Legislative genesis and judicial death of a directive: The European Court of Justice invalidated the data retention directive (2006/24/EC) thereby creating a sustained period of legal uncertainty about the validity of national laws which enacted it

The Grand Chamber has ruled that the data retention directive was invalid ex tunc since it seriously interfered with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and protection of personal data and exceeded the limits of the principle of proportionality which are provided for in the Charter. The scope and temporal effects of this ruling should be clarified, especially its legal impacts on national laws of Member States which enacted the directive. In addition, the findings of the Grand Chamber on geographical safeguards have far-reaching implications on the retention and storage of personal data in the EU.     

美国科技成果转化优先序研究

美国作为全球科技创新大国,科技成果转化率很高。从政府的角度来看,美国有一个精密的系统,来根据社会、国家和城市的需要确定科技成果转化的优先序列。这个优先序列在一定时期内会具有一定的稳定性,也会随着社会需要的变化做出调整。政府通过科技政策和立法中确定的各种保障措施,推动它们的优先转化。这对我国有一定的借鉴意义。     

Policy processes and police reform: Examining similarities and differences between Scotland and the Netherlands

During 2013 the national governments of both the Netherlands and Scotland have introduced radical reforms which have replaced largely autonomous regional police forces with a national police service. Despite these structural similarities, however, there are important differences in the underlying processes which have shaped these reforms and the broader narratives about policing which have informed public and policy discourses.The purpose of this paper is to understand the underlying dynamics of these police reforms. Following an overview of concepts drawn from the public policy literature regarding policy change, the paper describes in detail the structural changes to policing that have occurred in both countries. These structural changes relate not just to the spatial re-organization of policing but also to the structure of police governance and accountability. The focus then shifts to disentangling key aspects of the decision-making processes which led to the reforms drawing on Kingdon's analysis of policy change and policy formation. The paper concludes with a broader discussion of the similarities and differences in police reform in the two countries, highlighting important issues regarding the significance of political context, debates around localism and policing, and narratives regarding a normative vision of the police role.     

“白澳政策”的兴衰与二战后澳大利亚对华移民政策的重大调整

作为一个典型的移民国家,澳大利亚历史上长期推行种族主义的"白澳政策"。战后以来,在世界进步潮流推动下,澳大利亚政府逐步调整对华移民政策,1972年中澳建交后,最终废止"白澳政策",对中国和亚洲推行新移民政策并不断加以调整,中澳关系进入了一个新阶段,华人社会不断发生适应新形势的整合与嬗变。本文论述了"白澳政策"的历史兴衰和二战后澳大利亚政府对华移民政策演变的发展轨迹、主要内容和特点,以及最终废止"白澳政策"的基本原因。     

Voting on Europe: The Potential Pitfalls of a British Referendum

As Britain prepares for a possible referendum on continued membership of the European Union, it is essential that more careful thought is paid to the dynamics of referendums. Polling data reveal the existence of a substantial knowledge deficit in the UK and other parts of the EU: large numbers of voters simply do not understand the EU. There is also reason to question the conventional view that voters can correct for such a deficit by using cues from opinion leaders and the media. The experience of recent referendums in other EU member states suggests that many voters will take part in the proposed British referendum without independent and informed knowledge of the issues at stake, that many will have been swayed by partisan elite opinion, and that many will decide on the basis of their views about domestic politics rather than their views about Europe.     

冲突和调适的界碑--湘西南长城之历史文化定位

湘西南长城是改主归流后民族矛盾再次加剧后,在平息民族冲突中,重新调适地区社会秩序的产物.明清政府修建南长城是为了从军事上长期有效地控制湘西地区的社会秩序.南长城保障了民族的有序交往,巩固了改土归流的成果,促进了湘西少数民族地区政治、经济、文化的发展.同时在巩固中华民族的统一和发展过程中发挥了它应有的历史作用.     

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 rewards of cooperation: The effects of membership in European regulatory networks

Networks famously epitomize the shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ as governing structures for exercising control and coordination besides hierarchies and markets. Their distinctive features are their horizontality, the interdependence among member actors and an interactive decision‐making style. Networks are expected to increase the problem‐solving capacity of political systems in a context of growing social complexity, where political authority is increasingly fragmented across territorial and functional levels. However, very little attention has been given so far to another crucial implication of network governance – that is, the effects of networks on their members. To explore this important question, this article examines the effects of membership in European regulatory networks on two crucial attributes of member agencies, which are in charge of regulating finance, energy, telecommunications and competition: organisational growth and their regulatory powers. Panel analysis applied to data on 118 agencies during a ten‐year period and semi‐structured interviews provide mixed support regarding the expectation of organisational growth while strongly confirming the positive effect of networks on the increase of the regulatory powers attributed to member agencies.     

How citizenship matters: narratives of stateless and citizenship choice in Estonia

The phenomenon of statelessness is most often studied as an issue of international and human-rights law. In contrast, this paper examines narratives of citizenship choice among initially stateless Russian-speaking residents of Estonia in order to explore the practical meanings of (non)citizenship in a context where the available options include both national citizenship and statelessness. While legal aspects of citizenship do explain many of the perceived benefits and disadvantages of various citizenship options, we find that deliberations about citizenship choice also reflect extra-legal normative and affective dimensions of civic belonging. The resulting multidimensional model of citizenship helps account for courses of action that would appear anomalous if citizenship choice were merely an instrumental matter of weighing the costs and benefits of different options. It also points to a growing disjuncture among citizenship as a source of legal rights and obligations, as a normative framework, and as a site of attachment and identification.