Given the controversies and difficulties which preceded the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty, it is easy to forget that the Treaty is a complex legal document in need of detailed analysis for ...its impact to be fully understood. Jean-Claude Piris, the Director General of the Legal Service of the Council of the European Union, provides such an analysis, looking at the historical and political contexts of the Treaty, its impact on the democratic framework of the EU and its provisions in relation to substantive law. Impartial legal analysis of the EU's functions, its powers and the treaties which govern it make this the seminal text on the most significant recent development in EU law.
Reforming the European Union Finke, Daniel; Konig, Thomas; Proksch, Sven-Oliver ...
2012., 20120729, 2012, 2012-07-29
eBook
For decades the European Union tried changing its institutions, but achieved only unsatisfying political compromises and modest, incremental treaty revisions. In late 2009, however, the EU was ...successfully reformed through the Treaty of Lisbon.Reforming the European Unionexamines how political leaders ratified this treaty against all odds and shows how this victory involved all stages of treaty reform negotiations--from the initial proposal to referendums in several European countries.
The authors emphasize the strategic role of political leadership and domestic politics, and they use state-of-the-art methodology, applying a comprehensive data set for actors' reform preferences. They look at how political leaders reacted to apparent failures of the process by recreating or changing the rules of the game. While domestic actors played a significant role in the process, their influence over the outcome was limited as leaders ignored negative referendums and plowed ahead with intended reforms. The book's empirical analyses shed light on critical episodes: strategic agenda setting during the European Convention, the choice of ratification instrument, intergovernmental bargaining dynamics, and the reaction of the German Council presidency to the negative referendums in France, the Netherlands, and Ireland.
Why did governments adopt austerity policies, and why were they so harmful? Why did the media largely ignore the majority of experts who opposed these policies, and allow politicians to get away with ...lies? And why did voters choose Brexit when the economic consensus was that it would harm living standards? Simon Wren-Lewis, winner of the SPERI/New Statesman Prize for Political Economy, is one of Britain's most respected economists. Since 2012, his widely-read Mainly Macro blog has been an influential resource for policymakers, academics and social commentators around the world. This book presents some of his most important work, telling the story of how the damaging political and economic events of recent years became inevitable. With new material including a preface by Nobel prize-winner Paul Krugman, these dispatches from the front-line serve as an essential guide to some of the most important economic and political issues facing us today, and as a warning to avert future disasters on this scale.
"A bridge shouldn't just fall down," Senator Amy Klobuchar said after the August 1, 2007, collapse of the Minneapolis I-35W eight-lane steel truss bridge, which killed 13 motorists, injured 145, and ...left a collective wound on the city's psyche and infrastructure.On her way to a soccer game with a fellow teammate, Kimberly J. Brown experienced the collapse firsthand, falling 114 feet in her teammate's car to the Mississippi River. Although terrified, injured, and in shock, she survived. In this sobering memoir and exposé, Brown recounts her harrowing experience.In the aftermath of the disaster, Brown became both an advocate for survivors and an unofficial whistle-blower about decaying infrastructure. She details her investigation and correspondence with Thornton Tomasetti engineers, including the false official account of the collapse and the eventual revelation of its real causes. In addition, she chronicles the ongoing decay of America's bridges and the continuing challenges faced by leaders to address infrastructure problems across the country.After nearly a decade of research into the collapse and her active and ongoing recovery from psychic and physical injuries, Brown shares her experience and answers the questions we should all be asking: Why did this bridge collapse? And what could have been done to prevent this tragedy?
Seismic data reveal that the aftershock zone expands with time after a main shock event. Here we examine the aftershock sequence recorded during the first 32 days following the 2007 Noto‐Hanto ...earthquake, Japan. By applying a matched‐filter technique to the data, we detected about 10 times more events than those listed in the routinely constructed earthquake catalog. The aftershock area expanded along the fault strike as a logarithmic function of time, beginning immediately after the main shock. Aftershock expansion toward the SW was especially extensive and developed more rapidly than toward the NE. Interestingly, the aftershock area expanded in a step‐like manner by the activation of a series of spatially clustered seismic bursts. Spatial correlation between the aftershock extension and the afterslip distribution suggests that the expansion of the aftershock area could be mainly driven by aseismic afterslip. The aftershock area continues to expand, even though 7 years have now passed since the main shock.
