Die Europäische Union schickt sich an, wichtige Entscheidungen für ihre Zukunft zu treffen. Der eingesetzte Konvent wird eine europäische Verfassung ausarbeiten, die Entscheidungsmechanismen der Union reformieren soll. Welche ökonomischen Aspekte sollten dabei Berücksichtigung finden? Nach...

The citizen assembly of the Swiss canton Glarus decided to radically reduce the historical number of communes from 25 to three. Studies show that the financial and economic consequences are surprisingly small. This paper analyzes the effects on citizens’ vote participation as an indicator of...

Present anti-terrorist policy concentrates almost exclusively on deterrence. It seeks to fend off terrorism by raising the cost of undertaking terrorist acts. This paper argues that deterrence policy is less effective than generally thought and induces in some cases even more terrorism. This is,...

At present, new EU-members have to fully accept the "acquis communautaire" even if their economic and institutional development differs drastically from the EU-average. In contrast, we propose that there should be the possibility of partial entry into the EU. East European Countries should have...