A Discourse Called China and the PRC’s Foreign Policy and Diplomacy

On the basis of the premise that China, besides being a powerful civilization and state, is also a powerful discourse, this essay will set forth, as a preliminary analytical step, a plausible definition of the ‘Chinese mind’ by describing certain essential characteristics that have been forged in China’s classical culture and thought. When placed in the more creative sphere of discourse construction, these essential characteristics become ideological compounds of the here theorized ‘discourse called China’, whose impact is weighed up as the focal analytical point in the discursive space of the PRC’s foreign policy and diplomacy.     

The role of Salvadorean NGOs in post-war reconstruction

The Peace Agreement signed recently between the Government and FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador marks the end of a decade of civil war. As both sides of the conflict and the international donor community begin to add up the financial costs of reconstruction, the human, social and psychological costs are carried mainly by the poor of El Salvador. Social organisations and NGOs who became strategists of survival now face the challenge of transforming their accumulated experience into alternative proposals for the building of a more just society and a prosperous nation. This article explores the practical complexities of transition from war to peace; and from emergency aid to sustainable development based on the participation of communities, social organisations, NGOs, and international agencies; and the challenges of building on their experience.     

Legal Causality and Criminal Intent in the Legal Discourse

In this article I analyse linguistic means employed to reconstruct causality in court. Identifying the causal relations that induced the occurrence in reality is particularly important when the mental element of the offence is considered proving criminal intent is showing existence of a causal relation between an intention and a legally prohibited act.I show that the legal significance of an action depends on the time of the action relative to other events. I will show that in the legal-criminal discourse simultaneity implies causality. In particular, if discussing a concrete occurrence, an event is proved to be simultaneous or almost simultaneous with an action – then causation between the action and the event is commonly implied if the event seems to the court as a reasonable motive for the particular action.I exemplify how the institutional speakers use time conjunctions indicating actions that happen simultaneously or almost simultaneously in order to prove existence of a causal relation, and how they present the simultaneity as incidental in order to deny existence of such a relation.     

The effects of party competition on budget outcomes: Empirical evidence from local governments in Spain

This paper investigates the link between local budget outcomes and the intensity of party competition, measured as the margin of victory obtained by the incumbent in the previous local election (i.e. the difference between the vote share and 50%). Two competing hypotheses are tested in the paper. On the one hand, the Leviathan government hypothesis suggests that the lower the intensity of party competition is, the greater is the increase in the size of the local public sector, irrespective of the ideology of the party in power. On the other hand, the Partisan government hypothesis suggests that the incumbent will find it easier to advance its platform when intensity of competition is low (i.e., parties on the left/right will increase/decrease the size of the local public sector when the intensity of the challenge from the opposition is low). These hypotheses are tested with information on spending, own revenues and deficit for more than 500 Spanish local governments over 8 years (1992–1999), and information on the results of two local electoral contests (1991 and 1995). The evidence favors the Partisan hypothesis over the Leviathan one. We found that, for left-wing governments, spending, taxes and deficits increased as the electoral margin increases; whereas, for right-wing governments, a greater margin of victory led to reductions in all these variables.     

The Use of the Biblical Oath and Its Development

The use of the oath in Jewish law reflects the religious nature of this system of law: in case a litigant cannot receive justice from the human judges s/he is entitled to call on God by swearing an oath. I begin this survey of the use of oaths in Jewish law with a discussion of the nature of “swearing an oath” based on biblical stories and biblical rules that regulate the use of oaths outside court. I then focus on the use of the oath in court; I survey the domain of circumstances in which an oath is accepted by Jewish law as evidence according to the Bible, the Mishna, Gemara, and codifications. Finally, I exemplify how the oath is used in practice in the 20th century by one case from Rabbi Saul Ibn Dannan’s responsa book “Hagam Shaul”.     

Eurovision song contest and identity crisis in Moldova

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was created for strengthening the development of a European soul. But generally speaking, one can say it has been used as a tool for nation-branding, and as a means for Central and Eastern countries to “return” to Europe, in particular after the fall of their Communist regimes. In the difficult social, economic, political, and historical context of the Republic of Moldova nowadays, the ESC furthermore allows the discursive construction of the nation and the building of a particular self. Accordingly, based on a method inspired by the Critical Discourse Analysis methodology applied to three local newspapers, the research demonstrates how the ESC acts as a sound box when building the Moldovan self. The Moldovan identity that emerges from the articles seems to be an identity in crisis which proves much different from the usual political constructions of the nation. This bottom-up identity put forward by journalists has indeed to be related to the twofold crisis in which Moldova is at the moment: social and economic, on the one hand, and linked to a permanent struggle between a separate Moldovan or an integrated Romanian identity, on the other.