Democratization and political corruption in the Philippines and South Korea: A comparative analysis

The Philippines and South Korea have long had difficult corruption problems. More recently, both have experienced significant democratization. This article compares the two cases, first developing an analysis of corruption in each country, then laying out their reform strategies and assessing their effectiveness, and finally exploring the contrasting relationships between democratization and corruption that are found in these countries. The Philippines confront reformers with more difficult challenges, beginning with the size and decentralization of the society, but other contrasts are important as well. The political will required to produce successful reform has been lacking in the Philippines, for a variety of reasons, while recent anti-corruption initiatives in Korea have had stronger backing. Recent Korean reforms also emulate the successful approaches of Singapore and Hong Kong in important ways. By itself, democratization will not check corruption in either country, but where reform is accompanied by significant resources and where democratic accountability complements political will--more true of Korea than of the Philippines--significant progress can be made.     

Japan,Korea, the Philippines,China: four syndromes of corruption

Both generalizations about “Asian corruption”, and claims about greater or lesser amounts of corruption, tend to overlook the many variations existing among and within Asian societies, and among the corruption problems they experience. I suggest that deeper influences in social, political and economic development, and contrasting institutional settings, create four distinctive syndromes of corruption, each with its own set of implications for relationships between wealth and power. Japan is an example of “influence markets” in which private interests buy or rent influence over relatively specific policy outcomes within a strong state. Korea is a case of “elite cartels”, in which collusion and corrupt incentives enable several kinds of elites to cooperate in governing, enriching themselves, and resisting rising political competition. The Philippines is marked by “oligarchs and clans”, with powerful families and their entourages plundering a weak state in a climate of uncertainty and insecurity. China experiences “official mogul” corruption, in which officials abuse state power with impunity, although that process is becoming increasingly fragmented. The four syndromes may help us understand why corruption and rapid growth have coexisted in some, but not all, Asian states for long periods of time, and may also help us understand why some of those states will adapt to new global realities only with some difficulty. They also show how “consensus”-driven reforms emanating from the west may not only be ineffective, but may actually make matters worse.     

韩国实施《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》简介

本文简介了韩国加入《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》后的履约状况与疑难问题,特别介绍了该公约在韩国法律体系中的地位及履约机制。     

Lifetime Family Violence and Depression: The Case of Older Women in South Korea

The current study examined the prevalence of lifetime family violence among older women (N = 525) and the influence of family violence on depression using data from a national survey in South Korea. The major findings were that 49.3 % of respondents had been victimized from lifetime family violence, the prevalence of childhood maltreatment was 37.1 % and intimate partner violence was 23.4 %. Approximately, 55 % of participants had clinical depression, which was significantly associated with reported experiences of family violence. The findings suggest that family violence and depression are common social problems and that individualized intervention for older women in South Korea is needed.     

中日韩植物新品种保护制度比较研究

本文分析了中日韩三国植物新品种保护制度的差异,并且比较了植物新品 种保护制度对中日韩三国农业的影响。通过比较分析,本文指出目前我国在制度实 施方面存在的不足,并提出我国农业育种领域的发展方向是将育种行业市场方向, 育种投资多元化,政府要为我国的育种市场健康有序的发展提供制度保障。     

Corruption and NIC development: A case study of South Korea

The debate on corruption and economic performance has swung from one position to the other over the decades. During the 1960s the school of thought associated with modernisation theory argued corruption was often positively correlated with economic growth. (Huntington, 1968; Leff, 1964) Subsequently corruption came to be viewed as inimical to growth by undermining the basis of stable, rational public policies and allocation through markets (Rose-Ackerman, 1978; Theobald, 1990), the situation in which it is still largely viewed today, particularly following the “corruption eruption” of the 1990s (Alam, 1989; Leiken, 1997; Naim, 1995). East Asian countries stand as important case studies of the role of corruption in industrialisation: this article focuses on South Korea. Firstly corruption coexisted with development. Secondly corruption in South Korea was at different times functional, detrimental, irrelevant and relevant, but always present during rapid industrialisation. This is not of course to argue corruption fuelled growth nor to recommend it as a plausible policy option for developing or transitional economies, since it is evident that in many cases corruption is harmful to growth. This article seeks to understand the role corruption played in Korean economic development to better understand the phenomenon of corruption itself. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

