Suchergebnisse

В работе дается понятие экстремистских мотивов, показывается их уголовно-правовое зна чение как обстоятельств, отягчающих ответственность за убийство и отягчающих наказание за другие виды преступлений, исследуется их социально-нравственная характеристика и прак тика применения судами состава убийства, предусмотренного п. «л» ч. 2 ст. 105 УК РФ, исполь зуется соответствующее зарубежное уголовное законодательство, предлагаются некоторые изменения и дополнения уголовного законодательства России. ; The paper defines the notion of extremist motives and presents their legal meaning as aggravating circumstances of murder and other crimes. The authors analyze their social and moral characteristics and judicial practice of application of components of crime, provided for in unit "l" of Part 2 of the Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Some changes and additions to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation are suggested based on experience of foreign legislature.

In the current educational climate in America, standardization is the driving force. Across the United States school districts are facing severe budget cuts which, when paired with legislature such as the No Child Left Behind Act, are creating a learning environment void of creativity and spontaneity. John Dewey, the father of progressive education, believed that learning should not be marked by rote memorization, but rather should aspire to actively engage students in experience and learning that erased boundaries between subject areas and integrated daily life practices. This thesis addresses the question of whether or not it is possible for a typical classroom teacher in the public elementary school setting to implement an experiential education framework into academic curriculum through the administration of a mathematics unit. Using the backdrop of art, music, and cooking, students will develop the necessary skills and knowledge to authentically use fractions.

This article discusses power-sharing in Iraq as a case of consociational democracy. It is argued that in post-2003 Iraq, consociational features have been employed to an extent that goes beyond what is normal for power-sharing democracies. Not only unspoken ethno-sectarian quota arrangements
are used in the country's legislature and executive, but also attempts to impose such features through extra-constitutional councils aimed at weakening existing executive and prime ministerial powers are frequent. The article examines three such attempts: the political council of national
security (2006), the federal oil and gas council in the draft oil and gas law (2007) and the projected national council for high policies (2010-11). It is concluded that support for the moves towards greater dispersal (and fragmentation) of state power in Iraq comes not only from the Kurds,
but also from the secular Iraqiya party, United States and Iran.

The United States leads the world in public higher education, with a substantial amount of funding coming from state, rather than federal, government sources. Perhaps not surprisingly, the amount states contribute varies widely, leading researchers to explore the sources of such variation. While numerous factors have been shown to matter, the potential relevance of political representation remains unclear. To address this gap, the relationship between state legislators' own educational backgrounds and state spending on higher education is tested. Utilizing a database of publicly available information on the educational backgrounds of 6,517 state senators and representatives, we find that states with a higher percentage of legislators who attended state colleges and/or universities invest more generously in public higher education than other state legislatures. Results support theories of representation, suggesting that legislators may be directly advocating for spending given their own educational profiles.

The paper examines the turbulent period of 2010-2012 when Greece became the first EU member-state to accept the IMF/EU bailout package. Unarguably, accepting the bailout package did not have only economic but also electoral consequences as the established party system has been steadily disintegrating. We focus on the relationship between government and opposition parties and MPs in the legislature and we examine their voting behaviour during key economic bills during this period. We find that their behaviour can be explained less by consensus-building and more by strategic considerations. Moreover, even though the economic crisis seems to have decreased polarization on the traditional left-right dimension, a new conflict dimension over the bailout package seems to have emerged. Taken together, these events can explain both the lack of consensus observed in other Southern European countries as well as the changes in the party system.

There are growing indications that transjudicial dialogue among national courts has increased in recent years and that it has become more routinized. We argue below that this trend is at least partially motivated by the efforts of these courts to: (1) address a 'judicial deficit' that has resulted from the broad transfer of regulatory policy-making authority from the domestic to the international sphere; and (2) curb pro-executive interpretations of regulatory rules on the part of less politically insulated international tribunals. While recognizing the dangers of 'le gouvernement des juges', we suggest that, at least in the short term, the expanded role of national courts can operate to enhance rather than pre-empt domestic political processes and promote accountability to diverse democratic concerns by providing opportunities for national legislatures and civil society to weigh in on matters subject to executive discretion or international regulation.

