Showing papers on "Legislature published in 2005"

The political system of European Union

Abstract: Introduction: Explaining the EU Political System PART I: GOVERNMENT Executive Politics Legislative Politics Judicial Politics PART II: POLITICS Public Opinion Democracy, Parties and Elections Interest Representation PART III: POLICY-MAKING Regulation of the Single Market Expenditure Policies Economic and Monetary Union Citizen Freedom and Security Policies Foreign Policies Conclusions: Rethinking the European Union Appendix: Decision-making Procedures of the European Union Bibliography

Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives

Abstract: Scholars of the U.S. House disagree over the importance of political parties in organizing the legislative process. On the one hand, non-partisan theories stress how congressional organization serves members' non-partisan goals. On the other hand, partisan theories argue that the House is organized to serve the collective interests of the majority party. This book advances our partisan theory and presents a series of empirical tests of that theory's predictions (pitted against others). It considers why procedural cartels form, arguing that agenda power is naturally subject to cartelization in busy legislatures. It argues that the majority party has cartelized agenda power in the U.S. House since the adoption of Reed's rules in 1890. The evidence demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process in order to prevent bills that the party dislikes from reaching the floor.

Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting

Abstract: This book presents a simple geometric model of voting as a tool to analyze parliamentary roll call data. Each legislator is represented by one point and each roll call is represented by two points that correspond to the policy consequences of voting Yea or Nay. On every roll call each legislator votes for the closer outcome point, at least probabilistically. These points form a spatial map that summarizes the roll calls. In this sense a spatial map is much like a road map because it visually depicts the political world of a legislature. The closeness of two legislators on the map shows how similar their voting records are, and the distribution of legislators shows what the dimensions are. These maps can be used to study a wide variety of topics including how political parties evolve over time, the existence of sophisticated voting and how an executive influences legislative outcomes.

Direct Democracy Works

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to describe the practice and theory of the increasingly important political phenomenon of direct democracy and the main lessons from the scholarly literature. Many questions remain to be answered, but the emerging view is that direct democracy works--allowing the general public to participate in lawmaking often seems to improve the performance of government.

Power to the Parties: Cohesion and Competition in the European Parliament, 1979–2001

Abstract: How cohesive are political parties in the European Parliament? What coalitions form and why? The answers to these questions are central for understanding the impact of the European Parliament on European Union policies. These questions are also central in the study of legislative behaviour in general. We collected the total population of roll-call votes in the European Parliament, from the first elections in 1979 to the end of 2001 (over 11,500 votes). The data show growing party cohesion despite growing internal national and ideological diversity within the European party groups. We also find that the distance between parties on the left-right dimension is the strongest predictor of coalition patterns. We conclude that increased power of the European Parliament has meant increased power for the transnational parties, via increased internal party cohesion and inter-party competition.

Critical Mass Theory Revisited: The Behavior and Success of Token Women in State Legislatures

Abstract: Research on women and representation has argued that women who serve in “skewed” legislatures—that is, legislatures in which women make up less than 15% of the membership—avoid addressing women's interests and are marginalized by other legislators I argue that women in such legislatures may actually be encouraged to develop legislative agendas that are distinct from those of their male colleagues, and that they may be as successful as their male counterparts Analyzing data from three state legislatures in four years, I find that even in extremely skewed state legislatures, women are generally more active than men in sponsoring legislation that focuses on women's interests; indeed, in two of the three states, gender differences narrow as the legislature becomes more gender balanced Second, I find that women are generally as successful as men in passing the legislation that they sponsor, and that in very homogeneous settings, they are sometimes more successful than men Moreover, little evidence exists that they are less likely to be appointed to leadership positions Finally, I find that increasing gender diversity within a legislature is accompanied by a greater overall focus on women's issues I conclude that a “critical mass” is not necessary for substantive representation on the part of individual female state legislators, but that increased diversity may indeed bring about changes in policy outputs that reflect the interests of women

A political economy model of congressional careers

Abstract: Our main goal is to quantify the returns to a career in the United States Congress. We specify a dynamic model of career decisions of a member of Congress and estimate this model using a newly collected dataset. Given estimates of the structural model, we assess reelection probabilities, estimate the effect of congressional experience on private and public sector wages, and quantify the value of congressional seat. Moreover, we assess how an increase in the congressional wage or the imposition of term limits would affect the career decisions of politicians and the returns from a career in Congress.

