The Financial Crisis: A Retrospective

Government efforts to manage the financial crisis and to promote economic recovery have been extensive over the past three years. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been distributed—and much of it now repaid—from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Federal Reserve holds more than $2 trillion in mortgage‐backed securities, collateralized loans to financial institutions, and other assets and liabilities to maintain liquidity in the financial markets. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act injected more than $600 billion into the economy through tax breaks, loans, contracts, grants, and entitlements. Congress also passed the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. Yet economic recovery remains flat. The author examines the reform effort to date, key points of its primary focus, and the politics of implementing the reform as a factor in eventual economic recovery. One component of the reform, the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, holds the greatest potential for changing the way consumers participate in the financial markets, but also has drawn the greatest debate and opposition. While regulatory reform alone will not revive the economy, a newly conceived and broadly participatory Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could simplify and streamline the complex linkages that contribute to the supply of credit.     

The Banking Crisis: A Rational Interpretation

Modern macroeconomic models have been widely criticised as relying too much on rationality and market efficiency. However, their predictions about this crisis are being borne out by events. 'Crashes' are an integral part of an 'efficient market' capitalism and are brought on by swings in the news about productivity growth; this time nearly two decades of strong computer-based productivity growth were brought to a crashing halt by raw material shortages. This presages a slow recovery until innovation in material use frees growth up again as it did in the 1990s after the shortages of the 1970s.     

Being British: A Crisis of Identity?

An assumed decline in Britishness has rekindled concern over the 'break up of Britain'. The creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 is taken as the cause and the effect of Scots having come to feel more Scottish and less British. Using data on public attitudes from British, and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys, this paper shows that, despite a strengthening sense of Scottishness over the last thirty years, the sense of being British is still widespread and similar in Scotland and in England. Even those who describe themselves as Scottish and not British are not hostile to the idea of Britain. The relatively weak association between national identity, party support and views on constitutional change suggests that being Scottish is more cultural than political. Recent attempts by politicians and others to mobilise Britishness ignore the complexity and diversity of meanings it has both north and south of the border.     

乡民自治:农村治理模式的一种选择

农村治理中的种种问题根源于近代以来所形成的旧的国家与农民关系,进一步后移国家与农村社会的边界,改变目前“乡政村治”的农村治理模式,从体制上消除旧的国家与农民关系最集中的载体,实行中国共产党领导下的“乡民自治”,给农民更广阔的自由生存、自主发展的空间,是农村基层政权建设的理性选择。     

Learning from the Katrina Crisis: A Global and International Perspective with Implications for Future Crisis Management

The study of crisis and emergency management—or mismanagement—during Hurricane Katrina will continue to proliferate in the near future. This article presents a global and international perspective on Katrina as a case of "grand failure" in crisis and emergency management, with lessons and implications for future crisis management. Benefiting from empirical data collected from international interviews, the essay presents a theoretical analysis of emergency governance and crisis management, discusses a detailed global perspective on Katrina crisis management as "management and leadership crisis," offers a number of key lessons learned from Katrina, and draws policy and administrative recommendations for future crisis and emergency management through a theory of "surprise management" that is adaptive, collaborative, and citizen engaging and draws on chaos and complexity theories to cope with hyper-uncertainties and unknowns.     

The Creeping Politicisation of the World Bank: The Case of Corruption

This paper looks at the increasing politicisation of the World Bank through its work on corruption. Historically, the Bank's Articles of Agreement, which forbid it from involving itself in the politics of its recipient countries, have excluded work on corruption. In the 1990s, internal and external demands grew for the Bank to address the problem of corruption, despite earlier reticence. Much research done over the past decade, often commissioned by the Bank or done in-house, has worked to turn corruption into an economic and social issue, rather than a political one, in order to conduct anti-corruption work while evading accusations that it is violating this non-political mandate. Now this pretence is gradually slipping away and the Bank is becoming overtly political, despite its Articles and a lack of international consensus that this is the direction in which it should be heading.     

A Crisis of Party?*

The debate about the (future) role of political parties in modern democracies suffers from generally unacknowledged normative preconceptions as well as a tendency to reason in terms of ‘inevitable’ social processes, rather than precise theoretical reasoning or empirical analysis. At least four distinct bodies of thought affect the discussion about the assumed crisis of party: (1) the view that parties are a danger to the good society, leading to the denial of parties as legitimate actors; (2) the belief that some types of parties are ‘good’ and others ‘bad’, causing a selective rejection of parties; (3) the proposition that certain party systems are ‘good’ and others ‘bad’, resulting in a selective rejection of party systems; and (4) the affirmation that parties are becoming redundant. The latter suggestion is shown in a variety of approaches -e. g. the idea that parties are transient agents of democratization, the analysis of parties as mere market-forces, the assumption that parties do not matter in policies, and the view, as exemplified by neocorporatism, that parties inevitably lose their functions to other political actors. The pervasive presence of aprioristic views suggests the need for a conceptual house-cleaning, the importance of distinguishing normative from empirical arguments, and the need for more detailed empirical research, giving due weight to differences between countries, party systems, parties and periods instead of postulating inexorable trends.     

