Contesting Citizenship in the Arab Revolutions: Youth,Women, and Refugees

Focusing on youth, women, and refugees in the context of the ongoing Arab revolutions, this article explores how constructions of citizenship are being challenged. More than 40 percent of the population in the Arab world is under the age of eighteen, and youth are expressing a strong civic motivation and agency for change. Second, with regard to women’s participation in the Arab revolutions, while highly visible on the Arab streets, to date they have been largely excluded from participating in subsequent more formal political processes. Third, the ensuing large refugee populations in the Arab world further challenge understandings of citizenship. This article proposes that exploring the role of youth, women, and refugees in contesting citizenship in the ongoing revolutions of the Arab world challenges not only conceptions of citizenship in the Arab world but also how we understand conceptions of civil society.     

‘Resistance as creation’: a new sociability in Argentina

While everyday forms of resistance are not new in Argentina, the spontaneity that characterised the insurrection on 19 and 20 December 2001 was unprecedented. It showed how the absence of leadership, co-ordination, and promise might open the doors to powerful forms of mobilisation and radical practices in direct democracy. The author suggests that in challenging capitalism and the social paradigms that it generates, the values and practices of counter-power, self-affirmation, collectivity, and multiplicity can all play a vital role in the success and survival of radical democracy. The article is largely inspired by the works of Colectivo Situaciones, an autonomous research collective in Buenos Aires, and draws on the example of the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD) Solano. This movement of unemployed workers struggles against capitalist and state violence by practising a constantly renewed spiral of rebellion and creativity. From the perspective of a participant observer the article considers their successes, challenges, and limitations in developing radical democratic thought and practice.     

公正行政:和谐社会的行政模式选择

公正是和谐社会的基石,也是现代公共行政的核心价值追求,因此,公正行政是与和谐社会相适应的行政模式。建设公正行政要把公正作为公共行政的价值目标,通过建设法治、透明、可问责的行政体系实现行政过程的公正,并通过建立双重互动机制缓解公正行政的价值诉求与政治决策之间可能存在的张力。     

异体评估:我国政府绩效评估的路径选择及理论建构

我国政府绩效评估工作在经历了十年的快速发展以后,最近有陷入评估困境的趋势。同体评估是困局之源,其解决需要在理论层面有所突破。从评估对象界定切入,对政府绩效评估的性质进行分析,提出及解释了"管理评估"和"治理评估"两个范式,并尝试提出了"异体评估"概念,在此基础上提出构建以人大为主导的政府绩效评估主体结构的理论框架。基于人大的异体评估路径切合我国政府绩效评估的内涵及其肇兴的体制改革诉求,有望建立起适合中国实际的政府绩效评估动力机制,进一步释放评估活力。     

Academic judgement,the university Visitor and the Human Rights Act 1998

Students have proved increasingly willing to challenge academic judgements in court, and the passage into law of the Human Rights Act 1998 is likely to have a major bearing on future challenges. The Act will make it unlawful for a public authority (including both a university and the courts) to act in a way which is incompatible with many of the provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights (and the Protocols attaching thereto). It will also permit a victim of such unlawfulness to bring proceedings in an appropriate court or tribunal, whether in the High Court as part of an application for judicial review or as an ordinary civil action for negligence or breach of contract. The court will have the power to grant whatever remedy it considers to be just and equitable, including an award of damages where it feels such an award to be appropriate. This could have significant consequences for the use of the Visitor in chartered universities as the final arbiter in disputes over academic judgements. For the Visitor does not conduct hearings in public and often fails to follow any recognised procedure. It may even be doubted whether the Visitor can be said to be truly independent of the institution against whose decision the student is appealing. In future, therefore, universities may have to be prepared to justify any marks awarded in the public forum of the courtroom.