The Impact of Rural Votes in Foreign Policies: The FTA Policies under the DPJ Government in Japan

The recent trend of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) has pressured the governments of many countries to make such arrangements with their trade partners. Since its foundation in 1998, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has advocated free trade policies, partly because the party was an urban-based party. Thus, many expected that, when the DPJ assumed power in 2009, it would implement free trade policies as it had promised in the past. However, the DPJ government failed to deliver on its promise after spending three and a half years in office. It contrasts sharply with the Korean government under the leadership of Lee Myung-bak, which managed to conclude FTAs with its major trade partners, including the United States and the European Union. Both governments' free trade policies faced strong opposition from the agricultural industry, as farmers in Japan and Korea lacked international competitiveness. What explains the reasons why the Japanese government has been struggling to implement its free trade policies, while its Korean counterpart succeeded in signing a number of FTAs? Focusing primarily on the case of Japan and using the Korean case as reference, this study tries to provide an explanation for this puzzle by analyzing the impact of rural votes in the policy-making process.     

Democracy and the multinationals

The relationship between western multinational corporations' perceived commercial interests and democratic quality in developing markets is more varied than habitually argued. While autocratic policy making and low-intensity democracy have been judged to provide benefits to investors, they are also increasingly recognized to generate features prejudicial to commercial operations. Many investment trends reflect the adverse impact of democratic limitations in developing markets. Multinational companies can be faulted less for a uniform effort to frustrate democratic improvements than for a failure to develop a coherent or proactive engagement in relation to the international democracy promotion agenda.     

Democratic innovation beyond deliberative reflection: the plebiscitary rebound and the advent of action-oriented democracy

This article investigates democratic innovations of a plebiscitary and action-oriented type that diverge from a predominantly transformative and reflective definition of democratic innovation. Conceptually, the article offers a balanced, extended framework that serves to recognize and understand a range of democratic innovations that includes non-deliberative besides deliberative models and methods. Empirically, the article offers a closer look at three exemplary cases focusing on the rebound of aggregative democracy through the (quasi-)referendum, the advent of collaborative democratic governance through concerted action, and of do-it-ourselves democracy through pragmatic activism. Ultimately, the article calls for a practice and theory of democratic innovation aware of and sensitive to the reality of democratic hybridization.     

The legislature and agenda politics of social welfare: a comparative analysis of authoritarian and democratic regimes in South Korea

The article mainly seeks to explain the legislature’s preferences in social welfare before and after democratization using South Korea as a case study. Based on an original dataset that consists of all executive and of legislative branch-submitted bills between 1948 and 2016 – roughly 60,000– legislative priority on social welfare is compared over time, and tested using logistic regressions. The key focus of analysis is whether and how the level of democracy affected the degree and universality of social welfare priority. The findings show that the promotion of social welfare is positively related to higher levels of democracy in a continuous fashion, which clearly points to the need to avoid applying a simple regime dichotomy – authoritarian or democratic – when seeking to understand social welfare development. Going further, the article examines the legislature's priority in welfare issues within a presidential structure and under majoritarian electoral rule, at different levels of democracy. The result shows that the higher levels of democracy are, the more the legislative branch contributes to the overall salience of social welfare legislative initiatives as compared to the executive branch. Moreover, the legislative branch itself prioritizes a social welfare agenda – alongside democratic deepening – over other issues.     

发挥民主党派对权力运行的监督作用

民主党派对共产党的权力运行进行监督既是民主党派的重要职能,也是多党合作的重要形式。针对民主党派对权力运行监督中存在的主要问题,我们要提高民主党派的政党意识,健全对权力运行的监督机制,增加民主党派担任实职的机会。只有充分发挥民主党派对权力运行的监督作用,才能让权力在阳光下运行,才能正确用好权力这把"双刃剑"。     

浅谈社会主义市场经济下的职工民主管理

职工民主管理是社会主义市场经济的内在要求和职工主人翁地位的体现。职工代表大会仍然是职工民主管理的基本形式,但需要在组织形式,职权范围、工作内容等方面进行调整和充实完善。     

公民权利与社会稳定关系初探

在近现代社会,公民权利的享有不仅仅体现在人身自由权利和社会经济文化权利,某种意义上更多地体 现在政治权利;社会稳定应是一种动态的稳定,相对的稳定。保障公民权利的享有是社会稳定的关键所在,社会稳定 意味着保障和进一步扩大公民权利的享有。     

The Italian Democratic Party from Merger to Personalism

Abstract

The Partito Democratico (PD) was born as an original Merger Party on the cusp of the economic crisis in October 2007. The party’s genesis and formative years were critical to the party’s failure to institutionalise around a new common ideology or vision, as a result of the persistence of two party souls which could not find unity. Rather than a genuinely ‘new’ reformist party, the PD resembled an organisational vehicle through which the two former parties could continue their struggle. This weakened the organisational nature of the PD and made it a candidate for takeover by a dominant, personal leader such as Matteo Renzi. He set about establishing a personal party whose existence has in many ways confirmed the failure, if not exhaustion, of the PD’s mission to become the reformist party of the majority.     

Whither peacebuilding? A reflection on post-conflict African experiences

Peacebuilding is a key concept in efforts to reconstruct African states emerging from conflicts. At heart, it captures the whole array of activities associated with state-and nation-building in addition to building the foundations for local ownership of these processes. Popularised by the UN Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali in the early 1990s, peacebuilding has evolved alongside peacemaking and peacekeeping in the reconstruction repertoire. This article suggests that while there is considerable scepticism about the utility of peacebuilding in contemporary conflict resolution efforts, African experiences have, since the 1990s, provided solid lessons to both local and international actors on how to rebuild states, societies, polities, and economies.     

农民工政治参与的程序主义建制化研究——从农民工讨薪事件谈起

农民工讨薪事件频发,特别是在年关岁末,作为社会弱势群体在诉求维护其经济利益权利过程中往往陷入一种无序的社会行为。本文运用哈贝马斯程序主义的模式,构建基于法治目标的农民工维权行为的程序主义模式,一方面,从程序主义民主模式中获取农民工与劳动单位之间合理及合法的规章制度达成共识;另一方面,从农民工自身出发,通过学习提高自身文化水平,进而促进构建合理合法实现自我维权意识的途径。