Building bridges over troubled waters: Administrative change at the regional level in European,multilevel water management

The European Commission is promoting more decentralized forms of multilevel administration, without having its own administrative capacity on the ground. This article examines the role of ground-level administration in this multilevel system, by analysing why and how administrative change at sub-national levels comes about in connection with the implementation of European Union (EU) legislation. Despite their similar unitary state systems, Sweden and Norway have implemented the administrative requirements of the Water Framework Directive differently. While Sweden has delegated decision-making authority to novel regional-level bodies, triggering frictions in the hierarchical structure of government, Norway established networked, interdependent structures. Enquiring into the causes, the study finds that complementary use of instrumental, power-oriented and historical institutionalism shed light on the conditions under which European multilevel administration develops. In complex political-administrative systems, domestic legacies and time-specific events provide ‘turfs’ for Europeanization-processes shaping domestic administrative systems from within.     

加强行政立法监督是完善行政立法的关键

对行政自由裁量的程序控制已成为现代各国行政法的“命脉”。行政立法行为作为一种范围相当广泛的授权性自由裁量行为对社会产生着无孔不入的影响,如则。强对其的监控已越来越引起人们的关注。就我国目前的行政立法、地方性行政法规和规章中存在的问题及原因进行研究,并提出完善行政立法的设想,极具现实意义。     

On the logic of productive cooperation: a response to critics

This paper identifies and responds to four critiques of democratic contractarianism, as advocated in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, to be found in this symposium. The first is that, as a contingent practice-dependent account of justice, democratic contractarianism lacks the capacity to explain civic cooperation. The second is that, despite its intentions, Democratic Justice does not lay out an authentic contractarian theory. The third is that the theory is incompatible with our considered judgements about justice. And the fourth is that the ambition of Democratic Justice to use the empirical method to compensate for the failures of hypothetical contract theory fails because all social science needs interpretation. To each of these critiques, replies are offered, drawing attention to the way in which democratic contractarianism exemplifies a logic of social cooperation to mutual advantage that is compatible with justice provided the cooperation emerges from a bargaining situation of roughly equal power.     

Coast guards and maritime piracy: sailing past the impediments to cooperation in Asia

Abstract

Despite the efforts of the past decade, maritime piracy remains of international concern today. Countries need to cooperate actively at both the regional and international levels to eradicate the problem effectively. In particular, the nature of the threat in the Asia-Pacific region suggests that coastal states – countries that possess sovereignty over the pirate-infested waters but lack the law-enforcement resources – have to turn to resource-rich extra-regional powers for assistance. Unfortunately, cooperation between such disparate countries has traditionally been impeded by sovereignty sensitivities, as best exemplified by Malaysia's and Indonesia's hostile responses to the United States' Regional Maritime Security Initiative in 2003. Faced with this apparent dilemma, a new phenomenon has emerged. National coast guard agencies, instead of their military naval counterparts, have become attractive alternatives for promoting international cooperation against non-traditional security threats, such as maritime piracy. Spearheaded by the Japanese Coast Guard (JCG), coast guards from various countries have imparted training expertise, conducted joint exercises, hosted low-publicity multilateral meetings, and even transferred security equipment across international borders. Together they have succeeded in promoting cooperation without arousing the sovereignty sensitivities often associated with such cooperation. This article analyzes the evolution of coast guard cooperation in Asia, highlighting in particular the Japanese Coast Guard's success in this endeavor. With the general alignment of regional and global power interests in Southeast Asia, coast guard agencies hold promise for extra-regional powers wishing to help eradicate maritime piracy in the region.     

Signing on to liberalization: AFTA and the politics of regional economic cooperation

From the inception of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 to 1991 economic cooperation among its members was virtually non-existent. However, in January 1992 the leaders of the member states agreed to work towards an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). Following an uncertain initial phase the leaders rededicated themselves in 1995 to an accelerated implementation of the AFTA agreement. The key to the change in policy and to the relatively successful implementation of AFTA was the shift in the domestic balance of power in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand from economic nationalists to liberal reformers. This occurred as the result of a series of recessions and booms that affected the economies of the region from the early 1980s onwards. Also crucial to the successful implementation of AFTA was the distinctive approach to regional cooperation that has developed among the ASEAN members.     