States passed agricultural preservation statutes in part to protect their agricultural heritage. Some scholars worry that right-to-farm statutes have not succeeded in achieving this goal. The agricultural preservation statutes of New York, Nebraska, and Minnesota show three different strategies toward agricultural preservation, all of which take different stances on the protections extended to small and large farms. Despite the structural differences among the states' statutory approach to agricultural preservation, all three experienced similar agricultural demographic shifts since the 1980s—the number of large and small farms has increased while the number of medium-sized farms has decreased. The similarity in demographic trends suggests that none of the statutes are effective. Legislatures may be able to redirect their agricultural preservation statutes by empowering agricultural advisory boards to consider not only the soundness of farming practices but also the cultural and environmental value of individual farms.

Jurisdictions in the United States are granted considerable discretion in choosing the method by which they redraw their political boundaries following a decennial census. Two common methods are allowing legislatures to redistrict or creating a citizen commission to perform the task. Yet each of these processes frequently results in gridlock and/or political gerrymandering. This paper proposes an alternative method for local jurisdictions: a "planning approach" to redistricting in which it is suggested that districts can be created through the amalgamation of neighborhoods in a process driven by professional planners. This approach lends no consideration to politics. Rather, the research presented here posits that empowering planners to lead legislative redistricting processes will aid in the reduction of politically anticompetitive behavior, thereby increasing the efficiency, effectiveness, and logic of the process. A local redistricting problem using data from Buffalo, NY, is modeled and then solved using the proposed planning framework.

This article explores the environmental policy in New York State. Science is significant as a driver of environmental policy, but public opinion is even more important. The story of the New York State's water supply is dominated by the historic quest to supply water to New York City. The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) has been the most fertile source of environmental litigation in New York State courts. New York's solid waste expenditures have soared as it has had to pay commercial landfills and incinerators to take waste that had previously been cheaply dumped at Fresh Kills. New York began the modern era as a vigorous and innovative leader in environmental protection measures, but since the early 1990s, the paralyzing partisanship in the legislature and inconsistent leadership in the governor's office have moved the state considerably further back in the national pack on many environmental issues.

The United States leads the world in public higher education, with a substantial amount of funding coming from state, rather than federal, government sources. Perhaps not surprisingly, the amount states contribute varies widely, leading researchers to explore the sources of such variation. While numerous factors have been shown to matter, the potential relevance of political representation remains unclear. To address this gap, the relationship between state legislators own educational backgrounds and state spending on higher education is tested. Utilizing a database of publicly available information on the educational backgrounds of 6,517 state senators and representatives, we find that states with a higher percentage of legislators who attended state colleges and/or universities invest more generously in public higher education than other state legislatures. Results support theories of representation, suggesting that legislators may be directly advocating for spending given their own educational profiles.

In recent years scholarly attention has shifted from the study of democratization to the phenomenon of electoral authoritarianism. In these regimes, regular elections are held for national legislatures and chief executives, yet they fail to live up to democratic standards of freedom and fairness. A range of new research has investigated these regimes and especially the capacity of elections to either dislodge or reinvigorate authoritarian incumbents. This article reviews some of the current work on electoral authoritarianism and attempts to find ways to achieve synthesis and better theoretical development. It notes the need for greater conceptual consensus, attention to context, and better evaluation of what electoral competiveness means under authoritarian conditions. It argues that the next stage for research should be smaller and contextual comparison that can allow for greater attention to concepts, while allowing for strong midrange theory. Adapted from the source document.

Discipline and cohesiveness of political parties are essential for legislatures to engage in policy-making. Parties in Brazil have historically been considered ideologically weak and uninvolved in policy issues of national importance. Analyses of roll-call votes, however, have shown that parties can be disciplined government supporters. This paper tests the claim that Brazilian parties have also become programmatic actors in their own right. The paper uses statutory delegation content to test whether voting discipline translates into greater influence on the substance of legislation. The data analysis shows that party unity among parties of the government coalition does not affect statutory content. Opposition parties, by contrast, are more likely to reduce the executive's discretion when they are more unified. Overall, the support for the hypothesis of programmatic parties is weak, given that executive authorship is the strongest determinant of statutory content.

It's a sad fact, but too few Americans are aware that their nation's capital is a colony within the mainland of our country. Since the District of Columbia's founding more than two centuries ago, the city's residents have been denied the democratic rights that Americans living in the 50 states take for granted, including voting representation in Congress and control over their own legislation, budgets, courts, and prison system. Among all countries with elected national legislatures, only the United States denies voting representation to the citizens of its nation's capital. While the budget deal was the trigger for the April demonstrations, two centuries of disenfranchisement were the fuel. And for Mayor Gray and many of the other protestors, the demonstration was not only to register outrage but also to promote a solution: making DC the 51st state. Adapted from the source document.