Divide and conquer: the consolidation of Hafiz al-Assad's policy toward Lebanon – the early stages

This article examines the attitude of Syria toward Lebanon during the first years of Hafiz al-Assad's regime. Assad adhered to the policy of ‘divide and conquer’, in which Syria purposefully prevented any Lebanese figure from becoming too powerful in the political arena. The article will analyze two cases of prominent Lebanese leaders in which Syria applied this policy, President Suleiman Frangieh and the Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt. Both were close allays of Assad, but this fact did not prevent the latter from acting against his friends. The article's main claim is that by using this policy, Assad paved the way for Syrian intervention and increasing influence in the land of the cedars.     

我国银行业竞争推进制度研究

我国银行业的垄断问题主要并不是由于处于寡占地位的国有银行实施限制竞争行为造成的,而是国家干预、管制的结果。传统的反垄断执法和司法对这种管制下的垄断无能为力,只能被动地等待银行业主管部门的自我觉醒,或者象民间金融危机之类事件发生之后才意识到问题的存在。竞争推进是各国竞争主管部门的实务工作者在实践中探索出来的竞争执法之外的手段。通过竞争性评估、引入竞争和培育竞争文化等竞争推进制度,将促进我国银行业的有效竞争和金融资源的分配公平。     

网络游戏直播涉及的著作权问题研究

随着网络游戏大热,网络游戏直播越来越受到人们的关注。2015年出现的"中国电子游戏直播第一案"足以引起立法机关的反思。纵观我国现行立法,无论是作品的类型模式还是其所涉及的著作权的相关规定,都存在着一定的漏洞,不仅使法律适用存在困难,造成司法实践中的混乱局面,同时就著作权人而言,其权利难以受到公正的保护。设立新的作品类别以及对所涉及的著作财产权进行扩大解释能够很好地解决这些问题,同时弥补法律漏洞,推动我国网络游戏行业的健康发展。     

Democracy,Deception, and Entry into War

Realists propose that elected leaders that seek war but face a hesitant public may use deception to build public support for war. Leaders may secretly make provocative diplomatic or military moves to push the adversary to attack first, rallying the public behind a war effort seen as defensive, or publicly exaggerate the threat posed by the adversary. This paper develops a liberal institutionalist critique of this theory, positing that elected leaders are deterred from engaging in such deception because democratic political institutions such as political competition, a professionalized military, and the marketplace of ideas increase the likelihood that such moves will be exposed, and once exposed, deceptive politicians will suffer domestic political punishment. The paper examines the thesis that Franklin Roosevelt sought to provoke Germany and Japan to war in 1941, finding little support. It also finds that in general autocratic leaders are more likely than elected leaders to deceive.     

Sharīʻa,Islamism and Arab support for democracy

ABSTRACT

The Arab Spring and its aftermath reignited the debate over the relationship between Islamism and democracy. This analysis improves upon previous research by demonstrating the crucial contribution which a more precise understanding of the multiple meanings of the concept of Sharī?a can have on our assessment of the future of democracy in the Arab world. While support for the Sharī?a-conformity of laws has a positive impact on the preference for democracy, the insistence that Sharī?a represents the word of God as opposed to the human attempt to interpret it reduces support for democracy. These findings are of considerable significance for academics and policy-makers interested in the future of democracy in the Arab world as it suggests that generic expressions of support for Sharī?a are less relevant in explaining support for democracy than what Arab women and men consider to be its essence.     

Particularities Regarding the Etiology of Sepsis in Forensic Services

If in clinical practice definitive diagnostic criteria had been established, after death sepsis is often difficult to diagnose, especially if a site of origin is not found or if no clinical data are available. This article will analyze the etiology of sepsis in a medical‐legal service with emphasis on the differences in diagnosing it in clinical and forensic environments. A total of 78 cases of sepsis cases diagnosed or confirmed at the autopsy were selected. The etiological agent was determined either during the hospitalization or by postmortem bacteriology. A high prevalence of Gram‐negative sepsis was found, especially multidrug‐resistant micro‐organisms. Most frequent etiological agents were Acinetobacter baumannii, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter, Enterococcus, Pseudomonas, and Klebsiella. Polymicrobial sepsis is much more frequent than in nonforensic cases. In legal medicine, the prevalence of Gram‐negative sepsis is much higher than in nonforensic autopsies, and the point of origin is shifted toward the skin and the gastrointestinal system.     

The Indirect Influence of Politics on Tort Liability of Public Authorities in English Law

The scope of negligence liability of public authorities in English law has undergone significant changes in the Post‐World War II period, first expanding and then, from the mid‐1980s, retracting. This article tries to explain why this happened not by focusing, as is common in most commentary on this area of law, on changing doctrinal “tests,” but rather by tying it to changes in the background political ideology. My main contention is that political change has brought about a change in the law, but that it did so by affecting the scope of the political domain, and by implication, also the scope of the legal one. More specifically, I argue that Britain's Post‐War consensus on the welfare state has enabled the courts to expand state liability in accordance with emerging notions of the welfare state without seeming to take the law into controversial territory. When Thatcher came to power, the welfare state was no longer in consensus, thus making further development of legal doctrines on welfarist lines appear politically contentious. The courts therefore reverted back to older doctrines that seemed less politically charged in the new political atmosphere of the 1980s.