"You Better Shop Around": The Market for Motor Vehicle Inspection

The effectiveness of regulations is reduced by inspector capture. An environment conducive to capture is one in which inspectors must compete for business. This type of competition is found in various regulatory contexts; it is a fundamental characteristic of a decentralized motor vehicle inspection network.
Motor vehicle inspection stations in most localities are numerous, geographically dispersed, private, and hence largely outside the effective purview of state authorities. Motorists can choose their inspection station, and generally prefer quick, superficial and passing inspections. Motor vehicle inspectors therefore tend to be quite lax. Evidence is presented showing that the most lenient ones tend to get more of the inspection business.     

论检察机关对国家经济监管权的监督

随着“市场失灵”的出现,各国均积极履行经济监管职能,保障经济平稳运行。然而,国家经济监管权同样存在着怠行与滥用的问题,无法彰显市场与政府的良性互动。在“议行合一”的政治架构下,法律监督权作为一项独立的外部权力,应肩担防范国家经济监管权异化的重任。这是市场秩序的需要,也是分权制衡的依归,更是检察制度历史演进的使然。检察监督的路径就是加强抽象监管行为的监督,防止监管法规命令腐败,并以检察建议权、行政公诉分别监督具体监管行为的合理性与合法性。最后,以职务犯罪侦查权监督监管人员的职务行为。     

Regulatory Enforcement in Local Government in Japan

The Japanese inspectors usually adopt an "informal measure-oriented" style in enforcing violations of regulatory statutes. They prefer administrative guidance with no legally binding effect to compliance orders or criminal prosecution. These formal measures, they think, would erode the cooperative relationship with the regulatee, which is believed essential for cost-effective enforcement. In contrast to that in the United States, the Japanese enforcement process lacks citizen participation and information disclosure, this enabling the inspectors to deal with violations at their own pace.     

依法规范县、乡政府行政行为，建立高效率的政府职能机制

本文系统地论述了县、乡政府的行政行为的范围,我国县、乡政府行政行为与其他行政行为的不同点,根据目前我国中央政府的分权改革使地方政府获得了广泛的自主权,自主空间的扩展等特点,分析了我国县、乡政府行政行为中存在的问题,提出了加强制约县、乡政府行政行为,增强准确信息的沟通,实现县、乡政府职能转变,在农村推广法治改革,在法治轨道内引导农民有序地进行政治参与依法规范县、乡政府行为,建立高效率的政府职能机制。     

Regulatory and Administrative Agency Behavior: Accommodation,Amplification, and Assimilation*

Much scholarly analysis of regulatory and administrative behavior focuses on officials' reactions to external influences. Commonly discussed is officials' accommodation of external interests or pressures (such as those of interest groups). But case studies show two additional types of behavior: amplification, in which officials enlarge the effects of external influences by anticipating the potential likely consequences of certain kinds of agency actions based upon their understandings of how situations have been responded to or may be responded to by others in the future; and assimilation, where officials define a situation as problematic and coordinate with or take into account various elements of their environment in attending to the perceived problem. Focusing on all three patterns of behavior and the context within which they emerge yields a fuller analysis of the significance of external factors for the exercise of discretion.     

行政不作为及其救济

行政不作为是程序上不为的行政行为,不包括单纯的实质不为。行政不作为可以分为合法行政不作为和违法行政不作为。合法行政不作为包括有法定免责事由的行政不作为和有法定不作为权利的行政不作为。违法行政不作为的构成要件包括主体要件、法定作为义务要件、不作为状态要件和主观要件,其法定的救济方法主要有确认违法或无效和责令履行法定义务。     

Are Regulators Responsive?

For decades there has been a trend in regulatory studies to advocate a responsive, tit-for-tat, regulatory strategy. However, most of the prominent arguments for this strategy are theoretical and few have tested its effectiveness. Even less tested has been whether or not regulatory inspectors manage to react responsively to the "conduct" of regulatees. By distinguishing between five different kinds of responsiveness, the present article tests these different kinds of responsiveness in four different regulatory areas, using data about more than 2,500 legal breaches. The empirical analyses show that regulatory inspectors manage to act responsively, but only to a small degree and not necessarily in the way that the theories of responsive and tit-for-tat regulation recommend. Furthermore, the analyses show large differences between the four regulatory areas suggesting that future studies should focus on the role of formal and informal institutional settings in creating responsiveness. If we want to design regulatory agencies that are able to regulate responsively we need to know what kind of institutional settings promote responsiveness.     

