The twin concepts of a federal arrangement – a structure for a multi-tiered form of government with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, as well as active citizenship are like the two strands of the DNA of good public governance. And we are in the early evolutionary stages of both...

It has been argued that the European Union suffers from serious accountability deficits. But how can we establish the existence of accountability deficits? This paper tries to get to grips with the appealing but elusive concept of accountability by asking three types of questions, thus providing...

Abstract: In Europe the public role of the religions appears to be directly proportional to the fall in trust in the procedural mechanisms at the basis of the liberal democracies. Compared to the strong identities attributed to the United States and to the Islamic world Europe is accused of...

Abstract: This paper develops a conceptual framework for the analysis of hard and soft law that is drawn in part from recent work in the field of international relations. We examine the literature on the role of soft law, noting that scholars have approached this phenomenon in very different...

The growing importance of India and other emerging economies in the globalized world are given in this lecture. This group of economies is not easy to define. However, some reflections on the implications of these changes are made. The emerging markets are becoming larger players in the global...

The paper examines corruption in the institutions of local government in Karnataka, using a Logit model. One of the arguments in favour of decentralisation in developing countries is that it provides a favourable environment to responsive planning, and promotes greater accountability in the...

This paper uses household data from India to examine the economic and social status of village politicians, and how individual and village characteristics a®ect politician behavior while in o±ce. Education increases the chances of selection to public o±ce and reduces the odds that a...

Processes of soft policy coordination in the EU and of Europeanization have in recent years mostly been conceptualised in terms of learning. The OMC is mostly seen as inducing ideational, cognitive and possibly normative learning between member states. However, the generalised learning...

In this special issue of the European Integration online Papers (EIoP), we reconsider the practicability of gender mainstreaming in the European Union (EU) and its traction in the European integration project more broadly. We follow the feminist institutionalist turn which seeks to bring...