Still Divided by a Common Language: Discontentment and the Semantics of Power

In a recent response to an article of mine on the 'faces of power' controversy published in this journal ( Politics Vol. 18. No. 1), James Doyle provides an important, sophisticated and provocative attempt to rehabilitate Lukes' three-dimensional conception of power from the criticisms of myself and others. He argues, in particular, that Lukes' understanding of power is not compromised by its reliance upon a distinction between subjective and objective interests since such a distinction is, in fact, 'an integral part of the logical grammar of the concept'. Nor, he suggests, is Lukes wrong to raise the spectre of the concept of 'false consciousness since the notion of 'duping others' is also 'internal to the logic of the concept' of power. Finally, Doyle argues that my chosen reformulation of the concept of power as context- and conduct-shaping unwittingly exposes me to precisely the same criticism(s) which I direct at Lukes. In this brief response I seek to clarify and defend my earlier position in the face of certain obvious misunderstandings in Doyle's reading, whilst re-stating my principal point of departure from Lukes' formulation.     

The Limits to Evidence‐Based Policy: Evidence,Emotion and Criminal Justice1

While ‘evidence‐based’ or ‘rationalist’ approaches to criminal policy may appeal to technocrats, bureaucrats and a number of academics, they often fail to compete successfully with the affective approaches to law and order policies which resonate with the public and which appear to meet deep‐seated psychological needs. They also often fail to recognise that ‘policy’ and ‘politics’ are related concepts and that debates about criminal justice are played out in broader arenas than the academy, the bureau or the agency. To be successful, penal reform must take account of the emotions people feel in the face of wrongdoing. Further, successful reform must take into account changes in public ‘mood’ or emotions over time and be sensitive to different political and social cultures. This article argues that criminal justice policies are more likely to be adopted if, in addition to the gathering and presentation of evidence, they recognise and deal with the roles of emotions, symbols, faith, belief and religion in the criminal justice system. It also recognises that evidence alone is unlikely to be the major determinant of policy outcomes and that the creation and successful implementation of policy also requires extensive engagement and evidence‐based dialogue with interested and affected parties. This necessitates a different kind of modelling for evidence‐based policy processes.     

China's engagement-oriented strategy towards North Korea: achievements and limitations

In response to the challenge of unstable North Korea (weak economy, weapons of mass destruction [WMD] development), China has followed an engagement-oriented strategy based on diplomatic persuasion, economic interaction and moderate economic sanctions. Intensified engagement (2009–2012) facilitated North Korean convergence with China in respect of economic reform but divergence has persisted over WMD development. Despite the widening of divergence since 2013, China has refrained from applying crippling sanctions. This article seeks to explain these diverging results and their implications for China's strategy towards North Korea. Reviewing recent literature and data, it will argue that Chinese economic input reinforced the trend of economic reform that formed the basis of political consolidation under the new hereditary regime. On the other hand, the prospect of stable dependence on China ran counter to that regime's pursuit of WMDs as the basis of security and diplomatic diversification. These mixed results reveal the limits of China's strategy: its economic input involuntarily reinforces North Korea's WMD potential but it is not prepared to accept the risks of enforcing WMD restraint by crippling sanctions either. With limited room for manoeuvre, the attainment of China's strategic objectives ultimately depends upon policy change from the US or South Korea.     

Civic implications of restorative justice theory: Citizen participation and criminal justice policy

Restorative justice, a normative theory and reform movement emphasizing dialogue and reconciliation between victim, offender, and community, is a widespread, if experimental, part of the practice of criminal justice in the United States. This essay argues that restorative justice draws connections between civic engagement and punishment practices that distinguish it as a normative theory of criminal justice. Advocates of restorative justice expect the growth of non-punitive attitudes and the weakening of support for incarceration to emerge from a public and lay-oriented context of adjudication. The role of lay participation in achieving social change, although prominent in restorative justice critiques of mainstream criminal justice norms and practices, has not been clearly articulated in practical terms. Significant ambiguities remain regarding the degree of lay participation, scope of authority, and the focus of restorative justice forums. The essay argues that an adequate assessment of restorative justice experiments should include an analysis of their impact on public attitudes towards crime and crime control policy and not simply on their impact on the specific victims and offenders involved. The link between less incarceration and restorative justice forums is public willingness to grant them the authority to hear and sanction offenses that would ordinarily receive incarceration. Whether and how they can influence broader public attitudes, then, is a critical test of restorative justice effectiveness.     

