Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's China,by David E. Apter and Tony Saich

Abstract

As early as Edgar Snow's pioneering Red Star over China (1937), Yan'an was seen as the “defining moment” of the Chinese Communists' rise to power. Beginning in 1935, Mao Zedong set his personal imprint on the party as he successfully guided it from the disaster of the Long March to the “Congress of Victors” in 1945. This set the stage for the final showdown with Chiang Kai-shek and the hapless Nationalists in the civil war of 1946-49. With the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, the experiences of Yan'an became the blueprint for the reconstruction of China along the lines first laid out in that remote and impoverished town in the northeast.     

Inter-parliamentary relations in the United Kingdom: devolution’s undiscovered country?

Since 1997, the United Kingdom’s territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of change and has resulted in the establishment of separate legislatures and governments for the peoples of Scotland, Wales and, when Stormont is operational, Northern Ireland. These changes have spawned a whole series of relationships between the institutions of the devolved UK, at executive, legislature and civil service levels. However, while intergovernmental relations has been the subject of repeated debate, there has been little attempt to document and examine the way in which the UK’s four legislatures interact with one another, post-devolution. To the extent that these interactions, otherwise known as inter-parliamentary relations (IPR), have been the subject of scrutiny, it has been largely to bemoan their modest state and/or to suggest that stronger, albeit occasionally rather unelaborated, mechanisms be established. This article seeks to correct this deficit and provide a first step towards a clearer understanding of IPR in the UK, post-devolution. The article breaks the different levels of IPR down into three main strands: (1) parliament-parliament, (2) committee-committee and (3) official-official, and suggests that the main interactions that take place at each of these levels. Following this audit, the article concludes by highlighting the role that shared policy competence (a field that is set to grow with the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union) has played in driving IPR in the UK, post-devolution, and suggests some steps that may be taken to enhance IPR in the future.