Irish civil society: rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic? A case study of fighting Irish social security retrenchment

Examining the politics of Irish responses to crisis-related social security cuts gives insight into Irish agency and how crisis has shaped the contours of Irish civil society. Despite assertions of lack of protest, Irish retrenchment was resisted and sometimes partially defeated. Using political sociology frameworks to explore interactions between institutional, ideological and interest variables in three case studies of defending cuts enables analysis of resistance strategies. There are tensions when short-term defensive resistance strategies undermine or limit offensive political coalition-building that might offer greater long-term solidarity and more sustainable resistance to intensification of the neoliberal Irish welfare state.     

族性视野中多民族国家族际政治问题比较研究——基于尼日利亚与印度尼西亚民族国家建构的经验观察

族性是影响多民族国家安全及其族际政治走向的关键变量。它既能促进族际政治整合、维护国家安全、有助于民族国家建构,也能导致族际政治冲突、危及国家安全、阻碍民族国家建构。以\"族性\"为分析视角,通过对尼日利亚与印度尼西亚民族国家建构历程的梳理及其族际政治问题的比较,其共性特征包括:族际政治问题的分析单位是多民族国家;族际政治问题虽然发生在现实中的多民族国家,却往往带有深刻的历史根源;政治与文化边界的重叠是族际政治问题产生的逻辑起点;国内不同民族群体无法得到平等公正对待是导致族际政治问题的核心因素;军事专政和腐败会增加族际政治问题的风险和国家安全的不确定性。解决多民族国家族际政治问题、确保国家安全的关键在于如何让一个在历史上和观念中都不曾存在的国家民族能够超越族性分界而被成功建构。结合两国国情提出应对策略:寻找重叠共识,建构文化多元、政治一体的国族共同体;借鉴差异政治和差别公民权利思想,探寻积极回应不同民族群体正当利益诉求、实现各族人民成果共享、利益均沾的政治制度、体制和机制;消除军人在政治生活中的影响,惩治腐败;探索包容促进多语言、多宗教和谐相处的民族政策。     

Mobilizing from the Margins: Domestic Citizen Politics and Yasukuni Shrine

Prime Minister Koizumi’s six consecutive annual visits to Yasukuni shrine played a key role in initiating a new phase of domestic citizen political mobilization not seen since the early 1970s. This paper is based on field research during the Koizumi years (2001–2006) centering on domestic groups that conduct activities in “protection” of or “opposition” to Yasukuni shrine. As a study of street-based politics, this paper seeks to uncover the processes, strategies, and outcomes of citizen responses to elite political action at Yasukuni Shrine as well as explore meaning of their actions within the context of Japan’s democratic polity.

Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States

The United States is experiencing growing impacts of climate change but currently receives a limited policy response from its national leadership. Within this policy void, many state governments are stepping up and taking action on adaptation planning. Yet we know little about why some states adopt State Adaptation Plans (SAPs), while others do not. This article investigates factors that predict the emergence of SAPs, both in terms of policy adoption and policy intensity (goal ambitiousness). Applying the diffusion of innovation theory, I consider the relative influence of internal state characteristics, regional pressures, and test for conditional effects between government ideologies and severity of the problem. The results show interesting differences between predictors that influence policy adoption and ambitiousness. States are more motivated to adopt a policy when faced with greater climate vulnerability, have more liberal citizenry, and where governments have crossed policy hurdles by previously passing mitigation plans. The intensity of policies and goal setting, moreover, is more likely to be driven by interest group politics and diffuse through policy learning or sharing information among neighboring states in Environmental Protection Agency regions. These findings support an emerging scholarship that uses more complex dependent variables in policy analysis. These variables have the potential to differentiate symbolic from substantive policies and capture finer information about predictors of importance.     

Explaining variation and change in supervisory confidentiality in the European Union

Abstract

Some European Union member states’ financial regulators choose to make some of the data they routinely collect on individual banks publicly available. Others treat this data as confidential. What explains this difference? This paper considers the possible effects of crises, path-dependent legal institutions, and the design of deposit insurance schemes. At the national level, the paper focuses on contrasting German and Dutch cases. After the recent economic crisis, the Dutch released more data while the German authorities maintained strict confidentiality rules. The design of deposit insurance schemes provides a key reason why the level of secrecy varies, with the Dutch move from an ex post to an ex ante scheme where the government served as the ultimate backstop leading to questions about the accounts of individual banks while the German system favoured continued secrecy. The paper also describes the level of transparency at the EU level. Multilevel legal restrictions and bureaucratic capacity tilt EU banking union practices towards member states that treat financial supervisory data as confidential.     

利益政治的失效:利益非和谐的成因分析

利益政治的应然效能就是实现利益的和谐发展,但在实然层面,利益和谐往往被认为可欲而不可求,原因在于利益政治会出现失效,本文着力于此,希望清楚解读这一问题,以便为深入实践研究提供理论支撑。     

论和谐侦查的语境

和谐侦查是指权力机关在办理案件过程中,依照法律和社会许容度进行的专门调查工作和有关的强制性措施。侦查语境指的是侦查存在和运行的外部环境。和谐侦查的实现应以相关语境为依托,汲取语境的合理内核,相辅相成。其现实语境应涵盖以人为本的政治语境,正义实现的法律语境,探求真实的哲学语境。和谐侦查的构建没有现成的经验可供借鉴,因此,侦查所应有的各项理性规则与程序,侦查所面临的评价标准等等,仍待进一步实践和探索。