The competition strategy for medical care

This article reviews the so-called competition strategy for medical care. It sets out the policy goals of the strategy and the problems in the present medical and insurance system that it seeks to address. It then describes several distinct formulations of the competition strategy, showing that it is not a single, rigid, monolithic approach, but rather a flexible combination of market-oriented approaches. Finally, it briefly discusses the technical and political problems and prospects of the strategy.     

Framing the Ghanaian LGBT rights debate: competing decolonisation and human rights frames

This paper investigates how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movements in Ghana, both anti and pro, framed the debate that captured media attention in 2006 and 2011. Decolonisation and human rights frames were appropriated, challenged, and dominated by opponents of LGBT rights, making it difficult for LGBT activists to use them. The opponents' corruption frame overpowered the LGBT activists' preservation frame. When LGBT activists used a human rights frame (comparing sexual minorities to racial minorities and to persons with disabilities), the countermovement appropriated it in a way that excluded same-sex relations by comparing sexual minorities to “deviants”, persons with mental illnesses, and animals. The interaction between the decolonisation and human rights frames was also problematic: the corruption frame not only rendered the LGBT activists' preservation frame nearly useless, but it also made their use of the human rights frame appear to be cultural imperialism and problematised the help they received from international LGBT organisations.     

Individual rights and collective rights: Labor's predicament in China

Despite the government's active legislation to protect workers, labor rights still remain widely ignored and poorly enforced in China. Structural constrains, such as the state's development strategy biased on efficiency over equity, tight labor markets, and the lack of an effective safety net, cannot fully explain why Chinese workers have had so little impact on the environment in which they work and the violations of their rights often occur. Using Marshall's theory of citizenship rights, this article explores the structure of China's labor rights for an explanation. It argues that while Chinese labor legislation stipulates workers' individual rights regarding contracts, wages, working conditions, pensions, and so on, it fails to provide them with collective rights, namely the rights to organize, to strike, and to bargain collectively in a meaningful sense. The lack of collective rights is one of the major factors that render workers' individual rights vulnerable, hollow, unenforceable, or often disregarded. Labor legislation that enables workers to act collectively is crucial for safeguarding their individual rights.     

青少年权益的司法保障

“没有救济的权利就不是权利。”[1]当然,维护权利的方法很多,其中,司法保障作为权利救济的最后一道防线,是维护权利最基本和最重要的方式。这不仅是中外学者的共识,也被有关的国际人权条约如《世界人权宣言》、《公民及政治权利国际公约》所强调。更重要的是,各国历史经验证明     

Uneven geographical distribution of medical care: A Ghanaian case study

It is well known that the provision of medical care in developing countries is often very unevenly distributed geographically, and one of the most important points made in Maurice King's pioneering Medical Care in Developing Countries, [1967, Oxford University Press: East Africa] was that health facilities such as hospitals have an extremely small effective geographical range. The purpose of this article is to use new statistical data to analyse the problem of uneven distribution of medical care further, and in this way to investigate the social and cultural factors which are indirectly reponsible. The discussion is in terms of Ghana, but much of it may well have a wider relevance.     

Animal rights,political theory and the liberal tradition

Those scholars who have sought to argue for a higher moral status for animals, including the granting of rights to them, have come primarily from the liberal tradition. Their accounts are persuasive, albeit practically unrealistic. Animals can be incorporated into a liberal theory of justice whether they are inferior morally to humans or regarded as their moral equivalents. This article argues that where animals are excluded from theories of justice, as in the work of Rawls, the relationship between liberalism and the protection of animal interests becomes problematic. In theoretical terms, the influential emphasis within liberal thought on moral pluralism, whereby society or the state are prevented from intervening in what is regarded as the private realm, is clearly inimical to the protection of animal interests. Even more significant is the fact that the practical utilization of this moral pluralism in liberal democracies is detrimental to the welfare of animals.     

Property rights and the challenge of the technological modernization of the mexican state

This article focuses on the technological challenges arising from two broader challenges of the Mexican state: growth and equity. In order to face the first one, Mexico needs safer and more comprehensive property rights, especially given the changing array of goods characteristic of contemporary economies. Mexico also needs to take into account the new context of a global economy, subject to rapid changes and highly dependent on information flows. Securing property rights and growing within a global economy call for the technological modernization of the Mexican state. The second challenge, equity, also requires of such modernization: nowadays policy-making in areas such as education, health, etc. requires complex analytical capacities and extensive data bases. That is more the case when the Mexican state needs to act through incentives and market signals instead of through the traditional mechanisms of command and control.     

Special drawing rights and development aid

This article examines the case for establishing a link between the creation of Special Drawing Rights and development aid, analyses the various objections that have been raised against the idea, and describes several possible mechanisms for making the link operative. It then considers the national burden sharing, balance of payments and foreign exchange reserve implications of an ‘organic’ link. Finally, it suggests how, in the context of international monetary reform, the disposal of the large outstanding dollar and sterling reserve‐currency holdings of the developed countries could also be linked with aid to the developing countries.     

Democracy,property rights and economic growth

What does the global surge in democracy and capitalism portend for economic growth? The shift toward popular government is predicted by some to accelerate growth, by others to retard it. Often left out of the equation is property rights as a factor distinct from democratic rule. Using recent data on 59 less developed and transitional countries, this article explores the relationship among institutional factors and growth in the 1980s and early 1990s. Democratic freedoms and property rights are associated with the dependent variable, suggesting that national income in poor countries stands to gain from recent efforts to implant these institutions.     

Capacity building and the (re)production of intellectual property rights

There is little settled or uncontested about the trips agreement and the global governance of intellectual property rights (iprs). This suggests that the provision of training and technical assistance to build capacity is itself part of the reproduction of the dominant (trips constituted) view of iprs and is therefore a political project rather than merely technical provision. On one side many developing countries' elites and governments are keen to join the international trading community and see the need to adopt the increasingly universalised rules of the system as part of this process. On the other hand, there are vocal constituencies less supportive of an unqualified adoption of trips‐related standards of legal protection for iprs. Given the continuing importance of legal structures to underpin and constitute markets (and this is most especially the case in markets for knowledge and information), the processes by which the trips solution to the question of knowledge ownership is being globalised through technical training needs to be understood and analysed.