行政执法案卷评查之主体分析

行政执法案卷评查是行政机关进行内部监督的一种重要方式,案卷评查主体应当是行政机关的内设机构和工作人员,实践中却存在着将该工作委托给社会律师完成的不合理现象。行政执法案卷评查具有强烈的公权力属性,社会律师进行行政执法案卷评查除不合公权力属性外,也无正当法律依据,其本身还不具备相关的专业知识。行政执法案卷应由行政机关集中进行内部评查,这不仅符合行政执法案卷评查制度的设计本意,同时也有助于促进行政执法案卷评查与行政执法责任追究制的有效衔接,此外还更顺应行政法治监督的发展趋势。     

Defense Industries and Global Dependency

The global defense industrial sector is a remarkably accurate indicator of the distribution of power in the post-Cold War international system. However, the defense industrial sector as a policy tool has received relatively little scrutiny, even though it not only reflects the international order, but also provides the United States with the ability to influence the foreign policy behavior of other states. The defense industrial sector is a powerful, if undervalued, diplomatic tool in the United States’ political arsenal.     

The several costs of responding to the threat of terrorism

This paper describes several dimensions of the cost of the U.S. response to the threat of terrorism. Following an evaluation of the nature and magnitude of the threat of terrorism against the United States, the paper describes the restrictions on our civil liberties, the fiscal and other costs of the major homeland security measures, the fiscal cost of programs that make no contribution to the defense against terrorism but are rationalized on that ground, and the effects on our language and the potential for civil discourse of an extended defense against terrorism.     

我国城市规划法制的现状与展望

二十世纪八十年代以来,我国逐渐形成了数量繁多、相对较为齐全的城市规划法制体系.但由于受到指导思想、发展水平等主客观因素的制约,目前,我国城市规划法制在实践中出现了诸多弊端和不足.我国必须对城市规划的法制进行科学、理性的整合与完善.这种整合与完善应当以科学的可持续发展观为指导,应体现社会的公平性与正义性,注重对环境、对有关利益主体的权益保障.     

Representational Altruism: The Wary Cooperator as Authoritative Decision Maker

What drives policymakers to put the interests of others above their own? If human nature is inherently selfish, it makes sense to institutionalize incentives that counter decision makers' temptations to use their positions to benefit themselves over others. A growing literature rooted in evolutionary theories of human behavior, however, suggests that humans, under certain circumstances, have inherent predispositions towards “representational altruism,” i.e., to make an authoritative decision to benefit another at one's own expense. Drawing on Hibbing and Alford's conception of the wary cooperator, a theoretical case is made for such behavioral expectations, which are confirmed in a series of original laboratory experiments.     

The End of Wilderness: Conflict and Defeat of Wilderness in the Grand Canyon

In the early 1970s, Grand Canyon National Park intended to designate its land to “Wilderness,” including the controversial Colorado River corridor. However, by the end of the 1970s the potential for Wilderness designation was off the table, and would never seriously return for genuine consideration. Using Schattschneider's model of conflict, we explain how the organization of this conflict privileges the “causal story” of Wilderness opponents, and therefore why the canyon is not designated. It is our contention that members of Congress will not stand forward to support Wilderness designations without simultaneously providing benefits for extractive land use because (1) congressional representatives are more penalized for supporting than opposing Wilderness designations, (2) Wilderness advocacy groups do not pressure congressional delegates as firmly as opposition groups, and (3) key local congressional members are not likely to see Wilderness as a salient issue worth the risk of negative exposure. If these findings hold, the implication is that we may have reached the end of significant Wilderness designations in highly visible areas, unless critical aspects in land use conflict change.     

Congressional Vote Options

Numerous accounts reveal that congressional leaders often secure “hip‐pocket votes” or “if you need me” pledges from rank‐and‐file legislators. These are essentially options on votes. Leaders exercise sufficient options—pay legislators to convert to favorable votes—when those options will yield victory. Otherwise, they release the options. A model shows that this optimal strategy for leaders produces many small victories, few small losses, and losses that are, on average, larger than victories. We find precisely these patterns, hence strong evidence for vote options, in Congressional Quarterly key votes from 1975 through 2001 and in non‐key votes from the 106th Congress (1999–2000).     

Crime and justice in the context of resource scarcity

This concept paper presents a theory of environmental scarcity developed byHomer-Dixon. Homer-Dixon developed a model to describe the consequences of scarcity for sub-national violence in third world countries. This paper hasfour interrelated purposes. First, it presents the model of scarcity developedby Thomas Homer-Dixon in 1999. Second, it assesses the way in which the scarcity model contextualizes criminal justice and criminology research, andby extension, how research in crime and justice processes can broaden the scarcity model. Third, it applies elements of the model to the United States,a goal that represents a generalization of the model from third-world to first-world settings. Fourth, it presents a particular case, the migrationof African-Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the 1950s and1960s and consequent inner-city violence in the 1960s, that displays manyelements of the environmental scarcity model.     

Assessing the Performance of the Price Cap Plan for Local Exchange Carriers in the United States

In 1991 the FCC implemented a price cap plan for local exchange carriers' interstate access service designed to deal with the regulatory boundaries problem arising from the breakup of AT&T in 1984. The experience with the price cap plan demonstrates the difficulty of predicting productivity growth accurately and makes clear that regulators cannot depend upon a pure price cap plan to keep prices within a reasonable range of costs. With periodic reviews to readjust plan parameters, however, a price cap plan can maintain the rate-of-return close to the target rate-of-return without diminishing the price cap plan's incentives for efficient production. A simple method of recalculating the X-factor based on the rate-of-return over the previous three years worked well in simulations. If this procedure had been used over the price cap period 1991 to 2000, prices would have been 20 percent lower and expenditures on LECs' telecommunications service subject to a price cap would have been $3.8 billion lower.