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What types of attitudinal surveys are produced by public administrations? Who commissions, uses and analyses them? What are their methodological characteristics and for which policies are they used? Do the contents of surveys commissioned by public administrations at different territorial levels differ? We lack any systematic empirical information to answer these questions in the Spanish case. Three public sources (corresponding to the local, regional and national level) are used to establish a preliminary picture of the attitudinal surveys commissioned by Spanish public administrations. This paper makes a comparative description of these surveys and discusses their differing characteristics. We create a new database of 350 surveys, where characteristics of the survey promoters, its contents and technical details are discussed. The surveys carried out at each of the three levels are quite different. The policy agendas of these administrations, their resources and especially the organisational characteristics of these institutions at their creation are the most likely explanations of many of their differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the political philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). Through discourse analysis it deepens investigations of the origins of Ortega's political key concepts. Based on recent biographical research, the analysis illustrates and explains how the drastic sociopolitical changes experienced in Germany and Italy between 1918 and 1922 came to have major significance for Ortega's political thinking. In fact, the tremendous transformations undergone in both countries had a direct and decisive impact on Ortega's early, and fundamental, essay España invertebrada (1922). The results of the current study allow us to reevaluate Ortega's political philosophy critically and in context, not only with regard to its origin and range, but also its systematic relevance with respect to current political and social problems in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current crisis of representative democracy and the emphasis on citizens' direct participation in public affairs is taking place at a time when western societies are becoming more diverse, and plural and have a higher percentage of foreign population. This raises the question, to what extent are foreigners guaranteed access to mechanisms of direct participation in public matters. This paper sustains a substantive understanding of citizenship and political participation open to foreign population and defends that, beyond political participation strictly understood (Article 13 of the Spanish Constitution), the Spanish Constitution embraces this understanding. It then analyses to what extent the Spanish legal order conforms to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a work in progress, dealing with property rights regarding the human body. My point of departure is to look for the best way to protect people's right to choose in conflicts concerning the human body or its parts. Medical and biotechnological science is now at a level unimaginable only a few years ago. Furthermore, the influence of corporations is becoming more and more decisive. This paper first examines several conceptions of property, and then goes on to analyze the possibility of considering the human body or its parts as such. If this is indeed the case, as is suggested by some decisions of the jurisprudence of a number of different countries, we have to ask about the rights of individuals whose bodies were the origin of these properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the revival of extreme right-wing populism as well as the increase of protest movements brings the emotions to the forefront. The political conflict seems then to be controlled by passions such as fear and rage. In this context it is worth asking if passions and emotions should play a role in the democratic political legitimacy. This article explores the problems of emotions in the democratic theory. First, we stress the role of emotions in the political scene today, particularly their role in the populist movements. Secondly, this paper advances some suggestion for a solution beyond a strict understanding of the criteria of deliberative democratic theory. The result is a new perspective of the possibilities of the practice of deliberative democracy, one which abandons the search for perfection in only one institution, and looks instead to a more dialogical understanding of deliberative theory itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1/1977 Law of January 4, for Political Reform (LPR), was a key political piece at the beginning of the Spanish Transition to democracy, as well as a legal instrument that allowed the institutional dismantling of the Francoist regime and the transition to a democratic system. This paper analyzes the different phases of the legislative iter and its difficulties, the risky bet on the LPR of Adolfo Suárez and his Government, including the study of the campaign to its ratification by referendum, and giving special attention to the debate between legality and legitimacy and the role played by the memory of the Civil War in the process of elaboration and passing of this Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article analyzes the career of the 110 individuals who served as vice president in the 17 presidential regimes of the American continent in the period spanning from 1985 to 2012. First, the article analyses the variables which influence the selection of succesful vicepresidential candidates, and seeks to elucidate if presidential tickets seeks to increase their political and socio-demographic representation with said candidate. The article also studies the relationship between presidents and their respective vicepresidents, and suggests that the key variables which explain this relationship are the vicepresident's preexisting loyalty towards his running mate, the president's job performance and the vicepresident's own political power. Finally, the paper proposes that the vicepresidency can not be perceived as a stepping stone towards the presidency, as very few sitting or former vice presidents are ever elected to the highest office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La legislación española de protección de datos ofrece el régimen sancionador más severo de Europa. Desde 1992, la