aquiescencia

El séptimo seminario sobre Derecho Administrativo Global será en Viterbo, Italia, del 10 al 11 de junio de 2011. El tema es “Private and Public-Private Global Regulation: Global Administrative Law Dimensions” y este es el call for papers:

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE GLOBAL REGULATION:

GLOBAL ADMINISTRATIVE LAW DIMENSIONS

1. Overview

In recent decades, the development of the market economy, the general retrenchment of public funds and resources, and growing doubts about the ability of public administrations to respond to complex and multilayered public needs have contributed to two trends. First, State and local governments have sought alternative ways to provide services by contracting out to private actors, triggering the development of hybrid public-private forms of organizing and carrying out public functions. Second, the State has increasingly opened up rule-making functions to private and public-private entities, both to gain access to expertise not present within traditional public bodies, and in recognition of the significant involvement of private actors in particular sectors.

The traditional dichotomy of public and private bodies is breaking down at the global level as well. In many regimes, the organizational framework for addressing global issues has been enriched by public-private partnerships and mechanisms. There are also cases in which fully private entities play a dominant role in regulating global issues (such as credit- rating agencies in standard-setting).

The greater flexibility of rule-making by private or hybrid entities, and the associated ability to deploy highly specialized expertise, and enable direct participation of affected parties, have contributed to a perception that production of rules and regulations by these entities is more efficient and effective than rule-making by public bodies. However, the direct or indirect delegation of administrative rule-making to private or hybrid entities may be open to criticism on both procedural and substantive grounds. How are these entities legitimate? To whom and in which ways are they accountable for their exercise of power? Are their rule- making procedures sufficient to safeguard participatory rights, and guarantee proper representation of the interests at stake? Might ‘privatization’ of the rule-making function erode fundamental public law values, human rights norms, social values or democratic requirements? Do the final regulatory products correspond to the needs for which they were conceived? If the involvement of hybrid entities blurs the lines between public and private authority, rather than producing a clear bifurcation of responsibilities, how is the exercise of power by different actors regulated? To what extent does competition between different bodies in standard setting and other functions provide alternative incentives and mechanisms for accountability?

The complexity of public-private dynamics is increased by the interplay between various levels of governance. Private bodies can be global and yet produce rules applicable to the national sphere, but can also be national bodies, and produce regulations of global relevance and application. How are issues related to the interaction between public and private complicated by this interplay between national and supranational realms?

From the Global Administrative Law perspective, different questions might be raised: What are the legal framework regulating these private and hybrid entities and mechanisms? How does public and private regulation affect transparency and accountability? What kinds of oversight mechanisms are provided? Which operational issues create most difficulties in the relationships between public and private actors?

The 7th Viterbo GAL Seminar will provide an opportunity to present advanced research projects on private and hybrid regulation through a global administrative law perspective. In particular, applicants are encouraged to submit research projects concerning institutional or procedural aspects of the involvement of private or hybrid bodies in regulatory matters. The institutional dimensions of this phenomenon are particularly prominent in sectors such as the environment, cultural heritage, finance, public health, the Internet, or sports. Other examples include specific global institutions created to assist developing countries, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Global Environment Facility, or the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Procedural dimensions may arise in these sectors but also in other fields in which private actors play a significant role in rule-making (for example through participation, consultation or, as in the case of nuclear energy, specific agreements), or in instances where private actors (such as the International Organization for Standardization) adopt standards of global relevance. Applicants may take a case study approach or present a more comprehensive or cross-cutting analysis. An interdisciplinary exchange is welcomed, and papers may also draw on historical, economic and/or international relations scholarship to complement the global administrative law perspective.

Rome, October 25, 2010

2. Provisional program and next seminar

The seminar will be held in Viterbo (Italy), at the Tuscia University, on June 10-11, 2011. The Seminar Steering Committee includes Giulio Vesperini, Stefano Battini, Edoardo Chiti, Mario Savino, and Lorenzo Casini.The Seminar Organizing Team is made of Giulia Bertezzolo, Eleonora Cavalieri, and Elisabetta Morlino.

