Confidence in the Police: Where does Taiwan Rank in the World?

The study of public opinion toward the police in Taiwan has not, heretofore, included comparative research. The current study fills this void in the literature by analyzing the data from the World Values Surveys. It was found that Taiwanese confidence in the police was reasonably good for a society experiencing democratic transition. Although lower than many more mature democratic societies such as Finland and the USA, confidence in the police is among the top one-third of fifty countries and is significantly higher than those found in other Asian and European countries that also experienced democratic transition. Further regression analyses of data from the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan indicated that the differences between those three countries are substantive and cannot be explained away after the demographic social and attitudinal variables have been controlled.An early version of this paper was presented at “The Second International Conference in Crime and Its Control,” Taiwan, April 2005. We would like to thank Professors Susyan Jou and Lanying Huang, for providing information on Taiwan, and Professor Alethea Helbig, for polishing the languages of the paper. The views expressed in the paper are all ours.     

In search of criminological tradition: the development of criminology in Taiwan

There has been a growing interest in the historical development of criminology(ies) throughout the world. This paper examines the development of criminology in Taiwan (Republic of China) using both questionnaire and interview data. Textbooks, institutional development, and research activity are taken as proxy measures of a criminological tradition. Beginning with criminology in Republican China (1929–1949), the article explores the key features of change in criminology against the background of Taiwan's own particular adoption of social, political and economic ‘modernisation’. Foreign influence and the contemporary meaning of ‘indigenous’ are considered. The article ends with a research agenda for a grounded historical sociology of criminology on Taiwan; key identified research questions relate to sponsorship, research priorities and the production of criminological knowledge; the reception of research by policy communities and practitioners; the relationship between criminological knowledge and politics; and the processes of selective appropriation.     

公共卫生法制的视角转换——基于控烟和肥胖防控等新兴公共卫生措施的讨论

一直以来,公共卫生以控制传染性疾病的蔓延为首要目的。相应地,公共卫生法制的工作重心和学术讨论,也主要集中于如何规范控制疾病传染过程中政府公权力的行使。而近年来全球范围内非传染性慢性疾病,例如糖尿病、肥胖和吸烟导致的各种心脏病和癌症等,逐渐取代传染性疾病,成为导致人类患病以及死亡的主要原因。为了应对客观情况的变化,公共卫生措施不断突破传统的法律边界,以继续发挥其保护和促进公众健康的作用。面对公共卫生措施的革新步伐,我们对公共卫生法制的思考也应该推陈出新。本文以控烟和肥胖防控等新兴的公共卫生措施为例,揭示传统法学理论视角的不足,并提供一个以社会正义为导向、群体为视角的法理框架。     

Perceptions of Public Security in Post-reform Urban China: A Routine Activity Analysis

This paper investigates the personal and environmental determinants of public security perceptions across 32 Chinese cities within the risk/opportunity framework of Cohen and Felson’s (American Sociological Review 44:588–608, 1979) routine activity theory. Structural path analysis reveals that public security perceptions in China are informed by similar personal and environment characteristics to those reported as important in extant research within Western contexts. However, the frequently reported influence of gender on public security perceptions in the West does not appear to extend to post-reform urban China. The results provide support for the routine activity theory in terms of extending our understanding of the factors that influence perceptions of public security to a non-Western context.     

Are arrest statistics a valid measure of illicit drug use? The relationship between criminal justice and public health indicators of cocaine,heroin, and marijuana use

Several alternative indicators are currently available to researchers, policy makers, and practitioners for gauging levels and patterns of illicit drug use within and across communities. Yet there exists little information that allows reliable comparisons across indicators to determine whether they tell essentially the same story about variation in the prevalence of drug use. In particular, it remains unclear how closely arrest statistics, the leading law enforcement indicator of illicit drug use, correspond to other law enforcement indicators, such as urine tests of jail inmates, or to public health measures, such as emergency departments' and medical examiners' reports. In this paper we assess the relationships between alternative law enforcement and public health indicators of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana use for a sample of large U.S. cities. We find pronounced convergence across measurement systems in cocaine and heroin use, but little convergence for marijuana use. In addition to other research and policy implications, these results increase confidence in the use of arrest data to assess variation across urban areas in cocaine and heroin use.     

