The Globalization of Rights: From Citizenship to Human Rights

Globalization is shifting the balance away from membership-based citizenship towards universal human rights, thus we ask: how are new human rights generated? We argue that the movement for human rights follows on the heels of the much older and richer tradition of citizenship, as can be seen from the fact that many of the new claims put forward by human rights activists seek to define traditional citizenship rights as universal human rights. Most recently, we witness attempts by NGOs and CSOs to bring health, rights-based development, and identity rights under the umbrella of human rights. We examine the changing but continuous relationship of these two rights traditions, the gains made by human rights activists and the global solidarity and national enforcement capacity needed to underwrite their further progress.     

Citizenship and Res Publica : The Emergence of Republican Rights

A fourth kind of citizens' rights--the republican rights--are being recognized and enforced in the last quarter of the twentieth century, after the civil, political, and social rights have been defined. Republican rights are the rights that every citizen has that the public patrimony, the res publica , is utilized on behalf of the public interest. While civil rights protect citizens against a powerful state, republican rights protect the state against powerful citizens involved in several forms of rent-seeking. Three major types of republican rights are identified: rights to the environment, to the historical patrimony, and to the economic patrimony. The last, in flow terms, corresponds to the state's revenues, which are permanently threatened by businessmen, bureaucrats, and all kinds of special interest groups, sometimes in subtle ways. To identify and contain these threats is a major challenge for modern institutions and law systems.     

公民基本权利在刑事追诉中的可能状态

公民一旦受到国家刑事追诉,其基本权利即陷入了危险的境地,既有可能受到因正当程序造成的合理性伤害,更有可能遭受非正当程序带来的巨大侵害,再强大的犯罪势力在国家暴力机器面前也渺如蝼蚁,更何况国家追诉还存在因制度缺陷而殃及无辜的可能性。这就是刑事诉讼制度在打击犯罪的同时必须充分保障犯罪嫌疑人、被告人基本人权不受过分损害和非法侵害的根本理由。     

《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》在我国的适用

《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》是国际人权保护领域的一个非常重要的公约 ,我国政府已于 1998年签署了该公约。为使之在国内生效 ,各国作法不同 ,我国倾向于采取直接纳入作法 ,这样 ,该公约一经全国人大常委会决定批准 ,将在全国适用。为确保公约在我国的正确实施 ,有必要对这一问题进行分析研究。     

Reconsidering Citizenship in the Light of the Concerns of the UK Disability Movement

Perhaps largely due to the successful campaigning of a number of pressure groups and social movements, but also due to the established position of related subjects within academia, there is a now almost routine consideration of class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality in relation to citizenship. Disability and the position of disabled people as “citizens” has not, however, received as much attention. It is the assertion of this article that this is a significant fact, for a consideration of disability in relation to citizenship provides useful insights into the strengths and weaknesses of some important theories of citizenship. Further, it demonstrates the need for an approach that takes account of the increasing uncertainty of groups such as disabled people towards their own identities and that conceives citizenship as being a process of “proactive engagement” towards a “reflexive position”.     

Civil Society and Global Governance: The Possibilities for Global Citizenship

In this article we reassert the role of governance as well as of civil society in the analysis of citizenship. We argue that to analyse global civil society and global citizenship it is necessary to focus on global governance. Just as states may facilitate or obstruct the emergence and development of national civil society, so too global governance institutions may facilitate or obstruct an emerging global civil society. Our key contention is that civil society at the global level thrives through its interaction with strong facilitating institutions of global governance. We start with a discussion of civil society and citizenship within the nation-state, and from there develop a model of global civil society and citizenship. Through analysing the impacts of various modes of global governance, we identify strategically appropriate forms of political and social engagement that best advance the prospects for global citizenship.     

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of “equality-as-same” to one that treats children as “differently equal” members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.     

民事权利体系:反思与重构

民事权利及其体系自始随着社会经济发展而不断发展变化,民事权利体系的构建始终是民事权利研究的关键问题。如何构建出一个较为完善的民事权利体系,最大程度地将已有的民事权利合理地收入其中并尽可能地适用于未来的新兴民事权利是民事权利体系化研究的重点。必须从一个新的角度来构建民事权利体系,并且将目前的新兴民事权利细分后纳入这个体系。同时也可以将未来的新兴的民事权利细分后列入体系,使体系的相对稳定性得以保持。     

In the Service of Power: The Global Political Economy of Citizenship and Human Rights

This article investigates how the idea of universal human rights has been co-opted by the prevailing (neo)liberal consensus in support of processes associated with capitalist globalization. So-called “civil and political” rights form the core of (neo)liberal values upon which free market, laissez-faire economics are based, but the idealism of the dichotomy of first and second generation rights is profoundly ideological. Through an examination of the idea of the international citizen, it is argued that the attempt to introduce a duty to promote the widest possible social good falls far short of an obligation to respond to claims for alternative conceptions of “economic and social” rights; far less alternative models of social affairs. Drawing on empirical evidence from Africa, the article contends that the dominance of (neo)liberal rights is integral to the emerging (neo)liberal constitution of the global order effected in the name of “human rights”, “democratization”, “citizenship”, “good governance” and “civil society”.

