It has been suggested that the higher the political constraints, the greater the regulation of political finance. This is because, when parties operate in highly constrained contexts with numerous veto opportunities, there is more pressure to reach a consensus on reform. While public funding tends to be a positive-sum game conducive to the inclusive policymaking of constrained systems, political finance regulation tends to be a zero-sum game that can be stymied by veto players. We test these ideas using Lieberman’s nested analysis design. First, we run a series of logistic and OLS regression models on a global dataset, using IDEA’s indicator of public party funding and the Regulation of Political Finance Indicator (RoPFI) as dependent variables, and the index of political constraints (POLCON) as the independent variable. We find a strong association between public funding and political constraints, but no association between constraints and political finance regulation more generally. These findings are resistant to numerous robustness tests. We use the regression models to inform case selection for two plausibility probes of our main arguments. Our readings of the Netherlands and Botswana support the large-N analysis and are consistent with the different role political constraints play in public funding versus political finance regulation more generally. Our research has concrete implications for reformers and those advising them, and we make numerous contributions to political finance, party systems, and veto points literature.

Why are cash waqfs administered and regulated by the state in some countries but by non-state entities in others? I present a twofold argument to explain this puzzle. First, colonial policies shaped the baseline framework for the regulation of religion, well into the postcolonial period. However, political actors in the postcolonial period then made specific choices within those regulatory frameworks, with implications for the administration and regulation of cash waqfs. In British India, legal arbitration became the primary framework for religious regulation. In postcolonial Bangladesh, successive governments politicized the bureaucracy as they prioritized survival, and so cash waqfs exist within the Islamic banking and finance sector. In British Malaya, local sultans were able to bureaucratize all aspects of Islam. The bureaucratization of Islam proceeded in a centripetal manner from the state to the federal level in postcolonial Malaysia, with the federal government taking charge of cash waqfs.

Article 5(1)(c) of the EU AI Act is widely reported as a ban on using AI systems to score individuals’ social behavior, and such ban was likely motivated, at least in some part, by European lawmakers’ concerns over the widely misrepresented dystopian scenario of China’s Social Credit System. However, as the text of the provision presents considerable interpretive uncertainties, it could potentially lead to the prohibition of scoring practices that have been commonplace and socially beneficial both before and after the advent of AI and algorithms. Alternatively, the provision can be interpreted and implemented narrowly—and perhaps must be—so that most existing and potentially implementable scoring practices are not unnecessarily affected. The European Commission’s guidelines publicized in early 2025 suggest that authorities may be leaning towards such narrow reading. A narrow reading is also necessary when one understands the role that social scoring plays in human societies. And by drawing on China’s experiences with implementing and regulating its Social Credit System (SCS), policymakers around the world may also realize that there are feasible options for regulating AI-based social scoring practices instead of insisting on an outright ban.

We stand at a curious moment in the history of law and technology. Nations around the world are scrambling to regulate or deregulate artificial intelligence, each convinced they are in a “race”—for dominance, for values, for the future itself. Brussels votes on comprehensive AI Acts. Beijing issues the world’s first copyright ruling on AI-generated content. Washington debates whether chatbots should have First Amendment rights. The underlying premise of this volume is that this framing as a zero-sum competition fundamentally misunderstands both the nature of AI and the task before us. The truth is more sobering and more hopeful: We are not racing against each other but experimenting together, trying to govern technologies that respect neither borders nor traditional legal categories. The real question is not who will “win” the AI race, but how we can learn from each other’s experiments fast enough to keep pace with systems that evolve by the microsecond. This Special Issue of the German Law Journal brings together fifteen contributions that demonstrate why comparative law has never been more essential—or more challenging. The authors span continents and legal traditions, from Beijing to Brussels, from Silicon Valley to Sydney.

It is undeniable that nongovernmental organization (NGO) beneficiaries should have their interests protected, especially when investing in and borrowing from a microfinance provider. Yet, prior literature highlights the patchy nature of beneficiary accountability when NGOs prioritize funders’ and donors’ accountability and commercialization. In this longitudinal case study on a large development microfinance NGO, multi-actor collaboration between donors, funders, and regulators to impose accountability requirements helps protect the interests of NGO beneficiaries. New institutional rules and accountability norms were developed to create dialogs between NGOs and their beneficiaries. Coercive mechanisms were established to sanction situations where beneficiary interests were not upheld in a type of surrogate accountability. Our longitudinal study integrates institutional theory and the stakeholder collaboration concept to show how donors and funders can work with government regulators to increase their effectiveness and protect beneficiaries. However, cultural issues limit full surrogate accountability.

There is little consensus on how to regulate information giving in reproductive donation – using donated gametes (eggs, sperm) to have children. Should gamete donors be anonymous or should donor-conceived individuals have access to their donor’s identity, and at what age? What information should be available about donor siblings and other donor relations? And, crucially, how should this information giving be appropriately managed and regulated? Before we can answer these questions, we need to first understand what reproductive donation is. This paper sets out options for how reproductive donation can be conceptualized and develops a typology of different approaches, by categorizing reproductive donation into two main models: the biomedical and the psychosocial. These models provide a conceptual framework, a useful heuristic, for both understanding reproductive donation and critiquing regulation and oversight. The purpose of this paper is not to take a stand on which model is optimal; this is a matter for further debate. Rather, it provides clarification of what is at stake, and this can form the basis for coherent and justifiable approaches to the oversight and regulation of reproductive donation, instead of the patchwork of provisions that currently exist in many jurisdictions.