The selected papers will constitute the basis for a thorough and wide-ranging discussion on the legal questions raised. As has been the case since the first GAL seminar in 2005, the best papers presented will be published in leading legal reviews and journals.

The overall aim of the Seminars is not only to assess the consistency of the analytic categories adopted to date, but also to develop more effective and forward-looking tools and technologies of global governance. To this end, legal counsel and leading practitioners will also participate in the seminar and act as discussants or commentators, together with leading academics in the field.

In accordance with this aim of examining – and improving the effectiveness of –instruments of global governance, the theme of the 8th GAL Seminar (June 2012) will be “Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance”. The call for papers will be published at the beginning of 2011. In the meantime, information about this highly significant and emerging issue is available at http://www.iilj.org/research/IndicatorsProject.asp.

3. Call for papers

Submissions from both junior and senior scholars are invited on the themes outlined above. An abstract of 150-500 words should be sent (in .pdf or .doc format) to ViterboGalSeminar@gmail.com by January 5, 2011. Abstracts must include a statement of the issue area of the paper, as well as an indication of the major arguments to be made, a proposed title, and postal, email and telephone contacts for the author.

A selection panel will consider all abstracts received by the submission deadline, and notify applicants of paper acceptance by January 31, 2011. The submission date for full papers accepted for presentation is May 10, 2011. The final version of the paper must be no longer than 8,000 words (footnotes included) and must be sent (in .pdf or .doc format) to ViterboGalSeminar@gmail.com.

For any further information please contact: ViterboGalSeminar@gmail.com.

Call for Papers – 1st HEC Paris Workshop on Regulation

Emergency Regulation under the Threat of a Catastrophe:
A Hard Look at the Volcanic Ash Crisis

The recent Iceland volcanic ash crisis epitomizes the general problem of emergency response in a world of uncertain manufactured and natural risks. A cloud of volcanic ash preventing traveling across an entire continent probably did not feature in the risk-management scenarios of many firms. No surprise that the immediate and drastic regulatory response which followed soon became an uneven political dispute between industry economic power and regulatory science, with consumers caught in the middle. Regulatory systems designed for careful deliberation and cooperative action had to respond almost instantly to a barrage of data arguments and conflicting legal interpretations, with threats of litigation on one side and the risk of loss of human life on the other.

Overview

The ash crisis is not the first or the only such problem to have occurred. It is one of a series of recent real or potential catastrophes – natural disasters, terrorism, pandemics – that have taken by surprise globalized firms and partly regulators. As such it represents a rich case study in the problem of emergency regulation and the questions that it raises should concern a wide variety of scholars, regulators and industry analysts whose normal areas of concern are far removed from aviation and volcanoes. Any industry could have a problem which involves the same rapid, fragmented and multilayered regulatory response. Some industries may even have problems or situations which are even more complex than the ash crisis, but it makes a good starting point for conceptual analysis of the problem. According to many, the volcanic eruption will serve as a wake-up call for both companies and regulators that need to modernize their risk management approaches aimed at avert disasters or mitigating their full effects.

How to respond to such emergency problems is a major source of complexities in risk analysis and regulatory decision-taking. Who is competent to conduct the assessment of the hazard? How long does it take? Who is competent to take risk management decisions? Who has the final word on the quality of the safety analysis? Does industry ignore the problem until it finally occurs? How accurate are estimates of costs and benefits? Which risks are insurable? Do regulators tend to overact? What if they do? To what extent do they manage a politically perceived risk rather than the actual one? What are the implications of different schools of technical thought which must be resolved by the regulator? How and by whom should risks be communicated? Which are the consequences stemming from bad emergency regulations adopted in high stress environment? In particular for the EU what are the specific characteristics of EU regulation that make problem easier or harder to solve?