The Socio-Cultural Exclusion and the Regulation of Sexuality in Taiwan

My paper begins with an analysis of recent emergence in Taiwan of public discourse and administrative ordinances that aim to regulate the internet, TV programs, newspapers, romance novels, comics, video games, education, obscenity laws and teenage culture. My analysis points out that the discourse and regulations have signaled significant changes in the relationship between Taiwan’s civil society and its nation-state. An exclusive civil society, a concept which I have partly drawn from Jock Young’s The Exclusive Society, is emerging as an extension of state power rather than as the antithesis of the state. I argue that as a result of this development of the exclusive society and the new regulatory state, a “culture war” between socio-cultural exclusion and social freedom (especially in the area of sexuality) is now being waged in Taiwan’s civil society. The role of the mainstream NGOs, the tactics of regulation and the wider context of this culture war will be analyzed in this paper.     

Talking Heads and Bleeding Hearts: Newsmaking, Emotion and Public Criminology in the Wake of a Sexual Assault

Using our own experiences in attempting to ‘do’ public criminology in the wake of a violent sexual assault on our campus, we offer a critique of the emerging public criminology framework. Focusing specifically on tensions between fact and emotion and representations of expertise in the news media, we argue for a greater respect for emotional responses to crime in moving the public criminology agenda forward. We suggest that if public criminology sets as its goal educating the public about crime with an eye towards injecting a counter/critical discourse into ‘get tough’ crime control policies, then public criminologists need to recognize and take seriously the public’s emotions rather than negate them. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge, London, 2004), we suggest that the role of the expert is not to simply inform citizens of the ‘facts’ about crime, but to establish—through emotions—the relationship between themselves and the imagined criminal Other (Young in Imagining crime: Textual outlaws and criminal conversations. Sage Publications, London, 1996). Thus, alongside trying to convince the public to be more ‘rational’ when it comes to crime, critical criminologists must start to accept people’s fear and anger as legitimate reactions and try to redirect these emotions toward more productive ends.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">A</Emphasis>nti-corruption agencies: between empowerment and irrelevance

The anti-corruption activity of the 1990s is characterized by the rise of new players, such as specialized anti-corruption bodies. Anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) are public bodies of a durable nature, with a specific mission to fight corruption and reducing the opportunity structures propitious for its occurrence in society through preventive and/or repressive measures. Independently of their format and powers, ACAs encounter various constraints to their mandate, which explains the meagre results obtained by some of them. This introductory paper tries to understand the rise, future, and implications of this new kind of “integrity warrior” and to locate them in the evolving doctrine of corruption control. The objective of this edited volume is to re-launch the debate on ACAs as the most innovative feature of the anti-corruption movement of the last two decades.     

Non-Electoral Accountability in Global Politics: Strengthening Democratic Control within the Global Garment Industry

This article challenges the widespread view that democraticaccountability is unattainable in global politics because ofthe impracticality of establishing global elections. Instead,it argues that global democratic accountability can potentiallybe achieved by instituting non-electoral mechanisms that performequivalent accountability functions through more workable institutionalmeans. This argument is defended at a theoretical level, andfurther illustrated by analysing an empirical case study ofthe institutions through which labour standards in the globalgarment industry are determined. The article first explainswhy electoral mechanisms are no longer a viable means for achievingdemocratic accountability in political contexts such as theglobal garment industry, that are characterized by the decentralizeddispersion of public decision-making power among a range oforganizationally disparate state and non-state actors. It thenidentifies the key democratic function of electoral accountabilityas that of ensuring a reasonable degree of public control overpublic decision-making, and argues that this normative functioncan, in principle, be legitimately performed through non-electoralas well as electoral mechanisms. Finally, it elaborates thekey institutional features of a legitimate framework of non-electoralaccountability – public transparency and public disempowerment– and illustrates how these functions could potentiallybe achieved in practice, with reference to the example of theglobal garment industry.     

