Suchergebnisse

The EU is at a crossroads. Should it choose the path towards protectionism or the path towards free trade? This book convincingly argues that lobbying regulation will be a decisive first step towards fulfilling the European dream of free trade, in accordance with the original purpose of the Treaty of Rome. Without the regulation of lobbyists to try and prevent undue political persuasion, there is a greater risk of abuse in the form of corruption, subsidies and trade barriers, which will come at the expense of consumers, tax payers and competitiveness. This interdisciplinary approach - both theoretical and methodological - offers a wealth of knowledge concerning the effect of lobbying on political decision-making and will appeal to academics across the social sciences, practitioners and policy-makers

The Rio+20 conference in 2012 called for goals of promoting green industries and improving the quality of institutions worldwide. Is a global CO 2 tax the best global solution for achieving this twin goal? As most countries in the world are highly corrupt, an adequate regulatory instrument should be able to work in a simple way that does not rely on strong formal institutions for enforcement. We argue that this is the case for a global CO2 tax. A uniform CO2 tax can be introduced as a "painted" energy tax that provides the needed incentive to switch from brown to green industries and minimizes the risk of carbon leakage. The achievement of the specific 2-degree target level is discussed as an example implying huge tax revenues that may be invested in better institutions. In perspective, the idea of having one instrument solving one problem will probably ease forthcoming political discussions and sustainability conferences substantially since the focus is on one issue rather than many.

Is local participation always optimal for sustainable action? Here, Local Agenda 21 is a relevant case as it broadly calls for consensus-building among stakeholders. Consensus-building is, however, costly. We show that the costs of making local decisions are likely to rapidly exceed the benefits. Why? Because as the number of participants grows, the more likely it is that the group will include individuals who have an extreme position and are unwilling to make compromises. Thus, the net gain of self-organization should be compared with those of its alternatives, for example voting, market-solutions, or not making any choices at all. Even though the informational value of meetings may be helpful to policy makers, the model shows that it also decreases as the number of participants increase. Overall, the result is a thought provoking scenario for Local Agenda 21 as it highlights the risk of less sustainable action in the future.

At Lisbon in 2000, the European Union (EU) set itself a new strategic goal, namely to become the world's leading economy and to enhance social cohesion across the union, all within a decade. It is argued in this article that one fundamental barrier to the fulfilment of this dream is the fact that power is centralised in the Commission rather than the Parliament. The basic idea upon which our theoretical model is predicated is that a political system that centralises power lowers the cost of rent-seeking and therefore leads to a more economically harmful redistribution, as reflected in the annual EU budget. Here, the two main redistribution policies, (1) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and (2) the Structural Funds, consume more than four fifths of the total annual EU budget. Thus, if the EU is to achieve its strategic goal, a strong cure is needed to reduce redistribution and encourage more free trade. The simple cure for this 'EU disease' would be to strengthen the decision-making power of the Parliament at the expense of the Commission. In this way, power would be spread out between the democratically elected members of the Parliament rather than being concentrated with a few bureaucrats. Such constitutional change and decentralisation of power would increase the costs of lobbyism in particular and thereby reduce distortions of policy outcomes, clearing the road for free-trade policies and economic growth in the new millennium.