Building Europe's Parliament: Democratic Representation beyond the Nation State

Abstract: Introduction: Building Europe's Parliament PART I: THEORY 1. The Empowerment of the European Parliament: Lessons from the New Institutionalism and Democratic Theory 2. Parliamentary Institutions in International Polities: What are the Conditions? PART II: THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT'S POWER TRIAS 3. The Origins of the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community 4. Budgetary Powers and the Treaty of Luxembourg 5. Legislative Powers and the Single European Act 6. From Maastricht to the Constitutional Treaty: The Return of National Parliaments? Conclusion: No Integration without Representation? Bibliography

Women on the Sidelines: Women's Representation on Committees in Latin American Legislatures

Abstract: This article explores how new groups can be marginalized after they gain representation in the legislature. We use data from six Latin American legislatures to examine the effect of institutional and political factors on how traditionally dominant male political leaders distribute scarce political resources—committee assignments—to female newcomers. In general, we find that women tend to be isolated on women’s issues and social issues committees and kept off of power and economics/foreign affairs committees as the percentage of legislators who are women increases, when party leaders or chamber presidents control committee assignments, and when the structure of the committee system provides a specific committee to deal with women’s issues. Thus, to achieve full incorporation into the legislative arena, newcomers must do more than just win seats. They must change the institutions that allow the traditionally dominant group to hoard scarce political resources.

The Security Council as World Legislature

Abstract: As has recently been noted, the Security Council has entered its legislative phase. This phase began on September 28, 2001, with the adoption of Resolution 1373.2 Resolution 1540 of April 28, 2004, is the most recent example, but undoubtedly not the last. In a briefing on the Council's schedule for April 2004, its president, referring to the planned adoption of Resolution 1540, described the ongoing consultation process for that resolution as "the first major step towards having the Security Council legislate for the rest of the United Nations' membership." He explained that "[Resolution] 1373 had been the first step" and that the "Council would be needed more and more to do that kind of legislative work."3 In the legal literature the Council is referred to as "legislator"4 or "world legislator."5 One author has even claimed that "[b]y means of its enforcement powers, the Security Council has in fact replaced the conventional law-making process on the international level."6 These are revolutionary statements considering that, for a long time, the perceived wisdom was that "there is no machinery of international legislation"7 and that the states are the legislators of the international legal system. As recently as 1995, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) held in the Tadiccase: "There is ... no legislature, in the technical sense of the term, in the United Nations system .... That is to say, there exists no corporate organ formally empowered to enact laws directly binding on international legal subjects."8 But the appeals chamber also noted that the Council is a body that "has a limited power to take binding decisions. ... when, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, it makes decisions binding by virtue of Article 25 of the Charter."9 This Note will examine the legal framework for Security Council legislation and assess the effectiveness of this new weapon in the Security Council's arsenal. But before doing so, it may be useful to ask what is meant by "international legislation" in the context of Security Council action.

Coalition Policymaking and Legislative Review

Abstract: Do legislatures in parliamentary democracies play a significant role in policymaking? If so, arealllegislativeactorsequallyabletoexercise policy influence? In what circumstances will those who can affect legislative outcomes actually choose to do so? These questions are central to an understanding of representative government in parliamentary democracies. In parliamentary systems, legislatures are typically the only political institutions at the national level thataredirectlyelectedby—‐andthusaccountableto—‐ citizens. Furthermore, with only rare exceptions, parliaments must approve all major policy initiatives. And yet, scholars know remarkably little about the extent to which legislatures in parliamentary systems matter. Instead, political scientists with an interest in policymaking in these systems have placed primary emphasis on understanding politics at the government (cabinet) level (see Gamm and Huber 2002, 323). In one sense,thisfocusongovernmentsisnatural.Thegovernment appears dominant in the policymaking process, at least with respect to the introduction of legislation (Andeweg and Nijzink 1995, 171). Moreover, since electionsusuallydonotyieldalegislativemajorityfora single party, political elites must engage in a process of complex bargaining that typically results in the formation of multiparty coalitions, which must then strive to retain the confidence of a majority of legislators for the remainder of the parliamentary term. This combination of facts readily suggests that to understand policymakinginparliamentarysystems,onemustunderstand aboveallelsetheformationanddissolutionofcoalition governments. Thus, over the last four decades, increasingly sophisticated theoretical and empirical accounts of the “birth” and “death” of coalitions have come to dominate the literature on parliamentary politics.

