制度的十大功能:学理层面的诠释

制度具有思想、道德、文化、政策等所不能代替的特有属性和功能:转化与载体功能、抑恶与惩恶功能、护善与扬善功能、预防与教化功能、纠错与更新功能、管理与效率功能、疏通与减压功能、激励与创造功能、协调与整合功能、秩序与稳定功能。只有深刻认识这些功能,才能增强制度意识,加强制度建设和创新,为和谐社会的构建提供理论支撑和制度保证。     

我国高校趋同化现象的理论解释——新制度主义的视角

在我国高等教育大众化进程中,出现了较严重的高校趋同化现象。虽然目前对这种趋同化现象所带来的后果还不能作出最终判决,但作为一种已经出现并在不断强化着的现象,则需要我们从理论上作出解释。组织社会学的新制度主义认为,在不确定的环境中,组织为了生存和发展,其外部形态、内部结构、运行模式等会在环境的逼迫和诱导下走向趋同,这是组织追求合法性的表现。我国高等教育大众化阶段出现的高校趋同化现象,正是高校在竞争激烈、环境不确定的情况下寻求合法性的本能反应。深刻认识和正确分析高校这种趋同性,对优化高等教育生态环境具有重要意义。     

我国民事公益诉讼的制度建构

民事公益诉讼的提出是当前侵害国家利益和社会公共利益的案件大量涌现却得不到适当解决的情势所需.民事公益诉讼的目的,是立法者基于其客观需要和民事诉讼、民事公益诉讼的本质及其规律的认识,而预先设定的理想目标.它是民事公益诉讼制度构建的逻辑起点,由此论及民事公益诉讼的原则、管辖、原告资格认定、诉讼受案范围、证明责任分担、诉讼费用等内容,目的是对民事公益诉讼制度在我国的全面确立有所裨益.     

完善民事纠纷多元化解决机制的思考

目前,我国正处于体制转轨、社会变革、利益分化、观念更新的矛盾凸显期,社会矛盾日趋复杂,民事纠纷日益增加,迫切需要在诉讼外寻求其他纠纷解决方式来缓解社会矛盾。文章通过对多元化纠纷解决机制含义、内容以及价值功能的分析研究,提出完善多元化纠纷解决机制的建议。     

Building from the ground up: exploring forensic mental health staff’s relationships with patients

Recovery-orientated care is becoming generally accepted as the best practice, and continued development in the ways it is practiced is necessary to ensure improvement of ongoing care. Forensic patients often experience double stigmatization (the dual stigma of mental illness and offending behaviour) and during admission to hospital may lose touch with their community supports. While working through their personal recovery, patients develop therapeutic relationships with their multidisciplinary team members. When positive, these relationships can enhance a patient’s recovery. Clinical staff members participated in 88 in-depth interviews, which were transcribed, reviewed, and analysed using thematic analysis. From analysing the data, main themes and subthemes emerged related to staff’s perceptions of therapeutic relationships. When developing relationships, staff need to overcome receptiveness issues by increasing trust through understanding their preconceptions, reducing stigma, sharing innocuous stories, and giving patients the time they need. The key pillar underpinning all traits ascribed to patients and staff is collaboration and approaching treatment protocols with a social approach is essential to enhancing recovery. Staff shared a holistic view of recovery that incorporated the benefits of positive relationships and the need to create a sense of home within the institution.     

Unsupervised Routine Activities as a Mediator of the Parental Knowledge–Delinquency Relationship

The principal aim of this study was to examine the relationship between parents (parental knowledge) and peers (unsupervised routine activities) in predicting delinquency. Enlisting all 1,170 male members of the Pathways to Desistance study and a causal mediation model, baseline and Wave 1 measures of parental knowledge and unsupervised routine activities were cross-lagged and then regressed onto Wave 2 delinquency. Consistent with the view that parenting precedes peer influence when it comes to predicting delinquency, the target pathway (baseline parental knowledge → Wave 1 unsupervised routine activities → Wave 2 delinquency) achieved significance and the comparison pathway (baseline unsupervised routine activities → Wave 1 parental knowledge → Wave 2 delinquency) did not. These results suggest that weak parental knowledge may increase delinquency by failing to divert the child from involvement in unsupervised routine activities with peers.     

Female sex offenders who abuse children whilst working in organisational contexts: offending,conviction and sentencing

To date, there has been very little research into the phenomenon of female-perpetrated institutional child sexual abuse (CSA). This study explored 71 cases of CSA perpetrated by women working with children, considered by UK police and courts between 2000 and 2016. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis was employed to examine court reports, professional regulatory body decisions, media reports and an online sentencing database in order to identify perpetrator and victim characteristics, the nature of the offending behaviour, modus operandi and criminal justice system responses. Findings indicate most women offended alone and had no previous criminal or employment records of concern. Victims were typically male and 15–16 years old. Most women received custodial sentences, typically of 2–3 years in length. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed.     

Voluntary policing in Sweden: media reports of contemporary forms of police–citizen partnerships

Many Western-style democracies have witnessed a general shift in the distribution of crime prevention responsibility, away from the state and increasingly to citizens themselves. Civil society is today more and more often called upon as an additional policing resource. This article explores the phenomenon of voluntary citizen participation in policing in Sweden, based on an analysis of 9280 news-media articles. One state-sanctioned (the Volunteers of the Police) and one autonomous civic (Missing People Sweden) initiative were examined, from their respective start until 2017, to understand the role played by police–citizen partnerships in the establishment and legitimation of voluntary policing forms in Sweden. A high degree of integration between police and volunteer work was found, enabling not only effective citizen participation, but also having an influence on police operations. The more effective and publicly visible the voluntary policing bodies were, the more pressure there was on the police to defend its legitimacy, ally itself with the volunteers and regulate the latter’s activities while holding them responsible for their actions. Arguably, however, with the police–citizen relationship being one of integration and mutual dependence, the division of labour and the accountability of both parties risk becoming blurred or even confused.     

Evaluating Brazilian South–South Cooperation in Haiti

I focus on evaluating Brazilian development and humanitarian cooperation in Haiti to answer how emerging providers such as Brazil are contributing to global development through cooperation. The paper establishes criteria for evaluation, arguing that global standards for aid effectiveness need to be expanded. I argue that when assessed on ownership, efficiency and sustainability, cooperation holds several advantages and limits, such as misplaced assumptions that Brazil’s approach is appropriate elsewhere. The discussion is rooted in the context of Haiti in order to underline how outcomes are not pre-determined, but rather depend on the model’s interaction with the partner context.     

The reconstruction of business interests after the ISI collapse: unpacking the effect of institutional change in Chile and Uruguay

Abstract

This paper focuses on understanding the different evolutions of business’ associational paths in post-Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) Chile and Uruguay, offering an explanation at the crossroads of the institutional change and international trade literatures. The argument is that the different forms in which ISI institutions were transformed during the liberalisation period facilitated a greater mobility of factors to different degrees, triggering divergent enduring associational strategies on the part of business. The proliferation of narrow-based special benefits during the ISI fuelled preferences for the formation of sector-based coalitions oriented towards rent-seeking activities. Nevertheless, while ISI regulations were displaced in Chile during the military period, Uruguay followed a gradual process of layering of new rules alongside old ones. These diverging strategies, having different effect on established inter-sectoral regulatory distortions, propitiated alternative associational paths of local business.