关于东欧剧变和社会发展道路的思考

首先向中国朋友们表示问候。我很荣幸应邀参与《当代世界》杂志关于东欧剧变等重要问题的讨论并发表个人粗浅之见。     

La guerre vue d'Ochollo (Éthiopie méridionale)

La quête pour la reconnaissance de la subjectivité et la dignité est au coeur des mouvements sociaux actuels. Les Africains se battent pour obtenir la reconnaissance depuis l’époque où la traite des esclaves et plus tard la colonisation les ont dépouillés de leurs qualités humaines. Ces combats ont été essentiellement révélés par l’écriture et le monothéisme. L’article actuel suggère aux lecteurs de considérer la construction performative du moi où la subjectivité Africaine / Noire est représentée dans toute son autonomie. L’exemple empirique proposé est celui de l’Afrique centrale.     

Biting the hand that feeds them? Abkhazia–Russia client–patron relations

ABSTRACT

The article discusses the post-Soviet de facto state of Abkhazia, and its relationship to its main patron, Russia. All patron–client nexuses are marked by a high degree of asymmetrical power – especially with de facto states, which depend upon the patron for their very survival. Thus, it is surprising to see how de facto client states repeatedly show that they are both willing and able to defy the wishes of their patrons and pursue their own agendas instead. Moreover, the patron may be willing to tolerate such rebelliousness. What can explain such “disobedient” behavior? I examine three contentious aspects of Russian–Abkhazian relations: the process leading up to the signing of an extended bilateral agreement in 2014; the tussles over how to fight crime in Abkhazia; and acrimony over Abkhazia’s reluctance to allow Russians to buy property in their country, despite massive pressure from Russian authorities.     

Indigenous voters and party system fragmentation in Latin America

This article shows that ethnic cleavages have contributed to electoral fragmentation in Latin America, but not in the way that the social cleavages literature would expect. It finds that party system fragmentation in the region is not correlated with ethnic diversity, but rather with the proportion of the population that is indigenous. The failure of the main parties to adequately represent indigenous people, it argues, has led indigenous voters to shift their support to a variety of smaller populist and leftist parties, which has produced high levels of party system fragmentation in indigenous areas. Where a significant indigenous party has emerged, however, indigenous voters have flocked to that party, which has reduced party system fragmentation. Analyses of sub-national electoral data from Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru provide support for these arguments.     

An Integrative Perspective on Social Justice: Distributive and Procedural Fairness Evaluations of Positive and Negative Outcome Allocations

This paper presents a theoretical framework for the integration of distributive and procedural justice in positive and negative outcome allocations. The framework consists of seven basic assumptions, seven propositions, and seven groups of interrelated hypotheses. The expected outcome offers a coherent program for future justice research based on the realization that distributive and procedural aspects of fairness cannot be meaningfully treated (1) in isolation from one another, and (2) without taking into account the valence of the allocated outcome. The framework should also reveal the need to reassess existing distributive and procedural justice study conclusions that neglected to examine the interactive effects of the allocation outcome (distribution) and the procedure and the outcome valence.     

Empirical evidence of paradoxes of voting in Dutch elections

In this paper we analyze four national elections held in 1982, 1986, 1989 and 1994 in the Netherlands on the occurrence of the Condorcet paradox. In addition, we investigate these elections on the occurrence of three so-called majority-plurality paradoxes. The first paradox states that a party having a majority over another party may receive less seats. The second states that a Condorcet winner may not receive the largest number of seats and even may not receive a seat at all. The third says that the majority relation may be the reverse of the ranking of parties in terms of numbers of seats.     

Military–economic planning in socialist Hungary: The history of the general organisational department of the National Planning Office, 1948–1971

This article analyses the institutional framework of military–economic and defence industrial planning in Hungary in the Socialist period. At the beginning of the 1950s the Soviet military planning system was mechanically adopted in Hungary and during the Korean War a system of general mobilisation was developed, and the whole economy was militarised. Although some limitations were introduced into this structure in the following years, it was only in the 1960s that the planning methods and apparatus were reorganised and modernised. It was at this time that the implications of atomic war were brought into the considerations of the planning office, resulting in radical change.