浅谈出租车行业政府管制改革

中国出租车行业政府管制导致市场失灵,改革的基本思路是放松管制,降低“份钱,”健全“委托—代理”关系,完善行政程序法等。     

Defining Indecency as an Artifact of Cultural Policy

This article examines the United States’ enforcement of indecency norms in the broadcast arena to discern how it illuminates cultural policy. The article looks at several examples of how enforcement of indecency norms has contributed to the development of an indecency policy that is in tension with other aspects of cultural policy including diversity of voices and localism.     

对改革乡镇工会组织领导体制的思考

改革乡镇工会组织领导体制是巩固和发展新建企业工会工作成果的关键。乡镇工会采取工会工作委员会的形式在刚刚起步组建的时候非常有效,但随着乡镇工会逐渐发展和规范之后,工会工作委员会这种形式所存在的弊端愈来愈突出。因此,需要进一步理顺乡镇工会的组织领导体制,按照联合制、代表制的原则,拓宽乡镇工会干部直选、聘用的渠道,不断增强乡镇工会干部的事业心和责任感。     

Reclaiming Politics: Popular Democracy in Britain after the Scottish Referendum

Referendums are often criticised for being elite‐controlled and undeliberative. This article argues that the detailed, multiactor regulation of the Scottish referendum resulted in an elaborate legal regime which helped to overcome these potential pathologies, diluting executive control and facilitating an exercise in national public engagement. It addresses the troubled history of referendum use in the UK and contends that the Scottish process may well transform how referendums are now viewed. Indeed, one outcome of the Scottish process is likely to be a greater demand at UK level for the use of direct democracy in processes of significant constitutional change. It is by no means certain, however, that these demands for greater popular engagement in the process of constitutional change will be met, particularly when we consider the Smith Commission process, which marks a return to elite interparty bargaining.     

浅谈保险条款行政审批的法律效力

为保障保险业有序发展,中国保险监督管理委员会依法行使对保险合同条款审查、备案的行政职权,通过事先监督的方式保证条款内容的合法性,防止出现损害社会公众利益的情况。这在一定程上是对保险合同的行政干预。     

Problems and process: European merger control and how to use it

This paper seeks to explore some of the public affairs principles involved in the EU mergers and acquisitions regulatory process, which affects most corporate restructuring of a European scope. Following a brief overview of the EU merger review process and the main role of public affairs in such cases, the paper explores some of the more sensitive issues that demand public affairs activities, and issues that are raised by public affairs activities. The paper focuses on the open nature of the EU merger review process, which allows for wide consultation; the imperfections within the EU merger review process, which lead to confusion as to where the exact point of decision lies; and the fact that the process is only quasi‐legal, so that competition policy and industrial policy considerations may filter into the regulator's assessment. The impact of politics is also explored; from high‐profile political interventions to low‐key political negotiations. Finally, there is a review of the perception of lobbying and the question of the legitimacy of the public affairs discipline in the context of EU merger control. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Mental health and fitness to plead proposals in England and Wales

Proposals to reform fitness to plead legislation have been published by the Law Commission in England and Wales; they include a new test of decision making capacity and a new psychiatric test that has yet to be fully developed. Although proposals have met with some support, there have also been detractors. The history of fitness to plead is reviewed and current case law (including the 1836 Pritchard criteria) is examined. Although existing arrangements have been criticised, this may be attributable to inconsistent practical application, rather than inherent conceptual flaws. The Pritchard test has largely stood the test of time and has emerged relatively unscathed. Fitness to plead is not a medical construct, but rather a legal entity and any new test would be likely to introduce its own difficulties. A capacity based assessment could enhance debate and disagreement and increase court time in many cases, presenting new resource implications with questionable benefit. As the existing Pritchard criteria, amended by case law, already include a five limb test that closely resembles a capacity assessment (ability to plead to the indictment, to understand the course of the proceedings, to instruct a lawyer, to challenge a juror and to understand the evidence) and given the difficulties in introducing a functional test format in other jurisdictions, the Law Commission's proposals should now be set aside, perhaps for another day: reconsideration may be possible some decades hence, pending enhanced scientific developments within psychiatry and better understanding of the mind.     

Path Dependence and Paradigm Shift: How Cetacean Scientists Learned to Develop Management Procedures that Survived the Controversial Whaling Regime

The transformation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) into a preservationist regime met with extremely fierce opposition from the prowhaling countries and created an unprecedented and famous polarization of the IWC parties into pro and antiwhaling camps, which can be observed even today. In such a bipolar and harsh process, it would be typically argued that scientific advice would be powerless because it would become subject to heightened scrutiny from both camps resulting in endless technical debate. Our case shows that, on the contrary, the advisory scientists learned to successfully develop a scientific management procedure that was accepted by both the pro and antiwhaling camps. The objective of this paper is to explain this process and examine to what extent collective learning in the assessment process affected the political effectiveness of the management procedure and, more broadly thereby, to contribute to the groundwork of analyzing how the scientists participating in the scientific assessments collectively learn. With a view to cross‐fertilization between institutionalism and science and technology study (STS) approaches, we develop an analytical framework and apply it to the international whaling regime to examine the usefulness of it and provide some general lessons to be learned for making learning assessments more effective. The framework was capable of showing that path dependency and paradigm shift were among the key factors of the scientific assessment's increased effectiveness. Overall, the cross‐fertilization between institutionalism and STS appears to be a fruitful way forward for the next generation of scientific assessment studies.     

European Commission merger control: Combining competition and the creation of larger European firms

The article examines the European Commission's use of its legal powers over mergers. It discusses and tests two views. One is that the ‘neoliberal’ Commission has ended previous industrial policies of aiding ‘national champion’ firms to grow through mergers and instead pursues a ‘merger‐constraining’ policy of vigorously using its legal powers to block mergers. The other is that the Commission follows an ‘integrationist policy’ of seeking the development of larger European firms to deepen economic integration. It examines Commission decisions under the 1989 EC Merger Regulation between 1990 and 2009. It selects three major sectors that are ‘likely’ for the ‘merger‐constraining’ view – banking, energy and telecommunications – and analyses a dataset of almost 600 Commission decisions and then individual merger cases. It finds that the Commission has approved almost all mergers, including by former ‘national champion’ firms. There have been only two prohibitions over 20 years in the three sectors and the outcome has been the creation of larger European firms through mergers. It explains how the Commission can pursue an integrationist policy through the application of competition processes and criteria. The wider implication is that the Commission can combine competition policy with achieving the ‘industrial policy’ aim of aiding the development of larger European firms.     

The Malta Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting: The Commonwealth’s New Beginnings?

This article argues that the Commonwealth needs to speak with a distinctive voice on a range of issues confronting the world, failing which it will lose its relevance. This calls for inspirational and strong leadership and a clear focus on the organisation’s charter. Among the concrete proposals suggested by the article for the reinvigoration of the Commonwealth is the establishment of a Commission for Democracy, the Rule of Law and Human Rights inspired by the model of the Council of Europe Venice Commission.