马英九“软实力”思想评析

在马英九以大陆为主要对象的“国家安全政策”中,“软实力”是一个十分重要的概念。他企图以政治价值观的漫洇,推动大陆民主化;以文化、教育理念的扩散,输出价值观;以“活路外交”塑造“民主台湾”、“文化台湾”的形象,最终达到对大陆实施“软制约”、“软制衡”的目标。虽然,由于岛内外种种原因的限制,马英九的“软实力”思想尚未对大陆产生明显的影响力,但这一切是在“没有硝烟的战场”上实施的,应引起我们足够的重视。     

第一代独生子女婚姻生育选择及对未来人口和家庭结构的影响——兼与庄渝霞商榷生育政策调整的可行性

随着第一代独生子女进入婚育年龄,产生大量的双独家庭、单独家庭,不同家庭类型的变化将引起政策生育率自然回升,如果考虑到有部分家庭放弃生育二孩,则意愿生育率会低于政策生育率。本文从独生子女婚育选择的角度出发,使用相关调查数据分析,发现由双独家庭所产生"4-2-1"家庭的数目受政策微调生育的影响较小,政策微调可以大幅度降低一孩家庭的比例,二孩家庭比例的增加无疑会降低家庭风险,且不会大规模地增加出生人口数量,因此,中国应当对生育政策进行微调,增强人口结构的合理性。     

青年的政策觉识与支持老年父母的关系:一项香港与上海的比较研究

这项研究探讨香港与上海两地青年的公共政策或社会责任、子孙或家庭责任、个人责任的觉识对其照顾、接纳和承担照顾父母的意愿的效应.研究结果显示:(1)对政府或社会的养老政策责任的觉识愈高者则照顾父母的意愿明显地愈高;然而,对老年人的自立生活具愈高的觉识者,其照顾父母的意愿却愈低;(2)对倡导尊敬老年人的觉识愈高和对老年人的自立生活的觉识愈低者,其接纳照顾父母的意愿愈高;(3)对政府责任的觉识愈高者和对个人责任的觉识愈低者,其承担照顾父母的意愿愈高.文章同时就倡导两地照顾或供养父母的政策启示进行讨论.     

Conditioned Networking: Swiss–EU Relations in Transport

This article addresses the structural characteristics of the interactions between Switzerland and the EU in the transport sector, i.e. transport by air and land. More precisely, it is focused on two different aspects of this relationship: first the modes of coordination between Switzerland and the EU according to the concept of external governance and, second, those conditions that make inclusive patterns of interaction more likely. The central finding of this case study is an expansion of both the regulatory and organisational boundary in both cases. This shift finds expression in the incorporation of Swiss actors into a variety of networks that, at least in some cases, allow Swiss actors to shape EU policy making. The actual patterns of interaction are influenced by a number of factors, including the type of governance inside the EU that facilitates the inclusion of third parties in EU external governance and the problem structure that is characterized by coordination rather than enforcement problems.     

Promising more to give less: international disputes between core and periphery around European posted labor, 1955–2018

ABSTRACT

The posting of workers from the European periphery has generated the longest and most tumultuous series of labor disputes in the history of European Integration. On the basis of relevant archives, this article conducts the first historical review of posting rules in the European Union, from the first negotiation in 1955 until the latest directive in 2018. This historical review enables to discard the idea of a neoliberal turn in posting rules from the 1980s onward. It also leads to reject the explanation of disputes by the movement out of the European periphery under posting rules of a Lumpenproletariat insensitive to class struggle. Instead, the article identifies the increasing regulation of the labor market at the expense of posting opportunities since thirty years. It reveals the dominant role played by governments and their invariable support for their workers. It highlights the constant asymmetry of power between core richer countries and the Southern and Eastern periphery of the European Union. Eventually, this article locates the long-term problem in the contradictions between the interests of workers and firms in richer destination countries and the enlargements of the Single Market to poorer countries.     

