德国示范确认之诉及其对我国消费民事公益诉讼的镜鉴

德国示范确认之诉以加强群体性法律保护为目的,是一项全新的民事诉讼类型。其在本质上属于确认之诉,但具有示范性效果。它只能由特定的有资格的机构提起,受损害的消费者可以自主决定是否登记参与这一诉讼。这既有利于消费者集体主张权利,也保障了其自主决定权。然而,这一制度在适用范围、主体限定和两阶段诉讼模式等方面暴露出不足,受到批判。通过比较研究可以发现,我国的消费民事公益诉讼制度具有鲜明的自身特色,但在适用前提、起诉主体和登记管理系统等方面,确有必要学习借鉴德国示范确认之诉的做法。     

数字化背景下德国消费者保护法的新发展——德国《公平消费者合同法》评述与启示

数字化时代助推电子商务平台高速发展，致使消费者在签订电子合同时处于弱势地位，无法体现合同主体之间的平等性。为了应对数字化发展带来的问题，同时回应欧盟《现代化指令》并提升消费者合同内容的公平性，德国制定并分阶段施行了《公平消费者合同法》。《公平消费者合同法》就数字化中消费者保护的问题，分别对《德国民法典》《德国民法施行法》以及《德国反不正当竞争法》部分条款做了修改或内容的增加。一方面，在民法框架内，《公平消费者合同法》增加了企业为消费者提供无限期续约合同的限制以及电子商务中合同终止按键的义务，并规定含有排除转让内容的合同条款无效，以增加对消费者在持续性的数字服务合同中的保护力度。另一方面，在反不正当竞争领域，该法增设了企业记录电话推广同意的义务及相应的处罚规则，以保护消费者免遭非法电话广告的侵扰。德国《公平消费者合同法》回应了数字化发展过程中有关消费者保护的问题，为我国数字经济发展中的消费者保护提供了有益借鉴。     

日本股东代表诉论制度评析

一、引言股东代表诉讼制度是公司法为保护股东权益，鼓励少数股东积极行使监督权而创设的一项制度，它又称为股东派生诉讼，是指公司机关成员如董事、监事、发起人等实施不当行为侵害公司利益，需对公司承担责任而公司却怠于通过诉讼追究行为人的责任及实现其他权利时，具备法定资格的股东为了公司的利益代公司提起诉讼，股东代表诉讼制度具有恢复公司财产损失和加强股东监督公司经营的功能。~①该制度由英美法首创，继而被众多大陆法系国家所采纳，日本、德国、法国及我国台湾地区在成文法中都确立了该项制度。近年来，我国也有许多学者撰…     

德国消费者食品健康保护组织体系

消费者健康保护是我们每个人自觉或不自觉都要接触到的话题,消费者需要的是安全的消费品.本文将介绍德国消费者健康保护的各级组织体系及其间的相互合作,其中既有官方的联邦和各级联邦州政府,欧盟的有关机构,也有各类非官方的基金会和协会.     

《德国民法典》中的消费者保护制度

本文从一般交易条件、特别销售形态、联合合同和消费品买卖等四个方面简略介绍 了《德国民法典》中有关消费者保护的法律规章。     

德国消费者购物决策行为研究

消费者购物决策心理特征是企业选择目标市场和制定产品及促销策略的重要依 据。德国消费者的购物决策行为模型,可以由七个公因子构成,它们分别是品牌意 识、追求完美意识、购物消遣/享乐意识、对选择感到困难的意识、冲动意识、好奇而 追求时尚意识、追求产品多样性的意识。德国消费者对产品生态方面的信息也越 来越重视。跨国企业认识德国消费者购物决策行为,对制定切实可行的国际营销 战略具有重要意义。     

德国做好准备应对禽流感 专家警告不要制造恐慌

鉴于禽流感向欧洲蔓延，科学家们要求更好地对公民进行宣传教育，同时警告不要制造恐慌。在德国汉诺威召开的专业会议上，约有150名专家济济一堂，共商防御禽流感的措施。下萨克森州卫生局局长温多夫教授表示，虽然这种病毒对经济的影响大，但这是一种动物瘟疫，只在极少数情况下会传染给人类。下萨克森州消费者保护与食品安全局局长豪恩霍斯特也表示，德国已经作了充分的准备，以迅速应对禽流感的爆发。     

联邦德国的消费者保护法及消费者组织

文章介绍了联邦德国的消费者政策及有关的消费者保护立法，比较详细地介绍了食品改革法、药品法等有关法规。文章还介绍了德国的消费者组织，主要有：消费者协会、消费者保护协会、消费者研究所及全德汽车俱乐部等。文章还介绍了商品测试机构的组成，资金来源、职能及工作手段。文章最后分析了德国消费者保护的发展趋势。     

