The idea of a hybrid bicameral system combining election and sortition is investigated. More precisely, the article imagines how an elected and a sortition chamber would interact, taking into account their public perception and their competing legitimacies. The article draws on a survey of a representative sample of the Belgian population and Belgian members of parliament assessing their views about sortition in political representation. Findings are combined with theoretical reflections on election’s and sortition’s respective sources of legitimacy. The possibility of conflicting legitimacies and mutually detrimental interactions leads to considerations of the effects of different possible distributions of power between the chambers as a crucial determinant of their interactions and perceived legitimacy.
In 2010, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (access and benefit-sharing, or ABS). 1 Nagoya Protocol adoption resulted from a long set of negotiations on the making of an international ABS regime, triggered by a situation of distributive injustice: countries using genetic resources reap most of the benefits, while the costs related to the conservation and protection of these same resources are mainly carried by provider countries. Through the establishment of an international ABS regime, benefits and burdens arising from the use of genetic resources should thus be shared fairly between user and provider countries.Based on principles of distributive justice, 2 the notion of fair and equitable sharing raises two well-documented issues. First, theories of distributive justice are ill suited to the study of the underlying conditions that shape decisions leading to the distribution of benefits and burdens. These conditions are rooted in the material, social, cultural, and institutional circumstances within which the decision-making process takes place. 3 Second, given that different conceptions of morality and justice coexist, fair agreement conditions tend to be better approached by defining the conditions of a fair decision-making process. 4 Fairness and equity of a benefit-sharing agreement thus depend on a decision-making procedure governed by the principles of procedural justice.The complexity and interdependence of an ever-growing number of multilateral environmental agreements and the unequal distribution of resources and (bargaining) power among states generates unequal participation opportunities.
Le débat juridique et philosophique opposant Carl Schmitt à Hans Kelsen ne met pas seulement en scène deux conceptions du droit et de la représentation. Le thème de la visibilité politique y joue aussi un rôle primordial. Quelle différence tracer entre publicité politique et transparence, et quelles conséquences en tirer en termes de justification d’un régime politique ? Afin d’approfondir cette question, l’article retrace la critique schmittienne de la conception kelsénienne du droit et du principe de publicité. Il expose ensuite les traits principaux de la conception de la transparence que Schmitt entend substituer au principe de publicité. Il montre enfin que la réponse de Kelsen à Schmitt permet de dépasser les limites du texte schmittien et les difficultés rencontrées par l’État législateur parlementaire.
The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing is the latest protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Its implementation can lead to two fundamentally different processes: a market-oriented self-regulatory approach, which emphasizes the self-regulating capacity of the economic actors involved, or a normative institutionalist approach, which focuses on the norms and formal rules of institutions that not only support and frame, but also shape and constrain the actions of the players acting within them. This paper analyzes the challenges related to the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol in the specific case of Belgium, and evaluates the possibility of moving from a self-regulatory to an institutional approach of implementation, which we argue is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Protocol. This move is analyzed in the specific multi-level governance context characterizing the Nagoya Protocol, which has a natural tendency towards a market-oriented self-regulatory approach.
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