Federalism Revised: The Promise and Challenge of the No Child Left Behind Act

Federalism in education has undergone significant changes since the Winter Commission. During the early 1990s, federal policy makers faced the challenge of organizational fragmentation and policy incoherence in public education. In the last 15 years, the intergovernmental system has evolved from one that is predominantly compliance‐driven to one that is performance based, as suggested by the congressional adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. While the former is often characterized by images of “picket fence” federalism and administrative silos, the latter remains very much a work in progress, with the promise of raising academic proficiency. This paper first examines the paradigm shift and then considers emerging politics in intergovernmental relations. The author explores the ways in which state and local policy makers are altering the rules governing education service provision in response to performance‐based federal expectations.     

De-Europeanization by Default? Germany's EU Policy in Defense and Asylum

Since the end of the Cold War and unification, Germany's policy toward and within the European Union (EU) has undergone significant changes. Once a model "Europeanist," Germany has become increasingly reluctant to support the progressive implementation of key projects of European integration. Neither an instance of a planned strategic change nor a result of an inevitable adaptation to structural shifts at the systemic level, these changes in German foreign policy, incremental yet significant as they are, evade both deterministic and voluntaristic accounts of foreign policy change. Integrating insights from foreign policy analysis, integration theory, and social theory, the article develops an innovative framework for analysis that is applied to Germany's European asylum and refugee policy as well as its security and defense policy. The origins of both policy fields at the European level can be traced back to initiatives that were supported by or even originated in Germany. However, as the 1990s progressed Germany increasingly obstructed further institutionalization. While in the field of asylum and refugee policy the Amsterdam summit marks a clear turning point in Germany's position, the transformation of German policies on European security and defense proceeded rather as an incremental decrease in material support, aggravating substantive progress in the policy field more broadly. An unanticipated consequence of earlier initiatives, in both cases Germany has found it increasingly difficult to live up to the expectations it has helped to raise.     

试论公权力与私权利之间的法律平衡--关于制定《传染病隔离法》的思考

2003年春夏之际,一场始料不及的瘟疫——“非典型性肺炎”席卷了我国大江南北。通过各级政府和全社会公民的良性互动,目前疫情已经得到了阶段性的控制。回首抗击“非典”的日日夜夜,少数人借“非典”之机大发不义之财;而更多的公民则为了控制疫情积极配合政府采取的应对措施。有法可依,依法办事,切实保障每一位公民的基本权利,这是法治国家政府在防治严重传染病过程中面临的重要问题。这场瘟疫不仅考验了科学,而且也考验着政府的应急能力及其法律是否完善。在我国缺乏《紧急状态法》的前提下,政府为了应对突发性公共卫生事件而采取了(包括“隔离”等限制公民人身自由在内的)一系列行政强制措施。政府行政权力的底线是尊重和保障人权,而不能随意压制公民、法人和其它组织的私权利。“塞翁失马,焉知非福。”尽早出台《传染病隔离法》等相关法律,从立法和执法中寻求公权力和私权利之间的动态平衡未尝不是抗击“非典”给我们带来的启示。     

Editors’ Introduction

Political Behavior -