State Postsecondary Policy Innovation: Politics, Competition, and the Interstate Migration of Policy Ideas

Abstract: Over the course of nearly 50 years of shifting governance patterns in American postsecondary education, the issue of state-level policy innovation has remained near the center of discussion. In the immediate postwar era of the 1950s-1960s, each state in the nation centralized decision-making in its postsecondary systems by establishing or strengthening the power of existing regulatory coordinating boards and consolidated governing boards in an attempt to bring greater order, rationality, and coherence to rapid nationwide increases in postsecondary enrollment and funding. In most states, these new boards replaced considerably less powerful advisory coordinating boards or planning agencies through which public campuses in an earlier era had voluntarily organized themselves to interface with governmental institutions and to respond to state demands. Through the regulatory coordinating board, states superimposed upon campuses a powerful new entity whose responsibility was to make centralized academic and fiscal decisions for an entire state. In consolidated governing boards, states achieved a highly centralized form of campus governance, whereby a single board was empowered to make all day-today management decisions for institutions within a particular system, sector, or state (Berdahl, 1971; McGuinness, 1997). At the time, advocates of centralized control claimed the new boards would improve the nature of postsecondary education policy-making by state governments. The argument made in support of centralized governance was that "poorly informed, inadequately coordinated actions would be replaced by knowledgeable planning, adaptation, and policy development" (Hearn & Griswold, 1994, p. 161). Among the supposed benefits of centralized planning and policy development would be greater state policy innovation (Callan, 1975; McConnell, 1962; Mortimer & McConnell, 1982). Advocates of centralized governance argued that the nonpartisan professionals that would staff the new state-level boards would bring increased technical knowledge and analytical capacity to bear on the management of postsecondary systems, thereby providing elected officials (e.g., legislatures and governors) and their staffs with new ideas for improving postsecondary access, quality, affordability, and productivity. Whereas centralization of postsecondary governance was the dominant trend of the 1950s-1970s, the period of the 1980s-1990s, by contrast, was one characterized by diverse "restructuring" of state postsecondary governance patterns (Marcus, 1997; McLendon, 2003b). Emerging as an important countertrend during this more recent era was what some observers have termed the "decentralization" or "deregulation" of postsecondary governance from the state-level to more local levels of campus control (Couturier, 2003; MacTaggart, 1998; Schmidt, 2001). Again, the capability of states to design new, effective postsecondary policies was as a point of debate, but with critics of strong regulatory structures now asserting that centralized governance may inhibit policy innovation in the postsecondary arena because government bureaucracies are inherently resistant to new ideas (Berdahl & MacTaggart, 2000; Hebel, 2000; MacTaggart, 1998). State policy innovation in the postsecondary education arena is an important question both for state governments and for the postsecondary sector. The question is an important one for the states because their investment in postsecondary education is vast: state governments appropriate in excess of $63 billion annually in direct support of public colleges and universities. Additionally, while policy innovation inherently is neither good nor bad, innovation in the public arena often is interpreted as a positive sign of the health of governmental institutions--innovation means that policymakers are responsive to new ideas, to the preferences of citizens, and to changing environmental conditions (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). …

Semi-Presidential Systems: Dual Executive And Mixed Authority Patterns

Abstract: Maurice Duverger in 1980 advanced the concept of a ‘semi-presidential’ regime: a mix of a popularly elected and powerful presidency with a prime minister heading a cabinet subject to assembly confidence. We can understand the performance of these regimes through a neo-Madisonian perspective that stresses agency relations between institutional actors. Executive and legislature as separate agents of the electorate — as in presidentialism — necessitates transactional interbranch relations. Fusion of powers — as in parliamentarism — means an executive that is hierarchically subordinated to the legislature. The dual executive of a semi-presidential system mixes a transactional executive-legislative relationship with a hierarchical one. The advantages of this perspective include allowing delineation of semi-presidentialism from other hybrids, highlighting subtypes (premier-presidential and president-parliamentary) according to variations in the locus of transactional and hierarchical institutional relationships, and predicting which observed relationships between actors derive from relatively immutable constitutional features and which from more transitory features such as partisan alignments.

