The American friends service committee and Nixon's China policy

This study investigates the influence of the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker lobbying group) on the policy of detente pursued by the Nixon Administration in dealing with the People's Republic of China. Nixon's Quaker family background is viewed as a link between A.F.S.C. lobbying efforts after 1965 and President Nixon's decision to change U.S. policy toward mainland China. The Quakers were not directly responsible for the Nixon‐Kissinger initiative, but through its lobbying activities in Washington, at Harvard University, and elsewhere, they did help to create a climate of opinion which made acceptable a shift in U.S. China policy.     

Gender Parity and Quotas in Italy: A Convoluted Reform Process

In 1995, two years after the adoption of gender quota laws, the Italian Constitutional Court declared these laws to be unconstitutional. The Constitution was subsequently reformed in order to make way for new quota legislation. Such reforms came in late and in a contradictory way. The Constitution was first modified in 2001 to allow regions to adopt quota measures to enhance women's political representation at the regional level and then in 2003 to allow similar measures to enhance women's political representation at the national and European levels. Thus far, quotas have been introduced only in some regions and for European elections. Consequently, the 2001 and 2003 constitutional reforms have had a limited impact on legislative implementation measures and thus on the percentage of women in elected assemblies.     

Voting on income tax exemptions

Most itemized tax exemptions lead to significant deductions for a minority of the population only. This raises the question why the majority does not vote for the abolition of these tax privileges in exchange for lower tax rates. In this paper we show that a reform proposal may be voted down, even when the majority uses the exemption at stake below the average. Turning to an empirical application, we simulate the voting outcome on the proposal to abolish the tax deductibility of commuting expenses in Germany. Our model predicts that this proposal would be rejected, even though a comfortable majority has below-average deductions.     

Out of Africa: The human trade between Libya and Lampedusa

Smuggling and trafficking in persons is ipso facto illegal. Is this criminal activity organised or diffuse? Recent objective indicators show that between 2000-2005 the reported incidence of people trafficking and smuggling from North Africa to Europe has escalated. The article examines the nature of criminality involved in people smuggling and trafficking with specific reference to the sea route between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa, 180 miles north of the Libyan coast. In 2006 almost 19,000 illegal migrants arrived on this small island. Recent major operations conducted by the Italian anti-mafia unit and the state police suggest transnational criminal organisation of the trade. The networks involved in this trade, however, do not conform to mafia-like hierarchical organisations but rather smaller, more complex and fluid criminal networks. The article aims to cast light on how people are smuggled and trafficked. The background to the rise in illegal immigration from Libya is sketched underlining the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors involved in the human trade. The article’s chief objective is to provide a greater understanding of the mechanisms and processes involved in smuggling/trafficking. A better knowledge of the processes involved is vital if domestic, regional and international authorities and bodies are to counter the practice and/or to formalise it.     

Does Globalisation Threaten the State? Thesis on the Fractal State

There has been much recent debate concerning the role of the state. What should we make of this unease? There are two possibilities: the first involves taking a clear position on the debate by stating that globalisation leads to the downgrading of states in global regulation, to the benefit of the market. This suggests that the era of the state will be followed by the era of the market. While this thesis has many elements of truth, it underestimates the capacity of the state to transform itself, at the risk of opposing the state too systematically to the market. The second takes the opposite point of view by saying that the globalisation leaves the state neither defenceless nor weakened. The tenants of this analysis use the historical plasticity of the state and the falling numbers of states in the world as evidence. At the same time, they hide the size of the crisis of legitimacy of public policies. The problem comes from the fact that these two theses, reputed to be mutually antagonistic, are in fact perfectly complementary. Accordingly, instead of choosing between them, it seems useful to address them simultaneously before moving beyond them to propose the following thesis: globalisation develops at once against and with the state. This inherent contradiction transforms the state into a fractal actor, that is to say a state that no longer poises itself over society, but who at the same time remains the guarantor of a public rationality.     

关于细化和落实公安机关领导干部逐级负责制和责任追究制的思考

公安机关领导干部逐级负责制存在落实不到位的问题。要在领导干部逐级负责制中实施责任追究的做法,完善考核机制,全面实行责任倒查机制,强化思想政治工作。