The importance of political parties for contemporary representative democracies is beyond dispute. Despite their significance for state-level democracy, political parties continue to be regarded as oligarchical and to be criticised because of their internal practices. For this reason, intra-party democracy (IPD) warrants in-depth analysis. This thesis investigates IPD in Turkey, primarily from the perspective of participatory democracy, with the purpose of suggesting reforms to the Turkish Political Parties Law (TPPL). Turkish political parties and Turkish party regulation provide an interesting case because there is a significant difference between mature democracies and Turkey regarding IPD regulation. IPD in established democracies has always been regarded as a private concern of parties and has been left unregulated. IPD in Turkey, by contrast, is provided for both by the constitution and the TPPL. Although IPD is a constitutional and legal requirement in Turkey, however, political parties in fact display a high level of non-democratic administration. The main reason is that the TPPL only pays lip service to the idea of IPD and requires no specific measures apart from establishing a party congress with a representative form of democracy. By establishing and holding party congresses, political parties are perceived as conforming to the requirements of IPD under the law. In addition, the contested nature of democracy as a concept has impeded the creation of efficacious legal principles. Thus, the existing party law fails to tackle the lack of IPD within political parties and, for this reason, is in need of reform. Furthermore, almost every Turkish party’s own constitution highlights the importance of IPD and promises IPD. However, these declared commitments to IPD in their constitutions alone, especially in countries where the democratic culture is weak, are unlikely to make much difference in practice. Accordingly, external regulation is necessary to ensure the protection of the rights and interests of the party members with regards to their participation in intra-party decision-making processes. Nevertheless, in spite of a general consensus in favour of reforming the TPPL, a lack of consensus exists as to what kind of reforms should be adopted. This thesis proposes that reforming the TPPL in line with an approach based on participatory democracy could provide better IPD within Turkish political parties, citing as evidence comparative case studies of the participatory practices for policy-making, leadership selection and candidate selection in mature democracies. This thesis also analyses membership registration and the effect of state funding on IPD, which are highly problematic in Turkey and represent impediments to the flourishing of IPD.

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Widely regarded as the first bourgeois Prime Minister of Greece, Eleutherios Venizelos, during his first tenure of office as Prime Minister in 1910-1912, is considered by many to have laid the foundations for the bourgeois modernisation of Greece. The parliamentary work conducted during this period has been highly praised, even by his adversaries and critics. This era is usually referred to as anorthosis (recovery) in the historiography of the period, and it is a common belief that because of anorthosis Greece experienced an unprecedented period of good governance and administration. However, except in the field of foreign policy, no substantial detailed research has been conducted into the political narrative of this crucial period in the transformation of Greece as a country. This thesis examines one critical part of Venizelos’ public policy programme, namely the public law legislation that provided the backbone of anorthosis. The aim of the thesis is to consider whether this wide-ranging legislative programme of reform provided the foundations for the country’s bourgeois modernisation. The research for the thesis analyses the intentions, content, and effects of the new laws dealing mainly with the amendment of the Constitution, the municipalities’ law reform and the so-called fiscal reform. A testimony to the quality and durable nature of this raft of reforming public legislation lies in the fact that many articles of the Constitution as then established are still standing and the municipality’s law introduced remained in force until 1997. The thesis also analyses the extent of Venizelos’ personal contribution to the formulation and passage of the public law legislation, particularly in the context of the inter-related political issues of day and his working relationships with the Opposition and with the Crown. Though anorthosis was not a one-man-show but the result of venizelism (Venizelos’ party ideology), the research undertaken for this thesis indicates that Venizelos was by far the most important and influential figure. The analysis reveals the nature and extent of his contribution to the reforming programme of public legislation, and includes a detailed study of his parliamentary speeches (as recorded in the Gazette of the Parliament’s Debates), and of contemporary press reports and the writings and speeches of other politicians of the day.

