建国前夕刘少奇对新中国政权建设的重大贡献

中国共产党在新中国成立前后的政权建设方面,有两大历史创建：建立了人民代表大会制度,成立了中央人民政府的雏形──华北人民政府。当时先后担任中共中央工委书记和华北局书记的刘少奇,直接指导了华北临时人民代表大会的召开工作;并创造性地提出和直接领导了华北人民政府的成立,为新中国国家机构和政府体制的建立打下了坚实基础。     

Myanmar’s way to democracy and the limits of the 2015 elections

The general election held on 8 November 2015 marked a significant turning point in Myanmar’s ongoing regime transition. Under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD) overwhelmingly dominated the polls. Although the huge electoral mandate for the NLD suggests that further political liberalization in Myanmar is likely, the country is not yet undergoing a genuine democratization. Under the current constitutional framework, the military will remain a key actor within the government, thus a new power-sharing arrangement between the NLD and the military is inevitable. This article examines how Myanmar has transformed from a military regime into the military’s version of a ‘disciplined democracy’ and argues that the 2015 general election was not a precursor to a democratic government per se, but rather a re-affirmation of the military’s version of democracy, in which popularly elected civilian political parties are allowed to co-govern the country with the military.     

Leader Language and Political Survival Strategies

Authoritarian leaders’ language provides clues to their survival strategies for remaining in office. This line of inquiry fits within an emerging literature that refocuses attention from state-level features to the dynamic role that individual heads of state and government play in international relations, especially in authoritarian regimes. The burgeoning text-as-data field can be used to deepen our understanding of the nuances of leader survival and political choices; for example, language can serve as a leading indicator of leader approval, which itself is a good predictor of leader survival. In this paper, we apply computational linguistics tools to an authoritarian leader corpus consisting of 102 speeches from nine leaders of countries across the Middle East and North Africa between 2009 and 2012. We find systematic differences in the language of these leaders, which help advance a more broadly applicable theory of authoritarian leader language and tenure.     

Political parties or party systems? Assessing the ‘myth’ of institutionalisation and democracy

No matter the region of the world under study, party (system) institutionalisation has been traditionally considered to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the survival of democracy. Despite being one of the most quoted statements in the democratisation literature, the few studies looking at the relationship between institutionalisation and democratic endurance have found no evidence of the ‘almost magical’ powers of the former. This article revisits the abovementioned research question by making use of an original dataset covering all European democracies between 1848 and 2014. The main findings are threefold: (1) it is not the institutionalisation of political parties but the institutionalisation of party systems as a whole that has fostered the prospects for democratic survival in Europe; (2) there is a threshold of systemic institutionalisation which, once reached, will avoid democratic collapse; and (3) systemic over-institutionalisation does not seem to be so perilous for the survival of democracy.     

Compartmentalized ideology and nation-building in non-democratic states

What are the mechanisms of legitimation in non-democratic and linguistically divided states? How do regimes in these states use and manipulate the ideology and nation-building for the purposes of regime legitimation? The article focuses on the concept of compartmentalized ideology in non-democratic regimes with substantial divisions in the so-called titular and minority group where socio-linguistic divide allows regimes to construct diverse audiences and even political communities with their own distinct narratives and discourses about the nation, state and the regime. The compartmentalized ideology is only sustainable under the conditions of the regime's power to control and facilitate these discourses through the system of authoritative presidential addresses to the nation and/or other forms of regime's communication with the polity. The shifting of these discourses and themes contribute to the regime stability but also may constitute its re-legitimation.     

Book Reviews

Food sovereignty, as a counter-movement to the food regime, includes a range of struggles, and is evidently quite elastic as a discourse and practice. Because the food regime itself is evolving and restructuring, food sovereignty embodies movement. In its ‘second generation’ phase it operates on both rural and urban fronts, separately and together, connecting producers, workers, consumers and various activist organizations. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize food sovereignty's origins in the global agrarian crisis of the last three decades. Small producers (peasants, farmers, pastoralists, fishers, forest-dwellers) continue to experience massive displacement by World Trade Organization (WTO)-style ‘free trade’, overlaid with new displacements by fiat, force and finance as land grabbing in various forms proceeds apace. This is a key theme in a response to Henry Bernstein's questions about the character of the food sovereignty movement.     

民主政治下的为民之道——对政治、行政及其关系的一个分析

在现代化进程中,处理传统方式与现代方式之间的关系,更为合理的思路在于,在现代方式的主导下,容纳并发挥传统方式的长处,而不是相反。由此,就政治、行政及其关系而言,民主政治下的为民之道、价值主导下的治理逻辑、程序机制下的服务意识,应该成为中国政治和法律发展的一种可取方向。     

关于加强中国热点外交的若干对策思考

目前中国热点外交所面临的挑战和存在的问题,主要反映在思想、理论与实践等领域。为解决这些问题,在思想上,中国要从战略高度对热点外交进行定位,具体表现在要从统筹国际和国内两个大局的高度看待热点外交的战略重要性,要从中国的价值理念与外交政策定位热点外交的指导思想与目标。在理论研究方面,中国要从国家利益、地缘政治、介入和参与的身份与环境要求等角度,对热点问题分类,并建立长效研究机制。在实践方面,中国应通过灵活运用外交基本原则、完善特使制度、增强外交统筹和平衡、加强中美战略对话、加大对伊朗核问题参与力度、创新外援体制、创新公共外交机制,解决当前热点外交面临的紧迫问题。     

ECJ倡议的内在缺陷及国际投资法体系的变革方向

从发展中国家和发达国家的角度来看,ECJ都是一种有瑕疵的建议.它的缺点对于发展中国家来说尤为严重,因为它从根本的角度忽略了发展的层面.发展中国家运用现有的双边协定比接受ECJ的多边协定更加适当.虽然现有的乌拉圭FDI体制相比于ECJ更加恰当,但是从发展的角度讲,前者有着重大缺陷,国际社会应当对此缺陷给予即时关注并采取补救措施.