Suchergebnisse

Twenty percent of the Swedish laws & amendments are directly governed by binding EC decisions, directives & regulations. Another 10 percent are connected with the EU or the EC. That is the result of a study examining all new laws & amendments passed by the Swedish Parliament during the years 1998-2003. By investigating the government bills behind the 3,449 acts, the researcher has analyzed to what extent the bills are designed to implement binding EC legislation or remove obstacles & conflicts between national & EC law, & to what extent the legislation is in any way influenced by the EU membership. This is one of few studies that make a quantitative survey of the power that the European Union wields over Swedish democratic institutions. After ten years of EU membership, the "power transferred from Stockholm to Brussels" is still a big issue in the domestic debate concerning the European Union. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

This article deals with the allez and retour provisions (Claes 2005: 84 f) of the Swedish constitution in relation to IU membership. What are the rules governing the transfer of sovereignty to the Union? And what are the provisions for assessing the constitutionality of the incoming tide of Union law into the domestic legal order? I have three objects in this essay. First, to describe how these two groups of constitutional rules were actually modified in the 2010 revision of the 1974 Instrument of Government. 1 find that neither was changed in any material way. Second, to try to explain the apparent reluctance of the parties involved to clarify the constitutional implications of EU membership. I find that this reluctance is rooted in a belief that European integration is not furthered if the rules contained in the allez and retour provisions are made stricter and more precise. Third, to confront a question conspicuously omitted by the parties in their revision: namely, by what criterion should the allez. and retour provisions be intertwined, if an optimum of hi-level constitutionalism is to be achieved? I argue that, in the end, the underlying issue is whether Swedish citizens want to see the principle of free movement applied as widely as possible. Do they want this principle to be applied across the board? Or would they prefer instead to restrict its application to the case of capital and goods, thus leaving them free to structure the labour market and welfare state as they themselves see fit? Adapted from the source document.

A review essay on books by (1) Stephen Wall, A Stranger in Europe. Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair (Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2008); (2) Ian Bache & Andrew Jordan [Eds], The Europeanization of British Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006/08). Adapted from the source document.

Even if Norway has said no to the EU, the country is practically very integrated with the Union via the EEA and the Schengen Agreement. Norwegian intellectuals who oppose the EU view it in general through methodological nationalism, normative nationalism, instrumentalism and neoliberalism. Intellectuals who support the EU come with their own biases, such as an emphasis on cosmopolitanism and a righteous based Europe. The opinion of intellectuals matters a great deal, since the intellectuals reflect the prevailing opinion in the society. In order for the Norwegian EU debate to advance, it would be important for the emphasis to move away from the previously mentioned generalizations. L. Pitkaniemi

The theory of social choice has recently benefited much from advances within the power index approach in game theory. One may start from the classical Wicksell framework of a unanimity regime & proceed to state the advantages of deviations from his model. A case can be stated for quantitative voting using some majority voting scheme, as it empowers the choice participants, also providing for blocking power. The power distinctions generated from the power index framework may be applied to the institutional evolution of the Council of Ministers with the EC or EU. It allows one to state in a concise manner the comparative advantages & disadvantages of alternative regimes for the European Community or Union. Tables, Figures, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.

In Sweden, there is a consensus that Swedish membership of substantial parts of the European Union (EU) entails cooperation that at least in parts implies supranationalism. Due to this consensus one may assume that there is also some sort of common understanding of the concept of supranationalism. However, while many researchers includes majority voting in their definition of supranationalism, this is rejected outright by others. As shown, both sides have a point and this article, therefore, suggests that three dimensions are noteworthy when it comes to supranationalism: (1) when states have transferred the right to exercise public power to an organization the states cannot make decisions alone, (2) the institution is autonomous and makes binding decisions, (3) the decisions taken by the institution have effective precedence over national ones. Adapted from the source document.

This study takes its starting -point in the Swedish referendum about a membership in the European monetary union. The purpose of the study is to explain the differences that became visible during the EMU-referendum, by thoroughly explore macro-factors & their importance to the voting against a membership at a municipal level. In earlier pursued research concerning voting behaviour & public opinion differences general explanations appear which work as an initial position for this study, the creation of three alternative explanation models & the macro factors to be tested. This study has a statistical design & its intention is to study macro-factors in the 290 municipals of Sweden through collecting material from several sources. The material has been compiled to analytical aggregate data & will be analysed through bivariate- & multivariate regressions. The result shows that the differences that became visible concerning the EMU-referendum can be explained from economic factors & economic structural differences between the municipals. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

A review essay on books by (1) Ben Tonra & Thomas Christiansen, Rethinking European Union Foreign Policy (Manchester, UK: Manchester U Press, 2004); (2) Walter Carlsnaes, Helene Sjursen, & Brian White (Eds), Contemporary European Foreign Policy (London: Sage, 2004); & (3) Karl Von Wogau (Ed), The Path to European Defence (Antwerpen, Belgium: Maklu, 2004). 27 References. Adapted from the source document.