The standard economic analysis of law has modelled tort liabilities as the state’s instruments to reduce accident costs, comprising prevention costs and damages. This regulatory deterrence model (RD model), however, does not fit with the private autonomous nature of tort law (PA model). This is why the RD model has to resort to numerous ad hoc elements to explain it. Nevertheless, given that private law is not some policy-instrument; rather, it is a complex system of norms with courts being independent adjudicators of legal disputes arising, amongst others, from contractual arrangements, legal dogmatics, rather than standard economics, seems to be a more appropriate approach to the economic analysis of private law. As such, in this paper, I am presenting an economic analysis of tort law that is closely associated with the PA model.
This article examines the European Social Dialogue as a distinctive mechanism in EU governance, institutionalized under Articles 154 and 155 TFEU, which allows social partners to negotiate agreements that may become binding EU law. Challenging traditional views of it as neo-corporatism or a deliberative complement to democracy, the study reconceptualizes it as “managed regulatory outsourcing”, where norm-drafting is delegated to organized interests but remains subject to Commission discretion, Council adoption, and limited parliamentary oversight. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of democratic legitimacy (input, output, throughput), institutional balance, and functional representation, the analysis highlights how this process redistributes authority without resolving the EU’s democratic deficit. Key case law, such as UEAPME and EPSU, underscores executive gatekeeping and constitutional constraints. Post-EPSU developments, including the 2023 Council Recommendation, reflect procedural expansion amid a shift to soft-law instruments, reinforcing hybrid legitimacy but diffusing accountability. The article concludes that while social dialogue innovates participatory governance, it reconfigures rather than eliminates legitimacy tensions, emphasizing the need for stronger accountability in EU multilevel structures.
China’s 2026 Provisions on livestream e-commerce food safety vest digital platforms with core regulatory functions that are functionally equivalent to those of administrative agencies. These functions include licensing, inspection, standard-setting, and sanctioning. Platforms now screen vendor credentials, deploy algorithmic surveillance, and impose sanctions up to permanent blacklisting. These powers mirror core administrative functions, yet Chinese law classifies them as private “corporate responsibility.” This classification displaces core administrative law constraints on platform power. Duties of reason-giving, procedural fairness, and the availability of judicial review are thereby excluded. This article exposes the accountability vacuum that results. Comparison with the EU Digital Services Act demonstrates that procedural safeguards need not compromise regulatory efficiency. This article proposes four interventions that establish minimum procedural safeguards for platform-mediated governance, including mandatory internal review, a duty to provide reasons, bridging mechanisms for dispute resolution, and technological due process embedded in platform architecture.
The free movement of persons is a key pillar of European integration. However, whether it constitutes a fundamental right remains contentious. This article argues that the fundamental status of free movement has been interpreted inconsistently, and highlights the need to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality by clearly affirming it as a fundamental right. The claim is that a legal redesign of this right is required. The article uses Rawls’ theory of justice to formulate a clearer normative standard for evaluating and redesigning European law on free movement of persons. The proposed shift towards a human‑rights‑based, residence‑anchored conception of free movement can thus be framed as an effort to align the European Union’s basic structure more closely with Rawlsian principles: securing free movement as an equal basic liberty for all legally resident persons and restructuring mobility‑related rules to promote, rather than undermine, fair equality of opportunity across the Union.
This article presents a relational comparative analysis of Estonian integration, building directly on Marju Lauristin’s cluster analysis and national defense index in the Estonian Integration Monitoring 2023. Drawing on relational integration theory and John W. Berry’s acculturation framework, it maps Lauristin’s clusters onto Berry’s four strategies and traces ethnic differences in trust, belonging, support for NATO, and military aid to Ukraine. The analysis identifies important limitations in Lauristin’s symmetric design: even when integration is framed as a two-sided process, asymmetrical power relations persist, and acculturation strategies continue to collapse into assimilation, separation, or marginalization. The post-2022 security context amplified these pre-existing cleavages. Vetik’s national unity-versus-equal-rights imperatives remain central, yet the majority has claimed the moral high ground by framing strong support for Ukraine as a loyalty test. And the relational lens shows that this securitization of integration has proved counterproductive, widening trust gaps across the whole society.
Behavioral government employs tools like nudges to steer behavior toward certain practices, raising ethical concerns if the underlying narratives are not transparent or inclusive. In this context, it has been debated whether these types of policies are a source of manipulation or rather are practices inherent to a libertarian paternalism. This article attempts to answer this question from an analysis of power. In contrast to theorizations of power in terms of force or pure domination, it is possible to establish a theoretical framework that understands power in an inclusive manner, as a capacity for order, and from there establish a rational framework for evaluating the narratives implicit in this type of policies. We propose that, within a framework of dialogue and shared values, power need not be coercive to be effective. The discussion concludes that narratives, when aligned with the common good and grounded in clear reasoning, legitimize behavioral government as an ethical and collaborative approach to addressing contemporary social challenges.