European Union civil society support and the depoliticisation of Turkish civil society

Despite growing critical literature on external funding, the link between EU funding to Turkish civil society organisations (CSOs) and their depoliticisation remains understudied. This article fills this gap. This article explores EU funds in Turkey and shows the incentives it creates for a depoliticised civil society. Drawing on an original set of interviews with 45 CSOs, this article analyses how Turkish CSOs interact with EU funding and how this support impacts on Turkish civil society. This article argues that EU funding’s short-term, activity-based, measurable outcome and visibility-oriented structure contributed to the depoliticisation of those CSOs benefited from EU funds.     

Canadian Concerns of a Different Kind of Brexit: Britain’s First Application to the EEC and Canada’s Commonwealth Appeal

Recent debates on Brexit have made several attempts to connect the current situation with Britain’s first attempt to gain entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961. In both 2016 and 1961, questions were raised about what role the Commonwealth would take and how the relationship with Britain would adapt to their then-entry and current exit of a union with Europe. This article seeks to examine how Canada reacted to Britain’s decision to enter the EEC and sheds light on the vociferous opposition it raised within the Commonwealth. Using both British and Canadian cabinet minutes and Commonwealth memoranda, the article follows the Canadian campaign against British entry to the EEC and its fervent defence of the Commonwealth as an economic-focused community. Ultimately, the Canadian-led protest against British entry into the EEC derived from a fear that Britain would drift from the Commonwealth towards Europe, leading to the complete dissolution of the economic bonds that tie the community together.     

Revisiting Transnational European Consociationalism: The European Union a Decade After Lisbon

This article discusses the notion of consociationalism as applied to the EU and assesses whether the institutional and procedural changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) and by the management of the Euro and refugee crises still warrant considering the EU as a case of consociational democracy. Our contention is that the changes introduced by the ToL bore the promise to strengthen the consociational structural traits of the Union but that the further institutional and procedural changes engendered by the management of the Euro and refugee crises have made the behavioral dimension of consociationalism all the more necessary just as the accommodating orientation of the political elites had begun to evaporate. We support this argument by looking at empirical evidence which allows us to offer a set of propositions on the effects of the recent crises on the attitudes of the European elites towards the future of EU democracy.     

Islamophobic conspiracism and neoliberal subjectivity: the inassimilable society

O’Donnell analyses the confluence of Islamophobia and anti-government conspiracy theory in the works of the far-right think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He argues that, rather than only being a contemporary form of the religious and racialized demonologies that code ‘Islam’ as being the constitutive outside of ‘the ‘West—irrational, religious and authoritarian versus rational, secular and democratic—Islamophobic conspiracism should also be examined in the context of anxieties over the erosion of personal and state sovereignty under neoliberalization. Mobilizing an Islamophobic demonology that constructs ‘Muslims’ as inassimilable to ‘American’ subjectivity, the CSP's Islamophobic conspiracism projects this construction of absolute alterity on to American social and state systems. In doing so, O’Donnell contends, Islamophobic conspiracism takes neoliberalization's estrangement of the state and its citizens to its logical conclusion, transfiguring the societal processes that impact on the freedom of the individual—notably the state and civil society—into something inassimilable to that individual's claims to self-ownership and self-mastery.     

Brexit: A Cliff Edge or a Small Bump in the Road?

It is becoming increasingly accepted, not least by the Prime Minister and opposition leadership, that the negotiation of a comprehensive trade relationship with the EU is necessary to prevent the UK economy falling off a ‘cliff edge’. This concern is shaping the UK's strategy towards negotiations with the EU and has provided at least part of the motivation for the UK to consider requesting a transition period to facilitate the Brexit process. But how accurate are these fears? What evidence is there for the existence of a ‘cliff edge’? How disastrous would it be for the UK to revert to trading with the EU on the same basis as most other countries in the world, namely according to World Trade Organisation rules? This article seeks to address these issues and it highlights a number of implications for policy makers which flow from understanding the available evidence a little more clearly.