Class, Capital and Crisis: A Return to Fundamentals

The financial crisis that currently threatens the stability of global capitalism is the latest in a long line of similar episodes stretching back some 200 years. While many orthodox economists explain the crisis in terms of the failure of the proper operation of the market mechanism, radical accounts see crisis as an aspect of the constitution of capital and of the process of the accumulation of capital itself. This article explores the extent to which Marx's understanding of accumulation and crisis can provide the basis for a general theory of capitalist crisis. It concludes that the growing and chronic separation between financial (fictitious) accumulation and productive accumulation is the key to understanding the latest crisis of capital expressed as a global credit crunch. Furthermore, Marx opens the door to the development of an overtly 'political' theory of crisis stressing the 'capitalist use of crisis' as a means for the violent reassertion of the fundamental class relation.     

我国政府危机管理与危机管理能力研究综述

我国政府危机管理研究的范围主要包括:各种概念的界定、危机的类型、危机的诱因;国外危机管理经验的借鉴、危机管理案例和政府危机管理体系等。我国的危机管理研究还处在初级阶段,在关于提升政府危机管理能力的措施研究上,主要有“制度论”、“经验论”、“全面整合论”和“公共关系论”。我国学界对危机和危机管理的研究,还存在概念界定不清、实证性研究不够、跨学科研究不够和还没有形成一套完整的系统的理论等等问题。     

社会主义新农村建设中农民的主体地位和作用问题

在政府、社会和农民组成的社会主义新农村建设主体格局中,农民是社会主义新农村建设的核心主体,农民主体性的强弱决定着社会主义新农村建设的效度。在实践"十一五"规划、建设社会主义新农村、构建社会主义和谐社会的重要时期,需要客观、冷静地分析社会主义新农村建设的主体格局,认清核心主体——农民弱位的事实,培育具有自我发展主体性能力的新型农民。     

跨域危机整体性治理中的组织协调问题研究——基于组织间网络视角

跨域性特征对现代社会危机治理提出了更为严峻的挑战,是世界范围内应急管理领域所面临的重要问题。本文结合现代社会,尤其是中国转型期社会特点,对现代跨域危机内涵及其特点进行归纳,进而提出了跨域危机治理中存在的碎片化问题。在此基础上,结合具体案例对当前中国跨域危机治理问题进行分析,进而着重从信息、资源维度对其整体性治理问题进行阐释,认为不同组织在信息、资源整合中存在的问题是产生跨域危机治理碎片化问题的主要原因。因此,要实现跨域危机整体性治理,必须结合中国应急管理实际,以组织间网络视角从应急管理组织层面对碎片化环节成因进行分析。在前述分析基础上,本文认为跨域危机整体性治理实现的关键在于其治理网络中信息、资源整合问题,目前管理体制条块分割现实以及由此产生的专业部门隶属不同、管理层级复杂、多头指挥而产生的协调困难是中国式碎片化问题的根本原因。最终,本文构建了跨域危机治理网络分析模型,并对碎片化环节识别、整理以及跨域危机整体性治理实现对策等问题进行了探讨。     

Crisis Navigation: Lessons from History for the Crisis Manager in Chief

As fundamental tests of presidential leadership and organizational capacity, crises can make or break an administration. This article presents a conceptual analysis of what makes any crisis situation challenging to deal with, and it develops a set of analytical steps that can help crisis managers diagnose particular crisis situations they might face. The proposed crisis navigation framework brings together case research studies and theories of organizational processes, so that those assuming responsibility for steering the government and society through crises—including the Obama administration—have a useful point of entry into the growing crisis management literature.     

The European Parliament and the Commission Crisis: A New Assertiveness?

This article examines two claims made about the "Commission crisis" of 1999: first, that the accountability of the Commission to the European Parliament (EP) was significantly increased; and, second, that the model of parliamentary government in the European Union (EU) was advanced by events in 1999. In analyzing the crisis and its consequences, this article focuses upon the powers of dismissal and appointment, and what these powers reveal about the capacity of the EP both to hold the Commission responsible for its collective and individual actions and to influence its policy agenda. If a parliamentary model is to develop in the EU, the negative parliamentary powers of censure and dismissal have to be balanced by the positive powers of appointment and enhanced executive responsiveness. On both counts—dismissal and appointment—the 1999 "Commission crisis" did not point to the clear and unambiguous dawning of a "genuine European parliamentary democracy."