The United States (US) Constitution’s Eighth Amendment includes a restriction on cruel and unusual punishments. Over the past fifty years the punishments clause has been developed by the US Supreme Court through its ‘evolving standards of decency’ (ESD) jurisprudence, restricting the range and application of lawful capital and non-capital penalties. Although the punishments clause has been evolved in the capital sphere such that the American death penalty is reaching a vanishing point, the Court has neglected to apply similar scrutiny in the non-capital setting, especially with respect to conditions of imprisonment. By undertaking an examination of the Eighth Amendment, a theoretical framework is developed in order to understand how the ESD principle has been applied, and to examine how a future constitutional challenge to disproportionate confinement conditions might materialise. This thesis contends that modern solitary confinement represents a recession of constitutional protection. It is argued that principles of morality underlying the Eighth Amendment create a bar to this severely disproportionate, under-reviewed, and often under-reported punishment. In reaching such a conclusion, Dworkin’s theory of interpretivism is applied to solitary confinement in a novel way. An interpretivist understands morality to have been an undercurrent in the drafting, adoption, application and, therefore, future interpretation of the Constitution. Moral principles trump majoritarian policies, and such an approach compels a curtailment of extreme solitary confinement under the Eighth Amendment’s ESD principle. Sources of morality relied on to reach such a conclusion are derived from the community and include traditional consensus, which is state counting, in addition to other elements selected for analysis due to their regular citation in Eighth Amendment decisions: public opinion, penological principles, transnational perspectives, and professional consensus. As a result, an original contribution is also made to the medico-legal literature, which has traditionally fixated on the psychiatric implications of confinement. Wider implications will extend to other areas of academic commentary, including professional consensus literature, and transnational law.

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This thesis examines rights of the dead, a subject on which there has been little previous research. Three predominant themes are explored in our endeavour, contrary to current philosophical and legal discourse, to argue for "rights of the dead". First, we utilise several approaches to both clarify the interests of the dead and then the argument for rights of the dead, rights which are in any case immanent in contemporary human rights and other established general rights, e.g., a right to succession. We argue that the dead have an interest and, in limited cases, for example defamation of the dead, rights can be ascribed to the dead. Second, in the process of examining the first theme, we analyse the arguments for and against whether interests of or rights of the dead can be justified and identify which current legal systems they are imbedded in. Comparing the situation involved by the living with that by the dead, we attempt to establish a new perspective of rights of the dead based upon the "social characteristics" . Third, we attempt to interpret rights of the dead from a point of view based upon the duties that the living are purported to hold with respect to the dead. Whilst we present a view which supports some previously under-valued perspectives of rights and duties, we moreover seek the possibility of establishing rights of the dead on the basis of these duties. We do not argue that all rights the living hold are applicable to the dead. We merely maintain that there are some rights which can be ascribed to the dead, rights which are particular to the dead because of the succession of the dead person to some of the social characteristics they held whilst they were living.

Das deutsche Vergaberecht unterliegt seit vielen Jahrzehnten einer klassischen Zweiteilung. Abhängig vom Wert des zu vergebenden öffentlichen Auftrags finden entweder die unionsrechtlich geprägten Vorschriften des Gesetzes gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen (GWB) oder aber das klassische deutsche Haushaltsrecht Anwendung. Nur oberhalb der sog. EU-Schwellenwerte im Anwendungsbereich des GWB kann ein unterlegener Bieter die Verletzung von Verfahrensvorschriften im Rahmen eines Nachprüfungsverfahrens vor den Vergabekammern geltend machen. Unterhalb der Schwellenwerte bleibt dagegen meist kein Raum für effektiven Rechtsschutz. Die Autorin hat die vergaberechtliche Zweiteilung zum Anlass genommen, zunächst die Defizite des gegenwärtigen Rechtsschutzsystems zu beleuchten. Rechtsvergleichend wird dann der Blick auf das österreichische Vergaberecht gerichtet, um Erkenntnisse für eine mögliche Reform des deutschen Rechts zu gewinnen. Auf dieser Grundlage werden schließlich zwei konkrete Gesetzgebungsvorschläge unterbreitet, die entweder eine Überarbeitung und Ergänzung der bestehenden Vorschriften oder die Neuschaffung eines Vergabegesetzbuches vorsehen. / The German public procurement regime above the EU thresholds is mainly determined by federal law. Particularly important is Part IV of the Act Against Restraints of Competition (Gesetz gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen – GWB) which provides fundamental procurement principles, subjective rights for bidders and thus full legal protection. However, below the EU thresholds Part IV of the GWB does not apply. Instead, public procurement is regulated mainly by the rules of budgetary law. Bidders can only complain to the supervising authority or file a civil claim for damages. This dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the legal framework for public procurement law and exposes the deficits of the two-stage system. It is followed by a comparative examination of the Austrian public procurement regime to draw its own conclusions for a possible reform in Germany.

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