民事诉讼中的电子证据

随着Internet的迅猛发展和网络社会的到来,人们已经感受到网络带来的方便与快捷。与此同时,网络侵权、计算机犯罪、电子商务纠纷案件也大量涌现出来,而目前我国电子证据方面的立法还相对滞后,司法实践中运用电子证据的规则不一.因此,加快电子证据立法、正确界定电子证据的法律地位已迫在眉睫。     

公共政策创新的理论逻辑——以中国人事档案制度为研究对象

公共政策变迁是人类社会基本的正式制度变迁模式,是围绕集体行动而开展的自发的或通过人为安排的秩序演进过程.公共政策创新是公共政策变迁的必然阶段,是人类走向政治文明、社会和谐的有效制度安排.作为一项政策工具,人事档案制度一直以来强化着中国的身份管理和单位管理,对于中国的人事管理和国家安全做出了巨大贡献.然而,人事档案制度突出的应该是公共服务和社会管理的功能,而不是身份限制和单位控制的功能.因此,人事档案制度的变革不可避免.在可预见的诱致性政策创新当中,交易费用理论、公共服务理论、普遍信任理论、公民社会理论将为制度变革提供理论基础.     

Making Government Accountable: Lessons from a Federal Job Training Program

This article describes the evolution of a performance measurement system in a government job training program. In this program, a federal agency establishes performance measures and standards for substate agencies. The performance measurement system's evolution is at least partly explained as a process of trial and error characterized by a feedback loop: The federal agency establishes performance measures, the local managers learn how to game them, the federal agency learns about gaming and reformulates the performance measures, possibly leading to new gaming, and so on. The dynamics suggest that implementing a performance measurement system in government is not a one-time challenge but benefits from careful monitoring and perhaps frequent revision.     

The convergence of fiscal regimes and the decline of the Tiebout effect

A measure of waste from the competitive rent-seeking activity of special interest groups in federal, state and local budgets was calculated over the period 1900–88. This period in U.S. fiscal history is characterized by constitutional changes that have made for more transparency in governmental fiscal activities and for greater diffusion of taxes. The XVI Amendment to the Constitution created the progressive individual income tax (the corporate income tax was judged to be an excise tax in 1909 and passed the test of constitutionality). High marginal tax rates are a justification for a high average level of taxation. The Full Employment Act of 1946 insitutionalized government deficits as a means of meeting a political objective. As a result, opportunities for rent-seeking through budgetary reallocations rose in the United States. In the first two decades of the 20th century, waste at all levels of government represented about 10 percent of incremental national output. Today, waste is three times that amount.The transparency and diffusion of taxes are highest at the federal level and least at the local level. Rent-seeking through budgetary reallocation has followed the public purse. One explanation for the observed centralization of government in the 20th century may be that opportunities to concentrate benefits and diffuse taxes are highest at the federal level.     

Japanese foreign policy: Inaction and reaction

Japan's tendency to simply react to international trends rather than to formulate its own policies is as prevalent today as during the Meiji period when the country was trying to catch up to the West, says Gerald Curtis, professor of political science at Columbia University. When international trends are murky, such as before World War II, this tendency can easily lead to disaster, Curtis says. Japan must break with the past and define its international role in the post‐Cold War era, Curtis argues, but the public debate required to achieve this is unlikely until Japan's domestic politics become more sharply defined.     

WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION IN THE USA: LESSONS LEARNT AND TO BE LEARNT

Abstract: In the 1970s, both Australia and the United States instituted legal reforms aimed at promoting greater accountability among public servants. Prompted by growing awareness of the need to encourage and protect federal government whistleblowers, Congress enacted whistleblower protection measures in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Although the notion of open government in Australia has never been extended to include whistleblowing by public servants, probing the issue of whether or not United States whistleblower protection can serve as a reform model in the search for more effective legal mechanisms for ensuring government accountability can provide lessons and insights of value to Australian public administrators. Analysis of the role and impact of the Office of the Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board as established under the Civil Service Reform Act reveals many difficulties associated with whistleblower protection. Research has substantiated the jurisdictional ambiguities, administrative and procedural deficiencies and lack of sanctioning power which plague this reform effort. Similar deficiencies also impede the protection of parliamentary witnesses in Australia. Evaluation of whistleblower protection leads to the conclusion that reform models in either country for ensuring government accountability must not be judged solely through examination of statutory provisions. There must also be in place strong stabilising factors such as political unity, economic comfort, social discipline, civic virtue and public service ideology in order to achieve the common public service goal of rendering governmental decision-making more accountable to persons affected by it and open to review by independent decision makers.     

Voting for ‘Sin’ in Kansas

We would like to thank our colleagues Nancy Snyder and William Terrell for comments and suggestions. The assistance of Ron Farha and Michael Webb is gratefully acknowledged, as is the patience of the staff in the Elections Office of the Office of the Secretary of State, Topeka, Kansas. Any errors or omissions are, of course, the responsibility of the authors.