garantía efectiva de este derecho fundamental se ha sustentado en la tramitación, investigación y, en su caso, sanción de todas las denuncias interpuestas ante la Agencia Española de Protección de Datos. Sin embargo, con las reformas legislativas de 1999 y 2011, se propició que este régimen sancionador extraordinariamente gravoso se viera acompañado de una estrategia preventiva que estimulara el cumplimiento efectivo de dicha legislación. Este trabajo analiza tanto la evolución normativa de este régimen sancionador como la práctica sancionadora de la AEPD que ilustra la justificación y efectos de las sucesivas reformas de la legislación de protección de datos. Spanish data protection law provides the most severe sanctioning regime in Europe. Since 1992, this effective protection of this fundamental right has been sustained in inspections, investigations and, where appropriate, sanctions of all complaints lodge into the Data Protection Spanish Agency. However, with the 1999 and 2011 legislative reforms, this strict sanctioning system would be balanced by a preventive strategy which stimulates effective enforcement of such legislation. This paper analyzes both the legal evolution of this system and the AEPD enforcement activity illustrating the justification and effects of successive reforms of the data protection law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some ten years ago, and within the framework of a collective reflection on the politics of national minority participation in post Communist Europe, I proposed a classification of the diverse ways in which the electoral laws of these countries were addressing the problem of the parliamentary representation of ethnic minorities. In that essay, I argued that formulas contained in these electoral laws had swung from the extreme hostility of those prohibiting the creation of ethnically based parties, to the inclusiveness of those where ethnicity had been converted into the very basis of political representation, going through a wide range of intermediate strategies like hindering that representation, being indifferent towards it, facilitating it in practice, and providing legal guarantees for it. Now in a context in which democracy is already consolidated, the legacy of the Balkan wars is gradually disappearing, and ten of these countries are already part of the EU, it is easy to anticipate that the perception of what should be an adequate treatment for national minorities in electoral laws should have substantially changed. On the basis of the above mentioned paradigms, this paper examines the manners in which these laws have changed their treatment of national minorities, seeks to give an explanation as to why these changes have taken place, and tries to assess their implications in the parliamentary representation of minorities --and, even more, in its social and political integration-- throughout the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the phenomenon of secession in the context of the European Union. For this, we use the concept of multilevel constitutionalism and study the effects of national self-determination from the perspective of the clause of Art. 50 TEU and the political projects currently driving the independence of regions of Member States. Since international law is often said that secession is an internal matter for the Member States. However, in our opinion the political and legal system of the Union can be characterized also federally, which prevents the national and regional authorities to carry out unilateral acts that go against the principle of Community federal loyalty and European citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intense financial turbulences within the Eurozone have unleashed what has been referred to as the deepest existentialist crisis in the European Union. In order to face it, the institutional balance that sustains the European Union since Maastricht has been altered by recent reforms in European law, i.e. the reform of the Stability and Growth, the reform of the very TFEU to allow for exceptions to the no bail-out clause (art. 136.3), and the conclusion of two new Treaties, the Treaty establishing the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism and, above all, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, that directs member States to incorporate in their constitutions the «balanced budget rule». Therefore these instruments not only entail centralization of powers in the EU, but also the transformation of the member States' economic constitutions. This paper aims to examine the impact of the constitutional amendment in the Spain's federal estructure, and the analysis focus mostly on the Organic Law passed by the central government to implement the new art. 135 CE. This Organic Law has substantially altered the previous legal framework so that the system of intergovernmental relations between the center and the autonomous communities has been deeply reshaped. In order to ensure the fiscal discipline, the communities are now subject to new monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms. Furthermore, communities' control over their own budgets has decreased because two bail-out mechanisms have been established by the State: the «payments to suppliers fund» and the «regional liquidity fund». These mechanisms are conditioned on the communities' compliance with the budgetary and economic measures undertaken by the central government. Finally an amendment of the Organic Law (2013) has broadened the debt limit rule by including the commercial debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an integrated model that identifies the variables that explain judicial decision-making in Latin American Supreme Courts. As a case study considering the individual votes of the judges of the Fiscal and Tax Chamber of the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, the article finds empirical evidence that the characteristics of the cases, judges' time remaining time on the bench, the government's political strength, and the performance of the economy are good predictors of judicial vote. Unlike research suggesting that judges vote sincerely -according to their own ideological preferences -this article provides evidence that such actors decide cases strategically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The final years of the 1950s met in Catalonia and in the Basque Country a new impulse to their respective national