Some committees convene behind closed doors while others publicly discuss issues and make their decisions. This paper studies the role of open and closed committee decision making in presence of external influence. We show that restricting the information of interest groups may reduce the bias...

This paper presents a positive theory of centralization of political decisions in an international union. My central claim is that lobbies play a role in determining the assignment of competencies to the union because their power of influence can increase or decrease under centralization. I show...

The literature on fiscal institutions has established a connection between the design of fiscal institutions and a countryu0092s political fundamentals. The paper includes a review of the party and electoral systems in the Central and Eastern European countries (the CEECs) and then reaches...

Membership of the European Union on 1 May 2004 will undoubtedly have a major effect on the course of political developments in the countries of central Europe, although it is difficult to predict any particular consequences for, or direct impact on, the party systems of the region. Analysis of...

The process of what has been labeled Europeanisation has been considered by many scholars as one of the major challenges posed by the external environment on domestic politics. Political parties are forced to deal with it as one that constitutes a fundamental change to their operational context....

Policy attention to the security industry increased substantially after the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11th, 2001. With an increased demand for security, the global security market grew a tenfold to around €100 billion in 2011. Many studies expect that growth of the worldwide...