The Frontiers of Legal Analysis: Reframing the Transition in Northern Ireland

British constitutional legal discourse is structurally limited in its capacity to capture the complexity of the Good Friday Agreement. Rather than assessing the Agreement in narrow devolutionary terms, it should be seen as a hybrid domestic and international law instrument, making an important contribution to accepted international law norms in relation to self-determination. The Agreement transforms and partly transcends the Northern Ireland conflict by substituting political contestation for violent conflict, and by defining the modalities of conducting that contestation. This analysis complements classical international law perspectives, and opens up the application of legal discourses associated with 'transitional justice' to the legal and political transformation in Northern Ireland. These discourses focus on the problem of reconciling the demands of peace with the imperatives of justice. The Agreement sits squarely in this terrain with its provisions on 'dealing with the past' and 'institutional legacies'. The insights gained here challenge orthodox thinking about conflict-management and the ongoing political process.     

对台湾公投制宪的若干思考

本文从公民自决和民族自决的角度,对台独势力分裂祖国和民族的行径进行了批判。     

Examining the Effects of Social Media Use on Job Satisfaction in the Australian Public Service: Testing Self-Determination Theory

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between social media usage for work purposes and employee job satisfaction in the public sector. Because social media is a relatively recent phenomenon, the ways in which it affects employee attitudes such as job satisfaction are not well-known. Using self-determination theory (SDT) as a framework, this study tests whether perceived competence, relatedness, and autonomy mediate the relationship between social media usage for work purposes and employee job satisfaction. Data were obtained from the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC). Overall, results generated from the structural equation models support SDT, suggesting that employees using social media for work purposes have higher self-determination and higher self-determination increases their job satisfaction. In particular, the effect of competence to job satisfaction is very high. However, while social media usage for work purposes can enhance employees’ need for autonomy and competence, it does not have any statistical effect to employees need for relatedness. In addition, social media does not have any statistical and direct effect to job satisfaction. The results suggest that social media has an indirect effect to job satisfaction. This article discusses the implications of these findings.     

UN Peace Operations and Conflicting Legitimacies

ABSTRACT

Analyses of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping increasingly consider legitimacy a key factor for success, conceiving of it as a resource that operations should seek and use in the pursuit of their goals. However, these analyses rarely break down legitimacy by source. Because the UN is an organization with multiple identities and duties however, different legitimacy sources – in particular output and procedural legitimacy – and the UN’s corresponding legitimation practices come into conflict in the context of peacekeeping. Drawing on a range of examples and the specific case of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), this article argues that looking at different legitimacy sources and linking them to the institutional identity of the UN is thus critical, and it shows how the UN’s contradictory legitimation practices can reduce overall legitimacy perceptions.     

冷战结束后墨西哥的外交政策中的变与不变

由于受到独特的地理位置和历史的影响,墨西哥外交政策的基石是不干涉原则和民族自决。但墨西哥作为发展中国家,其外交政策不得不随着国际形势的变化而调整。冷战结束前,墨西哥的外交政策更多地强调民族主义;冷战结束后,墨西哥外交政策从强调民族主义转向现实主义,和美国结成战略联盟,大大改善同美国的关系。但是,墨西哥外交政策依然具有继承性。     

Mobile phones and self-determination among Muslim youth in Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the new ways to navigate family power dynamics among Muslim youth in contemporary Uzbekistan. Migration of labour from Uzbekistan increased rapidly in the 2000s. When young workers began to experience the freedom of making their own decisions in their everyday lives after migration, they became uncomfortable with the elders of the household making decisions on everything from daily chores to serious matters concerning their families. Youth who continued to live in Uzbekistan also expanded their areas of self-determination, such as in choosing their spouses, by securing private space through the use of mobile phones. The mobile phone can be an effective tool to improve the position of young wives, who tend to have the lowest status in the husband's family. Thus, the existing hierarchy or classical patriarchy in Muslim families can be navigated, challenged and circumvented by the use of mobile phones among the youth today.     

Antecedents and Outcomes of Self-Determination in 3 Life Domains: The Role of Parents' and Teachers' Autonomy Support

Due to conceptualizations of autonomy as detachment and independence, research on the parenting–autonomy relationship in adolescence has yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, self-determination is proposed as an alternative way of tapping into the construct of autonomy. An integrated model of the relationships between perceived parenting and teaching styles, self-determination in 3 life-domains (school, social competence, and job-seeking behaviors), and specific adolescent outcomes, was investigated and confirmed. In 2 samples of mid-adolescents (N = 328 and N = 285), autonomy-supportive parenting was significantly related to self-determination in all life-domains. Autonomy-supportive teaching added significantly to the prediction of self-determination in the domains of school and job-seeking behaviors. Self-determination, in turn, was positively and specifically associated with measures of adjustment in the specific life-domains under investigation. Finally, in both studies, indications were found that self-determination acts as an intervening variable in the relation between the perceived interpersonal environment and adolescent adjustment. Doctoral student at the Center for Developmental Psychology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. His major research interests are parenting, psychological control, and identity development. Postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Motivation Psychology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. His major research interests are self-determination theory, motivation, and parenting.     

转型期农村法治资源的发现、重组与良性互动

作者将农村作为一种社区分析空间,并将法治具体置于其中,利用各种分析或理论框架对其展开讨论,目的在于发现农村法治资源在法治建设中的重要作用和意义;探讨农村社会与国家在互动过程中法治资源的重组及良性互动。     

论刑法的干预边界

规范刑法的干预边界有进一步强化刑法对社会治理的作用,然而当刑法干预的边界超过一定的范围则有可能变成恶法。因此,确定刑法的干预边界时要充分运用法益保护原则或伤害原则,在此基础上尊重自我决定权,衡量刑法的现实操作及刑罚的不替代性。而对于刑、民的边界问题,主要衡量行为的危害程度。至于行政法中与刑法竞合的部分,除了考虑行为的危害大小,更要考验法律适用者的能力。     

Decentralisation,socio-territoriality and the exercise of indigenous self-governance in Bolivia

This article analyses the ‘indigenous autonomy’ being constructed in two dozen Bolivian municipalities and territories, in accordance with the 2009 Constitution. It finds that Bolivia’s 1994 decentralisation reforms, which created the country’s system of municipalities, are central to understanding the contemporary implementation of indigenous autonomy. Some indigenous people view as favourable the representative and material gains achieved by municipalisation, which helps explain why more majority-indigenous communities have not yet chosen the new option of indigenous autonomy. However, the new legal framework also limits indigenous self-governance, because territorial delimitations of the country’s municipalities are generally inconsistent with indigenous peoples’ ancestral territories. The new institutions of self-governance are legally obligated to include discrete legislative, executive and administrative functions, reflecting not indigenous norms but a municipal structure of liberal design. This study illustrates the way that indigenous self-determination may encounter obstacles where indigenous territorial jurisdictions must coincide with contemporary boundaries of colonial origins, rather than with pre-colonial territories.