What Happens When House Members “Run with Congress”? The Electoral Consequences of Institutional Loyalty

This article characterizes the electoral consequences of messages of institutional loyalty and disloyalty sent by incumbent House members to their constituents. We show that, for the contemporary House, there is variation in these messages—not all incumbents in the contemporary House “run for Congress by running against Congress.” Moreover, we show that these messages can, under the right conditions, have significant electoral consequences, even after controlling for party affiliation and district political factors. In addition to demonstrating the electoral relevance of legislators' presentations, our results show an incumbent‐level link between constituents' trust in government and their voting behavior—a link created by interaction between constituents' perceptions, legislators' party affiliations, and the messages that legislators send to their constituents.     

第三代政治传播及其对政治的影响

以新媒介的崛起为标志,第三代政治传播成为影响政治生活的重要力量。它颠覆了传统的权力关系,使政治生活变得更加复杂。认识和把握第三代政治传播及其基本特征,分析第三代政治传播对现代政治的影响,有利于更好地运作政治权力,促进政治发展,维护社会稳定。第三代政治传播的主要特征表现为：政治传播媒介立体化发展、政治传播深刻影响政治关系、政治传播职业化发展、政治活动营销化、政治传播互动性增强等。第三代政治传播深刻影响着政治的诸多方面,包括对政治体系的影响,对政治过程的影响,政治生活的娱乐化,使西方民主政治经历了一个螺旋式的循环过程等。     

Assaults Against Inspectors: The Dangers in Enforcing Corporate Crime

This survey of regulatory inspectors reveals a surprising number of threats and assaults being made against inspectors in the course of enforcing regulatory provisions. Contrary to conventional images of regulatory enforcement, inspectors in some agencies face violent resistance from regulatory offenders that is similar to the violent resistance encountered by police officers. These findings provide support for the contention that regulatory enforcement and policing should be conceptualized as overlapping forms of law enforcement rather than as distinct governmental activities.     

Party Differentiation in Congress

Abstract At times, the American political parties are so close in terms of policy positions that critics denounce the lack of a “dime's worth of difference” between them. At other times, the gap between them on a left‐right dimension is huge. How can we explain this variation? We argue that parties can behave rationally as collective units, and that shifts in divergence and convergence can be explained as rational responses to changes within governmental institutions and to shifts in conditions outside. We analyze this argument using adjusted ADA scores (Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder 1999) to compare voting score differences between the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress from 1952 to 1996. We pose specific hypotheses for potentially important factors shaping party behavior and test them with a multivariate model. Our results support the argument that the variation in the behavioral gap between the two parties in Congress can be explained as rational party responses to internal and external stimuli.     

行政诉讼行政首长出庭应诉制度:司法政治学的视角

新《行政诉讼法》修订颁布之后,行政首长出庭应诉制度正式成为一项带有鲜明中国特色的司法运作机制。从制度变迁的角度来看,行政首长出庭应诉制度经历了一个从地方政策试验到中央立法吸纳的过程。从各地关于行政首长出庭应诉制度的政策文本出发,不难发现社会稳定压力与地方法制竞争的外部因素影响,而且行政首长出庭应诉制度的实践运作,也主要依赖于数字考核的指标控制而非行政法治的自我拘束。从中国行政诉讼模式变迁的大背景下观察,行政首长出庭应诉与行政诉讼协调和解、行政诉讼司法建议制度根源自相同的法理,均旨在实现纠纷的实质性化解,而不再将合法性判断视为行政诉讼的核心议题。     

城管执法的权威与困惑

当前,我国城管执法问题凸显。加强并完善城管立法,合理配置城管执法的职责权限,回归城管机构的行政机关性质,明确城管执法人员的公务员身份,既是合理有效回避城管执法现实尴尬的题中应有之意,也是积极、正确应对城管执法难题的当务之急。     