La négociation au marché libre en Chine

在现实社会生活中,交际既是人际间相互交往的主观需求,也是社会生活的重要组成部分之一。鉴于人们都生活在自己的传统和文化环境中,所以交际活动离不开一定的文化和社会背景。因此我们说,人类的交际活动都不同程度地,客观地反映了一个民族文化价值观念。正是出于这一目的,本文通过对中国自由市场店主与消费者间的商务对话,分析研究在中国文化背景下,在双方谈话中所表现出来的文化理念和会话特点。     

美国金融消费者保护机制的改革及经验

次贷危机后美国不仅建立了专门的联邦金融消费者保护机构,而且通过完善信息披露、严格抵押贷款条件等具体制度加强对金融消费者的保护。美国的经验表明,消费者保护职能与审慎监管职能由同一个机构行使时,应确保消费者保护部门的独立性,以协调审慎监管目标与消费者保护目标之间的潜在冲突;以分业监管为基础设立的消费者保护部门之间应建立有效的协调机制以确保一致监管、避免重复监管和监管漏洞。监管方法的选择方面,规则监管的基础上适当采纳原则监管,可以有效应对金融创新对消费者保护和金融稳定的负面影响。鉴于信息披露在金融消费者保护方面的重要性,应通过合理设计信息披露的内容、简化信息披露的方式、加强金融教育等手段提高信息披露的有效性。     

U.S. COURT RULES IN THE “OKINAWA DUGONG” CASE

In January 2008, a U.S. federal court in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Defense Department's plans to construct a new U.S. offshore Marine airbase in Okinawa violated the National Historic Preservation Act by not protecting a Japanese “national monument,” the endangered Okinawa dugong. This article discusses the background and trajectory of the lawsuit and the implications of this judgment. The outcome of this lawsuit is expected to improve processes of evaluating and managing environmental and other social impacts of U.S. military forces on hosting communities in Okinawa/Japan. The case also demonstrates the potential of transnational civil society actors to overcome a deficient democratic system within one state. The expanded theater of the anti‐base Okinawans' protest brought them new allies while avoiding difficult and unnecessary conflict on the ground at home.     

Garros-Evdokimov and Commodification of the Baltics

Recent groundbreaking analyses of the Baltics have focused on decolonization and national and postcolonial subjectivity. A related but somewhat divergent approach to postcolonial, ethnic and global studies in the Baltic context is to explore the response of contemporary Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian cultures to the introduction of consumer capitalism, intra-European community and global pop-culture. A long-awaited independence brought by the Soviet departure has also presented the Baltics with multiple novel challenges, especially the issue of establishing a new identity, on both a national and a personal level. These challenges become the focus of Headcrusher (2003), the debut novel of Latvian-Russian journalists Alexander Garros and Alexei Evdokimov. This essay investigates Headcrusher's fictionalization of Latvian entry into global commodified space and contextualizes the novel's censure of the new consumer-driven realm within a broader Western comparative literary and theoretical perspective.     

美国转基因食品管制制度研究

美国是世界上转基因食品的生产和出口大国,其管制转基因食品的法律制度独树一帜,有别于大多数国家的制度。在管制理念上,美国主张“可靠科学原则”,强调管制必须以科学证据为基础。在管制方法上,美国反对对转基因食品采取不同于常规食品的特殊管制方法,而是同样适用“自律”管制,要求食品开发商自行确保食品安全。美国也不认同消费者的”知情权”,因而不要求在转基因食品上张贴强制性标签。美国的经验不合适我国国情,但其完善、和谐的管制理论体系却值得我国借鉴。     

Korea and Taiwan: The Crisis of Investment-Led Growth and the End of the Developmental State

A defining feature of the Northeast Asian developmental state was a focus on maximising investment and suppressing growth in consumption. While consistently high rates of investment were an integral part of the growth model, as the South Korean and Taiwanese economies matured, the viability of this model was undermined by the inability of these economies to generate sufficient opportunities for profitable investment. At the same time, the legacies of systems of labour control associated with the developmental state have impeded the development of stable wage-led growth regimes in both political economies. Instead, they have become reliant on an unstable combination of current account surpluses and consumer borrowing to sustain growth. The legacies of the developmental state continue to define many aspects of the political-economic landscape in Korea and Taiwan. However, changes in the growth regimes, the reorientation of the financial sectors from corporate to household lending, and the downgrading of industrial policy mean that it is no longer useful to define Korea or Taiwan as developmental states. Instead, contemporary Korea and Taiwan can be best understood as post-developmental states.     

Organisierte Zivilgesellschaft im EU-Verfassungsprozess: Partner des Regierens oder Konstituent politischer Ordnung?

