We analyze the relation between (horizontal) fairness in the local property tax and municipal tax policy in the 308 Flemish municipalities in 2012. The local property tax is levied on the property’s assessed rental value, and its unfairness is a by-product of the slow reassessment procedure – such that properties of identical value are being taxed (very) differently. Using data for housing sales, we create an indicator for the unfairness of the local property tax. We find clear evidence that this unfairness affects political decision-making: municipalities in which property taxation is more unfair tend to rely systematically less on this tax as a source of municipal revenue. Instead these local governments tend to generate revenue through local income taxation.

In the current multilateral trade regime, members often negotiate under the shadow of WTO law. In this article, we develop an explanation of how the legal vulnerability of members’ domestic policies affects ongoing multilateral negotiations in the trade regime. First, we show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, increased enforcement does not necessarily make actors shy away from further cooperation. Legal vulnerability can ignite a positive dynamic of cooperation because it can increase the set of feasible agreements of WTO members. In a second stage, we set out how the nature of the issue at stake, i.e. whether it can be easily disaggregated into negotiable units, affects whether this positive dynamics of cooperation takes place. We illustrate the plausibility of the argument by way of four in-depth case studies of how potential (or actual) defendants and potential (or actual) complainants in WTO disputes responded to the incentives brought about by legal vulnerability and negotiated in the Doha round.

Federal systems are characterised by compound and complex forms of democratic representation. The federal level addresses citizens both as members of the federal polity and as members of a constituent unit. This paper takes into account the existence of these multiple public identities of federal citizens by systematically comparing the degree of subfederal representation in 13 federal systems with QCA. The analysis shows that, apart from the EU, also traditional federal systems have a high degree of subfederal representation. Additionally, the paper looks in which kinds of federal systems we observe this. It shows that a heterogeneous society combined with low national pride or high economic diversity is sufficient to observe a high degree of subfederal representation. From there on conclusions are drawn on the EU and the Low Countries.