Regulation and the Role of Trust: Reflections from the Mining Industry

The role of prosecution in achieving compliance with social regulation is a highly contentious issue, nowhere more so than with regard to work-related injury and death in the New South Wales mining industry. Following a mining disaster, political pressure prompted the mines inspectorate to abandon its traditional 'advise and persuade' approach in favour of a much tougher, deterrence-oriented approach. Our field-work suggests that while the former approach can result in regulatory capture, the latter can be equally counterproductive. In the mining industry, interactions between inspectors and the regulated industry are frequent and ongoing and trust is central to constructive relations. When those relations break down (as under an inappropriate prosecution policy) then dialogue ceases, information is withheld rather than shared, in-firm accident investigation, prevention, and remedial action are inhibited and both sides retreat to a form of adversarialism that undermines regulatory effectiveness. Through a 20-year case study of the mines inspectorate, the article demonstrates the centrality of trust to regulatory effectiveness, how it can be lost, and how it can best be regained.     

Geopolitics and the Regulation of Economic Life

The nation‐state should be a central unit of analysis for research into international and transnational regulation. Considering the research implications of this, we focus on the emergence stage of the regulatory process. We discuss how knowledge is contested in discussions between states over regulatory problems. We argue that a range of factors, not just a narrowly conceived national interest, influence their incentive to cooperate. Research is needed into whether regulatory problems at this level pose new or additional issues for states. Other stages of the regulatory process need to be similarly examined, likewise the interaction between the stages themselves.     

Performing Regulation: Transcending Regulatory Ritualism in HIV Clinics

Sociolegal scholars suggest that regulatory encounters often are occasions for displaying a surface compliance decoupled from day‐to‐day practice. Yet ethnographic data from five highly regulated HIV clinics show that regulatory encounters open opportunities both for ritualism and—surprisingly—for transcending ritualism. Using a theatrical analogy, we argue that improv performance is the technology that enables regulatory inspectors and clinic staff to transcend ritualism. As regulatory encounters unfold, clinics' carefully prepared performances sometimes change into more cooperative interactions where inspectors and regulatees hash out details about how rules will be applied and even work together on reports for the regulators' supervisors. By “performing together,” regulatory inspectors gain access to the clinic's backstage where they can assess clinic workers' deeper conformity to ethical and scientific norms. But such joint performances are less likely where cultural divides and material scarcity make it difficult for clinic staff to gain inspectors' trust.     

The Militia Inspector in a Village or Settlement

Please explain how the relationships between a village soviet and the precinct [uchastkovyi] militia inspector should be organized. I am particularly interested in the following question: is the militiaman [policeman] required to notify the village executive committee when he will be away for twenty-four hours or more in connection with his duties? Our precinct inspector, Comrade V. M. Bodrov, states that he is not subordinate to the executive committee of the village soviet and, consequently, is not subject to its monotoring. And a second question. The village soviet executive committee sometimes receives citizens' complaints of improper behavior by neighbors (abusive behavior, disorderly quarrels, etc.). Do we have the right to instruct the precinct inspector to look into such complaints?     

反思中国行政法学存在的政治背景——通往中国行政法学自我意识之路

发轫于计划经济体制之上的当代中国行政法学,因将自身建构在公民权与行政权对立关系这一错误根基之上,而在面对现代行政实务时捉襟见肘。本文从前现代、现代、后现代之类型化视角反思中国行政法学政治背景,呼吁中国行政法学应建立在一个公民权与行政权良性沟通、交流、协商的平台上。置身于此平台之上、不囿圜于"法学上之方法"的藩篱、脱身于西方现代化范式之囹圄的"和谐行政法"为中国行政法学塑造了一种自我意识,并借对中国当代行政法学价值的准确定位、深厚的中国问题意识以及一条"从中国问题出发进入西方问题再返回中国问题"的路径,而结束中国行政法学历时已久的漂泊之旅,解救其于社会转型期的一场整体性危机。     

行政裁量的运作与治理

社会治理的法治化要求行政主体建立起新的与行政相对人交往的规则,行政裁量是行政主体与行政相对人之间重要的交往互动空间。行政裁量包括表象裁量、经验裁量与合理裁量等三个要素。通过对行政裁量运作过程以及实践的治理,祛除不必要的裁量,达到行政主体与行政相对人之间的正当交往与沟通,促进法律效果与社会效益的统一。