Stepping out of terrorism

Terrorist organizations, groups, cells or just ‘bunches of guys’ are systematically compared with other types of criminal or deviant organizations: organized crime such as the mafia, street gangs and religious sects. Of course there are many differences between them, especially where motivation is concerned, but they share the common factor that it is almost impossible or very difficult for individual members to step out. However, de-radicalization may follow analogous paths: aging out, accepting exit programs in prison or disengaging ideologically. The article discusses the obstacles that a government strategy that encourages desistance from terrorism by stepping out may encounter. It may be sufficient and more realistic to discourage radicals from using violence than to try to de-radicalize them by using counternarrative techniques.     

Independent Candidates in China’s Local People’s Congress Elections

In the Chinese political system, according to the constitution, the people’s congresses at the primary level are the only institution which the voters can directly elect. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightly controls the “direct elections” and takes every measure in the elections to prevent grassroots power from entering even the primary-level people’s congresses. In recent years, grassroots power has kept struggling for its legal rights in the “direct elections” held in a few localities. The conflicts between the grassroots power and the authoritarian party in the “direct elections” have become an interesting political phenomenon, a subject deserves close observation and research. This paper studies the background of the independent candidates, their motivations and behaviour in elections. The paper also examines the party’s control in the elections and thus exposes the true nature of China’s people’s congress “direct” elections. The paper argues that independent candidates can have little impacts on China’s political structure at the current stage because of the party’s tight control, but their political participation has the most democratic value, compared with the “reforms” instigated and carried out by the CCP.     

A Fascinating Region of Incredible Beauty

<正>My first visit to China was in 1986.After that I have been to this charming country several times and during these visits heard     

Minorities and the free press in Hungary after 1867

SUMMARY

The study analyses the status and the standard of freedom of the press in Hungary in the first decade of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Special attention is paid to libel cases against nationality papers attacking the government in Pest. The author's main purpose is to discuss the limits on the freedom of the press drawn by criminal law, and in addition, to examine the accusations against the oppositional papers and the court practices involved. As a result, the study emphasizes that the picture of ‘the press under a state of siege’ could hardly be verified from the criminal procedures examined. The author does not, however, paint an idealized picture of the freedom of the press. The government in Pest was biased against the nationality papers. Yet even so, in the first ten years of Dualism juries adjusted the official criminal law policy by acquittals of authors and editors. The prosecuting magistracy therefore accepted the independence of the jury and the unreliability of the lay judges, and often withstood the demands of government departments. The members of the government of Hungary accepted the practice instituted by the prosecuting magistracy and ‘instead of strict laws and even more strict courts’ they gave up trying to rule the press by means of the criminal law. The first half of the 1870s thus became a period of a free press, indicating to what extent the parliamentary system and its government in Dualism could ‘practise liberalism without risking its own existence’.     

Chernobyl': Observations on the Fifth Anniversary

A Canadian Sovietologist with extensive research experience relating to the accident at the Chernobyl' nuclear power plant in 1986 surveys some of its major consequences in light of new information on the fifth anniversary of the disaster in 1991. The author outlines and analyzes varying interpretations of the cause of the accident (operator error vs. design flaw), the extent and density of the radiation release, and the severity of its impact on public health in contaminated areas. Appropriately noted are the jurisdictional disputes over the clean-up and other remedial efforts-most rooted in the current political crisis in the Soviet Union. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P20, Q20, Q40.