Suchergebnisse

Recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has increased the uncertainty with regard to its jurisdiction on provisions and acts of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the Treaty on the European Union (TEU). While Article 24 TEU seems to exclude judicial control over CFSP acts which are not restrictive measures, the court has recently proved itself willing to adjudicate on them. This article proposes the introduction of a Political Question Doctrine, for the Court to clearly identify on what acts it does not have jurisdiction. After explaining the reasons for the introduction of the doctrine, the article proposes a threefold test, derived from the general principles of EU law and from US scholarship and jurisprudence, where the Political Question Doctrine has been object of much analysis and debate.

The prevention of terrorist attacks is an important concern for many governments. In democracies, officials also fear the electoral consequences of successful attacks. As a result, counterterrorism policy-making and electoral concerns are tightly intertwined. To understand the implications of this link, I develop a game-theoretic model and show that left-wing incumbents respond to terror threats more aggressively than their right-wing counterparts in order to convince voters that they can be trusted in fighting terrorism. Terrorist attacks improve right-wing incumbents' reputation, while they worsen the reputation of left-wing incumbents. When the terrorist threat is high, voters ignore right-wing incumbents' reputation, reelecting them independently of their performance. Finally, I consider the strategic consequences of maintaining counterterrorism policies hidden from the public eye.

Political parties in US politics are becoming increasingly polarized, with a growing number of extreme candidates entering electoral races. Why would extremists challenge more moderate opponents, since their chances of winning are supposedly very slim? I develop a model of electoral competition and endogenous entry to show that extremists rely on the possibility that the campaign might reveal information about the opponents' quality that can induce some voters to change their electoral decision. The weight voters place on candidates' valence determines the incidence of uncontested elections and the degree of asymmetry in polarization of the candidates' policy positions in contested elections. Finally, I extend the model to consider asymmetric information about individual valence levels. I show that uncontested races are still possible in equilibrium, that in contested races at least one candidate has high valence, and the valence-advantaged candidate can be the one with the more extreme policy stance.

The demand for constitutional reforms in the European Union is intensifying to ensure a more dynamic decision-making process, preventing political paralysis, especially in light of a potential enlargement to new members.

Sanctions are increasingly used by the European Union to pursue foreign and security policy objectives. Nowadays, these objectives include the protection of the Union's strategic autonomy too. As our empirical analysis suggests, restrictive measures – the official EU notion for sanctions – define strategic autonomy as much as they are defined by it. We understand the notion of 'sanctions' widely, not only encompassing measures adopted within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), but also other EU acts closely connected to sanctions – including the Blocking Statute and the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) – that also aim to strengthen the Union's strategic autonomy. The picture sanctions paint is one of strategic autonomy as a principle not only of processes, but also of substance. In terms of processes, it is an objective that allows for selective uses of partnership; and in terms of substance, it is also in the name of this principle that EU institutions have proceeded to a balancing between rights, interests, and values.
Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), sanctions, strategic autonomy, Blocking Statute, extra-territorial sanctions, Anti-Coercion Instrument