Worker Democracy and Worker Productivity

A major source of oppression in industrial and post-industrial society is the restrictive and highly authoritarian nature of the workplace. One response is to democratize the workplace by increasing the participation of workers in making decisions and in choosing and evaluating managers as well as sharing in the ownership of the firm. These are not new ideas, and there are many examples of organizations pursuing various forms of democratic practices. However, a major objection is that such participation would compromise economic and other types of organizational productivity. This article examines the empirical support for that argument over a wide range of types of organizations in which workers participate in important decisions affecting their welfare. The overall results of this survey across many different forms of work organization suggest that the evidence supports the opposite conclusion, that worker participation increases productivity, particularly when workers share the benefits of higher productivity. The challenge is to ascertain ways of spreading these practices more widely.     

英美近代治税思想之殊异考辨

学界相关研究中常常将近代英、美两国的治税思想都笼而统之于“no taxation without representation”这一英文句式表述之下,由于缺乏对其具体语境的进一步分辨,从而造成了对两国近代治税思想“同意同源”的混淆性认识.“no taxation without representation”在近代英国与美国的治税思想中并不具有统一一致的意涵而是各自代表着不同的思想表达,其分别体现为“无代表不得征税”与“无代表,不纳税”.在此基础上进一步阐明了两者虽在历史上就征税权的控制方面都曾起到过积极、进步作用,但是又都具有着各自深刻的历史局限性,而这种局限性恰是我们当下欲引鉴西方治税经验来构建自己的税制安排时所不应却也最易被忽略的.     

Worker responses to workplace hazards

Recent policy initiatives in occupational safety and health have emphasized strategies that provide workers with information about workplace exposures. It is not clear, however, what effect this new information has had or will have on worker self-help initiatives. This paper analyzes individual and collective worker responses to information on job hazards using five sources of data on workers and industries in the United States. Levels of expressed dissatisfaction, discharges for cause, and strike frequencies are found to be significantly higher in hazardous jobs than in safe jobs. Individual quit strategies are not consistently found to be associated with higher hazard levels. These findings have potentially important implications for the design of future information-oriented health and safety policies.     

营业转让中的劳动者保护

《劳动合同法》实施以来,触发了一个奇特的多米诺效应,法律基于保护劳动者的立场加大了企业的用工成本,却导致许多企业出售财产、宣告解散并遣散员工,留下大批待业人员。其原因在于我国劳动立法未强制营业财产受让方继受劳动关系,从而为企业规避法律留下空间。营业受让方是否存在上述义务,两大法系有三种立法例:默示继受主义、强制继受主义和自愿继受主义。我国应建构强制继受主义,并以"营业财产人格化"作为其法理依据,以强化营业转让中的劳动者利益保护。     

Authority and Representation

The act of `setting the law' enjoysa central position in Kelsen's theory of authority.His analysis of this act criticizes, amongst others,the assumption of natural-law doctrines that norms areobjective when they duplicate a content given directlyto cognition and independently of the act whereby thenorm is enacted. Correctly, Kelsen attacks the conceptof representation underlying this assumption as anexample of metaphysical dualism and a copy theory ofknowledge. Does, then, an alternative understanding ofauthority require scrapping representation from atheory of positive law? Or does it requireinterpreting representation differently? Following thesecond path, this paper reconstructs the act ofsetting the law in terms of the critical concept ofrepresentation developed by Ernst Cassirer andsuggests how, thus reconstructed, the structure ofthis act can account for the law's authority and itscontingency.

     

Sovereignty and Representation

In this contribution the author explores some aspects of the relation between sovereignty, democracy and representation. After shortly focusing on the idea of sovereignty, he then questions Rousseau's refusal to take representation into account within a democratic framework, an idea that is however latent in his general approach.     

Juries and Viewpoint Representation

To generate high-quality deliberations, juries should be diverse in terms of not only demographics but also viewpoints. Using data from the Survey of Texas Adults (n = 1380), we examine whether existing processes select for individuals who represent the population on a variety of viewpoint characteristics, particularly whether the process of forming juries selects for people who are more independent-minded versus authority-minded. We find, on average, that those who believe in the importance of speaking English, are less compassionate, support Biblical literalism, and express more concern about the community effects of wrongdoing are more likely to have been former jurors than to not have served. Death penalty support is also modestly predictive of jury membership. Non-jurors rate their neighborhoods as cleaner than do former jurors. Results point to composition effects in the summonsing process and to the possibility that some types of people exempt themselves from this civic obligation.     

国内职工起诉企业工会第一案始末

继将通用电气医疗系统（中国）有限公司和劳动保障监察部门告上法庭后,无锡“锦旗哥”周力又将矛头指向通用电气工会委员会,发动国内职工起诉企业工会第一案     

公司董事表见代表制度之我见

本文从公司角度阐述了表见代表制度的成因及其意义 ,分析了该制度的适用范围 ,并运用经济分析的方法 ,重点分析了公司章程公示力的规定同公司董事表见代表制度之间的冲突问题 ,认为后者应优于前者适用 ,同时认为公司章程不应就公司的经营范围作出规定。最后 ,分析指明了公司董事表见代表的构成要件。     

Proportional Representation and Female Parliamentarians

This article asks, “What effect does the choice of a nation's electoral system have on the gender composition of its parliament over time?” I find that the electoral system has an important part to play, but previous work has overstated, by factors of between two and three, how much of a difference an electoral system can make. This article contributes an updated nonlinear theory of female representation, an improved dataset on women's representation across space and time, and more modern statistical techniques than previously used in research on this question.     

Approaches to Studying Policy Representation

Some studies of policy representation test hypotheses about the relationship between citizens' views and elites' positions on multiple issues by proceeding one issue at a time. Others summarize citizens' and elites' preferences with “ideology scores” and test hypotheses with these. I show that approach is flawed. It misinterprets citizens' ideology scores as summaries of policy preferences, but these scores actually measure ideological consistency across areas: how often citizens' ideal policies are liberal or conservative. Examples show how attending to this distinction overturns conventional wisdom: legislators appear similarly moderate as citizens, not more extreme; however, politically engaged citizens appear especially moderate.     

Latino Representation on Congressional Websites

Do Latino representatives enhance or “enlarge” Latino representation (Walsh 2002)? I examined the content of websites posted by members of the 110th Congress and found that the websites of Latino representatives are not more accessible to Spanish‐speaking users than the websites of non‐Latino representatives, nor are the sites more likely to exhibit pro‐immigrant positions or offer immigration assistance. The websites of Latino representatives are, however, more likely to present Latino perspectives. Latino representatives enhance Latino representation in this forum by enlarging or broadening the presence of a Latino voice in policy discussion.