New Developments in Deliberative Democracy

This paper inspects recent theoretical work in deliberative democracy. It identifies three distinct ways in which such theories attempt to justify their claims for an increase in deliberation. Each has its strengths; each has its implications for practice. If the new deliberative theories are to move beyond a critique of liberal democracy in order to articulate a legitimate and practical politics, the respective gains of these three types must be brought together.     

The German community in 19<Superscript>th</Superscript> century Hong Kong

This article examines the development of the German community in Hong Kong between the 1840s and the outbreak of the First World War. It pays particular attention to the question of how the Germans, as a minority group in the crown colony, attempted to strike a good balance between integration and segregation, cultural assimilation and dissimilation, national identity and marginalization. Through investigating their social life, missionary activities and economic activities in Hong Kong, it shows that they, on the one hand, cooperated closely with the British who were in charge of key political and economic affairs, and on the other hand worked with the local Chinese on different social stratums. Although the unification of Germany in 1870 strengthened the sense of nationhood among German people in Hong Kong, they strove to strengthen the German cultural and economic network that already existed in and around the colony, without sacrificing their business and social interests which were interwoven with those of the British and the local Chinese. It is this strategy that enabled them to survive in Hong Kong until 1914.     

关于土地归属的初步讨论——以大陆法系传统、罗马法和俄罗斯法为视角

在以罗马法为基础的大陆法系传统中,关于土地归属的法律规定对俄罗斯法产生了一定的影响。分析在罗马法以及中世纪法中土地归属法律规定的复杂性,并且就资产阶级法典化过程中,通过个人所有权和他物权体系的构建,对土地归属问题复杂性的简化需要加以说明。此外,大陆法系传统概念在苏联时期俄罗斯法中所遭受的阻力,而所有权结构在俄罗斯联邦新民法典和土地法典中的扩张也值得重视。     

Deciding on the Electoral System: Chile's Adoption of Proportional Representation in 1925

In 1925 a new electoral system was introduced in Chile. This reform changed the electoral formula from a cumulative voting system to a proportional one (d'Hondt) and established new rules about district magnitude and form of voting. It has been argued that this reform was motivated by the emergence of new parties or the expansion of the electorate. This article offers an alternative explanation: in the case of Chile, the main reason for the electoral reform was the parties' need to solve problems of strategic coordination stemming from the characteristics of the Chilean cumulative voting system. In this context, the Chilean case shows that there are many routes to proportionality.     

External Interventions in Post-Cold War Africa, 1989–2010

The study of external interventions in conflict management is critical and has implications for international relations and conflict theory. Quantitative studies of the relationship between external interventions and civil war have been prone to some conceptual limitations (understudied lower-intensity periods) and data limitations (unavailability of event battle death data). This article presents a new external interventions data set covering the period between 1989 and 2010 for Africa, building on the Regan et al. (2009) data set, which covers the period between 1945 and 1999. Novel features of this new data set are: the recoding of the overlap period; a broader range of categories of intervention, including UN and non-UN missions; and wider temporal scope, by extending the period of analysis to 2010, by lowering the civil war threshold to 25 battle deaths, and by starting the conflict period from the date of the first battle death in each civil war (based on UCDP GED version-1.5-2011). The advantages of the data set are illustrated with an analysis of the different effects interventions have on high- and low-intensity conflict periods.     

Evaluating international social-change networks: a conceptual framework for a participatory approach

International networks for social change are growing in number and influence. While they need to be able to assess the extent to which they achieve their purpose and determine ways in which to be more effective, conventional evaluation methods are not designed for such complex organisational forms, or for the diverse kinds of activity to which they are characteristically dedicated. Building on an earlier version of their paper, the authors present a set of principles and participatory approaches that are more appropriate to the task of evaluating such networks.     

No More! Women Reporting Intimate Partner Violence in Mexico

An analysis of the National Survey of Violence Against Women (2006) in Mexico was performed to estimate the prevalence and the associated factors of women suffering intimate partner violence (IPV) that report their aggressor by severity of violence. Women aged 15 years or older who reported IPV were analyzed by using logistic regression models. Prevalence of IPV was 33.33 %, 64.11 % of them were classified as non-severe violence (NSV) and 35.89 % as severe violence (SV). Women with SV reported the aggressor more often (24.69 % vs. 6.08 % of NSV). Variables associated with reporting the aggressor for both NSV and SV were having children living in the household, higher socioeconomic status, frequent alcohol consumption by the partner, and health personnel informing women that they were experiencing IPV. We can conclude that a low percentage of women reported IPV. Greater efforts should be made to empower women so they can effectively execute their right to live a life free of violence.     

Marcuse: A Critic in Counterrevolutionary Times

Abstract

As a critique of neoliberalism, this article considers Marcuse’s formulations on “paralysis of criticism” presented in his seminal text One-Dimensional Man. This is not a pessimistic perspective. Rather, the author promotes a social diagnosis on political struggles, considering the new challenges of advanced industrial societies to radical subjective experiences of emancipation. The article centers upon, it is important to note, a frequent question in Marcuse’s inquiries: How do we think critically in counterrevolutionary times? This is a question that mobilizes dialectics to revolutionary trends as it expresses an effort to re-think traditional categories of Critical Theory in their “obsolescence.” In a world of “no alternatives,” obsolescent categories are symptom of its diseases. Such obsolescence contrasts immediate relations of status quo with “radical” mediations of social forces. It mobilizes criticism in “catalytic” processes to emancipate “centrifugal social forces” from below, a qualitative leap to social changes able to face counterrevolutionary times.     

The institutionalisation of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the institutional development of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies (BCD) from 1826 to the present. Legislature careers, the internal organisation of the BCD, the current system for filling positions within the committees and electoral rules are the objects of this study. The process of development of the BCD should be understood in light of the dynamics of the Brazilian political system, which has undergone significant ruptures of regime, and also in light of the nearly permanent fragility of the democracy, especially of its representative components. It is an institution with legislature career patterns that vary through time, but always point towards opportunities out of the BCD, a stable, hierarchical and complex mode of organisation that currently values parties as distributors of opportunities. It is, above all, an institution that is subject to external influences from other parts of the political system, which diminish its autonomy and self-determination, as shown by the example of the rule for the adjudication of terms. With its 190 years, the BCD has evolved along with Brazilian democracy and today, although boasting a great structure and large resources, it still needs to establish itself as a decisive and permanent actor in driving public policies and communication (parties and government projects) with voters.