论南海仲裁案的法律与政治——国际批判法学的视角

南海仲裁案深刻地蕴含着法律与政治之间的关系。国际法中的政治主要是指国家政治,即国家根据自身利益和意志而行动。国际法中还存在由超越国家政治的组织来调整国家行为的理想,这种理想属于国际主义。然而在现实中,国际主义往往被国家政治所利用,从而产生了虚假的国际主义。虚假的国际主义是貌似合法但实质上不正当的国家政治。菲律宾、临时仲裁庭和美国、日本都属于虚假的国际主义,分别对应工具的国际主义、错误的国际主义和虚伪的国际主义。国际批判法学揭示了这三者所涉法律背后的政治。     

Civil Society,Environmental Security and Knowledge: Forest Governance in Thailand and the Philippines in the Context of ASEAN

In the domain of environmental security, it appears that a strong civil society, one with strong social ingenuity and social capital, is a necessary condition not only for environmental security, but also for regional security in general. This paper will argue that in the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), much can be learned from the empirical experiences of Thailand and the Philippines that have established records of accomplishment in civil society participation in forest governance. Also discussed is the possible role of epistemic communities both within these countries as well as across countries in the ASEAN in harnessing institutions of knowledge to influence domestic and regional governance of forest resources.     

Roh regrets: Leadership, culture and politics in South Korea

South Korea has, in recent years, suffered a number of serious corruption scandals reaching to the very top of the political and economic worlds. This article attempts to explain why corruption scandals are so frequent in Korea. It suggests that practices that in the West are regarded as corrupt are seen as acceptable in Korea, but that nevertheless Koreans do take corruption very seriously. Korean culture is if anything less willing than western culture to see corrupt behaviour as normal; at the same time it is particularly susceptible to behaviour that is, within its own terms, corrupt. Corruption scandals are therefore frequent, both because there are pressures encouraging corruption, and because corruption, when exposed, is indeed seen as scandalous. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

From International Ethics to European Union Policy: A Case Study on Biopiracy in the EU's Biotechnology Directive

This article explores how the question of biopiracy, and the rights of indigenous people in the context of patents over natural resources related to traditional knowledge became articulated within the European Union's law and policy process. It presents how this issue was first introduced into the EU during the negotiation on the Directive 98/44/EC, and which mechanisms transformed this ethical issue into a policy concern. Analyzing the history of this issue within that of Directive 98/44/EC offers significant opportunities for testing the appropriateness of multilevel governance and policy-network theories to empirical sociolegal research in the EU context.     

Political structure,legislative process,and corruption: comparing Taiwan and South Korea

Taiwan and South Korea have the same constitutional system, approximate economic scale, and similar cultural backgrounds, yet they differ in degree of corruption. What political structures and legislative processes cause this outcome is the major question posed in this paper. The political structure in South Korea is a centralization-of-power model, while that in Taiwan is a separation-of-powers model. This paper proposes that Taiwan and South Korea have different types of corruption and different political structures, and the legislative process in South Korea is more compromising than that in Taiwan. These factors contribute to greater corruption in South Korea than in Taiwan. This study clarifies how particular institutional dynamics reduce or enhance the prospects for democratic governance and help to better understand how political structure and legislative process channel different types of corruption into different degrees of corruption. Studies on the relationship between constitutional structure and corruption have concluded that parliamentarism can help reduce corruption more than presidentialism. This thesis argues that a country with centralized power tends to be less corrupt than a country with separation of powers. If this argument and the rationale behind it hold true for countries with both parliamentary and presidential systems, we can expect that semi-presidential countries with a centralized system are less corrupt than those with a decentralized system, all else being equal. However, by comparing these two semi-presidential countries, we find that South Korea, with its centralized model, was more corrupt than Taiwan, with its decentralized model. This comparative case study provides a counterargument to the conventional wisdom of constitutional structure and governance.     

