Demotic humanitarians: historical perspectives on the global reach of local initiatives, 1940–2017

Abstract

This article focuses on over 70 years of demotic humanitarianism from a grassroots perspective. Using the archives of Hudfam and Elizabeth Wilson as well as more recent oral history of local nongovernmental organisations in the West Yorkshire region of the United Kingdom, this paper seeks to cast a new light on the complex network of humanitarianism enabled by local groups. The concept of demotic humanitarians will be used here to denote the modest scale of this work, but also the humanitarians’ self-perception as local agents of internationalism acting within localised networks. From the creation of Hudfam in 1942 (before Oxfam but in Huddersfield) to the birth of the Christian African Relief Trust or local partnerships with Ghana, this article shows how entangled in other social and political initiatives demotic humanitarians were.     

论国际投资法的外交保护制度

国际投资法中的外交保护是指本国国民在国外遭受损害,依该外国国内法程序得不到救济时,本国可以通过外交手段向该国要求适当的救济。外交保护作为一项传统的国际投资争端解决机制,曾是一种主要的解决投资争端的方法,但是随着国际投资争端法律解决机制的完善,外交保护失去了其原有的地位。并且遭到发展中国家的反对,甚至在卡尔沃条款出现之后一度引发了其效力的争议。     

我国地方政府绩效评估指标数据仓库的代表性对象选取和构建——以江苏四市为研究点

在中国这样的大国,各个地区之间在自然、地理、历史、社会等很多方面千差万别,由于这种异质性的存在,地方政府绩效评估指标的设计是一项噪音很多的系统工程,利用数据挖掘技术建设绩效指标数据仓库并进行挖掘可以有效解决这种异质性问题。论文首先通过标准比的形式,探讨了如何在我国筛选研究对象问题,然后通过将数据挖掘引入政府绩效评估指标设计研究,并以Microsoft SQL Server 2005作为数据挖掘软件,以江苏四市(苏州、南京、盐城、徐州)作为研究对象,在处理国家统计年鉴、地方统计年鉴、部门统计年鉴、政府及其各部门的工作计划与方案、工作记录等海量信息的基础上建立了四市的数据仓库,为进一步进行指标挖掘打下了基础。     

我国地方政府职能优化的深层探析

20世纪80年代之后,随着新公共管理、治理、新公共服务理论的兴起,西方发达国家相继进行了地方政府改革与职能转变。改革开放之后,随着社会主义市场经济体制的确立,我国也相应调整了政府职能。但是现实中地方政府职能还存在着许多的问题,亟需优化与改善。以服务型政府为目标导向,从制度、组织、技术层面探索地方政府职能优化的路径。     

“省直管县”相关概念辨析

近年来,国内关于“省直管县”体制改革的呼声越来越高,然而,学界在对“省直管县”体制改革进行研究的过程中普遍存在着概念混淆和滥用现象.本文对“市管县”、“省管县”、“财政省直管县”、“行政省直管县”、“强县扩权”、“扩权强县”等相关概念及其相互关系进行了分析,并在此基础上探讨了“省直管县”体制改革模式及其演进逻辑.     

Issues of local ownership in Kosovo’s security sector

Local ownership represents an overarching concept in international development. However, its core principles have been occasionally neglected in the practice of state-building such as in the case of Kosovo. This paper explores relations between the international community and local actors in the process of Kosovo security sector development after 2008, when the country declared its independence. This article finds that externally-driven models were imposed in some phases of security sector development. The actions of the international community disregarded the local context and created distrust by the local actors. The study relies on extensive face-to-face interviews with relevant national and international stakeholders, a public opinion survey with a sample of 1102 respondents, focus group and personal observation.     

The Effects of Local Government Consolidation on Turnout: Evidence from a Quasi‐Experiment in Switzerland

In the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi‐experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non‐merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.     

地方治理在中国的适用性及其限度——以宁波市海曙区政府购买居家养老政策为例

治理理论被引入中国以来,一方面被学术界寄予厚望,另一方面关于治理在中国的适用性又受到很多质疑.治理及地方治理是为了克服各种不可治理性而进行的国家(政府)与社会关系的调整过程和趋势.宁波市海曙区政府购买居家养老服务的政策过程表明,地方政府的职能转变需要管理创新.循于此,作为工具的地方治理就可能在中国出现并取得局部的良好效果,而且可能为地方治理机制的成长准备社会条件.但对地方治理机制的成长最有决定性的因素仍然在于政府,政府职能的转变可能会创造出对地方治理发展有利的条件.在中国未来治理机制形成和运行过程中,政府将是最有力的保障或最严重的障碍.而在地方,治理的发展空间是存在的.因此,应将地方治理作为政府职能转化过程中的管理创新思路,逐渐发展出针对地方公共事务的地方治理机制.     

侦查权问题探析

侦查是刑事诉讼大厦的基石 ,它在整个刑事诉讼活动中起着极为重要的作用。司法实践中 ,非侦查机关、非侦查人员行使、干预侦查权和侦查机关放弃侦查权、滥用侦查权、超越侦查权的现象仍然存在。而解决这一问题的关键在于侦查主体、侦查客体、侦查内容的合法性     

The paradoxes of the ‘everyday’: scrutinising the local turn in peace building

With the advent of the local turn in the mid-2000s, critical approaches have attempted to rethink peace building from the bottom up, placing local agents at the centre of the debate, declaring the end of top-down governance and affirming the fragmented, complex and plural nature of the social milieu. While local turn approaches have become popular in peace-building theory, this article invites the reader to question and problematise the local turn’s use of the concept of ‘everyday’, in order to explore paradoxes and contradictions that indicate the need to think more deeply about the impact of the local turn’s project of critique.