Este artículo presenta una lectura sobre el Procedimiento Legislativo Especial para la Paz, conocido popularmente como fast track, y su papel dentro de la transición política colombiana. La lectura ...enfrenta la interpretación de que el fast track fue un mecanismo poco eficaz para la implementación legislativa del Acuerdo de Paz, e intenta explicar esto a través de dos puntos de análisis. El primero presenta la dificultad de implementar las reformas constitucionales que necesitaba el Acuerdo sin activar el poder constituyente originario, lo cual hizo necesario flexibilizar la Constitución para integrar los pilares del Acuerdo a la Carta Política. El segundo ahonda en el concepto de aporía constitucional, es decir en la dificultad lógica de reformar la Constitución a través de la distinción de competencia entre poder constituyente originario y derivado, y sus consecuencias en la rigidez y flexibilidad de la Constitución.
Procedural change in Congress, especially in the United States Senate, has been studied quite extensively over the last thirty years. One of the most remarkable aspects of Senate procedural change is ...the extremely low likelihood that any proposals to change the way the Senate conducts its business will actually pass the relevant procedures and become part of either the Standing Rules of the Senate, or other sources of the procedural outlay. Being fully aware of this, however, senators continue to introduce scores of proposals that deal with many different aspects of the procedural environment, despite the negligible chance of any of them being accepted or even gaining attention from fellow lawmakers or the public. This paper looks at these ‘dead on arrival’ proposals, and tries to provide an explanation for the proposals, grounded in theories that deal with legislators’ building of their personal brands, aimed at helping their chances of re-election.
Parliamentary debate is a fundamental aspect of democratic law-making. While law makers everywhere seek to express their views in parliament, there are large discrepancies in who has access to the ...floor across political systems. This book explains how parties and their members of parliament (MPs) structure parliamentary debate. Parties may actively seek to prevent some members from taking the floor while promoting opportunities for others. In doing so, they attempt to control the message that their partisans convey in parliament. The authors provide a theoretical model to explain the design of procedural rules in parliament, how the party leadership interacts with rebel backbenchers, and how MPs represent voters. The book explores political institutions, intra-party politics, electoral politics and legislative behavior. It develops and tests a new theory of parliamentary debate, using data from the UK, Germany, New Zealand and the European Parliament.
Received 28.12.2020. The article examines the comparative influence of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament in the ordinary legislative procedure using the example of the EU ...Emissions Trading System (ETS) reform. The study was carried out on the basis of a process tracing method. Primary data includes documents reflecting positions of the actors (summary of consultations, position papers, statements) and the progress of the legislative process (Commission proposal, EP amendments, discussions in the Council, final text of the directive). In total, 21 important elements of the reform were analysed, on which the positions of the European Parliament and the Council diverged significantly. The following conclusions are made. 1) The case study provides a relevant example of the consensual nature of the EU decision-making. 2) The case study confirms that the essence of the legislative process in the EU is not a confrontation, but an faithful cooperation of both co-legislators. 3) The Commission and both co-legislators were significantly limited by the decision of the European Council, which fixed most of the basic parameters of the ETS phase IV. This corresponds to the trend of new intergovernmentalism. 4) The study of comparative influence of both co-legislators on the final text of the directive demonstrates that the member states played a decisive role in the ETS reform, and the final provisions of the directive reflect primarily the balance of interests and influence in the Council. The study shows how the interests of certain groups of the EU member states, in particular of CEE countries, were taken into account. The influence of the European Parliament on the legislative process is greater than that of individual countries, even the biggest ones, but it is no more than a quarter of the influence of the Council as an actor. 5) The study identifies a number of factors that enable the European Parliament to uphold its position more effectively. Acknowledgments. The article has been supported by the Institute of International Studies of the MGIMO-University. Project No. 2022-02-01.
This contribution develops a framework for evaluating the legitimacy of codecision. It uses democratic theory to clarify the role of legislative procedures in securing the legitimacy of political ...systems. It shows how that role requires public control with political equality and public justification. It uses that standard to show how legislative agenda-setting, Council voting weights, European Parliament elections and seat apportionments, national parliamentary scrutiny, justificatory practices, and control of judicial and administrative rule-making all affect the legitimacy of codecision. Overall the contribution concludes that the legitimacy of codecision is part of a predicament that can only be managed, not solved.
Alongside other actors such as the European Ombudsman, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) plays what looks like, at first sight, a key role in improving the transparency of EU ...legislative procedures. To take two relatively recent examples, the De Capitani v. European Parliament (2018) judgment was perceived as a victory by those in favor of increased transparency of EU legislative procedures at the stage of trilogues, as was the ClientEarth v. European Commission (2018) judgment regarding the pre-initiative stage. Both rulings emphasize the need for “allowing citizens to scrutinize all the information which has formed the basis of a legislative act…as a precondition for the effective exercise of their democratic rights” (ClientEarth v. European Commission, 2018, §84; De Capitani v. European Parliament, 2018, §80). Nevertheless, while the CJEU’s case law may indeed contribute to improving the legislative process’ transparency, its impact on the latter is inherently limited and even bears the potential of having a perverse effect. This article sheds light on the limits of the CJEU’s capacity to act in this field and the potential effects of its case law on the EU institutions’ attitudes or internal organization.
The aim of this contribution is to critically evaluate one of the theoretical approaches used to study the European Union (EU) political system and interest groups activity: the advocacy coalition ...framework (ACF). ACF considers that the outcome of legislative procedures is influenced by the alignment and role played by advocacy coalitions. This contribution assesses the impact of ACF on our understanding of the influences on the EU policy processes, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. The main argument is that the ACF, although very useful in studying the EU political system, shows shortcomings when applied to the study of EU interest groups' performance. The contribution ends with a consideration of future directions for theoretical and empirical ACF research, alone and as part of wider integrated theoretical approaches to understanding the dynamics of influence in the EU.
The authors of this paper examine the phenomenon of emotionalization of criminal law, which emanates in three stages: in the legislative process, within the content of respective legal provisions, ...and in criminal procedure. The third stage is well-identified as such and, here, procedural principles aim to guarantee impartiality of the judge. Regarding the content, discussions about negative feelings were part of the dogmatical upgrading of hate as an obligatory aggravating circumstance envisaged in prior amendments to the Serbian Criminal Code. On the other hand, the emotionalization of legislative procedure, perceived as the process of adopting and amending criminal legislation in an emotionalized context, has largely remained in the background. After elaborating on the relevance and topicality of this issue, the authors connect it with the basic goals of law and legitimacy of state power, provide various definitions and explain the notion of emotions by referring to examples from comparative law. Thereupon, the concept of emotionalization of law is analyzed with reference to the legal provisions from the latest amendments to the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia (2019).
On 22 March 2018, for the first time the General Court ruled on access to documents of trilogues (case T-540/15, De Capitani v. European Parliament). These are informal meetings between ...representatives of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, which negotiate to reach an agreement, which must subsequently be approved by those institutions in accordance with their respective internal procedures. The judgment, delivered on the appeal made against a refusal by the European Parliament to grant access to the fourth column of the multicolumn table used in an on-going trilogue, confirms that access to documents produced in the legislative procedure can be denied only if the institution requested proves that it is reasonably foreseeable, and not purely hypothetical, that full access to the documents at issue is likely to undermine, specifically and actually, its decision-making process. The General Court considered that the principles of publicity and transparency are to be applied to trilogues, since they constitute a decisive stage in the legislative process, and that exceptions provided for in the regulation regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents shall be restrictively interpreted. The judgment represents an important step towards reinforcing transparency of trilogues and democratic legislative process in the EU.
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