Law Guanxi: MNCs,state actors,and legal reform in China

Since 1978, China has opened itself to foreign direct investment and has undertaken significant legal reform, especially in the area of international commercial arbitration. I analyze the roles that foreign actors and state officials have played in changing Chinese legal institutions such as the Chinese International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) and personal relations, or guanxi. 1 ^1. La guanxi is a Chinese expression, meaning ‘to pull strings (to get things done)’. View all notes Foreign investors, attorneys, and non-governmental organizations are helping China to adopt formal commercial arbitral institutions that follow international norms. In that sense, foreign actors are contributing to rule of law in China. Yet, foreign investors also attempt to use guanxi to get around central regulations, thereby contributing to informal legal institutions. The combination of guanxi and formal legal institutions follows a model of path dependent institutional change. I use the terms, ‘layering’ and ‘bricolage’ to elucidate the ways that actors combine existing institutions with new legal forms introduced by foreign investors, attorneys, and NGOs.     

Crossing Identitarian Lines: Women's Liberation and James Baldwin's Early Essays

Since a gender‐free society has never existed historically, feminist thinking that posits the equality of the sexes is inherently Utopian. Feminist Utopian writers, working within the traditional genre of science‐fiction, a genre particularly well‐suited to revolutionary theoretical discussions, have explored three types of feminist utopias: all‐female societies, biological androgyny, and genuinely egalitarian two‐sex societies. This essay examines examples of feminist utopias in each of these three paradigms to determine to what extent they are “abstract” (in Ernst Bloch's terminology), ie. merely wish‐fulfillment fantasies, and to what extent “concrete” and thus viable blue‐prints for future political and social organization.     

EXPERTISE AND POLICY‐MAKING: LEGAL PROFESSIONALS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Professional influence in policy‐making is generally believed to rest on professionals successfully laying claim to access to expertise – knowledge, understanding or experience – not available to others, above all politicians. On the basis of a 2005 survey of nearly 800 lawyers serving in local authorities in England and Wales, this article explores the relationship between specialization and political influence. Lawyers who shape policy use conventional routes for political influence, establish contacts with political officeholders, tend to identify less with the profession at large and are less likely to see themselves as specialists in any field of law. This means that the relationship between expertise and political power is complex and that the notion that professionals use their expertise to shape policy should be treated with some caution.     

Form and Formalism: The View from Legal Theory

Abstract. The article considers Robert Summers' new book ( Summers 2006 ), in the context of Summers' earlier work and the role of form and formalism in other jurisprudential discussions. While accepting the value of a form‐centered approach to studying law, the article questions Summers' claim that his approach is clearly superior to (and not merely complementary with) traditional analytic theories, like those of Hart and Kelsen. The article also suggests that the book's discussion of form in contract and commercial law is somewhat disappointing, given Summers' expertise in this area, and the many difficult form‐related questions that area raises.     

MODELLING BUREAUCRACY: THE CASE OF THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL BUDGET SECTOR 1982-1992

A substantial literature exists on the economic analysis of bureaucracy, which includes formal models of bureaucratic behaviour by Niskanen (1971) and Dunleavy (1991). This article develops hypotheses from those models about changes in size of bureaux over time and tests them against data on the Australian federal budget sector in 1982–83 and 1991–92. The models predict that bureaucrats usually will be able to influence the size or structure of their bureaux in line with their personal preferences. However, the Australian data suggest that the extent of such influence may be less than is assumed in either model and that the preferences of politicians are more influential than the models allow. One conclusion is that, if bureaucracy is to be modelled, a principal-agent approach will have more to offer than the neo-classical maximizing framework adopted by Niskanen in particular. A further conclusion, at odds with those of Niskanen and weakening his case for wholesale privatization, is that bureaucratic dysfunctions may be amenable to reform of the political and bureaucratic rules and systems.