movements. The Secretary General of the Movement organized in 1961 a series of written debates on the question. The paper «Cultural and political action to overcome divisive nationalist concepts» studied the Basque question, but its findings were never published. The debate was repeated in very similar terms in 1971 and 1973. The attempts of the speakers for a new regionalism to oppose what they considered separatism, foundered on the Basque society demands and the Franco's authorities refusal to reform the Spanish state centralist model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain is one of the few countries in the European Union where Islam has had a historical role in the social and cultural construction of its identity. However, its modern history is marked by acts of repudiation of non-Christian cultures. Opinion polls indicate that certain groups of migrants from North Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, but mainly Muslims, are considered to be incompatible with the popular conception of Spanish identity. The reason for this perception is related to the social construction of the migrant as the «other to govern» by political, academic and media discourses. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that immigration law also plays a fundamental role in this strategy of «orientalization», i.e. the attribution of certain qualities to migrant groups (illegal, antisocial, criminal, unassimilable, terrorist), the aim of which is to legitimize the selective control of immigration. While meeting the guidelines provided by European authorities, the Spanish immigration and citizenship regime contributes to the construction of otherness, and therefore, to the political and legal (re)definition of what «being Spanish» means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decree-Law 16/2012, of April 20, has changed the legislation on immigration and health. One of the measures adopted is the deprivation of the right to health care to irregular migrants, except in certain circumstances. The paper examines the constitutionality of the legislative restriction of the right social respect of undocumented migrants for economic reasons. It also discusses the use of Decree-Law as a rule appropriate for limiting the right to health. In another part of the work is undertaken the study of the different reaction of the Autonomous Communities to reform introduced by Decree-Law 16/2012 and the invasion of the basic state legislation for regional rules you determine that extend health care services and ownership of the right irregular migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legalization of same-sex marriage in Act 13/2005 sparked in our country one of the most important constitutional debates of recent years. Some authors supported the constitutionality of the Act; other authors questioned this constitutionality. The debate has been recently settled by the Spanish Constitutional Court (STC 198/2012). Spain's Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of gay marriage. This paper analyzes the decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the context of the global debate over same-sex marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of electronic media in management as well as in the relationship of Public Administration with citizens has experienced an extraordinary development in recent years. In order to clarify the role played by regulation in the intensive use of ICT, especially in the area of e-Health, this paper analyses, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the Spanish regulations produced in this field during the last two decades. Afterwards, these regulations are contrasted with data resulting from the analysis of both the diversity of services offered on line and their depth of transaction. The approach seeks to help clarify the relationship between supply and service functionality and the level of regulation of e-Health within the regional administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on the Islamic veil in Europe have become a mirror of national identity. On the one hand, each country manages cultural diversity according to its selfunderstanding as a nation. On the other hand, conflicts around these issues have ended up raising the question about what keep us together as a nation. The context of crisis of multiculturalism that surrounds the debates has derived in campaigns in favor of a strongest feeling of belonging that safeguards social cohesion. This paper analyzes to what extent the understanding and the discourse on national identity are present in the controversies on the veil in Great Britain. The debates start using the British way of understanding liberalism. But they have moved to a broader arena that addresses national identity. The reassessment of «British» has taken place in close connection to the crisis of multiculturalism, blamed as responsible for social division. In this context the veil is considered as a symbol of that lack of integration and separateness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives account of the main republican and federal theoretical principles developed by Jefferson from his seminal Notes on the State of Virginia, to some extent shared by Madison. «Great principle» that fuels a new collective action logic, giving birth to the «Republican Party», and later the «Democratic-Republican Party ». This question of principles -true «war of principles» (Hamilton)- about what sort of Nation and State the United States of America was to be, appears notoriously at the origin of the first party system and electoral competition in USA. The disagreement between the «republicans» (Jefferson, Madison) and «federalists» (Hamilton) was very deep and insurmountable, beginning by the idea of Nature as rural rather than urban landscape of the American society, the plural Idea of the American nation, the kind of American Republic defended («ward» based and democratic participative in Jefferson views), and the institutional design of federalism (dualist and defender of the States rights in Jefferson and Madison). The critic of Hamilton not only as «centralist» but as «monarchist» evidenced the substantive ideological and political differences among this three Founding Fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate and the concerns arising from the current economic crisis raise questions about the future of the EU redistributive policies