医疗立法探讨

医疗立法是保障公民健康权的重要途径，是我国卫生法制建设的重要内容，是保证新医改关于医疗服务体系健全和公立医院改革顺利进行的重要保障之一，是依法卫生行政的内在要求。在分析医疗法立法的依据和-原则后，借鉴Et本、德国、台湾医疗立法经验，建议以总则、医疗法人制度、医疗安全保障、病人权益保护、信息公开制度、监督管理体制、法律责任作为医疗法的基本框架，并就我国医疗立法的相关问题进行探讨。     

Missing pieces: Notes on crime,poverty, and social policy

A long and impressive criminological tradition links crime to what social scientists call ‘persistent poverty’-and, in particular, to the corrosive effects of inadequate labor markets on a variety of social institutions. But few anticrime policies have seriously confronted those conditions, even at the height of the Great Society of the 1960s. With only scattered exceptions, those policies have sought to enhance the individual capacities of children and youth without substantially altering the surrounding economic institutions. An anticrime strategy for the next century that is both more effective and consistent with what we know about the roots of crime must involve measures that more directly address the labor market itself. Among other things, these measures include direct public job creation, systematic efforts to up grade wages, and greater support for labor organization. This essay is a revised version of a background paper presented at The Social Science Research Council Policy Conference on ‘Persistent Poverty’ in Washington D.C., November, 1993.     

Meanings of terrorism

Terrorism is a notoriously plastic word, depending on user, audience, and political context. This paper focuses on shifts in its meanings since the early 1970s. As federal statutes made terrorism a criminal offense, common usage changed from a broad meaning to one that specified terrorism as a political crime. The argument is that the state shapes meaning and public discourse through law. Peircean semiotics and the semiotic philosophy of Russian linguist Vološinov provide a framework to explore relationships among politics, law, and civil life. Applied to the events of September 11, 2001 such an analysis further allows better understanding of certain interpreters of the September 11 attacks, notably Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas.     

The generation and exploitation of technological change: market value and total factor productivity

In this paper we articulate and test the hypothesis that TFP is a reliable and relevant measure of firm’s innovation capabilities, and, as such, accounts for Tobin’s q indicator. With this aim, we investigate empirically the relationship between firm level total factor productivity and the Tobin’s q. Measuring Tobin’s q allows inferring the actual value of knowledge capital from stock market valuation. We use a panel of companies listed on UK and the main continental Europe financial markets (Germany, France and Italy) for the period 1995–2005. Our results confirm that TFP is a reliable indicator of firm’s innovative capabilities. When we control for firm’s R&D investments and intangible assets, the effects of TFP on market value remain highly significant. This suggests that TFP is a broader measure of innovation capability than R&D is. The validation of the Tobin’s q and TFP relationship has important implications concerning firm’s technological innovation measurement.     

台湾民间治安防范法治模式对大陆的借鉴意义

民间治安防范力量在大陆地区和台湾地区都发挥着重要作用。台湾民间治安防范工作取得了很好的社会效益,犯罪率明显下降,警民关系、邻里关系融洽,他山之石可以攻玉,希望大陆地区保留已有的先进经验的前提下,借鉴台湾地区的优秀工作成果,进一步完善大陆地区的民间治安防范力量。     

The Morals and Order Exceptions in WTO Law: Balancing the Toothless Tiger and the Undermining Mole

On 10 April 2007, the United States requested consultationswith China regarding trading rights for publications and audiovisualproducts. Following US—Gambling, this case is likely toprovoke the next clash between free trade and public morals.This article takes an abstract approach to the scope and contentof the public morals and public order exceptions in the GATSand the GATT and, given the absence of a public order exceptionunder the GATT, analyzes how these two concepts interrelatewith one another. In this regard, the finding in US—Gamblingthat Members should individually define the scope of ArticleXIV(a) GATS is critically examined, but the article suggeststhat it deserves support based on an interpretation in accordancewith general principles of the law of treaties. Following theidentification of instruments that limit the risk for abuseof the morals and order exceptions, the article will turn tothe scope-related aspect regarding the justifiability of ‘extraterritorial’measures.     

