Differing Effects of the Global Financial Crisis: Why Mexico Has Been Harder Hit than Other Large Latin American Countries

In this article, we argue that the economic and financial crisis that began in Mexico in 2008 has not been primarily caused by the US crisis that began in 2007, as many have argued. As we will show, years of misguided economic policies at the national level have been at the heart of the Mexican crisis. On the one hand, the dominance of foreign banks in the country's financial system and the minimal presence of the public banks have greatly limited the range of counter‐cyclical policy options available to authorities. On the other hand, in the face of the crisis, Mexico has continuously applied deflationary Washington Consensus policies that have deepened the economic contraction. This article will focus on Mexico's individual problems, which offer important lessons for other Latin American countries with a shared recent history of Washington Consensus policies.     

新形势下两岸关系和平发展的影响因素分析

2008年以来,在国共两党和两岸同胞的共同努力下,台湾局势发生了积极深刻变化,国民党在"立委"和台湾地区领导人选举中相继取得压倒性胜利,"台独"政权被终结,"法理台独"的现实威胁大大降低,两岸关系发展出现了难得的历史机遇。海峡两岸两会随即在"九二共识"的基础上恢复制度性协商,并在两岸包机、大陆居民赴台旅游等方面取得阶段性成果,两岸关系发展露出新的曙光。但两岸关系错综复杂,岛内民意发展尚存变数,加上美日等外部因素的影响,两岸关系取得重大改善仍需时日。因此,两岸执政当局和两岸同胞在坚持"九二共识"的基础上,建立互信、搁置争议,建立两岸制度性协商机制,深化两岸的经贸文化交流,以共同促进两岸关系和平稳定发展。     

What is “prison culture”? Developing a theoretical and methodological foundation for understanding cultural schema in prison

What does it mean to say that a prison has a “culture?” Scholars have long emphasized the presence of a “prison code” and, more recently, a “racial code” as salient cultural domains in men's prisons. Yet, even though most people intuitively understand what is meant by “prison culture,” little progress has been made regarding the conceptualization and operationalization of culture as an analytical construct in prison scholarship. The current study makes two primary contributions to this literature. First, drawing on advances in anthropology, cultural sociology, and cognitive science, we incorporate the concept of cultural schema to provide a concrete analytical construct. Second, we test varying conceptualizations of cultural schema as either characterized by consensus or as overlapping relational structures. Using cultural consensus and correlational class analyses among a sample of 266 incarcerated men, we find little evidence of a culture of consensus for either the prison code or the racial code. Furthermore, we show evidence of heterogenous schema among these cultural domains. Our study is relevant to wider disciplinary work on culture as the problem of analytical precision we address is characteristic of much of the work in criminology and criminal justice that evokes culture as an explanatory device.     

APEC:Seeking Common Development of the Asia-Pacific

Propelled by APEC and newly bolstered bilateral and multilateral relations between China and the Asia-Pacii c region, economic and trade relations between China and other major APEC members have witnessed bounding development.     

民主党派在舆论宣传上应当秉持的基本观点——兼议参政党应当成为执政党的“智库”

任何政治党派都会把自己的核心价值观、党性原则、理论指导、行动准则,在舆论宣传中体现出来。中国特色的民主党派作为中国共产党领导的参政党,要做政治上的清醒者,秉持＂敢于为民发声、善于为党‘补天’＂的基本观点,在舆论宣传上应当始终坚持与共产党合拍,为实现＂中国梦＂,不断传递＂中国声音＂,成为执政党需要、人民群众期盼的高层次的＂智库＂。     

对话思维在刑事公案中的运用

一个正当的法律决定必须通过理性的协商、交流与对话制度才能形成,把法律意义上的真理与通过沟通形成的共识联系起来。立法过程、诉讼程序的设计体现了对话协商的思想。在刑事公案的审理中,刑法规范的选择适用以及判决书的论证也应该以对话思维方法为出发点,对各方观点包括民意进行辨析和鉴别,理性地吸收合理部分,使公案的判决达到合法性、合理性和可接受性的统一。对话思维的运用必须限制在刑法的框架内,就是说,对各方意见包括公众意见的吸收,都必须能够有相关的刑法规范作为依据。     

Democratic reform between the extreme makeover and the reinvention of tradition: the case of the Netherlands

Democracy in the Netherlands, like in so many other Western countries, is under substantial reform pressure. The problem with the democratic system in the Netherlands, according to democratic reformers, is that it is out of step with the fast and major changes taking place in modern society. Champions of democratic reform in the Netherlands mostly look to sweeping, large-scale, and all-encompassing plans for democratic reform, achieving, however, little success. Major structural changes have been planned time and again, but eventually the institutional structure has remained largely the same. This article presents a critical analysis of the standard recipe that democratic reformers often prescribe – radical makeover – and outlines a viable alternative that can also be derived from the Dutch case – reinventing tradition. Reinventing tradition implies a mixture of change and preservation, of movement and counter-movement. It is, arguably, the only way for democratic reform to go, at least in a consensus democracy like the Netherlands. Dutch history demonstrates that large-scale blueprint reform runs a serious risk of non-implementation, and that small-scale adaptive tinkering, part of the incremental ‘reinvention of tradition’, can be significantly more successful as a reform strategy.     

Interorganisational Relations and Goal Consensus: An Exploratory Study in Two Local Dutch Service Delivery Networks

The present study explores how similarity in policy preferences within pairs of organisations in service delivery networks (that is, goal consensus) is related to existing bilateral interorganisational relations. We distinguish between different types of interorganisational relations and hypothesise that stronger relations are positively associated with goal consensus. A social network analysis is performed using data on 546 ties in two complete service delivery networks in a medium-sized city in the Netherlands. Results indicate that the strongest association is between goal consensus and types of interorganisational relations that imply more strategic information exchange between members of the organisations – especially managerial interaction.     

A critique of the grand narrative of the Swedish model

ABSTRACT

Several historians have placed the roots of the Swedish model and the Swedish spirit of consensus back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The present study is an attempt to problematize the image of Sweden as the homeland of consensus on earth. I argue that there is no specifically Swedish spirit of consensus. My thesis is that the Swedish model as manifested in the Saltsjöbaden Agreement of 1938 was the result of the political power relations that prevailed just then between the parties on the labour market. The thesis is pursued based on a study of developments in Sweden from the 1880s until 1938, that is, from the emergence of the socialist labour movement to the signing of the Saltsjöbaden Agreement. I show that conflict was the normal state on the labour market for several decades, and until the mid-1930s, Sweden was the country in the industrialized world with the most strikes. As regards democracy, Sweden was not a pioneer. Every step on the road to democracy was achieved through struggle. When Swedish history is presented as a history of consensus, it is an undervaluation of the efforts that many thousands of people expended in the struggle for civil rights.     

物权行为理论辩析

物权行为是交易双方基于变动物权的合意,以交付或登记为表现形式的民事行为,它具有物权变动同时消灭相关债权的效力;整个交易过程中双方都有权作出相应的意思表示,物权合意是完成交易的最终的意思表示;物权行为的独立性源于其不同于债权行为的法律效力,选择履约与否的自由和正当性决定了物权行为独立性的本质,否定物权行为的独立性就是否定交易双方在特定情形下毁约的权利;物权行为的无因性是其独立性的合理延伸,交易双方的利益并不会因之而失衡,认为无因性会损害出卖人的利益的看法是片面的。