Given the foreseeable pervasiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) in modern societies, it is legitimate and necessary to ask the question how this new technology must be shaped to support the ...maintenance and strengthening of constitutional democracy. This paper first describes the four core elements of today's digital power concentration, which need to be seen in cumulation and which, seen together, are both a threat to democracy and to functioning markets. It then recalls the experience with the lawless Internet and the relationship between technology and the law as it has developed in the Internet economy and the experience with GDPR before it moves on to the key question for AI in democracy, namely which of the challenges of AI can be safely and with good conscience left to ethics, and which challenges of AI need to be addressed by rules which are enforceable and encompass the legitimacy of democratic process, thus laws. The paper closes with a call for a new culture of incorporating the principles of democracy, rule of law and human rights by design in AI and a three-level technological impact assessment for new technologies like AI as a practical way forward for this purpose.
This article is part of a theme issue 'Governing artificial intelligence: ethical, legal, and technical opportunities and challenges'.
We advance research on human capital and entrepreneurial entry and posit that, in order to generate value, social entrepreneurship requires different configurations of human capital than commercial ...entrepreneurship. We develop a multilevel framework to analyse the commonalities and differences between social and commercial entrepreneurship, including the impact of general and specific human capital, of national context and its moderating effect on the human capital-entrepreneurship relationship. We find that specific entrepreneurial human capital is relatively more important in commercial entrepreneurship, and general human capital in social entrepreneurship, and that the effects of human capital depend on the rule of law.
•We explore the relationship between education, human capital and the choice of social as against commercial entrepreneurship.•We also consider the moderating effects of the institutional context on these relationships.•We use multi-level modelling on a cross country individual dataset.•We find social and commercial entrepreneurship only compete for the same talent to a limited extent.
During democratic backsliding, the state can curtail press freedom through the legalization of press control, that is, the establishment and utilization of legal instruments for the purpose of ...controlling the media and journalistic work. Drawing upon the literature on authoritarian rule of law, this article emphasizes that legalization of press control has to be examined by paying attention to both the conspicuous and subtle measures that constitute the legal minefield for journalism, the evolution of official discourses that aim at legitimizing the laws and their implementation, and the changing politics of self-censorship as journalists and the society react to emerging legal risks. The empirical analysis focuses on Hong Kong after the establishment of the National Security Law in June 2020. The article offers an updated analytical account of press freedom in Hong Kong and the conceptualization of a process possibly observable in other authoritarian states or hybrid regimes.
PPPs have become a popular way to supply infrastructure around the world. However, compared with developed countries, most developing countries have failed to attract private investment over the past ...years. Risk allocation and governance environment (e.g., the extent of public participation, the level of political stability, the quality of public services, the ability of regulations, abiding the law, and the extent of corruption) may be important factors. To test the hypotheses, using about 4560 PPP projects in 138 developing countries from 2002 to 2015, this paper applies the Tobit regression model to investigate the interaction effect of governance environment and risk assumed by private partners on private investment. Results indicate that private partners assume that less risk can attract more private investment, and that a higher level of governance (control of corruption, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and rule of law) reduces the negative influence of risk assumed by private partners on private investments.
•The interaction effect of governance environment and risk assumed by private partners was investigated.•The governance environment has different moderating effects in different sectors.•A higher level of governance reduces the negative influence of risk assumed by private partners.•Private investors assume less risk can attract more private investment.
Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the 'democratic backslider' parties in Hungary (Fidesz) and Poland (Law and Justice) took differing stances on Russia, bringing their ...positions on the Rule of Law (RoL) conflict and within the broader alliance of Populist Radical Right (PRR) parties into question. Building on and advancing the theoretical framework of democratic backsliding and PRR party cooperation, this article assesses the impact of exogenous shocks triggered by external authoritarian actors on these types of collaborations. A detailed examination of the voting patterns of Fidesz, Law and Justice and other PRR parties in the European Parliament (EP) is undertaken, and their stances towards Russia and the RoL conflict before and after the invasion are weighed. The findings show that the invasion did not influence the dynamics of democratic backsliding. Despite the rhetoric, it actually brought Fidesz and Law and Justice closer together. While the attack led to a convergence of assertiveness towards Russia among the PRR parties, the Putin regime remains a divisive issue within the PRR family. The different positions towards Russia did not affect the support of PRRs for the backsliders.
Perceptions of an East-West divide in the European Union (EU) with regard to democracy have led to re-evaluations of EU eastern enlargement as a policy failure and militate against further ...enlargement. This article examines the accuracy of narratives of an intra-EU East-West divide on democracy, in which the western member states outperform the eastern members, and in which the former support, and the latter oppose, rule of law (RoL) interventions by the EU in member states engaged in democratic backsliding. The article considers two aspects of a potential democracy divide: the quality of democracy and attitudes towards RoL interventions. It draws on several quantitative indicators for a more comprehensive assessment of intra-EU democracy divides and uses set-theory to identify different in- and out-groups that demarcate such intra-EU divides. Although different indicators and different conceptions of set-membership reveal to varying extents East-West patterns, none fit with a clear regional divide. It is more fruitful to conceive of these differences as a continuum, with (currently) a small group of (western) member states at one end and a small group of (eastern) members at the other, and most member states in distinctive sub-groups in-between.
