Visit to ROK, Japan and the Working Team

正At the invitation of the National Strategy Institute of the Republic of Korea(NSI),Japan-China Friendship Society under Junior Chamber International(JC) and the Philippine Center of Young Leaders in Governance(PCYLG),a 3-member working team headed by Nijian,     

Panacea or Snake Oil? Interest‐Based Bargaining in the U.S. Airline and Rail Industries

This study of interest‐based bargaining (IBB) examined past usage, current preferences, and future intentions to use this approach in U.S. airline and railroad labor negotiations. Based on a survey of eighty‐four union and management chief negotiators, we found that the personal attributes of the chief negotiator (orientation toward relationships, personal conflict handling style, and competency in IBB approaches) were strong predictors of the past use of IBB. However, personal affinities and styles became irrelevant as experience with IBB accumulated. The negotiator's preferences for IBB in general were strongly correlated to his or her awareness of other carriers' and unions' experiences with IBB, as well as to his or her own direct experience. The negotiator's intention to use IBB in the future was also related to the quality of the contract personally obtained through IBB practices. The study also revealed the unpopularity of IBB among labor negotiators relative to their management counterparts.     

Legislators as Lobbyists

Public policy is produced by elected and unelected officials and through the interactions of branches of government. We consider how such interactions affect policy implementation and representation. We argue that legislators try to influence bureaucratic decisions through direct communication with federal agencies, and that such contact is effective and has consequences for policy outcomes. We provide empirical evidence of this argument using original data about direct communication between members of Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) along with decisions made by the DOL regarding trade and redistributive policies. We find that direct contacts influence DOL decisions, and the agency is more likely to reverse previous decisions when requested to do so by legislators. Our results challenge key assumptions and findings in the previous literature and have important implications for interbranch relations and informal means of control over the implementation of national policy.     

Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo: Phraseology in Legal and Institutional Settings: A Corpus-Based Interdisciplinary Perspective (Reviewed by Tenghua You,Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

俄罗斯与叙利亚国家重建北大核心

随着叙利亚局势趋稳,其战后重建工作成为俄罗斯对外政策的重心之一。俄罗斯参与叙利亚国家重建主要出于以下动机:服务其世界大国的全球战略,塑造有利于俄方的中东地区秩序,巩固战后利益。为此,俄罗斯分别在安全、政治、经济三个领域采取了各种支持叙重建的举措,如多边维和与协助安全机制重建,推动宪法委员会组建及运行,提供国际援助等等。这些举措具有明显的俄式特征,即务实主义的理念、多边主义方式、军事力量为依托。然而,由于重建难度加大、能力不足、意愿下降、大国博弈加剧等,俄罗斯参与叙利亚重建的效果、前景具有复杂性和不确定性。