Who wants to pay more? The European Union's military operations and the dispute over financial burden sharing

In 2014, the European Union (EU) launched the sixth review of the Athena mechanism that finances the common costs of military operations launched in the framework of its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In the run up to the review, there were expectations that it would improve financial burden sharing in CSDP operations by expanding common funding for them. However, these hopes were disappointed; the review became a diplomatic tug of war between France, the strongest supporter of expanded common funding, and the UK, its strongest opponent. In the end, France agreed to the UK's terms to ensure that the existing level of common funding would not decrease. This article analyses the Athena review from a neoclassical realist perspective. It argues that the review's outcome was due to the imbalance of influence among EU member states and the diverging preferences of their Foreign Policy Executives (FPEs). These factors caused the Athena review to remain in the hands of a small group of member states that had diverging utility expectations and ideological preferences. Thus, the article shows that a surprisingly intense burden-sharing dispute has emerged within CSDP.     

法律现实主义与转型社会刑事司法

我国社会正处于转型期,各种社会矛盾凸显,刑事司法面临着新的挑战。西方的法律现实主义能为我国转型期刑事司法提供可资借鉴的方法论和改革思路。法律现实主义运动在批评形式主义与三段论式审判的基础上,把法律看作具有多重目标的社会引擎,关注司法行为、纠纷解决与社会问题。在中国语境下,引入法律现实主义,不是要简单地否定形式主义,而是应理性对待形式主义并在其中融入客观主义;应在刑事司法裁判中适用利益权衡,重视经验归纳而不拘泥于简单的演绎推理;应以实现社会正义为核心,构建合理衔接的多元纠纷解决机制。     

Return of the fetish: a plea for a new materialism

This essay argues for a renewed form of critique based upon a non-deflationary realist and materialist understanding of the nature of objects. Such an understanding is set against the deflationary conception of materiality common nowadays, one that sees ‘signs’ in the place of powerful objects (exemplars, charms, fetishes), adjudicates against the latter as mere relics of the past and can only conceive of material relations and causality in representational terms, as co-relative to our self-positing powers. Such a conception is responsible for our present inability to think the role of radical claims, thick attachments and religious objects in modern secular societies. The argument is developed from within a phenomenological tradition that includes Hegelo-Marxian themes and connects them with more and less recent insights from anthropology and elsewhere concerning value and objectification in modern times.

South African–Swaziland relations: A constructivist reading

There are several accounts of the past relations between Swaziland and South Africa. Some are set in the realist school of international relations scholarship. These studies portray Swaziland's policy behaviour as ‘submissive’ because of ‘immutable structural forces’. The neo-Marxian analyses locate the relations exclusively in class/ideological setting. Other accounts depict the ‘kaleidoscopic’ nature of the relations. The post-apartheid understanding of this relationship is largely gleaned from regional studies – the dominant view of which is that South Africa is reluctant to exercise hegemony in its relations with regional states. This article critiques the one-directional thrust of the realist and Marxian accounts. While endorsing multidirectional and multidimensional accounts of policy behaviour, the article shows that they lack an over-arching theoretical framework. A similar charge is directed at the post-apartheid literature. The position of this article is that constructivism offers analytical tools needed to understand the relations between the two states and how South Africa can reorder them.     

Reconsidering the ontological foundations of international energy affairs: realist geopolitics,market liberalism and a politico-economic alternative

Accounts of international energy affairs often present a divergence between geopolitical/realist and liberal market-based approaches. This article suggests that this state of affairs reflects the (often implicit) legacies of realist and rationalist international thought in the study of energy affairs and the corresponding political and economic ontological hierarchies of analytical frameworks employed in different accounts of energy politics. Consequently, this article recommends a greater explicit attention to scientific ontological foundations in studies of energy relations and, in line with the calls of Keating et al. and Strange, suggests an approach based in the literature on I/GPE, which merges political and economic ontological axioms, as most apposite for the study of energy affairs. Building on this framework, and giving particular examples from the context of Eurasian energy politics, this article then outlines a number of politico-economic heuristic models (structural diversity, territorial non-coincidence, milieu-shaping and market-authority bargains) that are particularly useful concepts in helping to explain the intricate interactions of international energy relations.     

The foreign policy and intervention behaviour of Nigeria and South Africa in Africa: A structural realist analysis

This article assesses the foreign policy and intervention roles of Nigeria and South Africa in Africa, given their status as regional powers, and the regional complexes within which they operate. Drawing references from a plethora of conflicts in which these two states have intervened, this article argues that structural realism, given its emphasis on the material structure of power and the pursuit of relative gains, is useful as a theoretical framework in this assessment. The article makes a contribution to the literature by illustrating the value of structural realism as an international relations (IR) approach within which the intervention behaviour of these two African states can be analysed. The author acknowledges that while structural realism points to the fact that the pursuit of relative gains may be behind the normatively-clad role conceptions of states, foreign policy cannot be reduced to the pursuit of relative power alone.     

Intervention and Statebuilding Beyond the Human: From the ‘Black Box’ to the ‘Great Outdoors’

This article analyses intervention and statebuilding as shifting towards a posthuman discursive regime. It seeks to explore how the shift to ‘bottom-up’ or post-liberal approaches has evolved into a focus upon epistemological barriers to intervention and an appreciation of complexity. It attempts to describe a process of reflection upon intervention as a policy practice, whereby the need to focus on local context and relations – in order to take problems seriously – begins to further undermine confidence in the Western episteme. In other words, the bottom-up approach, rather than resolving the crisis of policy practices of intervention, seems to further intensify it. It is argued that the way out of this crisis seems to be found in the rejection of the aspiration to know from a position of a ‘problem-solving’ external authority and instead to learn from the opportunities opened up through the practices of intervention. However, what is learnt does not seem to be able to fit into traditional modes and categories of expertise.     

法律的信息定义及其前景

以法律的定义、法律的概念、法律的本质、“什么是法律”或“法律是什么”等形式出现的法律本体论追问在中西方法理学史中不绝如缕。近几十年来，物理学、生物学、心理学以及文化进化理论等兴起了信息范式并且影响日增，为信息法律观的建构带来启示。它能打通西方法哲学三大法学流派之间的联系，融贯法律的价值、形式和社会事实向度，复兴综合法学或统一法学运动，并为马克思主义指导下的当代中国法学创新事业做出有益探索。     

我国当代现实主义对文学创作的兼容与吸收

我国当代现实主义文学审时度势,在自我发展创新的同时,合理而大胆地兼容和吸收了象征主义、黑色幽默、心理现实主义、魔幻现实主义等流派的创作方法和表现特点,极大地丰富和壮大了自己,获得了前所未有的发展.     

法理学中的法律形式主义

在法理学中,法律形式主义一直是人们批判的对象。本文认为,这主要是人们误解所致,人们主要是通过其对手的评论来了解法律形式主义的。为了让人们更加全面地了解法律形式主义,本文对法律形式主义的概念、历史和主要代表人物及其思想进行了详尽的考察。最后,对法律形式主义的批判进行了分析,认为应当正确评价法律形式主义。