The Contested Council: Conflict Dimensions of an Intergovernmental EU Institution

Abstract: Recent research has tried to uncover the political space in which the Council of Ministers of the European Union decides. Rather than the left-right conflict or a cleavage between governments with national and supranational attitudes, this article shows that a redistributive dimension, decisively shapes the interactions in this most important legislative body of the European Union. In contrast to extant studies, we employ ex ante rather than ex post preference data and rely on correspondence analysis as a means to identify the underlying dimensions of contestation. The article concludes with an empirical investigation of how enlargement will affect the emerging political space within the European Union. Our quantitative analysis suggests that the gulf between net-contributors and net-receivers will further deepen. Many experts have contended that coalition building in the Council of Ministers of the European Union is unpredictable and time-consuming (Peters and Wright, 2001, p. 160). According to this adage, member states do not build permanent alliances, but common interests on individual issues bind them together (Nugent, 1999, p. 474). The secrecy surrounding the negotiations, decisions and protocols has prevented the public from establishing whether this interpretation of casual coalition building is accurate (see Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 1997). The lack of reliable data has made it nearly impossible to study the preference and coalition structure within this core intergovernmental body of the European Union. The data set ‘Decision-Making in the European Union’ (DEU) (Thomson et al., forthcoming) enables us to identify the negotiation positions of the member states and the conflict structure within the Council. This article makes use of this unique resource and attempts to reduce the conflict space to a few dimensions that reveal the most important cleavages. Our results largely confirm the findings of Mattila and Lane (2001), Mattila (2004) and Thomson et al. (2004) who have pinpointed the north-south dimension as the main line of contestation within the European Union. However, we qualify these results and offer some substantial and methodological innovations to the emerging literature on the European political space (Marks and Steenbergen, 2004). First, although some conflict dimensions that we identified cannot be interpreted that easily, some recurrent patterns of contestation do exist in the intergovernmental council. Our calculations reveal more structure in the interactions of the member states than the similar recent inquiries by Selck (2004) and Thomson et al. (2004) did. Second, our results suggest that the north-south division encompasses various sub-dimensions, the most important of which being the conflict between net-receivers and net-contributors to the EU

Holding governments accountable in European affairs: Explaining cross-national variation*

Abstract: What factors explain cross-national variation in the level of parliamentary scrutiny of governments in European affairs? Using the fuzzy-set method developed by Charles C. Ragin, this article investigates the impact of five variables – the power of parliament independent of integration, public opinion on membership, party positions on integration, frequency of minority governments and political culture – identified in previous literature as relevant in explaining variation in the level of control. The strength of the parliament emerges as the only necessary cause in producing tighter scrutiny, while the combination of a powerful legislature and a more Euro-sceptical public opinion is sufficient in bringing about higher levels of control over the government. The final section summarises the main findings and concludes with a critical discussion on both the data and the validity of cross-national explanations, particularly in light of the recent enlargement of the Union. *An earlier version of this article ...

THEORIZING THE EUROPEAN UNION: International Organization, Domestic Polity, or Experiment in New Governance?

Abstract: ▪ Abstract The study of the European Union (EU) has been transformed during the past decade, and three distinct theoretical approaches have emerged. The first approach, which seeks to explain the process of European integration, has largely abandoned the long-standing neofunctionalist-intergovernmentalist debate in favor of a rationalist-constructivist debate reflecting broader developments in international relations theory. A second approach, however, has rejected the application of international relations theory in favor of comparative politics approaches which analyze the EU using off-the-shelf models of legislative, executive, and judicial politics in domestic politics. A third and final approach sees the EU as an emerging system of multi-level governance in which national governments are losing influence in favor of supranational and subnational actors, raising important normative questions about the future of democracy within the EU.

Political institutions and conservation by local governments

Abstract: In this article, the authors develop a political market framework to explain the circumstances under which Florida counties will supply environmental public goods in the form of conservation amendments to county general plans. The framework emphasizes the role of local legislative and executive institutions as mediators of local policy change. Using count models and interaction terms, the analysis shows how the strength of real estate interests constrains the ability of professional county managers to pursue conservation policies. The findings reinforce the importance of developing theories of urban politics in which local political institutions are not transparent.

