Why wait for the state? Using the CFS Tenure Guidelines to recalibrate political-legal struggles for democratic land control

Abstract

In 2012, with the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (or TGs), the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) established a new international standard on natural resource governance. After adoption, the challenge is for these guidelines to be implemented and used. However, no law is self-interpreting or self-implementing, and so how states will interpret and implement these new guidelines cannot be taken for granted. This is especially true in the current global context of land grabbing driven, in many cases, by alliances of state and capital. Consequently, subaltern people, for whom rights in relation to the natural resources on which they depend remain out of reach, face the challenge and potential opportunity of making use of the TGs to recalibrate the political-legal terrain in favour of human rights and democratic control of land and other natural resources.     

Why do they vote out of habit? Habitual voting under diverse regimes in East Asia

While scholars have shed light on our understanding of elections in less and non-democratic countries, the incentives behind electoral participation in these countries remain unexplored. This paper sets out to investigate how regime structure is associated with voters' incentives of habitual voting. We assert that the formation of voting habits is associated with the relationships of citizens with the state and their expectations about it. Thus, habitual voting reflects voters' understandings about, perceptions of, and concerns with their political environment and system. In democracy, habituated voting behavior is strongly associated with respondents' support for the regime because their sense of civic duty encourages them to vote. In authoritarian regimes, knowing that their ballots are the adornments of the authoritarian government, habitual voting simply reveals citizens' short-term support for the government or their concerns with the vertical accountability of the government. We further test the hypotheses against Asian Barometer Survey data and the analysis evidences our assumptions.     

Playing by the rules of the game: partisan use of recall referendums in Colombia

As a bottom-up mechanism of direct democracy, recall can be triggered by citizens to remove elected officials through a vote, which is expected to increase accountability. Contradicting this hope, previous research has suggested that intensive use of recall referendums became an instrument of party competition. However, empirical evidence is scant. Thus, focusing on the 107 attempts of activating recall in Colombia during the first half of 2017 this article seeks to understand if recall activations are more likely to reinforce democratic governance (by giving an institutional solution to exceptional problems of legitimacy) or are more likely to erode it (by becoming a weapon to escalate the partisan competition beyond regular elections). We created a dataset to identify who started the recall – partisan, mixed or civil society actors – and for what reasons. Then, we examined to what extent the effective number of parties in the council, the majority reached in the previous election, or the size of the municipality have an effect on the likelihood of recall attempts. The study finds that in Colombia, political leaders (and not specific parties) are the main actors promoting recall.     

Transparency: from Bentham’s inventory of virtuous effects to contemporary evidence-based scepticism

There is growing enthusiasm for transparency in public affairs. Discourses idealising the value of transparency are part of the rhetoric of advocates of ‘good governance’. However, there is little discussion of the justifications for transparency. The view that transparency underpins legitimacy is similar to that of the advocates for ‘publicity’ in the initial era of representative government, when transparency (or publicity) became a crucial issue in political debates. This article identifies the intellectual roots of claims for transparency through a retrospective examination of the initial pleas in its favour. It concentrates on Jeremy Bentham, who provided an extended inventory of reasons for publicity. We examine Bentham’s major arguments and how they are currently analysed. We conclude that the virtuous effects of transparency are today qualified by criticisms in scholarly work which emphasise the possible costs and perverse effects of the search for transparency or demonstrate that it may fail to deliver the expected benefits.     

Two spheres of regulation: Balancing social and economic goals

Independent regulatory authorities hold comprehensive policy mandates that cover both economic and social goals. They take on various roles in market regulation, competition policy, consumer protection, and labor inspection. This article questions whether policymakers are driven by different rationales when delegating the realization of social, as opposed to economic goals, and analyzes how regulators accommodate their various roles in practice. The conceptual framework links the literature on delegation and organizational models. Comparative analysis of postal policy in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom covers a serious area of potential conflict between social and economic regulation. Variation in delegation points to the relevance of instrumental considerations, but also to the politics of institutional arrangements. Variation in regulatory practice shows that organizational models make a difference in accommodating conflict. The article makes a strong case that social and economic regulation need to be addressed as two distinct, yet interacting spheres. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd     

Getting away with foul play? The importance of formal and informal oversight institutions for electoral integrity

Electoral integrity is increasingly being recognised as an important component of democracy, yet scholars still have limited understanding of the circumstances under which elections are most likely to be free, fair and genuine. This article posits that effective oversight institutions play a key role in scrutinising the electoral process and holding those with an interest in the electoral outcome to account. The main insight is that deficiencies in formal electoral management can be effectively compensated for via one or more other institutional checks: an active and independent judiciary; an active and independent media; and/or an active and independent civil society. Flawed elections are most likely to take place when all four checks on electoral conduct fail in key ways. These hypotheses are tested and supported on a cross‐national time‐series dataset of 1,047 national‐level elections held in 156 electoral regimes between 1990 and 2012.     

我国行政政治问责的问题与对策

行政政治问责存在明显的制度缺失,是我国行政问责的制度实践中的短板。这种制度困境形成的原因是复杂的,有内部和外部的问题,有主观方面的制约因素,也有政治问责立法滞后的影响。针对行政政治问责存在的问题及其原因,本文从行政政治问责的主体、对象、适用范围、标准、程序和救济制度方面提出构建有效的行政政治问责的实现机制。     

地方政府公共预算研究——深圳与香港的比较（2008）

本文以《深圳市2008年部门预算》和《香港2008年财政预算案》两个文本为基础,结合深度访谈,对比了深圳和香港两地公共预算在公开性、自主性和问责模式三个维度上的差异,并试图找出两者差异背后的原因。研究发现,深圳市公共预算的公开性弱于香港,而自主性大于香港,问责模式较香港有根本差异。究其原因,是因为深圳市预算维持着一种“产出绩效”的绩效观,而香港预算案遵循“衡工量值”的原则。不同的绩效观导致了不同的预算编制原则,不同的预算编制技术,产生了不同程度的自主性,进而表现出不同程度的公开性,催生了不同形式的问责模式。本文还讨论了三种预算问责模式,提出了“核心预算问责机构”的概念。     

国际组织与非传统性公共安全问题的国际治理

本文对全球化背景下的非传统性公共安全问题的属性、特征及其国际治理需求作出了分析,并在此基础上归纳出作为治理主体的国际组织的六项公共安全治理功能:问题提示功能、信息提供功能、标准设置功能、组织协调功能、绩效评估功能和外部监督功能。最后对国际组织在非传统性公共安全治理中的“民主赤字”问题及其消极影响进行了简要的剖析,本文认为,非传统性公共安全治理要达到真正的帕累托最优,有赖于国际组织的责任性问题的解决。