The Neo-Communist Regime of Present-Day China

The first goal of this article is to define the neo-communist regime as a specific type of undemocratic post-communist construct. Three case studies analyzing the regimes led by Zhan Videnov in Bulgaria, Ion Iliescu in Romania, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus are used to identify its main characteristics. The second goal is to show that the present-day Chinese regime falls into this category. As such, it does not represent an intermediate or transitional phase. This ‘hard’ neo-communist regime is the final stage of the Chinese post-communist transition. In the foreseeable future, it will most likely preserve its present characteristics.     

公共政策体制与社会公正

公共政策对于社会公正的实现具有重要意义，这种意义首先发生于体制层面。在界定公共政策体制内涵的基础上，通过实现社会公正的责任体系找到公共政策体制与社会公正之间的关联逻辑，并从公共政策体制构成出发分析二者关联的具体内容，同时从宏观上考虑到公共政策在实现社会公正中所遭遇的悖论，提出：体制性思考是解决悖论的钥匙，良好的公共政策体制有利于实现社会公正。     

Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime

In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and "marxism", the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural "democracy" is incoherent and self-contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of the "market" but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of "freedom". The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals.     

论日本小泉政权的行政结构改革

泡沫经济崩溃以来的日本经济的长期低迷和与此相伴的巨额债务是日本政府结构改革所处的大背景,日本政府改革的根本方向就是变大政府为小政府,促使政府从市场的参与者成为市场秩序的维持者和监督者。这一改革波及从社会体系到经济体制的各个领域。随着改革的深入,日本经济似乎实现了泡沫经济崩溃后的恢复。小泉的行政改革与日本的经济发展对我国来说,有可供借鉴之处。     

The Global Climate Regime: Explaining Lagging Reform

There have been growing calls for reform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). How have governments met the demand for action on climate change despite the lagging pace of UNFCCC reform? New qualitative data demonstrate that the institutional, sectoral, and technical characteristics of multilateral institutions have guided government choices in managing climate change issues. Institutional resources and sectoral participation in multilateral institutions have enabled governments to handle climate change issues outside the UNFCCC, reducing the need to invest in its reform as demand for action has grown. These specialized institutions are able to mitigate political disputes and facilitate greater efficacy in handling specific issues such as financing and emissions mitigation. They have mandates that overlap with the cross‐cutting nature of climate change, requiring no new mandates, which mitigates political disputes in managing specific climate issues.     

Legality of Anti-Satellites Under the Space Law Regime

The term anti-satellite, or in short ASAT, is used to refer to a system designed to destroy or damage satellites. The heightened tendency among the spacefaring nations to develop ASAT technology in the recent past has led to widespread debates as to the legality of ASAT deployment under the space law regime. In this context, I have endeavored to make a detailed analysis of the international legal provisions to find if there is any legal basis at all for the deployment of such ASATs. I have concluded that none of the existing legal provisions in space law, as well as public international law, have sufficient force and clarity to bring about a blanket ban on ASAT weapons. Therefore, the research suggests a slew of reforms to overcome this anomaly. Examples of such proposed reforms include, inter alia, an amendment of the Outer Space Treaty and an enhanced role and influence of the United Nations in treaty making coupled with active diplomatic initiatives.     

Economic Performance and Regime Legitimacy in Post-Communist Bulgaria

It is commonly assumed that socio-economic conditions strongly influence political attitudes. Since democratic rule is based on the consent of the ruled, a secure and stable democracy cannot be established and maintained without broad-based popular endorsement, which is especially important for nascent post-communist democracies. Painful economic difficulties may engender deep anti-system sentiments at the mass level, encouraging anti-regime activism at the elite level. From this perspective, democratic legitimacy is a function of regime performance. But the Bulgarian evidence fails to validate the hypothesis that system legitimacy depends on regime effectiveness or that socio-economic conditions determine mass-level political attitudes. In spite of the economic fiasco, Bulgaria's democratic regime remains capable of commanding popular support. While the economic performance deficit of catastrophic proportions has become a source of widespread popular dissatisfaction threatening regime stability, it has not led to democratic backsliding or collapse.     

The Evolution of a Global Labor Governance Regime

During the last decade, the approach by businesses and governments toward labor and social issues at the global level has fundamentally changed. Industrial relations are rapidly internationalizing by developing new actors and forms of governance to deal with the regulation of labor. This article looks at the evolution of self‐regulatory standards in the global labor governance debate. Key is that notwithstanding problems with the lacking legal framework of global regulation and enforceability, patterns of local self‐regulation, norm‐setting, and international codes lead not only to higher expectations of the behavior of transnationally operating firms but also to an indirect pattern of regulation. The article argues that particularly the adoption of the core labor standards by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the setup of the Global Compact by the UN serve as points of convergence. A plethora of voluntarist initiatives that converge over time toward a shared understanding of labor standards is part of the transformation of global labor governance institutions.     

Making It Personal: Regime Type and Nuclear Proliferation

Study after study has found that regime type has little or no effect on states’ decisions to pursue nuclear weapons. We argue, however, that conventional approaches comparing the behavior of democracies to that of nondemocracies have resulted in incorrect inferences. We disaggregate types of nondemocracies and argue that leaders of highly centralized, “personalistic” dictatorships are particularly likely to view nuclear weapons as an attractive solution to their concerns about regime security and face fewer constraints in pursuing nuclear weapons than leaders of other types of regimes. Combining our more nuanced classification of regime type with a more theoretically appropriate empirical approach, we find that personalist regimes are substantially more likely to pursue nuclear weapons than other regime types. This finding is robust to different codings of proliferation dates and a range of modeling approaches and specifications and has significant implications for both theory and policy.     

