Suchergebnisse

The contestation of international decision-making is one of the most pressing problems affecting both national institutions and international organizations. As the main arenas of communal decision-making, the involvement of parliaments may be a solution to the legitimacy shortages of international decisions and the institutional paralysis that this may ensue. This dissertation examines two distinct processes that reveal the current place of parliaments in international politics. In the first part of my dissertation, I focus on the role of national parliaments in the politicisation of European integration. Using original data on parliamentary debates and a large corpus of newspaper articles, I show that parliaments are channels for the politicisation of EU decision-making. I find that parliamentary debates on the EU have media attention, especially debates over EU institutions, and that news related to the EU in general are more likely to mention parliament than news unrelated to the EU. In the second part of my dissertation, I study international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). I present the first large n study on the parliamentarization of international organizations (IOs) and propose that IOs utilise IPIs to increase their democratic legitimacy. Specifically, IOs with a region-building objective seek to associate with an institutional design from a more legitimate example: national representative democracy. I support the conclusions of my quantitative analysis with a small n study of the creation of the Andean Parliament. Using original qualitative data, I argue that the transformation of the Andean institutions into a region-building project and the democratic transitions of military regimes at the time were conducive to parliamentarization. My results support the idea that parliaments can help to resolve the inherent tensions between national polities and international decision-making. At the national level, parliaments debating international decisions regain their democratic function of communicating policy alternatives. For IOs, empowerment of existing IPIs following the example of the European Parliament would alleviate the democratic deficit in which they operate.

Approximately 80% of the volume of exports of major conventional weapons for the period 2003-2007 were accounted for by the five largest suppliers -- the USA, Russia, Germany, France and the UK. Although these five suppliers are likely to continue to account for an overwhelmingly large share of international arms transfers, concerns were expressed in 2007 regarding the export prospects for French and Russian major conventional weapons. Asia, Europe and the Middle East continued to be the largest recipient regions for the period 2003-2007. The largest recipient countries were China, India, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Greece and South Korea. However, 2007 gave the first signs of a potentially significant change among the largest recipients, with decreased deliveries to and orders by China. The largest suppliers to Asia and the Middle East will continue to engage in intense competition for export orders, with Libya and Saudi Arabia likely to become large recipients once again. SIPRI data show the volume of international arms transfers to South America in the period 2003-2007 to be 47% higher than in 1998-2002. Despite attention-grabbing headlines and some evidence of competitive behaviour (e.g. the nature and timing of acquisitions by Brazil, Columbia and Venezuela), it seems unlikely that South America is in the midst of a classically defined arms race. Acquisitions have been primarily motivated by efforts to replace or upgrade military inventories in order to maintain existing capabilities; to respond to predominantly domestic security threats; to strengthen ties with supplier governments; to enhance domestic arms industry capability; or to bolster regional or international profile. Arms suppliers meet the demand for weapons that a conflict creates for a number of reasons: to gain political and economic influence, to substitute for an interested external party's direct military presence and to meet the powerful economic pressures to sell arms. The international transfer of arms to conflict zones in Afghanistan and Sudan illustrates a number of related tendencies. First, UN arms embargoes imposed on armed non-state actors have thus far failed to stop their arms acquisitions. Second, major arms suppliers have been willing to show their support for the government in a conflict zone by directly supplying it with arms. Third, internationally sanctioned peacekeeping operations often struggle to obtain suitable arms and military equipment. Adapted from the source document.

Part Part I Historical Perspective -- chapter 1 Hannah Arendt (1999), 'We Refugees', in Mark M. Anderson (ed.), Hitler's Exiles: personal stories of the flight from Nazi Germany to America, NY: The New Press, ppages 253-62 -- chapter 2 Paul Weis (1966), 'Territorial Asylum', Indian Journal of International Law, 6, ppages 173-94 -- chapter 3 Bonaventure Rutinwa (2002), 'The End of Asylum? The Changing Nature of Refugee Policies in Africa', Refugee Survey Quarterly, 21, ppages 12-41 -- chapter 4 James C. Hathaway (1990), 'A Reconsideration of the Underlying Premise of Refugee Law', Harvard International Law Journal, 31, ppages 129-83 -- chapter 5 Corinne Lewis (2005), 'UNHCR's Contribution to the Development of International Refugee Law: Its Foundations and Evolution', International Journal of Refugee Law, 17, ppages 67-90 -- chapter 6 Guy S. Goodwin-Gill (2008), 'The Politics of Refugee Protection', Refugee Survey Quarterly, 27, ppages 8-23 -- part Part II The 1951 Refugee Convention: Key Provisions and Implementation -- chapter 7 Andrew E. Shacknove (1985), 'Who Is a Refugee?', Ethics, 95, ppages 274-84 -- chapter 8 Walter Kalin (1986), 'Troubled Communication: Cross-Cultural Misunderstandings in the Asylum-Hearing', International Migration Review, 20, ppages 230-41 -- chapter 9 Guy S. Goodwin-Gill (1986), 'Non-Refoulement and the New Asylum Seekers', Virginia Journal of International Law, 26, ppages 897-918 -- chapter 10 Joan Fitzpatrick (1996), 'Revitalizing the 1951 Refugee Convention', Harvard Human Rights Journal, 9, ppages 229-53 -- part Part III Refugee Law and Its Relationship with International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law -- chapter 11 Deborah E. Anker (2002), 'Refugee Law, Gender, and the Human Rights Paradigm', Harvard Human Rights Journal, 15, ppages 133-54 -- chapter 12 Jane McAdam (2004), 'Seeking Asylum under the Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Case for Complementary Protection', International Journal of Children's Rights, 14, ppages 251-74 -- chapter 13 Stephane Jaquemet (2001), 'The Cross-Fertilization of International Humanitarian Law and International Refugee Law', International Review of the Red Cross, 83, ppages 651-73 -- part Part IV EU Dimension of Refugee Law -- chapter 14 Elspeth Guild (2006), 'The Europeanisation of Europe's Asylum Policy', International Journal of Refugee Law, 18, ppages 630-51 -- chapter 15 Geoff Gilbert (2004), 'Is Europe Living Up to Its Obligations to Refugees?', European Journal of International Law, 15, ppages 963-87 -- chapter 16 Rosemary Byrne, Gregor Noll and Jens Vedsted-Hansen (2004), 'Understanding Refugee Law in an Enlarged European Union', European Journal of International Law, 15, ppages 355-79 -- chapter 17 Helene Lambert (2009), 'Transnational Judicial Dialogue, Harmonization and the Common European Asylum System', International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 58, ppages 519-43 -- part Part V Challenges and Perspectives on the Future -- chapter 18 B.S. Chimni (2001), 'Reforming the International Refugee Regime: A Dialogic Model', Journal of Refugee Studies, 14, ppages 151-68 -- chapter 19 Satvinder S. Juss (2004), 'Free Movement and the World Order', International Journal of Refugee Law, 16, ppages 289-335 -- chapter 20 Alice Edwards (2009), 'Human Security and the Rights of Refugees: Transcending Territorial and Disciplinary Borders', Michigan Journal of International Law, 30, ppages 763-807.

The current banking crisis has highlighted the fragility of the international finance system and the extent to which current system safeguards such as IMF action fall short. Envisioning a fuller banking security system leads naturally to the proposal for an international deposit insurance system based on risk‐based premiums. This proposal is outlined here as a replacement for ad hoc action by national governments and the IMF that is designed to avoid moral hazard while providing an efficient means to international banking security as part of our global financial architecture.