The relevance of the study is stipulated by the necessity to determine the directions of the rule of law implementation (as a fundamental value of Western law culture) into the national law system. ...The statistics of the European Court of Human Rights, the study of the rule of law index in the world, the decisions of national courts as to the rule of law principle implementation are analyzed, some decisions of the European Court of Human Rights as to the rule of law are processed. Emphasis is placed on the impossibility of adequate study of the rule of law within the normative understanding of law. The rule of law can function only if the provisions of the natural and law understanding of law are implemented. Only by realizing what the rule of law is can it be implemented into legal practice. It is noted that the analysis of national courts’ judgments allowed experts to draw a number of conclusions about the inappropriate level of the rule of law principle application by domestic judges, which is usually brought to quoting individual judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (mostly the same) or references to articles of the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the implicit content of the human rights enshrined in these articles is not disclosed). The following areas of the rule of law implementation are noted and characterized. First, the ideological direction: given that the principle of the rule of law is inherent in Western tradition of law based on a natural understanding of law, and is incompatible with the normative school of law, to which indicates the lack of understanding of the content of this principle by a number of judges, then without changing the legal paradigm further implementation of the rule of law principle has no sense. Only by realizing what the rule of law is, it can it be implemented into legal practice. This direction involves radical changes in the system of national law, which can occur only due to involvement of public authorities in legal values. Secondly, the scientific and practical direction: if within the first direction the emphasis is on future employees of public authorities, this direction concerns those persons who implement the state policy in life today. A prerequisite for holding a position in public authorities should be a systematic training, an integral part of which should be mastering the subject within which employees will learn about the understanding of human rights, their implicit nature, the rule of law principle, study the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. Third, the normative and legal direction: the necessity of adoption of the legal act which will systematically define the order of realization of administrative process is proved.
Desde hace algunos años, en algunos países europeos la pérdida de la calidad de las leyes ha llegado a percibirse como una amenaza para el Estado de Derecho. Por eso, algunos tribunales ...constitucionales han abandonado su habitual autocontención en la revisión de los defectos de técnica legislativa para pasar a realizar un control más intenso al respecto. Así, en Alemania, Francia e Italia, a partir de disposiciones constitucionales muy generales, los tribunales constitucionales emplean parámetros tales como la inteligibilidad, accesibilidad y claridad de las leyes, y en los años más recientes son relativamente habituales las declaraciones de inconstitucionalidad. Este artículo se centra en examinar la jurisprudencia constitucional recaída sobre el principio de seguridad jurídica explícitamente consagrado en la Constitución española, con el principal objetivo de valorar si también nuestro Tribunal Constitucional se suma a esa tendencia a controlar de forma más estricta la falta de calidad de las leyes.
Este artigo tem por finalidade discutir os fundamentos políticos do estado democrático de direito e, através dele, o constitucionalismo e a democracia como presentes no texto constitucional. Para ...tanto, ancorado numa análise bibliográfica e documental, o texto é arvorado em três partes, a saber: i) a primeira parte é dedicada à exploração histórica do constitucionalismo e das suas diferentes versões na direção da limitação do poder político (o constitucionalismo clássico, o constitucionalismo social e o constitucionalismo democrático), bem como ao constitucionalismo presente no texto constitucional; ii) na segunda parte, discute-se a democracia na Constituição, de modo a se defender que, ainda que seja uma democracia com elementos sociais, ela se apresenta mais bem como uma versão da democracia deliberativa; finalmente, iii) na terceira parte, perquire-se propriamente a concepção de estado democrático de direito na Constituição de 1988, de modo a se evidenciar a originalidade da relação entre constitucionalismo e democracia na Lei Maior.
This article aims to discuss the political foundations of the democratic rule of law and, through it, constitutionalism and democracy as present in the constitutional text. Therefore, anchored in a ...bibliographic and documentary analysis, the text is displayed in three parts, a knowledge: i) the first part is dedicated to the historical exploration of constitutionalism and its different variations in the direction of limiting political power (classic constitutionalism), social constitutionalism and democratic constitutionalism), as well as the constitutionalism present in the constitutional text; ii) in the second part, to discuss a democracy in the Constitution, so that it is an advocate that, even though it is a democracy with social elements, it presents better as a version of deliberative democracy; finally, iii) in the third part, to acquire properly a democratic rule of law in the 1988 Constitution, in order to highlight the originality of the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy in the Major Law.
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