How the European Union does not work: national bargaining success in the Council of Ministers

We know surprisingly little about whether the content of European Union legislation reflects the preferences of some Member States more than others. The few studies that have examined national bargaining success rates for EU legislation have conceptual and methodological weaknesses. To redress these problems I use a salience-weighted measure to gauge the relative success of Member States in translating their national preferences into legislation, and test two plausible, competing hypotheses about how the EU works: that no state consistently achieves more of what it really wants than any other, and that large Member States tend to beat small ones. Neither hypothesis receives empirical support. Not only do states differ far more significantly in their respective levels of bargaining success than previously recognised, but some of the smaller states are the ones that do especially well. The paper‟s main contribution -- demonstrating that the EU does not work as most people think it does -- sets the stage for new research questions, both positive and normative. In the last section I make a tentative start answering two of the most important: which factors explain the surprising empirical results, and whether differential national bargaining success might undermine the legitimacy of the integration process.

Analytical functions for the ground state potential surfaces of C3 (X 1 Σ g+) and HCN (X 1 Σ +)

Analytic functions have been obtained to represent the potential energy surfaces of C3 and HCN in their ground electronic states. These functions closely reproduce the available data on the energy, geometry, and force constants in all stable conformations, as well as data on the various dissociation products, and ab initio calculations of the energy at other conformations. The form of the resulting surfaces are portrayed in various ways and discussed briefly.

Full-dimensional quantum calculations of ground-state tunneling splitting of malonaldehyde using an accurate ab initio potential energy surface

Quantum calculations of the ground vibrational state tunneling splitting of H-atom and D-atom transfer in malonaldehyde are performed on a full-dimensional ab initio potential energy surface (PES). The PES is a fit to 11 147 near basis-set-limit frozen-core CCSD(T) electronic energies. This surface properly describes the invariance of the potential with respect to all permutations of identical atoms. The saddle-point barrier for the H-atom transfer on the PES is 4.1 kcal/mol, in excellent agreement with the reported ab initio value. Model one-dimensional and "exact" full-dimensional calculations of the splitting for H- and D-atom transfer are done using this PES. The tunneling splittings in full dimensionality are calculated using the unbiased "fixed-node" diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) method in Cartesian and saddle-point normal coordinates. The ground-state tunneling splitting is found to be 21.6 cm(-1) in Cartesian coordinates and 22.6 cm(-1) in normal coordinates, with an uncertainty of 2-3 cm(-1). This splitting is also calculated based on a model which makes use of the exact single-well zero-point energy (ZPE) obtained with the MULTIMODE code and DMC ZPE and this calculation gives a tunneling splitting of 21-22 cm(-1). The corresponding computed splittings for the D-atom transfer are 3.0, 3.1, and 2-3 cm(-1). These calculated tunneling splittings agree with each other to within less than the standard uncertainties obtained with the DMC method used, which are between 2 and 3 cm(-1), and agree well with the experimental values of 21.6 and 2.9 cm(-1) for the H and D transfer, respectively. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Cheap dates and the delusion of gratification: are votes sold or traded in the EU Council of Ministers?

Each year, small Member States receive a disproportionate share of the European Union's (EU's) budget. A prominent explanation for this is that Council decision-making involves a healthy dose of vote selling, whereby large Member States offer small states generous fiscal transfers in exchange for influence over policy. But nobody has investigated whether net budget contributors actually get anything for their money. In this paper I identify the vote selling model's observable implications and find virtually no evidence consistent with Council cash-for-votes exchanges. I also show that a compromise model – the leading model of EU decision-making to date – modified to incorporate vote selling does not outperform a standard one that assumes votes are traded rather than sold. Taken together, the results suggest that Council decision-making operates with little or no vote selling, and that regardless of whatever they think they might be buying, net budget contributors get little or nothing in return for their money. These findings call for further investigation into how Member States approach the issue of fiscal transfers, and into the factors other than formal voting weight that affect the power of actors engaged in EU decision-making.

Land administration in a micro-state: the role of land use planning

Land policy in micro-states and the land administration that underpins it is often devised within a legacy framework inherited from a colonial past. Independence has allowed self-determination of the future political direction yet the range, legal framework, institutional structure and administration systems tend to mirror those of ex-colonial powers. Do land policies, administration systems and processes developed to serve large heavily populated countries scale down to serve the requirements of micro-states? The evidence suggests not: many land administration systems in the Caribbean face difficulties due to poor records, unclear title, exploitation of state lands, incomplete or ongoing land reform programmes, irregular or illegal settlement and non-enforced planning regulations. Land matters are typically the responsibility of several government departments and agencies responsible for land titling and registration, cadastral surveying of property interests, physical planning, taxation and financial regulation. Although planning is regarded as a land administration function, organisational responsibility usually rests with local rather than central government in large countries, but in microstates local government may be politically weak, under-resourced or even non-existent. Using a case study approach this paper explores how planning functions are organised in the Caribbean state of St Vincent & the Grenadines in relation to land administration as a whole and compares the arrangement with other independent micro-states in the region.

A rare case of solution and solid state inter-conversion of two copper(II) dimers and a copper(II) chain

Three Cu(II)-azido complexes of formula [Cu2L2(N-3)(2)] (1), [Cu2L2(N-3)(2)]center dot H2O (2) and [CuL(N-3)](n) (3) have been synthesized using the same tridentate Schiff base ligand HL (2-[(3-methylaminopropylimino)-methyl]-phenol), the condensation product of N-methyl-1,3-propanediamine and salicyldehyde). Compounds 1 and 2 are basal-apical mu-1,1 double azido bridged dimers. The dimeric structure of 1 is centro-symmetric but that of 2 is non-centrommetric. Compound 3 is a mu-1,1 single azido bridged 1D chain. The three complexes interconvert in solution and can be obtained in pure form by carefully controlling the synthetic conditions. Compound 2 undergoes an irreversible transformation to 1 upon dehydration in the solid state. The magnetic properties of compounds 1 and 2 show the presence of weak antiferromagnetic exchange interactions mediated by the double 1,1-N-3 azido bridges (J = -2.59(4) and -0.10(1) cm-(1), respectively). The single 1,1-N-3 bridge in compound 3 mediates a negligible exchange interaction.