Far-reaching transformations in Swiss education were pushed in the last decade by two prominent international initiatives, namely the 1999 Bologna process and the OECD's PISA study starting in 2000. To what extent and in which way were these soft governance initiatives able to trigger Swiss...

This paper compares four forms of inter-regional financial risk sharing: (i) segmentation, (ii) integration trough the secured interbank market, (iii) integration trough the unsecured interbank market, (iv) integration of retail markets. The secured interbank market is an optimal risk-sharing...

The development of the constitution must be based on the rule of law. Direct democratic rights allow citizens to participate in the amendment process. The direct democratic process of institutional change is theoretically and empirically analyzed. A number of counter arguments and issues for a...