At a time when the impact of the volcanic ash cloud crisis is being closely scrutinized by both public authorities and the affected industries, we propose a workshop with selected speakers and discussants that will retrospectively look at what happened during the worst aviation crisis in European history, and proactively suggest how the lessons learned can affect other regulatory systems which might be faced with similar crises.

This workshop will provide scholars (Phd students, post-docs, researchers and established professors), industry representatives (IATA, CANSO, AEA, ELFAA), policy-makers (EUROCONTROL, EU Commission, National authorities), and scientists (WMO, VAACs) the chance to address some of these hard questions. A group of discussants will provide feedback for authors during their oral presentations. The workshop will conceptualize the response to the volcanic as problem and use that problem as a case in point to explore the general problem of emergency response in an environment where the lines between manufactured and natural risks are increasingly blurred.

Examples of Critical Questions for Participants

• The role of science and technology in supporting both risk assessment and decision
• The institutional design and capability of the regulatory system to integrate this information in real time
• The capability and strategies of the regulatory system to communicate this information to the different stakeholders (industry, consumers, etc) in real time
• The role of various stakeholders in the system and how their legitimate interests are accommodated

Participants are requested to focus either on the ash crisis itself (a) or on the general lessons to be learned (b). An approach which combines both (a) and (b) would be preferred.

(a) Papers in the ash crisis area might include:

• The link between aviation/air traffic management and sovereignty
• Risk analysis in air transport
• The institutional dimension of EU aviation management and comparative analysis
• The development of a new EU methodology for safety risk assessment and risk management in relation to the closure and reopening of the airspace
• The ongoing revision of ICAO Volcanic Ash Guidance Material
• The future of EU aviation management after SES II (Regulation 1070/2009)
  • Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs)
  • Permanent crisis coordination cell
  • Central EU network management
  • EASA’s competence in Air Traffic Management (ATM)
• The international framework of civil aviation safety (ICAO, EASA, US FAA, etc)
• The impact of the volcanic ash crisis on several EU legislative frameworks
  • Passenger rights regulation (Regulation 261/2004)
  • EU Package Travel Directive
  • Emission Trading Scheme (Directive 2008/101)
  • Slots regulation (Regulation 95/93)
  • State Aids (107.2b of TFEU)

(b) Papers in the generalized area might include:

• Risk analytical techniques that promise real time data useable for a regulator
• Role of industry risk planning and insurance
• Risk communication under the threat of a catastrophe
• Conceptual problems not captured in the volcanic ash case study e.g. the role of individual consumer action or variation in personal susceptibility
• Special problems in regulation where key actors are not included in the traditional regulatory process

Organisers

Alberto Alemanno, Associate Professor of Law at HEC Paris and Editor of the European Journal of Risk Regulation
Vincent Brannigan, Professor Emeritus, A. James Clark School Engineering, University of Maryland, USA

Event

The focus is a two day workshop at HEC Paris, to be held on 10-11 November 2010. There will be no cost for presenters to attend the workshop. Both their accommodation and reasonable traveling costs will be covered.

Outcomes

A selection of the papers presented at the workshop will be refereed and edited for appearance as a symposium in the European Journal of Risk Regulation (EJRR) 2011. An edited volume comprising all the presented papers with a well regarded law publisher is also planned.

Proposal Submission

Procedure
Proposals, including a title and 300-word abstract are due 15 September 2010. Send proposals to:
Alberto Alemanno alemanno@hec.fr and Vincent Brannigan firelaw@firelaw.us

Felicitaciones a Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky (su contribución a aquiescencia aquí) por haber creado la Maestría en Derecho Administrativo Global en la Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, Argentina. Se trata de un programa magnífico y vanguardista (no conozco otros programas similares en España o en Latinoamérica), con unos contenidos muy cuidados y grandes profesores, entre los que quiero nombrar a mis admirados amigos Roberto Gargarella y Marcelo Alegre. Ya está abierta la inscripción para el curso que comienza en 2010. Le deseamos un gran éxito, y que dure mucho.