China’s 2026 Provisions on livestream e-commerce food safety vest digital platforms with core regulatory functions that are functionally equivalent to those of administrative agencies. These functions include licensing, inspection, standard-setting, and sanctioning. Platforms now screen vendor credentials, deploy algorithmic surveillance, and impose sanctions up to permanent blacklisting. These powers mirror core administrative functions, yet Chinese law classifies them as private “corporate responsibility.” This classification displaces core administrative law constraints on platform power. Duties of reason-giving, procedural fairness, and the availability of judicial review are thereby excluded. This article exposes the accountability vacuum that results. Comparison with the EU Digital Services Act demonstrates that procedural safeguards need not compromise regulatory efficiency. This article proposes four interventions that establish minimum procedural safeguards for platform-mediated governance, including mandatory internal review, a duty to provide reasons, bridging mechanisms for dispute resolution, and technological due process embedded in platform architecture.
This article examines the European Social Dialogue as a distinctive mechanism in EU governance, institutionalized under Articles 154 and 155 TFEU, which allows social partners to negotiate agreements that may become binding EU law. Challenging traditional views of it as neo-corporatism or a deliberative complement to democracy, the study reconceptualizes it as “managed regulatory outsourcing”, where norm-drafting is delegated to organized interests but remains subject to Commission discretion, Council adoption, and limited parliamentary oversight. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of democratic legitimacy (input, output, throughput), institutional balance, and functional representation, the analysis highlights how this process redistributes authority without resolving the EU’s democratic deficit. Key case law, such as UEAPME and EPSU, underscores executive gatekeeping and constitutional constraints. Post-EPSU developments, including the 2023 Council Recommendation, reflect procedural expansion amid a shift to soft-law instruments, reinforcing hybrid legitimacy but diffusing accountability. The article concludes that while social dialogue innovates participatory governance, it reconfigures rather than eliminates legitimacy tensions, emphasizing the need for stronger accountability in EU multilevel structures.
The standard economic analysis of law has modelled tort liabilities as the state’s instruments to reduce accident costs, comprising prevention costs and damages. This regulatory deterrence model (RD model), however, does not fit with the private autonomous nature of tort law (PA model). This is why the RD model has to resort to numerous ad hoc elements to explain it. Nevertheless, given that private law is not some policy-instrument; rather, it is a complex system of norms with courts being independent adjudicators of legal disputes arising, amongst others, from contractual arrangements, legal dogmatics, rather than standard economics, seems to be a more appropriate approach to the economic analysis of private law. As such, in this paper, I am presenting an economic analysis of tort law that is closely associated with the PA model.
China's 2026 Provisions on livestream e-commerce food safety vest digital platforms with core regulatory functions that are functionally equivalent to those of administrative agencies. These functions include licensing, inspection, standard-setting, and sanctioning. Platforms now screen vendor credentials, deploy algorithmic surveillance, and impose sanctions up to permanent blacklisting. These powers mirror core administrative functions, yet Chinese law classifies them as private "corporate responsibility." This classification displaces core administrative law constraints on platform power. Duties of reason-giving, procedural fairness, and the availability of judicial review are thereby excluded. This article exposes the accountability vacuum that results. Comparison with the EU Digital Services Act demonstrates that procedural safeguards need not compromise regulatory efficiency. This article proposes four interventions that establish minimum procedural safeguards for platform-mediated governance, including mandatory internal review, a duty to provide reasons, bridging mechanisms for dispute resolution, and technological due process embedded in platform architecture.
To be justified, charity tax incentives should improve social welfare. This paper illustrates the importance of allocating public funds to worthier causes in evaluating the effectiveness of charity tax incentives and proposes a tax-incentive scheme (new scheme) that can substantially improve the allocation of funds. The new scheme consists of a refundable equal-percentage tax credit for all donors, a tax on the receipts of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), and a tax exemption for NPOs based on the number of donors. Tying the tax exemption to the number of donors should improve the allocation of public funds, provided that worthier causes attract more donors. In addition, the new scheme can increase philanthropic contributions, improve the operational efficiency of NPOs, and produce more intangible benefits, such as social cohesion and giving culture. The new scheme is also fairer in that it treats low-income and high-income donors equally.
This article provides an overview of how German social welfare nonprofits in health and human services fared during the COVID-19 pandemic to gauge whether the historically strong complementary relationship between the sectors has continued to hold. Conceptually, we use third-party governance theory to frame German social welfare policy and see what the pandemic experience suggests about government/nonprofit relations. Using an exploratory approach, the analysis is based on a national CAWI survey, conducted in late 2020, covering initial effects of the pandemic and nonprofit countermeasures; financial and non-financial impacts; and the uptake of support programs. The survey data presents the first attempt to analyze the pandemic effects on the most crucial component of Germany’s social welfare infrastructure. The findings suggest that while the traditional partnership still exists, the government showed little interest in addressing the needs of nonprofits. This raises questions as to whether neo-liberal policies have undercut the sense that government is as dependent on nonprofits in social welfare service provision as nonprofits are on government support.
