordination. I describe the contents of forecasts and show how designers use organizational routines to balance competing requirements for conformity and differentiation. Most importantly, I argue that forecasting information is filtered through calculative spaces and the logic of uncertainty absorption. The consequences of transnational futurework resonate not only through finance and technological innovation, but through aesthetics and embodiment.

"Angesichts der Krise des politischen Systems der EU scheint eine grundlegende Debatte über seine Reform geboten. Elemente des dualen Föderalismus könnten bei einer Umgestaltung zu einer Verbesserung der Legitimität der EU beitragen." (Autorenreferat)

The study follows up the question if the third-party notice could be used to find a congruent solution for under company law conflicts.For the first time a monograph is on hand which examines the importance of the third-party notice as an instrument of under company law process conduct. Based on the general requirements of the third party notice relevant cases as well in business partnerships as in capital companies are being discussed. Though the competence for the declaration of the third-party notice is being fleshed out on the one hand and on the other hand the examination of reasons for the third-party notice is ostensible in the thesis.The typical relation between several persons at the third-party notice is in the company law as well as in other scopes in where the third party notice currently gets higher regard. Therefor the increased use of the third-party notice as a procedural instrument seems to be extremely reasonable.

In the last decades, EU studies have increasingly broadened in terms of their theoretical and methodological approaches. By now, comparative concepts and theories are an integral part of studying the EU, which aids the study of its polity, politics, and policies. Despite the indisputable peculiarity of the EU as a political system, many scholars have stressed the value of using comparative approaches to study it. This thematic issue aims to investigate a specific case—the political system of Canada—as to its merit for comparison with the EU. While both systems have been described as sui generis in the past, forming a class of political system by themselves, recently the similarities between both have been stressed. This thematic issue gathers articles that compare different aspects of these two systems—focusing on polity, politics, and policy—to reap the benefits of the comparative approach and gain new insights into the functioning of both systems. The contributions to the thematic issue show the benefits that both Canadian political science and EU studies can gain from engaging in comparative exercises.

AbstractIn this article, we introduce an innovative theoretical framework to analyse the use of differentiated implementation in the implementation process of European Union (EU) Directives. We identify rationales for offering flexibility in EU Directives as well as motives for policy‐makers to make use of the discretion. We analyse patterns and drivers of differentiated implementation under the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) in four member states in order to assess whether practices of differentiated implementation conform to the rationales for offering flexibility. We show that member states mainly use the flexibility offered to retain existing policies. In addition, the EED led to some mutual learning based on experimentation, although this effect is limited. Whilst the EED offered a high potential for mutual learning, the member states did not use this opportunity. Overall, the implementation of the EED offers mixed evidence for the use of differentiated implementation to support differentiation.