and the financing of the EU budget. Although it is expected that the cohesion policy follows the reform process of recent decades, currently key elements of this policy are discussed, such as the funding, the characteristics of the new «transition regions», the conditionality linked to macroeconomic indicators added to the formulas to measure and to increase the efficiency. In this paper we analyze the instruments available for the Autonomous Communities to participate in the design of the future cohesion policy and review the functioning of the coordination mechanisms between the different levels of government in a negotiation process, which is crucial for the Autonomous Communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral democracy rests on a straightforward idea: citizens elect their fellow citizens to represent their interests. However, the explanation of voting behaviour is more complex than a probabilistic association between X and Y. A proper understanding demands a close examination of the three links of the causal chain of electoral behavior: parties' entry decisions, campaign strategies and voter predispositions. Without providing the causal mechanisms, regression coefficients are a black box. The goal of this paper is to examine these factors in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many voices say that the victims of ETA were completely forgotten in the Basque Country until they began to mobilize and gain ground in public opinion in the late 90s. This paper aims to quantify, through content analysis methodology, the presence of the victims in political discourse since the beginning of Basque autonomy, in order to check if it is true that until the turn of the century they were practically invisible to political parties. In addition, the text also compares its presence in discourse with their victimizers, trying to estimate which of the two groups (victims or terrorists) has received more attention from the Basque political forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies Carl Schmitt considerations on the so-called «third power» of the State. First, with the help of the jurist own it outlines the general doctrine of the separation of powers and its political significance. Then, his book Law and judgment serves as a starting point for analyzing the Schmittean criticism on Kelsen's normativism. In a third stage, it will examine the author's invective against the liberal State of Law and its ideal of achieving a «State of Justice». And finally, it is contemplated how the defender of the Constitution of the German jurist deployed in history its unlimited factual and legal powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a change in the Spanish penal procedure regarding its actual inquisitorial nature. At present time, as the Judge is in charge of criminal investigation and the Public Ministry controls the Judge, they have exchanged their constitutional missions within the pre-trial phase. The Judge must stop deciding on coercive investigation activities at his own and sole proposal. The Public Ministry must be capable to accomplish its proactive constitutional mission --not reactive as the Judge's- defending legality and public interest since the initial phase; as the faculty to hold charges during the trial belongs to the Public Ministry. Compared to more executive or judiciary public ministry models, the Spanish Public Ministry «impartiality collectively reflected» would unsurpassed endure all the due processes principles within the pre-trial phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will attempt to analyze in depth the theory of raison d'etat put for-ward by Juan Blázquez de Mayoralgo. Such an analysis will stem from a review and partial correction of J. A. Maravall's approach to this object of study, and will dis-close what it believes to be the specific originality underlying Blázquez de Mayoralgo's thought by dwelling on the various possible meanings that the term «word» assumes in his work. Such scrutiny will enable us, next, to shed light into Blazquez de Mayoralgo's theory of raison d'etat within the the basic frame of catho-lic theology, its role in the discussion against Machiavelism and --though in a smaller degree-- in the historical context of the Spanish empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyze the meaning of John Dewey's ideal of «de-mocracy as a way of life», linked to his reformist view of liberalism. This is one of the most interesting cases to watch the distance that separates the ideal from the experience of democracy. Part of his formulations do not easily fit in the history of real polities, not even the American democracy of his time. Yet they are of the highest intellectual and practical interest, among other reasons because of their enduring scholarly influence and the practical inspiration they still provide. The paper discusses firstly the role played by democratic ideals in informing real practices and explores secondly the significance of political expectations generated by those ideals. In doing so, it distinguishes the metaphoric and pedagogic use of democracy as claimed by John Dewey from democracy as a system of government. That way the article highlights the educative value of democratic practices carried out outside the political process, while drawing attention to the institutional conditions for democracy to properly work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the pattern of territorial organization established in the Spanish Constitution of 1978 creates non-statewide institutions with legislative powers, and regional elections are held in order to choose non-national deputies. Turnout in these contests is usually lower than the one registered in the national congressional elections. The paper argues that some special groups of voters are particularly prone to vote in national but not in regional elections. This phenomenon, that is called differential turnout, is studied in the 2005 Basque Country and 2006 Catalonia regional elections. Econometric models show a relationship between voters' judgements on the performance of the regional incumbent and the quality of non-national candidates, on one side, and the propensity of differential turnout, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an analytical reconstruction of the main topics that sociological thought has developed and articulated about the concept of community. After a critical outlook