Civil society and state-centred struggles

This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses.     

耕地集约化租赁的纠纷审视与司法应对

耕地集约化租赁虽对实现农业的转型升级具有积极作用,但也出现了一些损害农村土地权益的负面现象,并逐渐演化为诉讼纠纷。其所凸显出的发展与有序的问题不容忽视,需要司法实践积极回应,并进行利益平衡上的思考。     

Is It Time to Reform the Dual-Track Pension System?

正Civil servants’pensions is an issue that has long been debated in China.In spite of the fact that pensions for enterprise employees have been rising continuously for the past seven years,their benefits are much lower than that of their civil servant peers.There exists an increasingly widening gap between civil servants’pensions and those of other workers.Recently,the microblog account of the newspaper People’s Daily published an article,which says that civil servants’pensions sur-     

中国地方治理中的政府与社会协商困境分析——基于民主化宏观策略的思考

一个国家民主化的宏观策略体现了该国民主化的根本方向与核心原则。中国民主化的宏观策略是一种可管理导向的积极民主化策略,这种策略给中国地方治理中的政府与社会协商实践造成了种种主客观困境,使得地方政府不能很好地举办协商活动,社会力量也不能有效地参与。为走出困境,就必须在坚持审慎而务实策略的同时,不断克服怀疑主义,建立和健全保证协商有效性的管理机制。     

香港民事诉讼制度改革之回顾与前瞻

香港的民事司法改革历时十年,彰显了民事司法理念的深度变迁,对民事司法制度的发展具有里程碑意义。新规则自2009年4月2日正式施行以来进展大致顺利,在克服诉讼拖延、促进和解、发展调解等方面取得了一定的成效,但改革终究不是一蹴而就的纸面化改造。在新制度与旧观念相互碰撞又各自发挥作用的时期,如欲推翻法律职业者乃至普通民众的思维定势,变革深埋于制度底层的文化样态,其中的困难同样是显而易见的。     

Like a tree

The contemporary mediascape has been marked by a proliferation of popular TV genres in which the public appear as central protagonists. These genres are part of a broader shift in the relationship between media and audiences which challenges traditional conceptions of public service broadcasting and appear to represent a shift from media as public knowledge to media as constituting a space for diffuse popular engagement. A central feature of this shift has been the growing role of popular forms of expertise on television. This paper maps the main critical debates around participatory television and the role of the expert, from earlier work on talk shows to more recent discussions of reality and makeover TV. It notes a transition within the critical media and cultural studies literature from a focus on public sphere theory and questions of democratization to a growing concern with the role played by popular media culture in supporting new modes of governance based on the expert mediation of normative self-control. In this paper we analyze the role of experts on Oprah Winfrey's popular website Oprah.com, noting both the utility and limitations of a governmental perspective. Extending upon Foucault's notion of the productive nature of liberal subjecthood, the paper suggests the more positive role played by popular expertise in contributing to a media–civic culture articulated to a politics of recognition.     

The Changing Spaces of Local Governance in Nicaragua

This article considers the new spaces for the participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) in local governance that have emerged in Nicaragua between 2000 and 2009, and how government and CSOs interact in these spaces. It discusses the significant changes that have taken place in Nicaraguan local governance during this period, and highlights the challenges for CSOs to engage with these spaces at different points in time. It finds that grassroots CSOs in Managua that based their engagement with the Bolaños government through these spaces on citizenship have been drawn into a more clientelist relationship with Ortega's government.     

行政担保的民法视角探讨

民法是现代社会赖以正常运转的基础法律。在最基本的法律制度上,行政法借用民法的概念与制度时不应改变私法主体既有的行为规范,以免社会无所适从。担保制度运用于行政法,形成行政担保不仅可行而且合理。行政担保与民事担保共用担保的一系列制度,可以建立起行政法与民法之间的桥梁,使各种不同的权利之间具有相互比较的基础,也可以节约大量的立法资源,避免一些潜在的矛盾。     

民事申请再审案件受理程序规范化改造

2007年民事诉讼法修订以来,关于再审程序划分的“三阶构说”日渐占据民事诉讼学界的主导地位.应从“三阶构说”的理论基础出发,结合现有法律规定,深入研究并完善民事申请再审案件受理程序具体内容,并针对其中若干疑难问题展开讨论,提出进一步完善申请再审案件受理程序的理论方向和具体构想,力求建立起更加完善、更具有操作性的民事申请再审案件受理程序.     

Power and property: commercialization,enclosures, and the transformation of agrarian relations in Ethiopia

The transnational agrarian social movement Vía Campesina is campaigning to have the United Nations negotiate and implement a Declaration, and eventually an International Convention, on Peasants' Rights. This article analyzes the origins and demands of the campaign and the place of the claimed rights in international law. Peasant organizations hope to follow in the footsteps of indigenous peoples' movements that participated in the negotiations preceding the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The peasants' rights campaign has succeeded in linking its demands to discussions of the right to food in the United Nations, where concern is growing over the approach of the 2015 target for realizing the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the halving of the numbers of people suffering from hunger. The campaign is likely to face stiff resistance from powerful UN member states, but could achieve substantial advances even if the path to a convention is difficult or never completed.