Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing

When does legislation trigger regulation? The US Congress regularly passes laws that authorise government agencies to write legally binding regulations. Yet, when this occurs, agencies may take years to act – or, at times – may never act at all. We theorise that the breadth of the congressional statutory delegation drives the timing of agency policy production. In particular, when Congress expressly tells an agency to promulgate a rule, we expect agencies to do so quickly. Yet, when Congress provides greater policymaking discretion to agencies, we expect other factors – and especially, internal agency considerations – to drive regulatory timing. We use data from almost 350 statutes spanning four decades, which are then matched up with thousands of regulations, to assess the argument. Using innovative methods, we find support for our hypotheses. Overall, we produce a deeper understanding of the link between delegation and discretion: suggesting when it occurs, as well as, importantly, why.

Are emergency measures in response to COVID-19 a threat to democracy?

The unprecedented outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 virus in the world and its grave consequences on human health, the economy and the everyday life forced national parliaments either to change its standard work mode or transfer their constitutional competences to the executive by declaring state of emergency. The detrimental effects of this unorthodox situation, especially on functioning of democracies, government branches’ division, economic disturbances and losses of jobs are yet to be determined and analyzed. Not expecting that the virus will reach pandemic proportions, the Macedonian parliament was dissolved for early parliamentary elections that ought to be carried out by a technical government, a commitment taken from the Przino Agreement in 2015. The state had faced a unique situation to get through the pandemic with a dissolved parliament and a technical government with limited competences. The constitutional vagueness regarding the work of the parliament in emergency situations and the duration of mandate of the parliamentarians allowing for different interpretation thereof, made the situation even more complicated than before. Consequently, the Government had to propose a proclamation of state of emergency for the first time since the independence, in order to be able to adopt legally binding regulations to manage the crisis. The State President proclaimed state of emergency on 18 March 2020 that had to be extended two more times, once for an additional 30 days and another for 8 days, in order to observe the electoral deadlines for the re-scheduled parliamentary elections. Some experts have strongly argued that the government with its hands untied in these challenging and de-parliamentarized times might abuse its competences by adopting regulations that have nothing to do with the state of emergency. This paper will reflect on the unique political and legislative processes in the state and its effects on the parliamentary democracy.

Tracing divergence in crisis governance: responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Germany and Sweden compared

This cross-country comparison of administrative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Germany and Sweden is aimed at exploring how institutional contexts and administrative cultures have shaped strategies of problem-solving and governance modes during the pandemic, and to what extent the crisis has been used for opportunity management. The article shows that in France, the central government reacted determinedly and hierarchically, with tough containment measures. By contrast, the response in Germany was characterized by an initial bottom-up approach that gave way to remarkable federal unity in the further course of the crisis, followed again by a return to regional variance and local discretion. In Sweden, there was a continuation of ‘normal governance’ and a strategy of relying on voluntary compliance largely based on recommendations and less – as in Germany and France – on a strategy of imposing legally binding regulations. The comparative analysis also reveals that relevant stakeholders in all three countries have used the crisis as an opportunity for changes in the institutional settings and administrative procedures. Points for practitioners COVID-19 has shown that national political and administrative standard operating procedures in preparation for crises are, at best, partially helpful. Notwithstanding the fact that dealing with the unpredictable is a necessary part of crisis management, a need to further improve the institutional preparedness for pandemic crises in all three countries examined here has also become clear. This should be done particularly by way of shifting resources to the health and care sectors, strengthening the decentralized management of health emergencies, stocking and/or self-producing protection material, assessing the effects of crisis measures, and opening the scientific discourse to broader arenas of experts.

Regulatory Compliance of Community-Based Conservation Organizations: Empirical Evidence from Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal

Community-based conservation in the developing world generally puts more emphasis on voluntary commitments and compliance rather than enforcement of formal laws and regulations for the governance of protected areas. However, as with other forms of organizational management, once institutions are established, they are required to comply with all relevant, legally binding regulations. Furthermore, it is broadly assumed that compliance with established regulations is critical for good governance. In this paper, we review these matters through an empirical study of Conservation Area Management Committees’ degree of compliance with regulations under Nepalese law, within the Annapurna Conservation Area—one of the best-known community-based protected areas worldwide—based on quantitative content analysis of the committees’ meeting minutes from 2008 to 2012. According to the established rules, two to four women and one to five minorities serve as committee members in each instance. On average, fewer members than expected attended meetings, and the number of decisions made per meeting showed a curvilinear relationship with the number of members present as well as their demographic diversity. Of the 13 committees selected for study, only two met the legal mandate of holding six regular meetings annually within two-month intervals. In all the other cases, non-compliance was noted for one to all five years of the committees’ terms. In general, compliance declined over the five-year terms, and some committees were significantly less-compliant than others. Although enforceable decisions were made within both compliant and non-compliant committees, several problems of non-compliance were identified that may affect conservation outcomes. We suggest several possible reasons for non-compliance and argue that these may be symptoms of institutional weaknesses. Organizations that fail to meet their commitments risk liability and may also lose the formal legal authority to govern. Regular monitoring is recommended to address compliance issues.

Protecting the Malacca and Singapore Straits from Ships’ Atmospheric Emissions through the Implementation of marpol Annex vi

The International Maritime Organization (imo) adopted legally binding regulations for the control of ships’ atmospheric emissions under Annex vi of the International Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Ships, 1973/78. With Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia being States Parties thereto, consequently, one of the effects in the Malacca and Singapore Straits is that it enables the Straits States, together with the imo, to designate emission control areas for the approximately 75,000 ships transiting annually. This article examines the robust provisions of Annex vi for the marine environmental protection of the Straits and the contentious debates preceding an otherwise dead-locked technology-transfer resolution for implementing Annex vi. If implemented, Annex vi provisions will represent a unique milestone in the protection of the marine environment of the Straits which is regulated by the restrictive provisions of Part iii of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.