Key Points
Aftershock area expanded along fault strike as a logarithmic function of time
Seismicity front migrated in a step‐like manner by activation of seismic bursts
Expansion of the aftershock area could be mainly driven by aseismic afterslip
On August 1, 2007, just after 6:00 p.m., during the evening rush hour in Minneapolis, the 1,900-foot-long, eight-lane I-35W bridge buckled and crashed into the Mississippi River. The unimaginable had ...happened right on the doorstep of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. Many of the first responders were from the University, persevering in the midst of chaos and disbelief. In the ensuing weeks, research and engineering teams from the University reviewed the wreckage, searched for causes, and began planning for the future.
The City, the River, the Bridgerepresents another set of responses to the disaster. Stemming from a 2008 University of Minnesota symposium on the bridge collapse and the building of a new bridge, it addresses the ramifications of the disaster from the perspectives of history, engineering, architecture, water science, community-based journalism, and geography. Contributors examine the factors that led to the collapse, the lessons learned from the disaster and the response, the policy and planning changes that have occurred or are likely to occur, and the impact on the city and the Mississippi River.The City, the River, the Bridgedemonstrates the University's commitment to issues that concern the community and shares insights on public questions of city building, infrastructure, and design policy.
Contributors: John O. Anfinson; Roberto Ballarini; Heather Dorsey; Thomas Fisher; Minmao Liao; Judith A. Martin; Roger Miller; Mark Pedelty; Deborah L. Swackhamer; Melissa Thompson.
We show in two natural experiments that default rules in Medicare Part D have large, persistent effects on enrollment and drug utilization of low-income beneficiaries. The implications of this ...phenomenon for welfare and optimal policy depend on the sensitivity of passivity to the value of the default option. Using random assignment to default options, we show that beneficiary passivity is extremely insensitive, even when enrolling in the default option would result in substantial drug consumption losses. A third natural experiment suggests that variation in active choice is driven by random transitory shocks rather than the inherent attentiveness of some beneficiaries.
The 14 November 2007 Tocopilla (MW 7.7) earthquake was the first large rupture (M > 7.5) in the 1877 Northern Chile seismic gap. The event only ruptured the lower seismogenic part of the megathrust, ...raising questions about the mechanism that prevented the trenchward rupture propagation. Here, we present the short-period rupture process of the Tocopilla earthquake from local strong-motion (2.0–8.0 Hz) and teleseismic (0.5–2.0 Hz) back-projections. P and pP teleseismic back-projections were combined from two arrays formed on broadband networks in North America and Africa. The kinematics of the earthquake rupture was also characterized by back-propagating S-wave envelopes from local accelerometers (≤ 200 km from the mainshock). The results show a complex rupture process, including a sub-event, from the distribution of short-period rupture emissions and the main slip asperities. The sub-event location agrees with published estimates based on S-wave arrivals and kinematic inversion. We also observed rupture emissions around the slip patches and systemically classified them relative to the asperities, i.e., down-dip, up-dip, and inside. The short-period emissions are balanced around the asperities, highlighting up-dip rupture emissions. We interpreted the up-dip emissions as a proxy of the high-stress gradient caused by a kink in the slab interface, proposed in previous literature to be the mechanism that arrested the trenchward propagation of the 2007 rupture. The down-dip limit of the Tocopilla event coincided approximately where the slab interface intersects the continental Moho. Thus, it is a region expected to be extensively serpentinized, i.e., the most seaward part of the mantle wedge, defining a velocity-strengthening margin and a source of short-period radiation. The high-stress gradient around the asperities is proposed to define a third source of short-period radiation that may contribute to rupture encircling emissions.
•Short-period rupture outlines both up-dip and down-dip of the main slip asperities.•Up-dip short-period emissions linked to a geometrical kink in the slab interface.•Down-dip limit of the rupture correlates with the continental Moho depth.
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