Instituting Peace: Third Party Principles and the Mitchell Effect

Abstract

The notion of legitimacy in international peacebuilding is an assumed one; there is an expectation that the formal, Weberian state institutions advanced therein will automatically be condoned by those in whose name they are delivered. But such bodies have, since at least colonial times, been suspect in many postconflict spaces and have routinely been ignored, resisted and bypassed when their local propriety does not reflect social preferences, and the empirical evidence does not suggest this pattern has stopped. The persistence of this null legitimacy derives from the exclusionary nature of liberal interventionism, which neither seeks local knowledge from which to design institutions nor considers their requirements important in relation to popular legitimacy. This article uses survey data drawn from Southern Sudan to discuss how legitimacy is seen from within and what it might look like.     

Social Capital,Islam, and the Arab Spring in the Middle East

To what extent do participatory civil society dynamics, rooted in self-assertive social capital, help explain the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011? How do pro-democratic Arab attitudes matter in promoting elite-challenging collective actions? Does Islam support or hinder elite-challenging, self-assertive social capital? To answer these questions, this study systematically examines the variation in self-assertive (emancipative) social capital in Egypt and Jordan from a comparative perspective. By using emancipative social capital theory, this article embarks on an individual-level quantitative analysis derived from the World Values Survey database to explore the empirical nexus between pro-democratic attitudes, elite-challenging actions, and Islamic values in order to partly explain comparatively high-intensive and persistent uprisings in Egypt and relatively low-intensive and less persistent demonstrations in Jordan. The findings offer critical insights in understanding the social capital dimension of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 and contribute new clues about empirical interactions between Islamic resurgence and civil society dynamics in the Muslim world.     

Alexander Dugin's Views on the Middle East

Alexander Dugin, influential Russian geo-politician and proponent of Eurasianism, regards Russia as a heartland state that should engage in a web of alliances with various Eurasian powers to confront Russia's natural enemy, the US. While Eurasianism has been quite popular in the late Yeltsin era and Putin regime, it is important for other reasons as well. It demonstrates that, in the wake of the Cold War, the most unexpected combinations could happen.     

法治社会第三方评价:体系、实证与审视

法治社会评价是可量化的社会正义,评价赋予法治的生命力。基于"法治国家、法治政府、法治社会一体化建设"命题,从法的运行的全流程视角,构建涵盖科学立法、依法行政、公正司法和全民守法等四个维度,包括客观指标和专家评议、公众满意度等主观指标相结合的法治社会评价体系具有科学性与可行性。运用这一体系在广东省的实证研究显示,2015年度"法治广东"指数为75.23,其中:客观指数(85.90)与公众满意度(54.18)及专家评议结果(72.19)反差明显。审视这一现象,应凸显以人民为中心的发展理念,进一步明确法治社会建设的目标,有效提升地方政府"法治满意度",同时,引入独立第三方评价主体,增强法治社会评价的公信力。     

Functional Hypotheses of Party Decline: The Case of the Scandinavian Social Democratic Parties*

Functional hypotheses of party decline define parties as fulfilling specific functions in the political system and relate party decay to the inability or diminished capacity of parties to perform these functions. This article examines two major hypotheses of this sort by assessing their relevance in the case of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Social Democratic parties. First, it deals with the thesis of the declining functionality of the mass membership party. Second, it discusses the rival structure hypothesis which argues that rival forms of political organization pose a threat to parties by encroaching upon their functions. These arguments are confronted with available empirical data. In several instances, the empirical evidence points to inadequacies in the hypotheses, or directly confutes them. These weaknesses of the hypotheses are discussed, and alternative interpretations are offered.     

基层政府的多重非正式权力建构——基于湘西A乡三个纠纷调解个案的分析

本文试图探讨基层政府在基层社会矛盾突出、结构性资源匮乏的情况下,维持基层社会稳定何以可能的问题。作者以湘西A乡乡政府对三个地方纠纷处理的个案为例,归纳出基层政府在与乡民的长期互动中建构起来用于地方治理的四种非正式权力:对正式权力的非正式建构使用、基于知识优势的文化权力、基于利益一家族关系网络的网络权力以及基于庇护乡民行为的道义权力。本文认为,基层政府维持地方社会稳定的关键在于政府能够在结构性资源之外灵活地建构起面对乡民的多重非正式权力。     

The Soviet Union,the Middle East,and the evolving world energy situation

Surveying and summarizing the basic issues confronting Soviet decisionmakers in the next ten years as reflected in energy and international political terms, this analysis treats the capacity and constraints mediating Soviet influence in the resolution of the future world energy balance. A scenario highlighting a “Soviet-Preferred Future World” is developed that focuses on three classes of likely energy outcomes: (1) a gradual erosion of the Western commercial position in Middle East oil, (2) repeated shortages in oil-consumer states leading to a diversion of attention away from international matters and increased preoccupation with “domestic” energy woes, and (3) a deterioration of the terms of trade for energy importers vis à vis Soviet and noncommunist trading partners. The discussion concludes with an assessment of several of the key choices confronting the major oil-importing nations and requiring resolution.