Engendering Transitional Justice: a Transformative Approach to Building Peace and Attaining Human Rights for Women

In this article, we examine the continuity of harms and traumas experienced by women before, during and after war and other mass violence. We focus on women because of the particular challenges they face in accessing justice due to patriarchal structures and ongoing discrimination in the political, economic and social, as well as legal spheres, and because of the gendered nature of the crimes and harms they experience. We use the four key pillars of transitional justice identified by the United Nations as a framework to analyse how these harms are addressed in the context of criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and institutional reform. We conclude that a gender-transformative approach to transitional justice that focuses on transforming psychosocial, socioeconomic and political power relations in society is needed in order to attain human rights for women and build a sustainable peace.     

Good government and sustainable anti-corruption strategies: A role for independent anti-corruption agencies?

Aid donors are increasingly seeking to link assistance to sustainable reform, including the provision of a responsible and responsive political and legal framework, the improvement of recipient countries' social, health and educational prospects, and the promotion of economic development and liberalization. Much attention is given to the first of these because of the size and cost to the state and the perceived constraints it exercises on the longer-term changes to the economy and society; in general terms, good government is an essential precondition for good governance and economic development. Increasingly donors have focused on corruption, both as a core obstacle to the encouragement of good government, and on the steps taken to dealing with it as evidence of commitment and the will of recipient countries to their introduction. While the types of activity associated with corruption are readily identifiable, as are the means to attempt to deal with it, it is usually much more difficult to determine effective implementation, particularly with limited resources at a time when longer-term political and economic reforms are also being promoted. It is therefore especially important that, in relation to corruption and good government, a practicable, effective and sustainable means is available to deal with corruption from preventative, investigative and reform perspectives.     

公正和效率的两难选择——评刑事诉讼法有关侦查程序的修改

我国侦查活动中公正和效率价值的双重缺失一直受到诟病。“宽严相济”刑事司法政策的确立以及司法体制和工作机制改革决策助推了刑事诉讼法再修改。立足于公正和效率价值的平衡,本次刑事诉讼法修改对有关侦查活动的证据制度、强制措施、辩护程序、讯问程序、侦查措施、侦查行为的监督等进行了完善。但基于我国国情,在人权保障、诉讼构造、侦查构造、侦查程序的科学性、侦查程序自治、侦查程序借鉴等方面．理想与现实之间仍存在一定差距。     

赔偿能力高低与交通肇事罪成立的关系——由最高人民法院司法解释的规定所引出理论上的看法

最高人民法院《关于审理交通肇事刑事案件具体应用法律若干问题的解释》将交通事故责任人有无财产赔偿能力以及赔偿能力的高低作为定罪量刑的因素之一，并不是以钱买罪。恰恰相反，它体现了是刑法谦抑性、宽严相济的刑事政策以及和谐社会的要求，符合当代法律的发展趋势。     

The Negotiated Economy: Is There a Theory?

The original concept of the negotiated economy from the late 1970s provided some heuristic insights into significant developments of political, economic, and administrative processes. The later development of the concept has not brought the theory of the negotiated economy any further. This is a reply to an article published in SPS (Andersen et al. 1996) which responded to criticisms brought by me in an earlier article (1W.4). The defence of the theory of the negotiated economy is not consistent. The theory is both non-positive and positive, and normally accepted criteria for empirical confrontation are not adhered to.     

Policy Networks And Agricultural Policy Reforms: Explaining Deregulation In Sweden And Re‐Regulation In The European Community

Policy network analysis has been criticized for being unable to explain outcomes and change in outcomes. This article develops a theoretical network model which attempts to explain reform outcomes. It suggests that the success of reformers depends mainly on the policy network type existing in the sector in which they attempt to bring about change. If the network has a high degree of cohesion, then those network members who are subject to reform have power to defend the principles of the established policy. Consequently, only moderate policy reform occurs. On the other hand, if the network's degree of cohesion is low, then those who are subject to reform do not have the power to oppose reformers successfully. Therefore, reformers have opportunities to bring about fundamental policy reform. Differences in the cohesion of agricultural policy networks help to explain why the 1990 Swedish agricultural policy reform was more radical than the European Community's in 1992.     