The Third Force? Independent Regulatory Agencies and Elected Politicians in Europe

Abstract: Governments and legislatures in Europe have created or greatly strengthened independent regulatory agencies (IRAs). Yet they also retain many formal controls over those agencies. The article analyzes whether elected politicians have used their powers to create IRAs in their own image and kept IRAs under tight control or whether they have allowed IRAs to become a distinct set of actors, hence a "third force" in regulation. Principal–agent (PA) theories, largely based on U.S. experience, emphasize the importance of certain formal controls for elected politicians to limit "agency losses." However, an analysis of four European nations between 1990 and 2001 shows that elected politicians did not use their powers to appoint party politicians, force the early departures of IRA members, reverse IRA decisions, or reduce IRA budgets and powers. Using PA theory, two interpretations of this apparent puzzle are offered, each with differing implications for agency autonomy. One is that elected politicians used alternative methods of control, hence they suffered low "agency losses" and IRAs in practice had little autonomy. The other is that elected politicians found that the benefits of IRA autonomy in practice and the costs of applying their formal control outweighed agency losses, and hence accepted agency autonomy.

Issue Politics in Congress

Abstract: Do representatives and senators respond to the critiques raised by their challengers? This study, one of the first to explore how legislators' experiences as candidates shape their subsequent behavior as policy makers, demonstrates that they do. Winning legislators regularly take up their challengers' priority issues from the last campaign and act on them in office, a phenomenon called 'issue uptake'. This attentiveness to their challengers' issues reflects a widespread and systematic yet largely unrecognized mode of responsiveness in the US Congress, but it is one with important benefits for the legislators who undertake it and for the health and legitimacy of the representative process. This book provides fresh insight into questions regarding the electoral connection in legislative behavior, the role of campaigns and elections, and the nature and quality of congressional representation.

Party Government in Presidential Democracies: Extending Cartel Theory Beyond the U.S. Congress

Abstract: Cartel Theory (and partisan theory more generally) expertly explains the functioning of the U.S. Congress. However, as a theory originally developed to study a single legislature where the institutional context differs greatly from that found in other presidential democracies, its applicability to these democracies has been questioned. Between one extreme represented by the United States (where legislators control their own political future) and the other represented by centralized party systems (where the national party leadership controls legislators' future) exists an intermediate group of democracies where subparty bosses are the key actors, controlling the future of subsets of a party's legislative delegation. We analyze one of these intermediate democracies, Argentina, and demonstrate the general applicability of Cartel Theory to an institutional context that differs notably from that found in the United States. We highlight how the theory can be adapted to a political system where subparty bosses, not individual legislators, are the most relevant political actors.

The Efficient Secret

Abstract: The Efficient Secret is an analysis of the institutional changes in parliamentary government in nineteenth-century England, concentrating on the years between the first and third Reform Acts. Professor Gary W. Cox employs a rational choice model to analyze the problems of voter choice and to examine the emergence of party loyalty in the electorate, the development of cabinet government, and their legislative consequences. The introductory chapters provide the historical setting for this study and briefly survey nineteenth-century political and economic events. Professor Cox then focuses on the increases in party voting in Parliament and in the electorate. To support his argument concerning these parallel developments, he uses statistical evidence drawn from poll books and newspapers.

Party Switching in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1996–2001

Abstract: Almost one-fourth of the members of the lower house in Italy, the Chamber of Deputies, switched parties at least once between 1996 and 2001. Why would a legislator abandon one party and enter another during a legislative term? Starting from the basic assumption that politicians are ambitious, we examine electoral and partisan motivations for members of parliament (MPs) who switch parties. We conclude that party switching most likely is motivated by party labels that provide little information about policy goals and that pit copartisans against each other in the effort to serve constituent needs. Switching is especially frequent when ambitious politicians operate under heightened uncertainty.

101 Chambers: Congress, State Legislatures, and the Future of Legislative Studies

Abstract: A powder coating booth comprising a pair of identical polycarbonate shells disposed opposite each other to define a coating chamber having smooth, curvilinear internal surfaces to facilitate the recovery and recycle of excess coating powder. Narrowed down end openings are provided to help confine the excess powder. A thermoplastic material such as polyvinyl carbonate or polycarbonate is formed in a large thermoforming machine with vacuum and pressure to fabricate the components of the coating chamber, which may be up to ten feet wide, ten feet tall, and thirty feet long or longer.

