城市·市场·法律——西方法律史中的“城市法”考察

本文考察了西方前近代社会历史中城市法制度的独特性质及其后来对西欧社会发展的影响等问题 ,认为从西欧社会城市法制度的经验看 ,市场、城市和法律三者之间具有十分密切的联系。其中城市法使市场和城市具有了一体性的内在关系并同时使城市成为自治实体 ,这正是使市场经济得以繁荣发展的关键。同时城市法制度的最终发展又走向极端 ,从而又成为统一市场形成的障碍 ,进而由民族国家取代城市而统一市场 ,城市法的使命终结了 ,近代法开始兴起。     

中国陪审制度改革的前景与出路

陪审制度与司法现代化既存在矛盾性,也存在相容性。矛盾性使其处境困难,而相容性则给其带来生机。陪审制度在中国具有一定的实践基础,但其在现实中也存在着很多问题。必须加以改革。当前的重点是限定陪审案件的范围,强中审员的权利,吸收专家型陪审员。而根本的出路则在于现行司法体制的改革。     

Leader Effects and Voting for the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

Charismatic leaders are often assumed to drive the electoral success of populist radical right parties. Yet, little attention is given to how voter evaluations of leaders influence individual voting behavior. To our knowledge, no systematic and comparative tests of this empirical question exist. In this paper, we test to what extent voters’ support for populist radical right parties is fueled by leaders' appreciation. In order to examine leader effects on the populist radical right vote, we rely on an original dataset pooling 29 National Election Studies from ten established West European parliamentary democracies (1985‐2018). Our analysis finds that: (1) voters’ evaluation of party leaders is significantly associated with voting for populist radical right parties; (2) leader evaluations are more important than left‐right self‐placement when it comes to voting for the populist radical right, and (3) leader effects are more important for populist radical right voters than for other voters.     

Explaining regulatory autonomy in EU network sectors: Varieties of utility regulation?

This article explains variation in the autonomy in the range of activities that European regulators perform. By focusing on 102 regulators of four network sectors (electricity, gas, telecom, and railways), we test for functional and institutional explanations. The findings indicate that the inclusion of institutional factors matters for our understanding of recent changes in the governance of European network sectors. Reforms toward the independent agency form of governance and the range of competencies granted to sector regulators seem to be shaped not only by international functional pressures but also by domestic institutional factors. Beyond the credibility hypothesis, we find that national governments grant less regulatory autonomy to utility regulators the more coordinated an economy is and the more veto players are present. On the contrary, common law countries are associated with higher levels of regulatory autonomy.     

Blessing or Curse for Advocacy? How News Media Attention Helps Advocacy Groups to Achieve Their Policy Goals

This article asks whether and under what circumstances a presence in news media debates helps advocacy groups to achieve their policy goals in European Union (EU) legislative politics. Common wisdom holds that lobbyists eschew the public spotlight and prefer to influence policymaking from behind the scenes. This perception contrasts with the literature on media and interest groups, which typically conceives of media attention as a crucial commodity for interest groups to influence policy decisions. This article unites these seemingly contrasting stances by arguing that media attention can be both a blessing and a curse for advocacy. The central argument posited is that media attention may improve or reduce advocacy groups’ chances of preference attainment depending on how advocacy groups frame their message in the news. The analyses draw from interviews with more than 200 policy practitioners and content analysis of 3,557 media statements connected to a sample of 125 EU policy proposals. The findings demonstrate that an advocacy group’s media presence may improve preference attainment, but only when the advocacy group manages to frame its objectives in the news as aligned with the public interest.     

How not to think of land-grabbing: three critiques of large-scale investments in farmland

Large-scale investments in farmland have been criticized, chiefly, because of questions about the capacity of the countries targeted by these land deals to effectively manage these investments in order to ensure that they contribute to rural development and poverty alleviation. This article questions the idea that this is the only or even the main problem raised by such investments. If weak governance were the only problem, then appropriate regulation—and incentives to manage such investments correctly—would indeed be a solution. However the real concern behind the development of large-scale investments in farmland is that giving land away to investors, having better access to capital to ‘develop’, implies huge opportunity costs, as it will result in a type of farming that will have much less powerful poverty-reducing impacts, than if access to land and water were improved for the local farming communities; that it directs agriculture towards crops for export markets, increasing the vulnerability to price shocks of the target countries; and that even where titling schemes seek to protect land users from eviction, it accelerates the development of a market for land rights with potentially destructive effects on the livelihoods, both of the current land users that will face increased commercial pressure on land, and of groups depending on the commons—grazing and fishing grounds, and forests. The article maps these various levels of critiques. It concludes that we need to do more than impose a discipline on land-grabbing: we need a real alternative to this kind of investment in land.     

Democracy and Gender Equality

This article examines the relationship between democracy and gender equality. In particular, it contrasts the impact of long-term stocks of democracy with the contemporary level of democracy and the participation of women in democracy. It contends that democracy should be thought of as a historical phenomenon with consequences that develop over many years and decades and that women’s participation should be included as an important component of democracy. The main argument is that long-term democracy together with women’s suffrage should provide new opportunities for women to promote their interests through mobilization and elections. A cross-national time-series statistical analysis finds that countries with greater stocks of democracy and longer experience of women’s suffrage have a higher proportion of the population that is female, a greater ratio of female life expectancy to male life expectancy, lower fertility rates, and higher rates of female labor force participation.

Attitudes toward Consent-Based and Non-Consent-Based International Law in a Regional Power Context

International legal scholars have identified and argued for and against new forms of non-consent-based international law. We study variation in Brazilian public opinion about adherence to international law created in three different ways: through a consent-based multilateral treaty, by the U.N. Security Council with the participation of Brazil, and by the U.N. Security Council without the participation of Brazil. Information that Brazil has participated in creating the international legal obligation through a multilateral treaty or membership on the Security Council yields levels of support for adherence to the legal obligation that are similar to those found when the origins of the legal obligation are generic. Information that the international legal obligation was created without Brazil’s participation, on the other hand, results in reduced support for compliance. This difference, which is particularly concentrated among highly educated respondents, is not driven by reduced concerns about reputational consequences or sanctions. Our results suggest that the increased use of non-consent-based forms of international law might be challenged by a lack of public support for compliance.     

The Case Against Participation Income—Political,Not Merely Administrative

This article develops the position we have taken in debate with Anthony Atkinson that a participation income (PI) would be problematic from an administrative and political point of view. We argue that Atkinson remains far too optimistic about the magnitude of administrative difficulties a PI would face. Negotiating these difficulties will inevitably involve the sort of political trade‐offs PI is supposedly able to avoid when compared to its more controversial cousin, the unconditional basic income. The enduring significance of ‘The case for a participation income’, we argue, lies in the often neglected point that Atkinson intends a PI as a supplement to an eroding contribution‐based welfare state. In the current political and fiscal environment, the case for a universal support scheme set below the rate of subsistence, and supplemented by other forms of welfare support, deserves careful re‐examination.     

Replica casting of the skull base

A new technique is described of obtaining a replica cast of the human skull base by making an epoxy resin case from a silicone rubber mould of the skull base. The replica provides an accurate and permanent record of the shape and dimensions of the base of the cranial cavity, together with the location and extent of any fractures of the skull. The method gives a good correlation between these characteristics and the type and extent of brain damage.