The uses of history by the Polish democratic opposition in the late 1970s

During the late 1970s, members of the Polish democratic opposition revised and reinterpreted key elements in the Polish past in support of their contemporary ideas about Polish society and opposition. The birth of the independent press in Poland in 1976 provided these debates with a medium for wide dissemination and discussion. Analysis of democratic opposition debates in the independent press on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, historic Polish–Russian relations, and the struggle for and achievement of independence in the early twentieth century shed light on the ways in which the democratic opposition perceived Polish society and the legacy of tolerance, diversity, nationalism, and socialism within it. It also reveals the major divisions within the democratic opposition and its primary tactical proposals prior to the birth of the Solidarity trade union in 1980. Forty years later, these debates continue to reverberate.     

Strategies and hybrid dynamics of soy transnational companies in the Southern Cone

Economical liberalization, market globalization and soy expansion stimulated the advance of big transnational companies in the Southern Cone countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay). Currently, the main corporations acting on the last links of the productive chain are ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus (the ABCD firms), global leaders in the soy trade. The objective of this contribution is to analyze the different strategies these companies articulate in the Southern Cone, and their dynamics in local space through market relations with local producers. The results show the rapid and intense process of denationalization of the firms in the soy productive chain as well as the high level of market internationalization and company concentration. In spite of this, this study shows that all transnational power of ABCD firms, which seems so abstract and intimidating when seen in the global scale, depends on its basis of the formation, maintenance and exploration of relations of proximity, trust and reciprocity with local actors (especially rural producers), including family friendship linkages.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

在线纠纷解决机制的困境和对策

ODR机制作为一种新生的纠纷解决方式，其在解决小额的、当事人间物理距离遥远的网络民事纠纷方面具有特别优势。而ODR机制存在着受理案件的有限性、提供救济方式的有限性、技术工具的双刃性等价值定位缺陷；存在着信任性不足、接近性难等实务利用缺陷；存在着程序被滥用、实践标准混乱等制度设计缺陷。ODR机制价值定位存在的缺陷是ODR本身所固有的，无法克服；实务利用缺陷和制度设计缺陷则可以通过相应的对策予以消减甚至消除。     

民法典编纂对财产犯罪法益保护的影响

在民法之外，重新构建一个仅适用于刑法中财产犯罪法益保护的判断标准，既无必要也不现实。财产犯罪法益保护扩张的主要目的是为了入罪，不论是“利益的法益化”还是“管理的占有化”，都是以保护法益之名行扩张犯罪圈之实。犯罪圈的不当扩张，不仅会有损整体法秩序，还会弱化乃至消解法益甄别法与不法的机能。部门法之间的紧张关系在任何法律体系下都是无可避免的，民法典编纂为解决“刑民倒挂”问题以及增加法秩序统一性原理在刑民之间的衔接度提供了重要契机。为此，应重新梳理刑民之间围绕财产、占有、管理等方面的争议问题，将民法所确定的财产法益内容作为财产犯罪法益保护的基本依据，并允许刑法根据财产犯罪的特点对法益保护范围作出适当调整。这样做的目的不是通过民法给刑法套上枷锁，而是在遵循法秩序统一性原理的基础上达成应有的刑民共识。     

论对“公法人”民事强制执行的限度

对政府等公法人作为被执行人的民事执行案件中存在两难的选择:一方面如果对公法人实施强制执行，则可能有碍公法人公共管理职能的实现，损及公共利益；另一方面如若不能对公法人实施强制执行，则会导致私权无法实现，有损司法权威。因而，为平衡私权之实现与公益之维护，对政府等公法人的执行须遵循必要的限度，给予其“规则礼遇”。对公法人财产的执行，以不影响公务推行为限度；对公法人执行程序的适用，应以维护其良好的信用和权威为保障；对公法人执行措施的适用，应考虑其依法行政的特殊主体地位和有序、高效推行公务，履行公务的履职要求，应限制适用间接执行措施。     

Military Integration,Demobilization, and the Recurrence of Civil War

ABSTRACT

Peace agreements often include provisions for the military integration of the conflict parties, involving an increase in government forces, and at the same time requesting demobilization and thus a reduction of military personnel. Depending on the modalities and magnitude both can be strong signals of a commitment to the peace process. However, tensions between these two concepts can also endanger post-conflict stability. The empirical analyses of 77 post-conflict societies show that civil war is more likely to recur if rebel forces are kept separate during the military integration process and if the military plays an important role in post-conflict economies.     

The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

Prior research on policy conflicts indicates a tendency among policy actors to misperceive the influence of actors engaged in policy debates based on the degree of distance between their relative policy positions. This research develops a measure for assessing the degree and direction of the misperception effect. This measure is then utilized as a dependent variable to assess the relationship between theoretically relevant factors and the degree to which actors will exaggerate the influence of their opponents and allies. The research uses original survey data of policy actors engaged in the debate over hydraulic fracturing in New York. The results indicate misperceptions of relative influence are prevalent and most associated with the experience of a policy loss and holding relatively extreme policy beliefs. The findings provide new insight into factors that influence the demonization of political opponents. These insights are timely in the context of polarized debates over environmental and energy policy in the United States.     

The rise of the far right in Greece and opposition to ‘othering’, hate speech,and crime by civil and civic organizations

This article focuses on forms of opposition to ‘othering’ and far-right politics in present-day Greece. This opposition takes a variety of forms, comes from a range of actors, and is motivated by a number of concerns with differing assessments of what should be done. More specifically, the article focuses on the far right in Greece and discrimination, hate speech, and hate crime against the ‘other’ from the perspectives of those who are active in mobilizing against racism and counteracting the country’s populist and neo-nationalist turn. Concentrating on the forces opposing discrimination, the analysis describes present-day social movements and actions from grassroots to governmental level, their strategies and politics, their diversity of thought and action, and their contribution in providing the resources for social change, and the production of new meaning in the context of anti-racism in Greece. Trying to provide answers as to how social movements and activists produce meaning, we argue that activists develop less intentional, inadvertent meanings which emerge in the course of the not-always conscious schemas of their struggle. This calls for a more dynamic explanation of the relationship between practice and meaning-making in social movement contexts.     

Grasping the Syrian War,a view from Albanians in the Balkans

Reactions to the brutal Syrian War from European governments and Europe’s Muslims have been diverse and subject to many shifts over the past few years. This paper focuses on how Albanian political and Islamic religious figures living in the Balkans have come to interpret the war. I focus on discourse, the ways in which these different agents communicate with their audience, and the wider contexts they evoke. Government sources and religiously themed lectures delivered by prominent imams on the social networking site YouTube are used to assess these trends. The most obvious aspect of these debates is the ways in which these agents use the war to press their own agendas, the government to affirm their commitment to the “West” and an ethnicized view of Islam, while Islamic religious leaders use it to reconnect their audiences to a more cosmopolitan vision of their past. War thus becomes a catalyst for a resurgent contestation between different groups vying for control over what it means to be “Albanian” and “Muslim” in the twenty-first century.