In Search of the Holy Grail: Policy Convergence, Experimentation, and Economic Performance

Abstract: We consider a model of policy choice in which appropriate policies depend on a country’’s own circumstances, but the presence of a successful leader generates an informational externality and results in too little ““policy experimentation.”” Corrupt governments are reined in while honest governments are disciplined inefficiently. Our model yields distinct predictions about the patterns of policy imitation, corruption, and economic performance as a function of a country’’s location vis-aa-vis successful leaders. In particular, it predicts a U-shaped pattern in economic performance as we move away from the leader in the relevant space of characteristics: close neighbors should do very well, distant countries moderately well on average with considerable variance, and intermediate countries worst of all. An empirical test with the experience of post-socialist countries provides supportive results.

The Pursuit of Political Control by Multiple Principals

Abstract: I examine how the legislature and the president sequentially enable and constrain agencies in a tug-of-war over the exercise of bureaucratic discretion, partly in response to past political interventions. I provide evidence from a duration analysis of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement of hazard waste law for the acceleration and deceleration of policy implementation in response to sequential interventions by multiple, competing principals. I document the use of agenda-setting and solution-forcing statutes by Congress and case clearance mechanisms by the president. Sequenced political control means that agencies face shifting political expectations, caused in part by how the agency responds to past control attempts. While previous empirical research has portrayed a largely static world in which Congress and the president have influence, this study reveals a dynamic portrayal in which there is move and countermove from these principals.

Regional grants as pork barrel politics

Abstract: We investigate the political and economic factors influencing the allocation of regional development grants for a panel of Canadian electoral districts in the 1988-2001 period. In a strong party system such as Canada’s, models of political competition predict little role for individual legislators, as party leaders allocate resources to maximize party success. While spending is targeted toward some “swing” districts, we do also find it is higher in districts represented by members of the government party, especially those in the federal Cabinet, and those of lower seniority. We develop a model featuring bargaining over legislative and non-legislative favours that is consistent with the evidence.

Political and Judicial Checks on Corruption: Evidence from American State Governments

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of checks and balances on corruption. Within a presidential system, effective separation of powers is achieved under a divided government, with the executive and legislative branches being controlled by different political parties. When government is unified, no effective separation exists even within a presidential system, but, we argue, can be partially restored by having an accountable judiciary. Our empirical findings show that a divided government and elected, rather than appointed, state supreme court judges are associated with lower corruption and, furthermore, that the effect of an accountable judiciary is stronger under a unified government, where the government cannot control itself.

The Role of Parliamentary Committees in Coalition Governments Keeping Tabs on Coalition Partners in the German Bundestag

Abstract: The coexistence of strong parties and strong committees in the U.S. Congress has been interpreted in a principal-agent framework with committees regarded as agents of the congressional parties. In a parliamentary system having coalition governments, the coexistence of strong parties and strong committees has a comparable rationale. With data during a 40-year period, the authors showthat the coalition parties in the German parliament distribute committee chair positions so that coalition parties can monitor each other’s cabinet ministers. Such monitoring is an alternative at the legislative level to intracoalition monitoring through the use of junior ministers at the executive level and is a means of enforcing coalition treaties.

Legislation and Maintenance of Public Order and Civil Life by Occupying Powers

Abstract: Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations is a key provision of the law of belligerent occupation. This essay examines how it has been understood by states and scholars, how it was developed by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and whether and how it was respected by the US and the UK during their recent occupation of Iraq. Under Article 43, an occupying power must restore and maintain public order and civil life, including public welfare, in an occupied territory. Local legislation and institutions based upon such legislation must be respected by an occupying power and by any local authorities acting under the global control of the occupying power. This general prohibition to change the local legislation also applies to post-conflict reconstruction efforts, including constitutional reforms, and changes of economic and social policies. The author examines the exceptions to the prohibition and assesses whether the widespread legislative activities by the occupying powers in Iraq fall under these exceptions. He then analyses the question of whether the law of military occupation ceased to apply in Iraq on 30 June 2004. It is also suggested that Article 43 applies to some peace operations and provides a useful framework even for those peace operations to which it does not formally apply.