国际货物贸易中卖方权利瑕疵担保责任之比较--兼评我国《合同法》的相关规定

在国际货物贸易中,对于卖方的权利瑕疵担保责任非常容易产生争议和纠纷,它关系到买卖双方权利义务的范围和双方的切身利益,是合同法律制度中一个值得密切关注的重要问题。《德国民法典》、美国《统一商法典》和《联合国国际货物销售合同公约》中关于卖方权利瑕疵担保责任规定,我国合同法应借鉴前三者的长处。     

撤离滞泰游客与中国的人本性领事保护机制分析

领事保护不仅是一项国家权利,也是一项个人权利。从人权的综合推动来看,在国际人权法的义务限定和影响下,中国的人权发展经历了一个较长的过程。在以人为本、执政为民理念的指导下,特别是2004年人权入宪,使得中国的领事保护得到了较大的改进。中国当前的领事保护机制,特别是预防与应急机制的建立与完善以及其他领事保护方面的进步,都突出体现在2004-2008年。本文结合2008年中国撤离滞泰游客这一具体案例分析了当前中国领事保护的具体运作机制,总结了其人本特点。     

Leprosy,Legal Mobilization,and the Public Sphere in Japan and South Korea

This article addresses the question of what gets transmitted in cross‐national diffusion and why. It does so by analyzing the spread of rights‐based activism from Japanese to South Korean leprosy (Hansen's disease) survivors in the 2000s. Previous scholarship would predict extensive diffusion of mobilizing frames and tactics, especially since Korean lawyers learned an effective legal mobilization template while working with Japanese lawyers to win compensation for Korean leprosy survivors mistreated by Japanese colonial authorities before 1945. Yet the form of subsequent activism by Korean leprosy survivors for redress from the Korean government differed from the original Japanese model. This case suggests the need for scope conditions on theories about isomorphism and the agency of brokers. In particular, it draws attention to how the structure of a country's public sphere—and especially its legal profession, news media, and activist sector—affects the feasibility of imported innovations related to activism and legal mobilization.     

中日韩受贿犯罪法定刑设置之比较研究

受贿犯罪因其对国家工作人员职务行为廉洁性及国民对公权力信赖的侵害,间接影响着国家实施社会管理行为的威信程度,具有极大的社会危害性.中日韩三国同为东北亚重要成员国,在文化背景上有着诸多共性,日韩同为发达国家,社会的各领域均有很多成功经验值得我们借鉴.同时,日韩均属大陆法系国家,我国刑法学理论研究也深受大陆法系的影响,据此,对比分析中日韩三国在受贿犯罪法定刑设置方面的立法问题,将对完善我国受贿犯罪法定刑的设置有所裨益.     

A case study of interpreter-mediated witness statement: police interpreting in South Korea

Interpreters play an important role in police interviewing witnesses from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In the cases where interpreters lack professional attributes such as interpreting competence and impartiality, it is very likely that the interpreted evidence and statement will not be a faithful reproduction of original utterances. If attention is not paid to possible alterations by interpreters to the original utterances of the witness and duty of care is lacking in the procedure of obtaining statement from witnesses through such interpreters, the official legal record may not be an accurate one. Drawing on the data of a video-recorded interpreter-mediated police interview in South Korea, this paper examines issues arising from the lack of understanding of the role of interpreters, which may have implications for criminal proceedings. The findings indicate that in addition to interpreter training, more efficient police training in the adoption of best practice guidelines in interviewing through interpreters is required.     

Trust, Distrust and Betrayal: A Social Housing Case Study

This paper discusses the importance of trust, distrust and betrayal in the context of relational contracts in the modern welfare state. We use a specific case study of the allocation of social housing. That context is one in which the local authority has statutory obligations towards households in housing need but limited ability to fulfil those obligations without reliance on other social housing providers, specifically registered social landlords. Relationships between providers are, in theory, negotiated through nominations agreements. In this paper, we draw on data from a research project concerned with 'problematic nominations' to illustrate the production of trust, distrust and betrayal. Our analysis is structured by reference to three frameworks for the production of trust: characteristic-based, process-based and institutional based trust.