Never in the recent past have the founding principles of universal rights been so instrumentalized in the service of power, to such an extent that … in the opening years of the twentieth-century, we can speak of a veritable apogee of hegemony and an unprecedented crystallization of the hatreds that it arouses. (Bessis, 2003 Bessis, S. 2003. Western Supremacy: The Triumph of an Idea?, London: Zed.  [Google Scholar])     

Citizenship in China: a Comparison of Rights with the East and West

After the economic rise of China with the improvement in their standard of living, there have been many changes in the rights of citizens in China. This paper provides a broad survey of rights to see how China compares with the West and some countries in the Far East. This comparison assesses citizenship theory as it might apply to China, and then assesses a number of measures of rights. First, in order to make comparisons, the very different conceptions and theories of citizenship in China must be considered. Chinese citizenship is based on more of a communitarian model than a liberal or social democratic approach mainly due to Confucianism. Despite considerable improvement in citizenship rights, China’s reliance on a more communitarian citizenship theory (rather than liberal or social democratic theories) tends to emphasize obligations over rights. Second, in assessing the level of rights in China in the 21st century, T. H. Marshall provides the classification of legal, political and social rights. Using Freedom House, Fraser Institute and other data, I make cross-national comparisons between China and Western countries (e.g., the US, Canada and select European countries) and East Asian countries or regions (e.g., Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan). I also include Russia since it has made a similar transition from communist rule. The paper argues that citizenship rights for Chinese citizens have improved for many legal and social rights but not so much for political rights. However, all of these rights in China are much lower than in the West and much of East Asia, though in a few instances the levels are quite similar to Russia. I conclude with an estimate of the possible pathways toward greater political rights in China over the next few decades.     

Social Rights,Civil Rights,and Health Reform in Canada

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that health programs have been largely insulated from welfare state retrenchment. Health care entitlements have in fact been transformed and diminished, albeit in more subtle ways. Employing rhetorical discursive constructions about the nature of social rights, and capitalizing on passive policy drift, reformists have succeeded in altering the right to health care away from a set of collective obligations and toward the competing claims of individuals. As a result, public health insurance programs are abandoning universalistic principles in favor of a narrower conception of rights that is consistent with and supportive of increased privatization of health care financing. Discursive constructions aimed at persuading target audiences to change their ideas aid and abet systemic and institutional factors, making policy changes seem both necessary and inevitable. Using the case of Canada, I contend that such changes are a form of retrenchment.     

德国民法典上的物权概念

本文从德国民法典的具体法律条文入手,分析了德国民法典上所体现出来的物权概念的主体、客体及物权的内容。最终作者认为德国民法典上的物权概念应定义为：对有体物的直接支配权。     

Towards a New Politics: Citizenship and Rights in Contemporary Argentina

The emergence of a human rights movement represented a cultural turning point in many Latin American societies. The movement's struggle acted as a catalyst for political learning, triggering a profound renovation of the region's democratic traditions. The most impressive development has been the emergence of a rights-oriented discourse that reunites two elements that populist forms of self-understanding had kept separate: democracy and the rule of law. Cultural innovation gave birth to a new form of politicization that greatly differs from the movementist and corporatist practices of past populist movements, for the former is guided by a liberal concern: establishing clear institutional boundaries between state and civil society. Through the analysis of a series of citizens' initiatives and movements, the paper analyzes this new form of politicization and its contribution to the authorization and effectivization of rights as institutions.     

信息化侦查中的程序控制与公民信息权保障

犯罪控制与人权保障的冲突在刑侦领域尤为凸显。信息社会刑侦部门对信息资源的高度依赖决定了刑侦信息化在有效侦破案件的同时也会带来侵犯公民权利的风险。以网上立案程序实现侦查程序的控制并通过对侦查机关采集使用个人信息制度的规范,达到保障公民的信息权利乃至人权的终极目的。     

Civil Rights and Political Human Rights: Contesting Human Rights Failures within the Minimally Democratic State

Allen Buchanan argues that democracy ought to be added to the list of basic human rights, but he limits the conception of democracy to a minimum of electoral representation within the nation state, effectively collapsing human rights into civil rights. This, however, leaves him unable to address the problem of human rights failures occurring within established states that meet his standard of minimal democratic representation. In order to address this problem, I appeal to James Bohman's conception of the political human rights of all members of humanity, as opposed to the civil rights of the citizens of particular states. I argue that while this provides the basis on which to address the problem of human rights failures within minimally democratic states, Bohman's conception also entails the potential for deep tensions to arise between the different claims of civil and human rights.     

论秘密侦查干预权利的特殊形态

秘密侦查对于公民权利的干预具有其特殊形态,从而使得秘密侦查手段与传统的侦查手段相比,具有诸多不同之处.这种权利干预的特殊形态体现在权利干预的对象、干预的程度包括广度与深度、权利干预的结果三个方面.