Justice Without Transition: Truth Commissions in the Context of Repressive Rule

While the study of transitional justice, and especially truth commissions, has gained in popularity over the past two decades, the literature is overwhelmingly focused on activities in democratizing states. This introduces a selection bias that interferes with proper analysis of causes and consequences of transitional justice on a global scale. In this paper, I discuss conditions under which new repressive elites, and even old repressive elites who survive to rule and repress in nominally new systems, may choose to launch broad investigations of the past. I argue that such a decision is based on two primary considerations, the presence of internally or externally based incentives (e.g., foreign aid) and the level of political control enjoyed by old elites in the new system. I apply this argument to post-Soviet Central Asia, including a detailed case study of Uzbekistan’s 1999 truth commission based on domestic media analysis and local elite interviews.

New Thinking in Financial Market Regulation: Dismantling the “Split Share Structure” of Chinese Listed Companies

China’s distinctive set of stock market institutions was introduced in 1990. Among the characteristics of China’s stock markets was a strict separation between different categories of investors. Listed companies issued different categories of shares to state shareholders, domestic corporate investors, domestic individual investors, and foreign investors. By 2005, the barriers segmenting China’s stock market had been significantly relaxed. Domestic investors were allowed to purchase shares previously reserved for foreign investors, and approved foreign investors were allowed to purchase shares previously earmarked for domestic individuals. Nevertheless, a crucial barrier remained. An ongoing debate among Chinese academics, investors, and policy makers focused on how to resolve the “split share structure” (guquan fen zhi) in which a minority of shares were tradable while the majority of shares (namely those reserved for domestic corporate and state shareholders) were excluded from the market. The split share structure was blamed for distorting prices and inhibiting development of the stock market. This paper analyzes the policy adopted to address the split share structure. To what extent does this policy change reflect new thinking on the part of China’s market regulators? This paper argues that analysis of policy making in China’s capital markets can help to distinguish between two competing assessments of China’s political economy. One account sees China pursuing a gradualist strategy, slowly but steadily expanding the role of markets. Another account sees China trapped in a semi-marketized and increasingly corrupt development pattern. The implementation of the split share structure reform program provides evidence to support the gradualist account of incremental, but persistent, reform. Mary Comerford Cooper is an assistant professor in political science at the Ohio State University. Her recent research focuses on the politics of financial markets in China and Taiwan. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Comparative Politics Research Workshop/ Globalization, Institutions and Economic Security Workshop at Ohio State University in May 2007, and at the annual meeting of the Association for Chinese Political Studies in July 2007. I benefited greatly from the constructive and insightful comments of Bj?rn Alpermann, Melanie Barr, Jean-Marc Blanchard, Sarah Brooks, Joseph Fewsmith, Sujian Guo, Dane Imerman, Ryan Kennedy, Marcus Kurtz, Xiaoyu Pu, James Reilly, Alex Thompson, Daniel Verdier, Jianwei Wang, Alan Wiseman, Bin Yu, and an anonymous reviewer. I am also grateful for Lan Hu’s exceptional research assistance. All remaining flaws are purely my own.     

Self-Awareness and Mental Perception

The purpose of this paper is to clarify Prajñākaragupta’s view of mental perception (mānasapratyak?a), with special emphasis on the relationship between mental perception and self-awareness. Dignāga, in his PS 1.6ab, says: “mental [perception] (mānasa) is [of two kinds:] a cognition of an [external] object and awareness of one’s own mental states such as passion.” According to his commentator Jinendrabuddhi, a cognition of an external object and awareness of an internal object such as passion are here equally called ‘mental perception’ in that neither depends on any of the five external sense organs. Dharmakīrti, on the other hand, considers mental perception to be a cognition which arises after sensory perception, and does not call self-awareness ‘mental perception’. According to Prajñākaragupta, mental perception is the cognition which determines an object as ‘this’ (idam iti jñānam). Unlike Dharmakīrti, he holds that the mental perception follows not only after the sensory perception of an external object, but also after the awareness of an internal object. The self-awareness which Dignāga calls ‘mental perception’ is for Prajñākaragupta the cognition which determines as ‘this’ an internal object, or an object which consists in a cognition; it is to be differentiated from the cognition which cognizes cognition itself, that is, self-awareness in its original sense.     

Enrollment in Mental Health Courts: Voluntariness,Knowingness, and Adjudicative Competence

Mental health courts (MHCs) are rapidly expanding as a form of diversion from jails and prisons for persons with mental illness charged with crimes. Although intended to be voluntary, little is known about this aspect of the courts. We examined perceptions of voluntariness, and levels of knowingness and legal competence among 200 newly enrolled clients of MHCs at two courts. Although most clients claimed to have chosen to enroll, at the same time, most claimed not to have been told the court was voluntary or told of the requirements prior to entering. The majority knew the “basics” of the courts, but fewer knew more nuanced information. A minority also were found to have impairments in legal competence. Implications are discussed.     

The Notion of Consent to Sexual Activity for Persons with Mental Disabilities

This paper seeks to examine the notion of consent to sexual activity as it is applied to situations involving persons with mental disabilities both by both medical professionals and the law. This will be achieved by analysing sexuality and consent through the lens of disability theory and subsequently by including feminist theories on the notion of consent and of sexual activity generally where this serves to assist in coming to a genuine assessment of the nature and existence of consent to sexual activity for persons with mental disabilities. It is concluded that in order to ensure that genuine substantive consent to sexual activity on the part of the persons with mental illnesses is accurately assessed at both a civil and criminal level, a fusion of both feminist and disability theory into such assessments and adjudications is vital.