Mexico reshuffle aims to facilitate agenda approval

Significance The change preceded the start of the first legislative period of the newly elected Chamber of Deputies on September 1, in which AMLO’s ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and its allies no longer hold a two-thirds majority. Impacts AMLO’s popular approval ratings suggest he will remain in office beyond March’s recall referendum. Despite requiring support from at least some of the opposition to pass key bills, AMLO will not abandon his polarising rhetoric. Co-opting opposition figures may become easier towards the end of the current legislature as internal competition for nominations grows.

Political competition and legislative shirking in roll-call votes: Evidence from Germany for 1953–2017

We analyze the impact of elected competitors from the same constituency on legislative shirking in the German Bundestag from 1953 to 2017. The German electoral system ensures at least one federal legislator per constituency with a varying number of elected competitors between zero to four from the same constituency. We exploit the exogenous variation in elected competitors by investigating changes in competition induced by legislators who leave parliament during the legislative period and their respective replacement candidates in an instrumental variables setting with legislator fixed effects. The existence of elected competitors from the same constituency reduces absentee rates in roll-call votes by about 6.1 percentage points, which corresponds to almost half of the mean absentee rate in our sample. The effect is robust to the inclusion of other measures of political competition.

Az erdélyi románok kisebbségjogi jogállása 1918 előtt

The purpose of the study is to explain the evolution of regulations that resulted in minority rights for Romanians living in Transylvania in the pre-1918 period. The study analyses in detail the advancement of the idea of “ nationalities” (in the meaning of national minorities) in the legislation from the last decade of the 18th century and presents the legal claims of the Transylvanian Romanians against the Habsburg Empire and the Hungarian Parliament. The authors present the Nationalities Act adopted in the 1848 revolution, but left without consequences, and examine the development of laws on minority rights during the legislative period following the Austrian-Hungarian settlement. The article discusses the grand debate on the act on nationalities, which took place in the Hungarian Parliament in 1868, and describes the later assimilation efforts by the majority lawmakers. The authors draw attention to the fact that non-Hungarian nationalities acquired a minority status only after the adoption of the Nationalities Act by the Hungarian state, which became a so-called majority state.

Austrian stability will hinge on Green Party patience

Subject Austria's new government. Significance On January 2, the centre-right People's Party (OVP) and the Greens Party presented a coalition deal after months of negotiations that required significant compromise. In particular, they hold opposing views on immigration, social affairs and climate policy. The potential for discord in these areas is the main risk for this government. Impacts Austria’s unprecedented coalition could increase support in Germany for a coalition between the CDU and Greens. Budget constraints and Green objections may prevent Kurz from replacing Austria's Eurofighter jets during this legislative period. Austria will seek to reform the EU-Mercosur deal, citing the need for higher standards in animal welfare and climate protection.

Fragen über Fragen – zum Rechtsrahmen der Interpellation und der exekutiven Antwortpflicht

The legal framework of the parliamentary right of interpellation and the executive’s obligation to respond to these questions has traditionally been a field of contention between the government and the opposition . The Federal Constitutional Court has recently issued several decisions that have again concretized and expanded this framework . The number of parliamentary questions, which has been high for decades, has once more reached a new dimension in the current Bundestag’s legislative period and has led to demands for a legal limitation . Its feasibility is constitutionally controversial . The right to information under press law competes with the parliamentary right to ask questions and the executive’s obligation to respond . There is no legal claim of the questioner to be the first to use the answer in the media . However, it is good practice within a parliamentary system for the government not to thwart this practice .

Strategic issue emphasis in parties’ election campaign statements

Parties should develop a consistent issue profile during an electoral campaign. Yet, manifestos, which form the baseline for a party’s programmatic goals in the upcoming legislative period, are usually published months before Election Day. We argue that parties must emphasize policy issues that are of key relevance to their likely voters in the last weeks of the election campaign, in which an increasing share of citizens make up their minds in terms of which party they will choose. To test this notion empirically, we draw on a novel data set that covers information on party representatives’ statements made during the final weeks of an election campaign in nine European countries. Focusing on the campaign messages of social democratic and socialist parties, we find that these parties indeed intensify their emphasis of unemployment policy, which is a salient issue for their core voter clienteles, particularly in times of economic hardship.

Die isolierte Fraktion. Zwischenreaktionen, Zwischenrufe und die AfD im Baden-Württembergischen Landtag

How do the members of parliament use hecklings and other intermediate reactions in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament? Does the AfD as a new party in parliament differ from the other political groups? An automatic analysis of all interruptive actions recorded in the plenary protocols of the current and the previous legislative period as well as a manual content analysis of the hecklings used in 20 current debates (ten debates per legislative period) shows that the use of hecklings as well as other interruptive actions like applause or laughter mirrors the conflict between government and opposition parties . In the current legislative period, the AfD falls out of the ordinary in that the party is isolated from all other political groups by various means . For example, the other parties avoid applauding for AfD speakers and criticize them sharply through hecklings . The AfD and its members of parliament also distance themselves from the other parties by heckling and laughing maliciously about them . Thus, we can identify a clear polarization between the AfD and the other parties in the federal state parliament in Baden-Württemberg .

On “Genuine” and “Illegitimate” Refugees: New Boundaries Drawn by Discriminatory Legislation and Practice in the Field of Humanitarian Reception in Germany

A high number of legal changes accompanied the increase of people seeking asylum in Germany throughout the 18th legislative period from 2013–2017. These changes have transformed the field of humanitarian reception in Germany, especially along the axes of citizenship, integration performance and deviation from administrative and legal rules. Half of the legal measures from this period have led to differential rights for different groups of asylum seekers according to one of these three axes. The axis of citizenship has also structured the development of administrative procedures referred to as “integrated refugee management” which was established to speed up asylum seeking processes, classifying persons applying for a humanitarian residence visa in Germany into four clusters. This categorization, too, led to different entitlements regarding the admittance to state-financed German courses and integration measures focussed on education and the labour market. In this article I employ the notion of differential inclusion (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2012) to analyse these legal and administrative changes. I show that they have reshaped the substructures impacting the lives of those categorized as “genuine” and “illegitimate” refugees and thus redrawn the boundaries and created hierarchies among those seeking humanitarian protection in Germany.

Criminal Act Principles Policy Renewal of Criminal Act in Indonesia

After Indonesia's independence, some legal experts Indonesia tried to make the Criminal Code itself in accordance with the characteristics of Indonesia based on Pancasila and legal values that live and thrive in Indonesian society, but the spirit of the legal experts of the Indonesian nation was not offset by a member legislative duty during the Old Order, New Order and the Reform Era. It was only during the reign of President Joko Widodo draft Act, especially criminal Act book on a book I had been passed in 2018 this with legalized the Draft Penal Code Book I into Act by the legislative period 2014 - 2019 will automatically bill the Penal Code which has been stalled for more than 56 years, has now become a legitimate Act although not enrolled gazetted in Indonesia. This research method using normative juridical approach. The results showed that essentially the principles and foundations of the criminal Act system and the colonial criminal Act still survive with a blanket and face Indonesia. Principles of criminal Act enactment space according to Criminal Code draft concept consisting of: according to time and according to place. The meaning and nature of criminal Act reforms can be divided into two parts: from the point of policy approaches; and on the angle of approach valuesKeywords: Policy of Positive Criminal Act; Criminal Act Reform.