Effects of Exchange Rate Regime on IMF Program Participation

This article investigates the effect of a domestic policy choice, the exchange rate regime, on countries’ interaction with an international institution, their participation in International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending agreements. I hypothesize that the effect of the level of international reserves on a country's probability of participation in an IMF program depends on the exchange rate regime. A low level of international reserves threatens unfavorable economic and political outcomes only in countries that maintain a fixed exchange rate regime. The level of reserves may thus be a significant determinant of participation in IMF programs only for countries that maintain a fixed exchange rate regime. I use a dynamic univariate probit model of IMF program participation to assess empirically the effect of reserves in countries that maintain fixed, intermediate, and floating exchange rate regimes. The empirical results support my hypothesis: reserves have a significant effect only in countries that maintain a fixed exchange rate.     

Airport Expansion and the British Planning System: Regime Management

The article examines the process whereby government and business elites have driven the expansion of London airports, particularly via the mode of the establishment of an ‘independent’ commission, the Davies Commission (2012–2015). It addresses the strategic framing of airports planning, including the role of National Policy Statements, and the nature of the consideration of the planning applications for consent to develop. Temporal and geographical dimensions are analysed, showing how central to the UK state project is the expansion of the southern English / Greater London core, with associated infrastructure geographies. It concludes that corporate and state power may well achieve the desired expansion of airport capacity in the London region, overriding environmental and other non‐commercial considerations. However, there are tensions in the dominant state and business model, given an apparent commitment to carbon emissions reduction and other air quality goals, as well as to minimising the costs to the public sector which airport expansion is likely to generate.     

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the New Regime

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is the national regulator in the new competition regime. It acts as the public guardian against anti-competitive or unfair business activities. The ACCC's task is to promote competition where it is limited; to preserve competition where it is effective; and to safeguard the position of consumers in their dealings with business. Its efforts are directed primarily at fostering business compliance with the national competition and consumer law, the Trade Practices Act 1974. The commission tries to persuade, coax or cajole businesses into pursuing their interests within the legally defined boundaries of fair competition. Where that proves insufficient, the commission becomes the enforcer. The ACCC can coerce businesses — through court orders and penalties — into rectifying their behaviour where they operate outside the boundaries of the law. It also has the capacity to hold businesses publicly accountable for the prices they set. Underlying these ACCC functions is an ulterior objective: to enhance the material welfare of Australians by promoting, wherever practical, a more competitive and efficient economy.     

Managing Disagreement: A Defense of “Regime Bias”

Stein Ringen’s theory of democratic purpose cannot do the work expected of it. Ringen’s own criteria oscillate between being too vague to be useful (i.e. “freedom”) or, when specified more fully, conflicting, so that almost all democracies will seem to be potentially at cross-purposes with themselves rather than their purposes or sub-purposes being mutually reinforcing. This reflects a bigger and more theoretical problem. Disagreement about the purpose of democracy is built into democracy itself. The whole point of many (perhaps all) of our democratic institutions is to arrive at conditionally legitimate decisions in spite of such disagreement. So-called regime bias, i.e. the tendency to assess democracies according to the form and stability of their institutions rather than their results or their ability to serve certain purposes, does not in fact arise from bias. It arises on the contrary from a determination to avoid the bias inherent in giving some—inevitably partisan—ideals of what democracies should do pride of place over others in a scheme of measurement or evaluation. And even a regime-based definition of democracy must itself make simplifying assumptions that elide possible normative controversies over how the democratic game is best played. Vindicating one’s preferred set of democratic ideals against alternatives is a completely legitimate enterprise and lends richness to debates within and across democracies. But it is an inherently ideological and political enterprise, not a neutral or scholarly one.     

The Viability of Space Mining in the Current Legal Regime

ABSTRACT

Several private players have expressed their desire to mine resources in space. This posits ethical and legal concerns. Several scholars argue that space mining activities flout the national non-appropriation principle enshrined in Article II of the Outer Space Treaty. However, it is the opinion of the author that space mining does not per se violate the provisions of Article II, though space mining brings forward other concerns of breach of cooperation and environmental damage. The current legal regime is not adequately equipped to address these problems. The national legislations of several countries which allow for space mining do not address these issues. Even though an international regime emulating deep seabed mining addresses some of these concerns, the current political structure is not in favor of such a development. Hence, the legal viability of any potential space mining industry is on tenuous terms.     

Climate Adaptation in Canada: Governing a Complex Policy Regime

Climate adaptation is a complex policy area, in which knowledge, authority, and resources are fragmented among numerous public agencies, multiple levels of government, and a wide range of nongovernmental actors. Mobilizing and coordinating disparate public and private efforts is a key challenge in this policy domain, and this has focused research attention on the governance of adaptation, including the dynamics of interaction among interests and the institutions that facilitate collective action. This paper contributes to the study of adaptation governance by adopting the policy regimes perspective, an analytical framework designed to make sense of the loose governing arrangements surrounding complex, fragmented problems. The perspective's constructs are applied to a longitudinal case study of adaptation governance in Canada, which identifies, analyzes, and evaluates the policy ideas, institutions, and interests that comprise Canada's adaptation policy regime.