我国法运行中的公民参与研究

在社会现实复杂多变、利益关系日趋多元的情况下，和谐社会应当是一个有能力化解利益冲突，并由此实现利益关系趋于均衡的社会，但仅仅依靠民选代表已经越来越难以充分反映各种不同的利益要求，因此，还需要设置相应的更为直接的民主参与制度来反映各种利益主体的意愿和要求。本文分析了法运行中公民参与的理论基础和社会基础，表明了参与制民主制度化的可行性和紧迫性，并以立法参与、行政执法参与、诉讼参与为重点，提出了建立健全我国公民参与制度的主要路径。     

群体性纠纷解决机制之辨析

群体性纠纷事件频发,而代表人诉讼制度却被各种司法解释限制了适用,实际上已被束之高阁.集团诉讼、团体诉讼制度虽然在解决群体性纠纷方面具有巨大的优越性,但是在我国“司法无力”的困境下,盲目移植必定水土不服.法之理在法内,更在法外,法律制度的构建必须考虑社会现实,示范诉讼在传统“一对一”诉讼结构下解决群体性纠纷的优势得以凸显.     

公平诉讼观与诚实信用原则

传统诉讼竞技观将诉讼视作敌对双方之争 ,不仅存在着诉讼观念上的严重偏差 ,也损害了诉讼的公平理念。公平诉讼观的确立 ,与诚实信用原则得以适用于民事诉讼有着密不可分的关系。弘扬民事诉讼法上的诚实信用精神 ,确立我国的公平诉讼观 ,主要体现在禁止权利滥用、禁止伪证、保护经济上弱者及律师的诚信代理等若干方面     

浅议复查听证制——审判监督程序改革的新探索

旧的暗箱式复查方式存在很多弊端,改革势在必行.复查听证是提高案件复查透明度、确保诉讼公正的行之有效的程序.将听证运用于复查程序是审判方式改革的一项崭新尝试,还需在实践中不断予以完善和发展.     

Inter-municipal cooperation in the case of spillovers: evidence from Western German municipalities

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the question: Does the existence of regional spillovers have an impact on the emergence of inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in tourism marketing? We use data from a survey conducted among Western German municipalities merged with official statistics regarding municipalities’ fiscal, political and demographic situation, as well as tourism-related characteristics. We are the first to apply a hazard model explaining the emergence of IMC. This method has serious advantages over the previously used methods. Surprisingly, our results show that especially municipalities with the opportunity to free ride start IMC more likely than municipalities without this opportunity. Apparently, under certain circumstances, municipalities are better off starting IMC than free riding.     

Justice in a non-ideal world: the case of climate change

Ideal theory faces a paradox. The ‘capacity of guidance’ is an important feature of most normative theories, but ideal principles of justice are not well suited to guide action in non-ideal circumstances. This charge presses us to seek plausible avenues to connect ideal values with the non-ideal realisation of justice. The objective of this paper is to introduce an analytical framework and present a case study in support of what I call the ‘reflective integration thesis’. The thesis states that: if we wish to formulate principles of justice that can guide action in non-ideal circumstances, we need to integrate ideal and non-ideal theory, and the way to integrate ideal and non-ideal theory is by seeking reflective equilibrium between these levels. Taking climate justice as a model, this paper will explore the features of a non-ideal theory of justice, thereby providing insights about the structure of an action-guiding theory. It will show that, in order to guide action, our ideal principles of climate justice need to be reformulated in the light of real-world considerations, which we only obtain by integrating the relevant empirical work on the matter.     

UNSC Resolution 1325 national action plans in Liberia and Sierra Leone: An analysis of gendered power relations in hybrid peacebuilding

This paper considers how the use of ‘hybridity’ in the peacebuilding literature overlooks the gendered dimensions of hybrid interactions. It does so by examining the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325 national action plans (NAPs) for Liberia and Sierra Leone. By asking the gendered questions of ‘who participates?’ and ‘how do they participate?’ it draws from Mac Ginty’s conception of hybridity and traces the compliance and incentivizing power in hybridized peace, as well as the ability of local actors to resist and provide alternatives. However, Mac Ginty’s model is found to be inadequate because of its inattention to the gendered nature of power. It is found that with a gendered approach to hybridity, it is easier to trace the processes of hybridization of NAPs in post-conflict states where their implementation is limited. In asking the questions of ‘who’ and ‘how’, three conclusions about the gendered nature of hybrid peacebuilding are drawn: international intervention relies upon the ‘feminization’ of local actors; issues framed within the realm of the ‘masculine’ are more likely to get attention; and the Resolution 1325 agenda in post-conflict states can be subverted by framing it as a ‘soft’ issue.     

Organizations,Credibility, and the Psychology of Collective Action

Political organizations frequently attempt to recruit sympathetic citizens to support their causes. Doing so requires communicating credibility—that is, persuading potential new supporters that they can actually achieve the goals they set out to achieve. In this article we investigate two of the predominant kinds of information that organizations might use to establish credibility: retrospective information (about past successes) and prospective information (about future plans). Using one field experiment and one survey experiment, we find that retrospective information fails to increase people’s willingness to spend scarce resources supporting political organizations. We find that this occurs because information about past successes suggests that the organization can succeed without any additional help. In contrast, we find that prospective information motivates new participants to become active.     

Three Prompts for Collective Action in the Context of Digital Media

Research dealing with the nexus of collective action, political participation, and digital media confronts three challenges: conceptualizing digital media as an influence on human behavior, finding common ground among new theories, and connecting together individual-level models with structural-level theories. This article addresses these challenges as a theoretical undertaking. It argues that the digital media environment should be understood as a change in the context for action rather than as an individual-level variable, and that this changed context is relevant to behavior because it expands opportunities for action. This expansion involves a range of structural possibilities for viable collective action that entail at least three paths: organizational prompts, social prompts, and self-initiation. There are theoretical reasons to expect that individual-level attributes including age, education, ideology, and personality may differentially affect people’s susceptibility to these prompts. Future research may profit from refinements to behavioral models that account for possible differences across structurally different prompts for action.     

Unintended Consequences of EU External Action

ABSTRACT

There is a gap in IR and EU scholarship concerning unintended consequences in an international context, leaving this important phenomenon understudied. To fill this gap, a conceptualisation of unintended consequences is offered, and a set of common research questions are presented, highlighting the nature (what), the causes (why) and the modes of management (how) of unintended consequences of EU external action. The Special Issue contributes to the study of the EU as an international actor by broadening the notion of the EU’s impact abroad to include the unintended consequences of EU (in)actions and by shedding new light on the conceptual paradigms that explain EU external action.