Administrative avenues to democratic governance: the balance of supply and demand

Governance interventions have evolved to a much greater emphasis on the demand side of good or democratic governance. This article discusses the need for an appropriate balance between both the demand and the supply sides. In short, while citizens need to demand, governments need to respond; both are capable of some supply; and none of these should be taken for granted. The pros and cons of a balanced approach are discussed, as well as the risks of imbalance. The article also begins to explore what a balanced approach might look like, arguing that balanced approaches incorporate a reorientation and expansion of various mechanisms of control: hierarchic/bureaucratic mechanisms are reoriented to embrace and promote democratic principles and opportunities for exit and voice; market mechanisms are exploited wherever possible; and clan mechanisms based on trust and repeated interaction are introduced and emphasized. Brief examples demonstrate that operationalizing a balanced approach entails consensus building through a series of negotiations among key stakeholders. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extreme right-wing voting in Germany in a multilevel perspective: A rejoinder to Lubbers and Scheepers

Abstract.  In their article about individual and contextual characteristics of the German extreme right-wing vote in the 1990s, Lubbers and Scheepers ('Individual and contextual characteristics of the German extreme right-wing vote in the 1990s: A test of complementary theories', European Journal of Political Research 38 (2000): 63–94) found a contra- intuitive significant negative relationship between unemployment rate and an individual's likelihood of voting for the right-wing extremist Republikaner Party. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the reasons for this puzzling result. To capture contextual information resembling the individual's life sphere as close as possible, we use data that allow us to include the districts as an additional level between the individual and the state in our multilevel analyses.     

Retrofitting the Administrative State to the Constitution: Congress and the Judiciary's Twentieth-Century Progress

One of the twentieth century's "big questions" for United States government has been how best to retrofit, or integrate, the full-fledged federal administrative state into the constitutional scheme. The public administration orthodoxy initially advocated placing the executive branch almost entirely under presidential control; Congress and the federal judiciary responded otherwise. Congress decided to treat the agencies as its extensions for legislative functions and to supervise them more closely. The courts developed an elaborate framework for imposing constitutional rights, values, and reasoning on public administration practice. As the challenge of retrofitting continues into the twenty-first century, public administrators might profitably play a larger role in the constitutional discourse regarding the administrative state's place in constitutional government.     

行动者:治理转型中的行政主体

管理行政下的行政主体只是主客二分意义上的行政实体,是不具有主体性的行政主体。后工业社会的发育、发展,使行政管理发生深刻变化,促使多元管理主体生成,多元治理主体的生成意味着管理主体自觉性的增强。然而,当众多管理主体的主体性不断增长时,也就意味着行政主体在多元化进程中走向了自己的反面,由此说明需要在后工业社会场景下用行动者来取代行政主体。后工业社会条件下的行动者是充满想象力、具有积极性和主动性的行动者,他们通过自己的行动在建构这个世界。     

论行政文化对文化的反作用

文化作为行政文化的生态环境决定着它的演进轨迹,而行政文化则主要通过行政体系、行政制度和行政行为影响公民的价值判断、价值选择和价值实现,在此基础上进而对整个文化系统实施反作用。社会主义行政丈化的中心任务就是通过对传统文化的反作用,建立适合中国国情的新型文化体系。     

Using implementation research to solve implementation problems: The case of energy emergency assistance

Generalizations drawn from implementation research can offer useful guidance in formulating new implementation plans, as the development of a revenue-recycling program illustrates. According to the conventional wisdom drawn from implementation research, the program design should be simple and all the steps necessary to produce the desired results should be identified at the outset. The program that was developed in this case was an extensive one, intended to provide financial relief to all U.S. citizens in an energy emergency. The program would be under the control of one existing agency where equipment, personnel, space, and standard operating procedures were most suitable to the goals of the plan. Although the admonitions derived from past research are straightforward, it turns out that adhering to them in the practical process of resolving specific implementation problems requires imagination and tenacity. Because implementation takes place in settings that are extraordinarily diverse, new generalizations regarding implementation will not be easy. Besides, those that engage in implementation research must reconcile themselves to the fact that their generalizations face a demanding test, far more demanding then that encountered in most policy analysis research—“Does it really work?”     

Regulatory relationships across levels of multilevel governance systems: From collaboration to competition

The European Union and the United States are paradigmatic examples of multilevel governance systems that are also regulatory states. In both settings, informal networks of regulators preceded and existed alongside supranational (federal) regulatory agencies. The literature understood their rationale as preparatory to the creation of higher level agencies. This approach, however, cannot explain why informal regulatory networks still exist, years after the establishment of higher level agencies. What explains the persistence of informal regulatory networks? The argument of this article is that in multilevel governance systems, the relationship between regulatory networks and the supranational level of governance is coevolutionary and embodies struggles for autonomy and authority: as the multilevel governance system consolidates, the character of this relationship evolves from collaborative to competitive. The argument relies on a comparative historical analysis of two voluntary networks of energy regulators from the European Union and the United States, based on 27 interviews and archival research.     

Labor's ace in the hole: casino organizing in Las Vegas

This article critically evaluates the argument that individuals and nations have a right to forget their past. Since our histories shape our identities, forgetting is unnecessary, impossible, and politically problematic. Cosmopolitanism allows individuals to combine memory and de-essentialized group identities with more universal identities. Further, governments have no right to forget the past, since they could use this right to avoid grappling with the legacies of historical injustices in the present. Against the view that time heals all wounds, I argue that promoting justice in the present requires us to recognize the legacies of historical injustices such as slavery and to promote some form of restitution.