Economic performance and U.S. Senate elections: Reply

Major criticisms made by Chressanthis and Shaffer (C-S) are addressed: the authors' failure to include noneconomic variables in the regression model, the inclusion of open elections in the sample, and the use of variables other than the state unemployment rate as economic performance measures. Errors in C-S's interpretations are noted. Additional regression results are reported using modifications of the authors' original model. These suggest that the change (notrelative change as in C-S) in state unemployment rate is superior, and that the authors' model yields a stronger effect of state economic performance on election outcomes than does the C-S model.John Beck contributed helpful comments.     

浅谈我国刑法中的“公理之情”

我国刑法中贯穿着"公理之情",这种"情"有助于我国刑法作用的充分发挥。理解"公理之情"的含义,在司法实践中运用好这种"情",有助于我国刑法任务和刑罚目的的实现,促进我国的法治建设。     

Human Rights and Ethnic Data Collection in Hungary

The article analyzes ethnic data collection pertaining to criminal justice in Hungary. With such a sensitive and delicate issue at hand, Hungary has decided on an evasive approach, resisting ethnic data collection by law enforcement authorities. The author argues that this approach has become one of the obstacles in fighting discrimination and ethnic profiling. Moreover, Hungary’s restrictive approach to ethno-national data classification also causes severe constitutional problems in other, noncriminal legal circumstances, where ethnic data is used in the context of additional rights and affirmative protection provided for ethno-national minorities. The first part of the article describes general problems relating to ethnic data collection and analyses of the Hungarian minority protection framework, in particular, the minority self-government structure (a unique constitutional institution). The second part focuses on the criminal justice system; the author’s aim is to show that prohibiting the official recognition and collection of data on ethnicity by criminal justice authorities has potentially ethnically discriminatory consequences. This paper was written under the aegis of the Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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Race,Class, and the Development of Criminal Justice Policy1

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are profound and well documented. A range of scholarship has examined these trends to assess the degree to which they result from biased decision making at various levels of the justice system. Also key to understanding the origin of these disparities is an analysis of the race and class determinants of criminal justice policy. This can be seen most clearly in the development of drug policy, but also in the means by which policy choices in law enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing are formulated. To the extent that crime is perceived as a “black problem,” the means by which the problem is addressed and the resulting punitiveness of the approach serve to exacerbate societal inequalities.     

Signals intelligence and Pearl Harbor: The state of the question

In recent times, Pearl Harbor historiography has shifted towards the question of whether or not the Pearl Harbor attack could have been predicted through intercepted signals. The recent prodigious output of books and articles on this subject makes it necessary to reflect upon how the debate has developed. Some traditionalists (who believe that the Pearl Harbor attack surprised US and Allied authorities) continue to criticize revisionists (who believe that intercepted signals may have provided foreknowledge of the attack) using a blend of polemics and ad hominem criticism. That adversarial template began long ago with the first sharp criticisms of the work of revisionist historian Charles Beard. Similar criticisms of revisionists continue to the present day, but such criticisms are unfounded as relevant evidence concerning pre-Pearl Harbor signals intelligence, drawn from both archival and anecdotal sources, suggests that the revisionist thesis merits further scholarly attention.     