Why did the nineteenth century see so little progress in addressing smoke pollution, even as smoke was increasingly recognised as a problem and economical technological solutions were identified? This article argues that efforts to abate smoke were impeded by the antagonistic class relationship between stokers and manufacturers, which prevented the emergence of a mutually beneficial compromise around smoke abatement. Employers sought to reduce smoke by compelling their stokers to take greater care under the threat of punishment. Law played an important role, siding with employers to impose liability for smoke pollution on stokers. Even when stokers were not prosecuted directly, employers often demanded indemnities as compensation for careless stoking. This reinforced mistrust between the two classes, undermining efforts to bring stokers on board with the goal of abating smoke. These findings may offer lessons today, as climate policy continues to be opposed despite the availability of green technologies and the existence of a scientific consensus on climate change.

About 10 million people worldwide chew khat daily. Chronic khat use is a public health problem associated with physical and psychological impacts, such as mental health disorders and social consequences. The use of khat is increasing dramatically in Ethiopia among the young population. There are controversies over the legal status and health effects related to the consumption of khat. Despite the existing controversies, the problem is increasing with its detrimental impact. Policymakers need to enforce education campaigns aimed at awareness creation on the impact of khat use. It is important to consider legally restricting the availability and use of khat in vulnerable populations, such as children under 18 years, individuals with mental disorders and pregnant women, as well as in settings such as hospitals and schools.

Studies persuasively show that parental power assertion contributes to children’s hostile (defensive) mindsets, but most examined severe forms of control (abuse, harsh punishment) and aggressive children. Less is known about processes linking power assertion with children’s hostile mindsets in typical, low-risk families. Further, specific mechanisms accounting for associations between parenting and hostile mindsets are unclear; children’s theory of mind (ToM) and regulation have been suggested, implying equifinality in developmental cascades. Finally, factors that moderate impact of parenting on children’s hostile mindsets, implying multifinality, are unclear. In a study of 200 mothers, fathers, and children, we proposed that links between parental power assertion and children’s hostile mindsets are (a) accounted for by two parallel mediators – children’s poor ToM and poor regulation, and (b) moderated by their representations of parents. We expected links between power assertion and hostile mindset to be significant for children with negative representations, but defused, or absent, for children with positive representations. Parental power assertion was assessed at toddler and preschool age, ToM and regulation at preschool age, and hostile mindsets and representations of parents at early school age. We supported both mediated paths for mother–child dyads, mediation via child regulation for father–child dyads, and moderation for both.

This article presents a novel type of co-regulation under EU law: codes of practice under the AI Act. The introductory section offers an overview on how the AI Act combines general statutory obligations with various non-legislative instruments. Following a brief presentation of the legal basis for codes of practice in the AI Act, the third section provides a detailed account of how the European AI Office put this sketchy statutory framework into practice for the first General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, which was approved on 1 August 2025. Drawing upon this experience, the conclusion highlights two practical and normative issues associated with codes of practice: tech-induced acceleration and a diffusion of responsibility.

In this article, I examine how venture capital-driven hypergrowth is progressively reshaping political authority via an emergent Silicon Valley Consensus (SVC). Drawing on the political theory of Carl Schmitt, I argue that VC-backed firms are able to operate in a zone of exception that suspends or bypasses conventional regulatory boundaries, thus constraining the state’s competence to govern. By foregrounding disruptive innovation as a strategic maneuver that subverts political power while accelerating capitalist transformations, I ultimately characterize venture capital as an anti-politics machine – one that depoliticizes itself while trapping regulatory institutions and sovereign authority in a field of political necessity. Focusing on the United States while drawing global implications, I show how the SVC not only shifts decision-making power from public institutions to private actors, but also reconfigures the political necessity that compels governments to legitimize new forms of power in an era of rapid technological change.

The claim is commonplace that harm-benefit analysis (HBA), a weighing procedure widely used in ethics reviews of animal experiments, is utilitarian. We argue this is false and misleading for three reasons: (1) HBA does not compare, let alone maximize, utility across different options, but merely assesses whether the consequences of one option are net-positive, thereby ignoring opportunity costs; (2) HBA does not aggregate utility coherently, as it allows for varying degrees of speculation in the assessment of harms and benefits; (3) HBA is not concerned with moral evaluation or moral goodness. From our discussion, we derive positive suggestions for how to improve animal experimentation policy and public communications about it. Most straightforwardly, scholars and institutions should stop claiming that HBA is “utilitarian.”

This article proposes a theory of mosque regulation to explain why state-mosque relations vary at the subnational level in Europe, using Belgium’s regions as comparative cases. Focusing on Belgium’s policy of formal recognition for mosque-communities, I argue that regulatory outcomes emerge from strategic interactions between local officials and mosque leaders, each responding to distinct audience pressures. I draw from original data on 270 mosques and 52 semi-structured interviews to argue that partisanship shapes regulatory practices: left-leaning governments pursue cooperative regulation to court minority voters, while right-wing officials adopt combative approaches to appease anti-Muslim constituencies. Mosque leaders, in turn, consider reputational costs when deciding whether to engage with the state, often pursuing recognition not for material gain but to signal trustworthiness to the broader public. These findings contribute to an emerging scholarship on the political behavior of Muslim leadership, as well as to broader literatures on minority incorporation and subnational governance.