Developing Durable Infrastructures: Politics,Social Skill,and Sanitation Partnerships in Urban India1

Accelerated national and international efforts to redress the acute lack of infrastructures in the developing world have focused on forging partnerships to spur infrastructure development. This article finds a sore lack in attempts to grasp how infrastructures implemented through multiactor partnerships within entrenched, often volatile, political environments, become durable. Durability is understood here through field analysis, an approach common within the “new institutional” literature. Two case studies of sanitation infrastructure‐making from cities in India are presented as empirical evidence. Failure of the first case and the success of the second in acquisition of durability clearly illustrate the vital role political strategy plays in making infrastructures durable.     

村民自治实践中两委关系及冲突解决模式探析

两委关系作为村民自治实践中的热点问题,正日益引起人们的重视.本文立足于我国农村发展的实际,将纷繁复杂的两委关系归结为四种类型,并提出了四种相对应的冲突解决模式,旨在探讨两委冲突的解决之道.     

From corporatism to lawyocracy? On liberalization and juridification

In 1997 Robert Kagan questioned whether European countries had to fear the coming of American style adversarial legalism. He answered this question with a qualified “no.” Today we are no longer so sure the answer is “no,” even in a country that Kagan considered the antipole of US adversarial legalism, the Netherlands, traditionally characterized by informal and consensual conflict resolution. In the present article we chart a trend of increasing juridification and legalism, that is, more formal and legal conflict resolution, in the Netherlands between 1970 and 2008. The trend is related to major changes in economic governance institutions, which generated a shift from corporatism toward lawyocracy; from power of the associations of civil society toward power of courts, lawyers, and judges. Yet the newly dominant system of governance is modified and merged with elements of the old system, producing a specific Dutch version, which one could call “corporatist lawyocracy.” We identify two types of liberalization as major driving forces: social liberalization in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by economic liberalization in the subsequent decades. If one considers economic liberalization a product of neoliberal “Reaganomics,” the legal changes are in a way an “American export product,” although a different one than the lawyering styles of large international American law firms mentioned by Kelemen and Sibbitt in 2004.     

Adding to the Controversy? Civil Society’s Evaluation of the National Conference Dialogue in Yemen

ABSTRACT

This article assembles a picture of Yemen’s 2013–14 National Dialogue Conference (NDC) by collecting perspectives from local civil society organizations (CSOs), which are contrasted to the views of international commentators. Despite all efforts by internal parties as well as the international community, the dialogue failed to avert war, which broke out shortly after. Through interviews with 50 CSOs, we reconstructed the reasons for failure, as well as paying attention to the observed strengths of the dialogue. Half of the consulted organizations were directly involved in the NDC, either as an invited participant or in a brokerage role. The other half concerns outside observers. We identify aspects on which the opinion of the CSOs converge, but also highlight striking divergences depending on insider/outsider status. In contrast to the view espoused in the international literature, the CSOs overall feel that, in spite of all its procedural and substantive flaws, the NDC was a significant junction in the long road towards peace and stability and laid important groundwork for future dialogues.     

Power to the legal professionals: Is there an Americanization of European law?

Twelve years ago, Robert Kagan asked “Should Europe worry about adversarial legalism?” He answered this question with a qualified “no,” and identified a number of sources of resistance to such a trend. More recently, he broadened the issue in this journal by asking whether European countries experience an “Americanization” of their legal systems. The articles in this Symposium on the Americanization of European Law all revisit that question. The present article introduces the topic, discusses the elements that make up adversarial legalism, and summarizes and compares the findings of the articles in the Symposium. The articles find an increase in one dimension of adversarial legalism, namely, more legalism, that is, more litigation, more formalism, and more verdicts interfering with politics, but hardly any increase in adversarialism. Tenacious pre‐existing national legal and political cultures and institutions resist a further move in the direction of American style adversarial legalism. The mix of more litigation, more legalism, and more politicization, overlaid on the pre‐existing hierarchic authority of courts and legal functionaries has, however, strengthened the societal and political power of the judiciary vis‐à‐vis other powers. A professional elite is increasingly making the political choices that in a democratic society ought to be made by democratic representatives. Perhaps Europe should worry about this.     