A new role has been ascribed to civil society within the EU-constitutional process. It is not only regarded as a partner in governance but also as a constituent of the emerging EU-polity. Civil society appears in this process primarily as the structure of voice that is articulated in relation to EU-governance and that claims to represent European citizens. The article proposes an analytical framework and a methodology of how to analyze civil society in its role as constituency. The research agenda is linked to the intermediary and the representative function of organised civil society as a transmission belt of legitimatory discourse on the EU. In order to reconstruct how potential interests, identities and normative ideas relating to the legitimacy of a EU constitutional order are contested within national politics, our research draws on a survey of German civil society organisations in three sectors: a) consumer interest organisations, b) churches and religious organisations, and c) women and gender equality groups.     

Staatlich gesteuerte Tarifautonomie

The German Tarifautonomie, the state-free collective bargaining system on working conditions, can be considered as an institutionalized arrangement of political exchange between labor market associations and the state. This understanding allows to examine the state’s interests in regard to free collective bargaining as well as the state’s options to achieve his interests and to impact the social partnership activities. The article highlights the intentions, the methods and the effects of various forms of state intervention. As a result, the decade-long institutional change of the German industrial relations system can be seen inter alia as an outcome of the dynamic and flexible relationship between associations and the state. A central feature of this relationship is the finding of a guided autonomy.     

Documents

South Africa's contemporary foreign policy cannot be understood outside an explanation of its post-apartheid political transition. Its actors, the ideas they express, the interests they represent and the institutions they craft are all crucially influenced and impacted upon by the democratic transition and how it has evolved. This democratic transition is defined by two foundational characteristics. First, as one of the last of the ‘anti-colonial’ transitions led by an African nationalist leadership, it is driven with a focus on achieving racial equality in both the domestic and global context. Second, the transition has occurred when a particular configuration of power prevailed in the global order that not only established the parameters which governed its evolution, but also determined which interests prevailed within it. The former's imprint on the foreign policy agenda is manifested in South Africa's prioritisation of Africa, its almost messianic zeal to modernise the continent through a focus on political stability and economic growth, and its desire to reform the global order so as to create an enabling environment for African development. It is also reflected in South Africa's insistence not to be seen to be dictated to by the West, especially in the fashioning of its economic policies and its approach to addressing the Zimbabwean question. The latter manifests itself not only in how corporate interests take centre stage in South Africa's foreign policy interactions, but also in how transnational alliances like India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA) are being fashioned to challenge big powers and their interests in global forums and in the international system. These thematic concerns are the subject of investigation in this paper.     

Suffrage Extensions and Voting Patterns in Latin America: Is Mobilization a Source of Decay?

This article examines whether changes in electoral participation contributed to electoral volatility in Latin America between 1945 and 2000. As a result of literacy voting requirements and authoritarian interludes that disenfranchised large portions of the population, new voters in Latin America probably had different political interests from the previous electorate and were not socialized to electoral politics. The article considers the hypothesis that the inclusion of new voters with different interests produces an immediate, short‐term change in aggregate voting patterns, and a lack of socialization of new voters generates lingering instability in electoral behavior. Accounting for confounding factors, the analysis of legislative elections in 12 countries indicates that the expansion of the electorate temporarily disrupted voting patterns in Latin America but did not lead to long‐run party system decay.     

Contested policymaking in Russia: industry,environment, and the “best available technology” debate

The centralized nature of the Russian political system and the dominance of the executive can obscure the role played by other actors in the policymaking process. This article aims to further our understanding of the Russian policy process by examining the ability of industry to determine policy outcomes. An example from the environmental policy process concerning the introduction of the “best available technology” will be presented. This highly contested policy led to significant opposition from industry groups and disputes between government actors. The case demonstrates that industrial interests in Russia are able to exert considerable influence on the policy process; however, this influence is not absolute and requires closer scrutiny. Political leadership was found to be an important factor in achieving policy outcomes. However, for the most part, the policy process was found to be heavily bureaucratized, and dominated by a range of competing interests.     

Representation By Consultation? The Rise of Direct Democracy in Latin America

Most of the countries of South America experienced two notable institutional phenomena during the 1990s: the reform or rewriting of constitutions and the emergence of direct democracy mechanisms. This paper examines the latter process through a cross-national comparison. The introduction of direct democracy mechanisms is typically driven by traditionally excluded political interests. It takes two forms, both involving the failure of representative democratic institutions. In most cases, these traditionally excluded interests win control over the constitutional reform and rewriting process, although this is not a necessary condition for the emergence of direct democracy. Drawing illustrations from 12 cases of constitutional reform, this paper links arguments about direct democracy in the United States and Western Europe, institutional change, neopopulism, and the decline of the party system in Latin America.