Milestones in Nuclear Law: A Journey in Nuclear Regulation

The development of the nuclear legal framework has been an interesting journey reflecting a commitment to addressing the key aspects of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy through a variety of approaches using both binding treaties and conventions and non-binding codes and guidance. This complex framework of hard and soft law instruments has developed in response to action forcing events. Future development of the legal regime will be aided by greater harmonization and commitment to ensuring that institutions at an international and national level are transparent and willing to engage in constructive interaction with stakeholders. Legal advisers will continue to play an important role in assisting policy makers and technical experts in crafting comprehensive and effective approaches to further development of the framework for nuclear energy and its regulation. In those deliberations a number of key elements should be highlighted. This chapter suggests that elements are stakeholder trust, strong institutional capacity, and integration of international instruments and standards at national levels.

Strengthening of the institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in the conditions of modern society as a scientific and practical problem

Modern scientific research of the problems of constitutional jurisdiction in Ukraine is conditioned not only by their established theoretical and practical significance for legal doctrine and law enforcement. In the context of modern global challenges and threats that inevitably affect the domestic legal order of Ukraine, taking into consideration the national problems in the field of human rights and freedoms, interaction between state and society, lawmaking, law enforcement and administration of justice, etc., the need to strengthen the institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court is an important scientific and practical task. It is aimed at strengthening the stability of the institution of constitutional jurisdiction in difficult sociopolitical situations, restoring public confidence in the Constitutional Court and the state in general, improving the legal protection of the Constitution of Ukraine and ensuring its supremacy, reviving respect for the Basic Law and the rule of law, accommodating the functioning of the Constitutional Court to the best international standards of constitutional jurisdiction. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the study of the problem of strengthening the institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine as a complex scientific and applied issue, which provides for its solution in the interdisciplinary scientific space. General scientific research methods, sociological method, structural-functional, as well as interdisciplinary approaches, are used. The institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine is considered as an institutional property of a body of constitutional jurisdiction, which reflects its organisational and functional ability to ensure the implementation of its tasks, functions, and powers under certain conditions and resources. Indicators of the institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court are efficiency, stability, and adaptability to changes. Strengthening the institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court should take place through legal support for strengthening its independence from political influence, improving mechanisms for selecting candidates for judges, modernising constitutional proceedings, developing a mechanism for the Court's interaction with the public, and so on. The main directions of the study of the institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court are determined

The Inequality Machine

Access to rights depends on the institutional capacity to deliver and citizens’ capacity to benefit from public services and programmes. This is where bureaucracy and inequality meet: many times, even if access procedures are designed for equality, they do not produce equal results. Bureaucratic pathologies, deficits, and administrative burdens imply that different citizens might not share the same experience while interacting with government agencies. Moreover, in some developing countries like Mexico, inequality in access leads to the creation and reinforcement of "low-trust” bureaucracies. This paper offers some general ideas on this problem and stresses the relevance of understanding bureaucratic dysfunction from the citizens' point of view particularly in weak institutional contexts.

KAPASITAS KELEMBAGAAN DAERAH DALAM PENYELENGGARAAN PEMERINTAHAN DAN PELAYANAN PUBLIK PASCA PEMEKARAN

This study aims to find out how the capacity of local institutions in administering government and public services after the expansion with a case study in Kulim District, Pekanbaru City, and to find out what factors support institutional capacity in administering government and public services after the division of the sub-district area. This research use desciptive qualitative approach. Primary data were obtained directly through interviews with informants, namely the administrative staff of the regional secretariat of the Mayor of Pekanbaru, the Head of Kulim District, the Village Head of Mentangor, sub-district service staff, and community service recipients in the sub-district. The results of this study indicate that the capacity of regional institutions in administering government and public services after the division in Kulim District is sufficient. This is marked by the implementation of various activities in the sub-district in carrying out government administration, public services, and also empowering the community in Kulim District. The factors that support the institutional capacity of the sub-district after the division include organizational structure, work team, number of human resources, commitment and competence, work experience and seniority, and completeness of supporting infrastructure.AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana kapasitas kelembagaan daerah dalam penyelenggaraan pemerintahan dan pelayanan publik pasca pemekaran dengan studi kasusnya di Kecamatan Kulim Kota Pekanbaru, serta untuk mengetahui faktor-faktor apa saja yang mendukung kapasitas kelembagaan dalam penyelenggaraan pemerintahan dan pelayanan publik pasca pemekaran wilayah kecamatan. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif kualitatif. Data primer diperoleh langsung melalui wawancara dari informan, yaitu Staf bidang pemerintahan sekretariat daerah walikota pekanbaru, Camat Kulim, Lurah Mentangor, staff pelayanan kecamatan, dan masyarakat penerima layanan di kecamatan. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa kapasitas kelembagaan daerah dalam penyelenggaraan pemerintahan dan pelayanan publik pasca pemekaran di Kecamatan Kulim sudah cukup memadai. Ini ditandai dengan sudah berjalannya berbagai aktifitas kegiatan di kecamatan dalam melaksanakan penyelenggaraan pemerintahan, pelayanan publik, dan juga pemberdayaan kepada masrayakat di Kecamatan Kulim. Adapun faktor-faktor yang mendukung kapasitas kelembagaan kecamatan pasca pemekaran antara lain, struktur organisasi, tim kerja, jumlah SDM yang dimiliki, komitmen dan kompetensi, pengalaman kerja dan senioritas camat, dan kelengkapan sarana prasarana pendukung. Kata Kunci: Kapasitas Organisasi, Desentralisasi, Pelayanan Publik