The Roman Law Tradition and Its Future Development in China

In Late Qing Dynasty, the Chinese Law Family was disintegrated and the Western Law was introduced into China. Finally, China adopted the European continental Roman law tradition. This paper analyzes the reason for China’s borrowing of such legal system and probes its development and reform in the later years. It also tries to answer the question of what will be the possible impact upon the current Chinese legal system since China now implements the policy of “one country two systems” in order to realize its reunification with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. In addition, it will make some prediction upon the future development of Chinese legal system. Translated from Tsinghua Law Review, Vol. 2, 1999 (in Chinese)     

The relationship between crime and private security at US shopping centers

This paper uses self-report data from the 1993 National Shopping Center Security Survey to examine the growing problem of crime at shopping centers located in the United States. Security managers from 369 shopping centers provided data on crime incidents, private security measures, and numerous shopping center demographic measures. Data are analyzed via LISREL using bivariate regression modeling. Results show that there is no direct relationship between the private security measures at the shopping center and the occurrence of property, violent, or public order crimes on the premises. Instead, private security presence is shaped by the size of the shopping center. Direct effects were also found between the incidence of crime on the premises and the size of the shopping center and the presence of various “problematic” persons (i.e., gangs and loitering groups of youth). Possible implications for shopping center security are considered.     

Transcending the dilemma of “public interest”

This paper discusses the evolution and recent trends in the development of the constitutional concept of “public use” in the case-law history of the United States starting from the source of US government’s taking powers and the original meaning of the Taking Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Since the concepts of “public use” and “public interest” are extremely difficult to be defined, it is very hard for the US courts to develop a relevant operative criterion. In the United States, the safeguard of “public interest” in taking mainly lies legislative rather than judicial control. In a democratic society, legislative judgment is highly respected by the courts and the entire takeovers that conform to public use as determined by the Congress are usually deemed constitutional. In this sense, the Congress is a “public interest machine”, which automatically generates laws and decisions on behalf of public interests through the democratic representative process. The paper eventually suggests that China should divert its attention from the theoretical definition of “public interest” to institutional construction, and should make the National and Local People’s Congresses and their standing committees to play major roles in deciding taking and compensation schemes. __________ Translated from Zhongguo Faxue 中国法学 (China Law), 2005, (5): 36–45     

Greening the security council: climate change as an emerging “threat to international peace and security”

Climate change is a security problem that requires global solutions. Despite some important recent advances, current international responses to climate change are inadequate. This paper assesses whether the United Nations Security Council possesses sufficient legal authority to compel states to address the causes and consequences of climate change. While not advocating the immediate adoption of coercive measures, this paper initiates discussion of this issue, with the goal of developing an institutional framework within which to respond to this emerging threat, if necessary. The paper begins with a brief overview of the clear links between climate change and security, and the inadequacy to date of international remedial efforts. This is followed by a detailed analysis of Security Council legal authority, in particular the UN Charter, including a discussion of its evolving invocation in the context of non-traditional threats. Applying this legal framework to the specific issue of climate change demonstrates the substantial authority of the Security Council to take binding decisions relating to this subject, and its wide range of available enforcement measures, recognizing that political will to exercise and support this authority is required for any successful Security Council efforts to address climate change. The paper concludes that the Security Council has the legal authority to address the causes and consequences of climate change, and that its recent counter-terrorism and non-proliferation measures provide an illustrative institutional framework within which to address this emerging ‘threat to international peace and security’.

Philosophy on messick and social conflict: Resolving the resolution process

In a recent paper, Messick described a framework for understanding the often intractable nature of social conflict, and suggested a method (the Messick Method) of resolving such conflict. My aim in this paper is to examine Messick’s approach from a philosophical perspective. More specifically, the question to be addressed is whether a philosophical method of resolution might, in some significant way, be superior to the Messick Method. The conclusion is that a collaboration of both methods, in the spirit of Messick’s suggestion, can contribute to resolving social conflict.