Current Security Situation in the Near East Palestinian State： Yes or No？

The article analyses the political situation in the Near East in trial to find the formula of peace. It would guarantee a peaceful coexistence for Palestinians and Israelites. The conflict of Israel and Palestine lasts for already over 100 years and becomes a global conflict among Islam believers and Jewish-Christians. Trying to have peace Israel left the occupied Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and made considerable concessions for Palestinians as well： It agreed on Palestine self-governing rights or autonomy in 1994. The problem is that Arabs cannot accept the fact of Israel state in their psychology. Nobody can guarantee their national security when Jews retracted to the borders which existed till 1967, the Sixth Day War. What does the total retraction from Gaza Strip from where the rockets are constantly sent to the territory of Israel on the heads of civil people？ Would the most real and secure way of all the solutions be a Federation of Palestinian Territories or Confederation with the Kingdom of Jordan （or with the state of Egypt）？ The peace problem of Near East is global and even connected with the intentions of Iran to make an atomic bomb. International community should be more sensitive not only to the tired nation of Palestine but also the Kurds who try to establish their state in Kurdistan. People of Azerbaijan should be helped in uniting into one state in the frames of Azerbaijan. The author tried to prove the article by the facts and the regulations of international law as much as possible.     

论组织冲突成因及管理对策分析

组织总是不断面对各种矛盾与冲突。组织的沟通不畅、架构不合理、成员的差异和组织资源的不足,都可造成冲突。组织冲突的管理水平关系着组织内部的和谐与稳定。冲突问题处理不当,直接影响组织目标的实现甚至威胁组织的生存和发展。必须认识到冲突具有正反两方面的作用,管理者应运用合理的管理策略将破坏性冲突转化为建设性冲突,使组织能够不断自我反省,不断创新与进步。文章通过分析、探讨组织冲突的类型和原因以及相关管理对策,为组织冲突管理的研究探索新的思路。     

Infrastructure and the Vision Thing

Australia faces a transport infrastructure problem requiring complex policy formulation and imaginative problem solving. In opposition, Kevin Rudd committed to improving the nation's infrastructure and addressing the ‘infrastructure bottlenecks’. This task is made more urgent by the Reserve Bank's concern that the infrastructure restraints are causing inflationary pressure. In the short term however, increased Commonwealth infrastructure expenditure would add to the pressure on interest rates. Consequently, the Commonwealth must work with industry and the states on improving operational efficiency in the short term, while planning for infrastructure investments in the longer term. With the political limitations of federalism, a shortage of skilled policy advice, and ministerial inexperience, the Rudd government must set a broad agenda to guide all infrastructure stakeholders.     

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan: Impartiality in New UN Peace Operations

Abstract

Set within the complex contemporary context of international interventions, UN peacekeeping operations have now evolved into peace operations. The emergence of the concepts of human security and the responsibility to protect have raised expectations that UN peace operations should deal with both macro and micro level insecurity in conflict and post-conflict situations, especially in the case of failed or collapsed states. Reflecting this development, the question of an appropriate framework in which to conceptualize peace operations has also been debated. This essay considers a conceptualization of UN peace operations from a conflict resolution perspective and analyses the case of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), using a framework of conflict transformation. It argues that the impartiality of UN operations has been reconceived in terms of the values of ‘human security’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’, making it vital to explicitly articulate the meaning and implications of ‘value-based’ impartiality.     

The quest for regional legitimation: Analyzing the Arab League’s legitimizing role in the Arab spring

The topic of international legitimacy has returned to centre stage during the Arab Spring, in which the Arab League has apparently assumed a prominent legitimation role. Although some scholarship has studied how international organizations are decisive in legitimizing actors and their actions during conflicts, relatively scant attention has been focused at constructing a comprehensive analytical framework for this kind of assessment that could be also applied to regional organizations (ROs). This paper proposes that when actors are involved in battles over international legitimation, analysing their access to the socially identified brokers of three legitimation functions (appropriateness, consensus, and empathy) is key to assess their success. Particularly, we argue that relevant identity-based ROs may have a crucial legitimizing role by operating as brokers of regional consensus. For this purpose, two case studies – Bahrain and Libya – illustrate how the Arab League’s brokerage influenced the legitimation of the actors involved and their outcomes. The findings suggest novel implications about the decisive legitimizing impact of regionalism on conflict resolution.     

马克思主义政治冲突思想研究

政治冲突理论是马克思主义政治学说的重要组成部分，但对它的研究还很鲜见。本运用辩证分析的方法，对阶级冲突、政治发展冲突、政治冲突的功能取向、政治冲突的发展过程、整合政治冲突的制度性设计等，进行了比较系统的阐释。     

Capital Gains and Spatial Inequalities: Developing Fairer Suburbs

One of the longest‐running debates in urban development, enshrined within the evolution of the British planning system, is how best to capture the increased value of land arising from development. This article outlines the historic and contemporary context before proposing an approach towards ‘land value capture’, based on practice in continental Europe but adapted to Britain's specific circumstances. In doing so, it also sets out why new approaches are needed as part of the search for better ways of funding local infrastructure, developing mixed communities and improving Britain's suburbs for the benefit of all.