Interventions to Strengthen Institutional Capacity for Peri-Urban Water Management in South Asia

Institutions, defined as social rules which guide decision-making, are an important feature of peri-urban water governance. Peri-urban institutions structure the access to and management of water resources during rural-to-urban transitions. However, peri-urban areas are dynamic in nature and heterogeneous in composition. This generates challenges for the effectiveness of institutional arrangements. Peri-urban spaces of South Asian cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Khulna demonstrate the various ways in which institutional arrangements influence issues of water insecurity, conflicts, and crises in the urbanisation process. This chapter explores this important dimension and demonstrates ways to intervene in the institutional context of water resources in such transitional settings. Two types of interventions to build institutional capacity are presented. First, the Approach for Participatory Institutional Analysis (APIA), is designed to help peri-urban actors frame problems through an institutional lens and offers skills to navigate the solution space. The second approach, Transformative Pathways, facilitates efforts to cope with the uncertain and dynamic nature of urban transitions. Based on the adaptation pathways approach, it helps peri-urban actors work from their existing situation and design pathways towards more sustainable and resilient futures. Practical applications of these approaches in South Asia offer insights on how to intervene institutionally in water problems during rural-urban transitions.

Current trends in organizational and legal and innovative support of parliamentary control in Ukraine

This article outlines main trends in domestic parliamentary practice that do not strengthen the institutional capacity of the Verkhovna Rada in the context of improving the organizational and legal mechanism of parliamentary control. Such tendencies are emphasized in comparison with European values and standards of e-democracy.

An approach between the institutional capacity of the Courts of Audit and the regimen of precedents and summulas from the Civil Procedure Code

The institutional capacity of the courts of audit as makers and applicants of precedents and summulas (restatement of case law) is investigated to answer the following: is it possible a mutually beneficial approach to the decision standards regimen from the Civil Procedure Code-CPC, as well as a productive dialogue with the Law of Introduction to the Brazilian Legal Statutes (Lei de Introdução às normas do Direito Brasileiro-LINDB)?. The objective of the work is to analyze, from the abstract and concrete institutional capacities of the audit courts, the aptitude for the formation and application of decision-making standards. To do so, Ronald Dworkin's interpretive theory was chosen, especially because it is believed that precedents are intertwined in a discursive plot, when every single interpreter commits to analyzing past decisions, in a reflexive way, to decide in the present and, at the same time, anticipating the directions for the future of the decision, which is made in the here and now. The hypothesis is that the audit courts have the potential ability to form and apply precedents and summulas, arising from the exercise of their constitutional powers, but that it is also necessary to develop a concrete capacity to form and apply controlling decision patterns. In this way, it allows for a better understanding of the relationship between the decisions of the audit courts and the judicial ones. It is a theoretical work, of legal analysis of the subject, using the deductive method, starting from a general analysis to reach the institutional capacity of audit courts for the formation and application of decision-making standards.

Do Elections (Still) Matter?

This book sheds new light on this central democratic concern based on an ambitious study of democratic mandates through the lens of agenda-setting in five West European countries since the 1980s. The authors develop and test a new model bridging studies of party competition, pledge fulfilment, and policymaking. The core argument is that electoral priorities are a major factor shaping policy agendas, but mandates should not be mistaken as partisan. Parties are like ‘snakes in tunnels’: they have distinctive priorities but they need to respond to emerging problems and their competitors’ priorities, resulting in considerable cross-partisan overlap. The ‘tunnel of attention’ remains constraining in the policymaking arena, especially when opposition parties have resources to press governing parties to act on the campaign priorities. This key aspect of mandate responsiveness has been neglected so far because in traditional models of mandate representation, party platforms are conceived as a set of distinctive priorities, whose agenda-setting impact ultimately depends on the institutional capacity of the parties in office. Rather differently, this book suggests that counter-majoritarian institutions and windows for opposition parties generate key incentives to stick to the mandate. It shows that these findings hold across five very different democracies: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. The results contribute to a renewal of mandate theories of representation and lead to question the idea underlying much of the comparative politics literature that majoritarian systems are more responsive than consensual ones.