地方工会“以上代下”与基层工会“瘦身减负” —— 近 40 年来中国工会改革的趋势与特点

中国工会为适应改革开放以来政治经济环境的变化,先后进行过四次比较系统的改革,在这一过程中,中国工会明确了自身作为职工权益的代表者和维护者的角色,其职责结构也从以往以生产为中心,向维护和服务职工转变,在履行职责的方式上,既借鉴国际经验,但更强调要回归和发展本土化的党政主导的社会化维护和服务模式。此外,地方工会与基层工会在职责结构上逐渐呈现出分化趋势,基层工会在职责上将趋于"瘦身减负",地方工会则"以上代下",通过整合各种资源来履行基层工会难以履行的维护和服务职责。     

Legal change in post-communist states: Contradictions and explanations. Introduction

Reformers had high hopes that the end of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would lead to significant improvements in legal institutions and the role of law in public administration. However, the cumulative experience of 25 years of legal change since communism has been mixed, marked by achievements and failures, advances and moves backward. This special issue of the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies documents the nuances of this process and starts the process of explaining them. This introductory essay draws on the findings of the articles in this issue to explore the impact of three potential explanatory factors: regime type, international influences, and legal (or political) culture. Regime type matters, but allows for considerable variation within authoritarian and democratic states alike and the possibility of reversals. The influence of international organizations (like the European Union) is also far from predictable, especially once states have joined the organization. Finally, legal cultures and political traditions play a large role in explaining developments in individual countries, but there is nothing inevitable about their impact.     

“Upholding the Correct Political Direction”. The PLA Reform and Civil-Military Relations in Xi Jinping’s China

The military reform launched in late 2015 has significant implications for China’s civil-military relations. One of the stated goals of the reform is to “uphold the correct political direction” by strengthening party control over the People’s Liberation Army. This has been achieved by centralising power over the PLA in the hands of the Central Military Commission, while at the same time centralising power within the Commission in the hands of its Chairman. This dual centralisation of power might considerably change the way in which the ‘conditional compliance’ model of civil-military relations works in Xi Jinping’s China.     

Kawabata's views of language and the postwar construction of a literary genealogy

Abstract

This paper shows the ways in which, in the immediate post-war period (1945–1951), Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972) reflected on his earlier, pre-war literary career and re-envisioned his postwar literary trajectory by constructing a new genealogy of the modern novel in Japan, in relationship to the intricate issues of the literary styles of the modern novel, ‘national language’ (kokugo), and the literary tradition. By examining his Shin bunshō tokuhon (New Guide to Literary Language, 1950), which presents Kawabata's past and present views of literary language, I will argue that Kawabata's changing views of language and literary style must be understood in the context of contemporary debates over national language policy and language reform movements. I will show the manner by which Kawabata formulated his views of language in dialogue with his two rival writers: Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947) in the prewar period and Tanizaki Junichirō (1886–1965) in the postwar period. As we shall see, the death of his close literary colleague Yokomitsu in 1947 and Tanizaki's unflagging literary exploration during and following the war prompted Kawabata to position himself in a genealogy of modern Japanese literary writers as well as in relationship to the linguistic and literary tradition of Japan.     

Land reform by default: uncovering patterns of agricultural decollectivization in Tajikistan

Like that in other post-communist states, Tajikistan’s agricultural decollectivization was initiated through top-down measures. However, the implementation process has not been uniform across the state’s territory; in some districts collective farms were quickly and thoroughly broken up, while in others the process is just now beginning. In this paper, we investigate spatial variation in Tajikistan’s decollectivization process. Through analyses of diverse data, we reveal that low cotton yield is a necessary condition for farm individualization in districts that are distant from the capital. We interpret this result as indicating that farm managers responsible for unproductive farms often have little incentive or capacity to resist the break-up of farms. In contrast, managers of productive farms have both an incentive and the capacity to maintain collective farming. Furthermore, although human capital dimensions, including family size, off-farm income and education, affect an individual farmer’s preference for private farming, these are not necessary conditions for widespread farm individualization at the district level. In other words, we did not find evidence that farmers had the capacity to directly determine collective farm dissolution.     