on classical thinkers, it analyses communitarian hypotheses which are developed in the contemporary literature, setting a general typology of the proposed approaches and appraising their conceptual novelties. Five ideal-types are distinguished: classical community, territorial community, communicative community, aesthetic community and neo-communitarian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the inclusion and regulation of social rights in the Statutes of Autonomy of second generation, the main features of the intense academic debate on this issue and the controversial doctrine established by the Constitutional Court Judgments 247/2007, on the Statute of the Comunidad Valenciana, and 31/2010, on the Statute of Catalonia. From a general conceptual framework, the author highlights the arguments that support the legitimacy of their establishment and their relation to fun- damental rights, the respect for constitutional limits, their authentic character of sub- jective rights in terms of structure and regulatory function and, ultimately, the central role given to them by the ⪡estatuyente⪢ legislator in a new statutory model which wants to be supported by the establishment of direct links with citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to attempt to determine Carl Schmitt's position regarding the tradition of «practical philosophy», which is that which develops from the Aristotelian differentiation between two types of knowledge: one that is purely theoretical and another which aims to study and orient human action, politics included. The thesis I wish to prove is that Schmitt, in his The Concept of the Political, has a position that is quite close to that tradition, notwithstanding the important differences that arise. In order to prove this thesis, I will refer to a series of criticisms to this Schmitt text, which would appear to separate the author from that tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss Quentin Skinner's denouncement of the «mythology of coherence» through the analysis of Hobbes's doctrine of the rationale for political compliance. The Skinnerian critique involves a descriptive thesis regarding classical philosophical texts' coherence as well as a normative thesis regarding the way these works should be read. The analysis of Hobbes' conception of political obligation seems to corroborate Skinner's descriptive thesis. The validity of Skinner's normative thesis, however, is dubious. Therefore, we should not necessarily interpret that Hobbes' political work involves an incoherent theory in this respect. Hobbes's theory of the rationale for political obligation includes elements of different status and scope, in the sense that not all of them have the same weight or theoretical relevance in the context of Hobbes's argument. Consequently, Hobbes's theory of the rationale for political compliance is not truly incoherent after all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These paper aims to enlighten the role displayed by the Tunisian presidential and parliamentary elections in the process of political liberalization on which Ben Ali embarked the country two decades ago. With this aim, the study analyses the electoral politics implemented in the country between 1989 and 2009, by focusing five analytical units. These are the following: I) the political strategies that inspires these electoral politics; II) the normative elements that support and materialize them; III) their impact in the political behaviour of the opposition parties; IV) their effect on the electoral results; and V) their transcendence over the development of the structure of political contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to curtail discrimination against women have traditionally been couched in terms of rights. Although these efforts often lead to improvements in women's equality and living conditions, they do not suffice to deconstruct the structural grounds of gender discrimination in western societies. This paper propounds that we should redefine gender relations through a new model of citizenship. It proposes that we elaborate a model of citizenship that does not rest on the myth of (male) independence, but assumes instead human beings' interdependent and relational nature. It proposes that we move from a model of citizenship towards a model of caringzenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the reasons why the legal consequences as well as the political significance of the Constitutional Treaty and the Treaty of Lisbon will be necessarily different from each other, despite the fact that they are essentially similar documents. In order to explain how this is possible the relation between the drafting process and the constitutional substance of both documents is analysed in some depth. The thesis is that the Laeken process was founded on a synthetic constitutional theory, which explains the European Union's nature as an alternative to the traditional international and constitutional views, whereas the Lisbon process was underpinned by an understanding of the integration process as a way to solve efficiently pragmatic problems resorting to unorthodox tools and devices (governance). The author considers some powerful normative reasons in favour of a constitutional transformation of the Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern political theory was built from an underlying assumption: the radical exclusion of emotions as departure of a hyper rationalist argumentation. The aim of this paper is, first, to explain how this exclusion is semantically structured trough the dichotomy reason/emotion. We will analyze afterwards the various presences of this dichotomy and exclusion in the shared vision of politics as the reign of reason held by the main paradigms of the modern political theory. Finally, we pay attention to some new theoretic developments that broke with and depart from the old vision of the dispassionate political mind, opening a new horizon to rethinking politics and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main arguments for and against workplace democracy (WD) are analyzed, with a particular stress on cooperatives. Firstly, two historical approaches to WD are presented (section 1) and the agent, content and forms of decision-making in a democratic firm are briefly defined (section 2). The remainding sections tackle the main arguments for and against WD regarding its feasibility (section 3) and efficiency (section 4), along with three well—known arguments against it—the epistemic argument (section 5), the propertarian argument (section 6) and the libertarian argument (section 7). The paper closes by discussing some pragmatic alternatives to WD (section 8). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legalisation of same-sex marriages in Spain is the consequence of significant changes in the preferences of the PSOE, that are linked with shifting electoral results and, also, with significant changes in the political and institutional environment of this political party. Legal change, however, was also made possible by the strategies of a social movement willing to shape its claims and tactics in a bid to create new opportunities. The time span covered is 1975 to 2005. The paper draws on current debates on the interaction between social movements and public policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that academics should reconsider the approaches and objectives of their research into how to reform the upper chamber of parliament in Spain, the Senate, in order to reflect changes in circumstances. This study describes those circumstances: a) doctrine has been taken as far as it can go, b) the State Council has submitted a detailed report about this question, c) and the Prime Minister has just announced postponement of constitutional reform until further notice (which means putting off reforming the Senate). Hence, the author clarifies the guide-lines that should be developed and the nuances which must be considered in every new research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new doctrinal criterion in order to distinguish between the two types of inter-regional agreements found in the article 145.2 of the Spanish Constitution, which Spanish law treats very differently. The first type is dealt with through Collaboration Agreements to provide and manage their own services; and the second with Co-operation Agreements. We give the grounds of our defending a criterion that helps to define both kinds of agreement to ensure a better fit with recent practice and the will expressed in the Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an in-depth study of how deliberation functions within the framework of Aristotle's Rhetoric. For Aristotle, rhetoric (whose counterpart he calls dialect) constitutes a fundamental truth about action. Thus, it influences all human knowledge regarding any subject, but especially the practical knowledge involved in deliberation about our behaviour and our approach to problem solving. It argues that Aristotele's system is not just as a defence of rhetoric in a democratic society, or a defence of a political life informed by a clear idea of what arguments count as politically reasonable, but also provide us with as a novel attempt to understand what it means to speak of practical rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although national European governments prefer to manage orderly, legal migration flows, the presence of irregular immigrants on European territory is evident. Although Southern- European countries are, for various reasons, the ones with most such irregular inmigrants, the rest of Europe must also come to grips with the same phenomenon. The goal of this paper is to analyse the mechanisms and instruments implemented through the years in order to deal with immigration irregularities in the different European countries. We will pay special attention to year 2005, in which the European Union has began to build up a common framework within which to discuss the political answers needed to manage irregular immigration in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, cognitive analysis of public policies has become increasingly fashionable. This paper examines this current in public policy and its relationship to other cognitive sciences such as neurosurgery, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. We ask what kinds of theoretical transfer have taken place between these to date. After defining four theories of public-policy analysis as a function of their cognitive content cases of integration of these cognitive sciences within social sciences, we argue that, in most of cases, such analysis does not tend to apply the concepts if cognitive sciences to their field in any real way but rather uses them as metaphors. Nevertheless, in some cases, assumptions of cognitive sciences are used to explain the development of public policy. These cases are extremely interesting since they shed a new light on rationality by proposing an alternative vision of policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have Member States decided to empower the European Parliament in each reform of the Founding Treaties? Drawing on existing literature, this paper aims at providing elements which could explain the gradual increase of the institution's powers. In order to do so, the last four modifications of the Treaties are analysed. Two types of explicative hypotheses are proposed: a) the increase of the chamber's competencies is generated by the desire of national elites to legitimise the EU political process; and b) the decisions adopted in each IGC constraint the available Options in the future and determine the scope of change in each round of institutional reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the existence of a coordination dilemma in multi-level countries that hold elections for different parliaments, at different territorial levels, and with different electoral rules. With evidence from Spain, our analysis identifies interaction or contamination effects between national and sub-national electoral arenas that generate, just as in most mixed-member electoral systems, a centrifugal force that increases the number of electoral parties in national elections. The incentives that solve this coordination dilemma faced by small regional or local parties are theoretically discussed and empirically tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stuart Mill in considered as one of the fathers of proportional representation. His book Considerations on Representative Goverment, from 1861, is cited as the source of the main normative justifications of proportionality. This paper intends to contest that statement and, at the same time, to reveal the influence of that assumption on the interpretation of Mill's political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]