Following in China's footsteps? The political economy of North Korean reform

Since the coming to power of Kim Jong Un in 2012, the North Korean government has recently announced, and to some degree has implemented, a new set of economic management policies known as the June 28th measures in 2012 and the May 30th measures in 2014. Both of these sets of measures seek to build upon the abandoned reforms of the early 2000s through restructuring North Korea's highly inefficient collective farm and state-owned enterprise management system. In addition, the government has intensified ongoing efforts at building special economic zones for the purpose of attracting foreign investment. As such, the country is attempting to emulate the reforms adopted by China in the late 1970s. Although the success of these efforts is by no means guaranteed, they do serve to question mainstream analyses that suggest that Juche Self-Reliance or S?n'gun Military First Politics ideologies will inhibit any genuine attempt at economic reform in North Korea. We argue, in contrast, that ongoing changes to North Korean state and society mean that, a cyclical stop and start rhythm to the reforms notwithstanding, such attempts at economic reform are likely to continue. However, we also argue that while the contemporary reform drive resembles and may indeed reproduce some of the successes of the Chinese experience, North Korea faces significantly greater challenges, including the greater decline of North Korean industry, local resistance to reform, and the dangers of inflation. Furthermore, North Korea faces a highly challenging external security environment that undermines the ability of the regime to attract investment and by extension the political standing of reformist elements within the country. Given this contrast with the international environment surrounding China's own reform experience, our analysis emphasises the importance of geopolitical context in shaping experiences of economic reform and of development more broadly.     

Defending the Articles of Confederation: A Reply to Dougherty

This reply addresses the issues raised byDougherty in response to my 1999 article in this journal. Ialso develop a new graphical model of the optimal collectionrate under the Articles, where states made contributions, andcontrast it to the revenue potential from direct taxation. Ibelieve that despite Dougherty's criticisms, my argumentremains valid. While the Articles were not perfect in anabsolute sense, that when more properly viewed in acomparative manner, that the system of state contributions forraising revenue under the Articles was (and still is) superiorto a system of direct federal taxation.     

The political economy of the environmental criminal justice system: a production function approach

The criminal justice system combines at least three distinct institutions, police, prosecutors, and courts, in order to enforce key regulations. Focusing on criminal environmental law contained in the German Penal Code, this paper empirically studies the determinants of enforcement decisions at the levels of the police, prosecutors, and judges using a production function approach. We focus particularly on the role of economic and political factors and their comparison across institutions. The results of the panel data analysis show evidence for the presence of economic factors determining behavior at all levels. Political factors impact especially on police and court behavior.     

The Penal Voluntary Sector in England and Wales: Adaptation to Unsettlement and Austerity

This article draws on some findings from research which investigated penal voluntary sector adaptation to the mixed market in criminal justice services. The article firstly reprises the main trends for aligning state relationships with the voluntary sector from the 1980s to the present. We then outline some findings about adaptive experiences, situations and practices of the voluntary sector in criminal justice resettlement in the light of considerable upheaval. The research found that service providing voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) either outwardly comply with, or, in a minority of cases, actively embrace, competitive marketised models of service delivery. Secondly, the sector has normalised commercial approaches to organisational efficiency as well as aligned with bureaucratic practices common to the statutory sector. Despite charges that they are effectively co‐opted by both state and market interests, many have reported conflicts between prioritising long‐term financial viability with their founding ‘ethos and values’. We conclude that while many VSOs have successfully adjusted to market and bureaucratic norms, aspects of that repositioning have been at a cost to their traditions of relative autonomy, localism and distinctiveness, to the possible detriment of a vigorous civil society.     

Externalised Justice and Democratisation: Lessons from the Pinochet Case

The attempt to try Pinochet in Spain exemplified and publicised a trend to use 'externalised justice' to tackle impunity for human rights crimes. It also demonstrated the possibilities and limitations of externalised justice initiatives, in terms of securing democracy at the national level, and of advancing accountability for serious crimes under international law. In Chile, Argentina and Spain the Pinochet affair served to restart stalled impulses towards accountability, accelerate democratic reform and challenge the legitimacy of compromises conceded during earlier democratic transitions. With regard to the wider role of international law in limiting impunity, expectations for rapid or consistent replication of 'the Pinochet precedent' have not been met. Despite some notable achievements, the exercise of universal jurisdiction by national courts remains inconsistent and controversial. The International Criminal Court (ICC) provides a new mechanism for external justice. An aggressive US campaign to undermine it, and to reverse progress in international law, is a serious obstacle to fulfilment of the ICC's enforcement role. However, at the domestic level the ICC may have similar indirect effects to the Pinochet litigation, boosting domestic enforcement prospects and strengthening democratic commitment. In both cases the key role for externalised justice is as stimulus or back-up. This suggests that progress in tackling impunity depends on incremental and dynamic interaction between domestic and international law, and between national and transnational actors.