Waves of Publications on Chinese Women and Gender Studies

ABSTRACT

This essay traces the evolution of Chinese women and gender studies in academia since the 1970s through a discussion of a number of prominent Western-language book publications that reveal changing scholarly approaches and attitudes toward this subject. It makes evident that within several generations the field has developed from a study favoured by left-leaning academics to a subject fed by multi-disciplinary approaches and integral to China scholarship. The review demonstrates how researchers sought sources and means to expose the once-buried literary and artistic achievements of imperial era women while modern history and literary experts as well as anthropologists and other social scientists countered long-standing narratives of women’s oppression, and pursued alternative scenarios to show how Chinese men and women have transformed their culture and society. There is also attention given to publications about masculinity, same-sex cultures, and the one-child policy. The review concludes that more contact between Western and Chinese scholars on women and gender studies will enrich and expand the dimensions of this field.     

‘We go back to the land’: processes of re-peasantisation in Araponga,Brazil

This contribution draws on original data relating to a land settlement case in Araponga, an administrative area in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The settlement of the land and subsequent building of robust, more self-dependent, land-based livelihoods have followed a joint experimentation trajectory in which the agro-ecologicalisation of agrarian production practices to regenerate and enrich the resource base has been coupled with effective institutional reform and the creation of a favourable institutional setting. Key to this grassroots transformation process has been the enrolment of various strategic actors in a collaborative support network by a mediating change agent. The paper argues that the Araponga case represents a particular expression of re-peasantisation. The Araponga project has evolved without the involvement of landless peoples' social movements such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). This has been crucial to its character and impact.     

Power Sector Reforms and Technical Performance: Good News from an Instrumental Variable Analysis

Over the past three decades, various power sector reforms have overhauled the governance of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution in almost a hundred countries. Have these reforms produced benefits? Using instrumental variables, we improve upon earlier studies and demonstrate that power sector reforms enacted between 1982 and 2008 have both had large positive effects on the availability of generation capacity and reduced transmission and distribution losses. We also show that the positive effects on generation capacity are pronounced in developing countries and that hybrid reforms falling short of privatization and free competition are effective in improving generation capacity in particular. Overall, the results show that these reforms are an effective tool to remove an important constraint on economic growth.     

Is the Future of SSR non-linear?

This article explores issues around security sector reform (SSR) and the involvement of the international community in peace-building. It argues that the international architecture which surrounds SSR privileges a particular form of knowledge that reflects a technocratic approach to security, and illustrates this by systematically examining the literature. Research on the literature itself shows that three core themes dominate: state-centric approaches, technocratic approaches, and approaches to local ownership. These comprise a current, linear approach to SSR that ignores much of the critical literature on peace-building. The article then goes on to draw on some of this critical literature to develop an alternative approach to SSR building using a non-linear approach which incorporates a better understanding of institutional politics, an emphasis on process rather than structures, and analysis of hidden politics.     

Whose Mandate is it Anyway? Brexit,the Constitution and the Contestation of Authority

Over the past year, a seemingly relentless barrage of Brexit‐related challenges has besieged the British constitution, which together have called into question the legitimacy of the political system. Yet, although it is tempting to regard the decision to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union as precipitating an acute constitutional crisis, this article argues that political and democratic dilemmas arising from Brexit are symptomatic of a wider constitutional malaise, the roots of which extend far beyond 23 June 2016. Flowing out of this, the article contends that the current crisis is one of ‘constitutional myopia’, fuelled by decades of incoherent reforms and a failure to address adequately democratic disengagement; and that the EU referendum and its aftermath have merely exposed the extent to which the foundations of the constitution have been eviscerated.