This article examines the transposition of Directive (EU) 2019/2121 into the Slovak legal framework, with particular emphasis on mechanisms designed to prevent tax law abuse in the context of cross-border company conversions. The objective is to evaluate whether the Slovak legislation has established adequate safeguards and institutional frameworks for detecting and mitigating abusive or fraudulent conduct. The research is based on doctrinal legal analysis, comparative assessment, and critical evaluation of relevant case law. The findings indicate that while the legislative intent is aligned with the Directive’s objectives, the procedural framework for reviewing the legality of cross-border conversions and institutional coordination fall short of ensuring effective prevention of tax abuse. The article concludes with specific legislative recommendations for strengthening procedural guarantees and authority cooperation.
The main goal of this article is to draw attention to the potential tools of the Hungarian Constitutional Court in the shaping of the future of cardinal law. The three main dilemmas around which the relevant HCC practice can be grouped are the legal rank of cardinal laws, ordinary and cardinal provisions occurring in the same laws, and the vertical scope of the cardinal regulation. The science of constitutional law and legal practice must focus on these three main issues in connection with supermajority legislation. Of course, many other sub-problems can be identified, which are important in themselves, but all of them can be classified into one of the aforementioned three areas. If these issues can be settled satisfactorily, a predictable jurisprudence may develop in the long term, which would greatly promote the effectiveness of the entire concept of cardinality. A wide-ranging professional dialogue from this would serve not only the interests of the Hungarian constitutional framework, but might also be an important point of reference for other countries operating with supermajority legislation.
This paper analyses the evolution of European Union media regulation from the Television Without Frontiers Directive to the European Media Freedom Act. It shows how an initially sectoral framework focused on cross-border broadcasting and market integration has gradually expanded to address structural challenges such as platform dominance, disinformation, and algorithmic control of information flows. The study traces this shift from economic coordination toward the protection of democratic discourse and media pluralism. It examines the main objectives and mechanisms of the new framework while assessing its legal foundations and compatibility with subsidiarity and proportionality. It concludes that the European Union’s expanding role in media regulation, though rooted in legitimate concerns, must be exercised with caution: without careful limits, the effort to safeguard democratic discourse could unintentionally blur the distinction between protecting the conditions of free expression and prescribing its boundaries, thereby risking the very pluralism it seeks to defend.
This article examines the transposition of Directive (EU) 2019/2121 into the Slovak legal framework, with particular emphasis on mechanisms designed to prevent tax law abuse in the context of cross-border company conversions. The objective is to evaluate whether the Slovak legislation has established adequate safeguards and institutional frameworks for detecting and mitigating abusive or fraudulent conduct. The research is based on doctrinal legal analysis, comparative assessment, and critical evaluation of relevant case law. The findings indicate that while the legislative intent is aligned with the Directive’s objectives, the procedural framework for reviewing the legality of cross-border conversions and institutional coordination fall short of ensuring effective prevention of tax abuse. The article concludes with specific legislative recommendations for strengthening procedural guarantees and authority cooperation.
This article provides an overview of how German social welfare nonprofits in health and human services fared during the COVID-19 pandemic to gauge whether the historically strong complementary relationship between the sectors has continued to hold. Conceptually, we use third-party governance theory to frame German social welfare policy and see what the pandemic experience suggests about government/nonprofit relations. Using an exploratory approach, the analysis is based on a national CAWI survey, conducted in late 2020, covering initial effects of the pandemic and nonprofit countermeasures; financial and non-financial impacts; and the uptake of support programs. The survey data presents the first attempt to analyze the pandemic effects on the most crucial component of Germany’s social welfare infrastructure. The findings suggest that while the traditional partnership still exists, the government showed little interest in addressing the needs of nonprofits. This raises questions as to whether neo-liberal policies have undercut the sense that government is as dependent on nonprofits in social welfare service provision as nonprofits are on government support.
The debate on presidentialism and its impact on democratic stability has been a central concern in political science, particularly following Juan José Linz’s seminal work on the perils of presidentialism. Linz contends that the separation of powers in presidential systems engenders democratic instability, primarily due to political rigidity, dual legitimacy, and zero-sum electoral politics. While many scholars support Linz’s argument, others critique it as overly simplistic, emphasizing institutional weaknesses rather than inherent flaws in presidential systems. This study engages with these scholarly debates by highlighting divergent perspectives on the relationship between presidentialism and democratic consolidation. This study moves beyond the abstract argument of whether presidentialism is inherently stable or fragile to discussing its viability in postcolonial Africa and whether external factors, such as weak institutions, play a more decisive role. And it concludes that presidentialism is not inherently detrimental to democracy, but requires robust institutional safeguards.
This paper analyses the evolution of European Union media regulation from the Television Without Frontiers Directive to the European Media Freedom Act. It shows how an initially sectoral framework focused on cross-border broadcasting and market integration has gradually expanded to address structural challenges such as platform dominance, disinformation, and algorithmic control of information flows. The study traces this shift from economic coordination toward the protection of democratic discourse and media pluralism. It examines the main objectives and mechanisms of the new framework while assessing its legal foundations and compatibility with subsidiarity and proportionality. It concludes that the European Union’s expanding role in media regulation, though rooted in legitimate concerns, must be exercised with caution: without careful limits, the effort to safeguard democratic discourse could unintentionally blur the distinction between protecting the conditions of free expression and prescribing its boundaries, thereby risking the very pluralism it seeks to defend.
