Sweden: The Fall of the Strong State

From the 1930s to the 1980s, Swedish politics was based on the assumption that social change could be accomplished through a specific political and administrative process. National politicians decided the aims of policy, government commissions of inquiry engaged experts who compiled available knowledge, Parliament turned the resulting proposal into law, a civil service agency implemented the policy and local authorities put it into effect. This rationalistic model of social steering can be called 'the strong state'. This article documents the fall of the strong state. It also argues that these changes to the output side of government have troubling im-plications for the operation of democracy. The reason is that the strong state model provided citizens with a reasonably clear idea of how public policies were – or should be – produced and implemented. As a result of the strong state's decline, the link from elections to policy is partly obscure, partly broken. The question for the future is whether the strong state will be replaced by some new model that provides the necessary focal points for debates on public policy, or whether stable norms will remain absent due to an inherently obscure division of labour within Sweden's policy-making and administrative structures.     

社会结构变迁中的政府职能转变与"职能悖论"

政府职能转变是中国社会经济结构变迁与全球化经济新秩序的内在需要。作为上层建筑的政府体制总是嵌入于一定的社会结构之中,动态地随社会结构变迁而变迁。本文将政府职能转变置于社会经济结构转型背景之中,对政府职能转变与“职能悖论”进行深层利益剖析,以探析新时期政府职能转变的动力机制、阻力机制与发展路径。     

关于性骚扰立法的几点思考--兼评《妇女权益保障法》相关条款

本文就中国性骚扰立法提出浅见。首先须准确界定性骚扰的概念,将公众场所性骚扰、女性对男性性骚扰、同性间性骚扰和非受雇性骚扰纳入性骚扰范畴;其次坚持以反性别歧视法为主的立法路径,明确雇主责任;最后应综合运用公法和私法手段,形成反性骚扰的法律体系。     

确立检察机关拘留权之构想

拘留权是决定和执行拘留的权力。根据我国现行刑事诉讼法的有关规定,拘留统一由公安机关来执行,检察机关只有对自行侦查的案件在特定情况下的拘留决定权,而没有拘留执行权。这就使检察机关在侦查实践中处于相当被动和尴尬的境地,影响了侦查程序的顺利进行,进而影响了诉讼的效益。应当尽快赋予检察机关一个完整而又名副其实的拘留权。     

社会主义荣辱观教育与青少年成长——论艰苦奋斗精神的继承与发展

社会主义荣辱观中的“艰苦奋斗精神”,既继承了中华民族传统美德的精华,并赋予其深刻的时代内涵,又充分体现了现代人的崇高追求和高尚境界,是社会主义伦理观、道德观和价值观的精确提炼和生动体现。社会主义荣辱观中的“艰苦奋斗精神”作为一种精神价值,在不同的时代,内容和形式虽然有所变化,但它绝不会消失。我们要教育和引导青少年继承和发扬艰苦奋斗的光荣传统,为社会多作贡献。     

关于扩大人大财政监督职责的几个问题

在我国,审议财政预算及其执行情况,是各级人民代表大会及其常务委员会监督政府机关的工作,规范政府行为的重要途径。由于历史和现实诸多因素的制约,目前我国人大财政预算监督质量还不高。对此我们认为:一、应该对人大的财政监督职能及其实施有更加明确、规范的规定。二、针对我国目前预算实施所出现的问题,考虑(1)建立重大项目的特别全程审查制度。(2)加强人大对部门预算的审查。三、明确“第二财政”的财政性,把他的使用纳入人大的审查和监督的范围。     

Governing China in the early 21st century: Provincial perspective

China is a country of provinces and provincial leaders are important players in Chinese politics. It is important to know who will be governing China’s provinces in the early 21^st century and how they are going to govern them. This paper will attempt to address three critical issues related to governance of China’s provinces. First, it will describe the new provincial leadership of the early 21^st century. It will identify significant changes in terms of personal characteristics of this new leadership compared to that of earlier years. Second, it will analyze political structural changes at the provincial level. It will look at the relationship among several important provincial institutions and identify significant historical changes. Third, it will assess public policy orientations of the new provincial leadership.     

The Politics of Caste in India’s New Land Wars

ABSTRACT

In this article we introduce the special issue through framing the debate on the role of caste in India’s current land wars. We draw attention to how caste consistently mediates land transfers in present day India by pre-empting, undermining, or fuelling processes of social contestation, as well as the ways in which land claims in turn shape realigned or reimagined caste identities. Based on this, we make three main arguments. The first and most obvious one is that in contemporary conflicts over land, caste matters in evolving ways that deserve attention. Second, we argue that caste and land are recursively linked categories that are produced and reproduced in continuous interaction, even as multi-scalar political economies (re)shape them. And third, that different registers of caste are articulated by different social groups in more or less overt ways as they stake often competing claims to land.     

The wage share and government job creation in Sweden, 1900–2016

ABSTRACT

This investigation explores the long-run relationship between the wage share in the non-construction private sector and government efforts to create jobs in public services and construction of infrastructure and houses, in Sweden in 1900 to 2016. In the present article, it is argued that the creation of employment with generous wages by the Swedish government has increased the bargaining power of workers outside of these sectors, thus raising the wage share, up to about 1980. Correspondingly, retrenchment from such policy has been detrimental for the wage share in recent decades. This argument is supported by the results of cointegration tests, estimation of long-run and short-run, speed of adjustment, coefficients, as well as by Impulse-response functions. While government consumption is often found to be an important determinant for the wage share, earlier research has neglected the full labor market effect of government job creation associated with an expansion of the welfare state. Sweden is an ideal case for studying the impact of welfare policy on the wage share, since it has been one of the most extensive welfare states and simultaneously has been one of the most egalitarian countries in the world.