Change beneath the surface: the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election

Preceded by a string of institutional crises and sustained political wrangling, the Northern Ireland Assembly election held in May 2016 cemented the grip of the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin over the province’s power-sharing institutions, while certifying the impasse of their intra-bloc rivals. Eighteen years after the Good Friday Agreement, the electoral campaign continued to feature emotionally charged ethnic appeals. Nonetheless, socioeconomic issues were at the fore of the political debate, contributing to the limited yet significant advance of non-sectarian actors. Beneath the surface of a mainly unaltered Assembly makeup and unchanged ethno-political geography, the vote resulted in a decline in support for the traditional governing parties, particularly in the nationalist camp. In the aftermath of the vote, the formation of an officially recognized Opposition has opened uncharted political waters.     

试评韩国《集合建筑物法》第三次修订

虽然韩国《民法》中的土地和建筑物属于不同的所有权客体,但两者基本上适用相同的物权变动法理。然而,就部分所有权而言,土地和建筑物之间存在一定差异。土地可仅依当事人的意思及分割登记而实现对其一部分之所有。相比之下,建筑物却不能仅凭当事人的意思对其一部分进行分割和所有。只有当建筑物的相应部分具备独立性时,才能在将该建筑物的一部分登记为独立所有权的客体后,实现受法律保护的区分所有。上述内容所涉及的规定建筑物部分所有权的韩国法律,即为《关于集合建筑物的所有及管理的法律》。但由于韩国法院担心区分所有权的泛滥可能造成不动产所有权秩序的混乱,因此对《集合建筑物法》项下建筑物之一部分的独立性要件采严格审核原则,其结果导致区分所有权不会轻易得到认定。但是,综观区分所有的具体事例,从平衡性和比例性的角度来看,则会产生法院拒绝提供保护是否正确的疑问。正是基于对这种情况提供保护之必要性的考虑,遂有《集合建筑物法》第1条之2的新设,以便将此等情形中的一部分作为法律所保护的对象。但即使在法律修订后,韩国法院基本上仍对区分所有权的认定持消极态度。对此,试将区分所有权的保护问题与因韩国不动产物权变动登记主义造成的事实所有权的保护问题相联系,提出扩大保护之必要。     

Words of War: The Iraqi Tower of Babel

This paper surveys the linguistic aspects of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq's multilingual society, focusing first on the multilingual character of Iraqi society and the Arabic, Kurdish, and other languages spoken in this rapidly changing society. Discussion then moves to an examination of the inherent difficulties in working across an English-Arabic/Kurdish divide and concludes by discussing the puzzling inability of the American government to grapple effectively with the linguistic challenges of political and military operations in the Middle East.     

Divided government and US federal rulemaking

Despite paying a great deal of attention to the effects of divided government on legislative outputs, scholars of American politics have surprisingly ignored the potential impact of divided government on bureaucratic regulatory outputs. In this article we argue that divided government should reduce the volume of federal agency rulemaking. We test this hypothesis against a data set covering 21,000 rules from 1983 to 2005. Our study is one of the first to analyze the determinants of federal bureaucratic rulemaking activity across such a long period of time. Our results demonstrate that during periods of divided government, agencies issue fewer rules and fewer substantively significant rules than they do during periods of unified government. These findings suggest that divided government impedes agency rulemaking.     

Natural population movement and marriage restrictions and hindrances in Styria in the 17th to 19th centuries

To marry has never been an egalitarian option or everybody's wish. There have always been calculations or considerations, structural or individual hindrances and even societal restrictions for individuals to get married despite wishing to do so. Without any doubt and apart from the debate on determination or love and free choice in former times, to marry has always been a societal event, a mutual relationship between personal wishes and societal environmental expectations.And apart from all the debates on paradoxes in modernization processes, it is clear that in pre-modern times societal marriage restrictions were widespread.It is very unlikely that people should have been forbidden to marry because they should not have sexual contacts, just for morality reasons. The keys have been considerations and calculations on reproductivity, economic and social resources, social and human capital. This paper deals with aggregated vital data from four parishes in Styria, Austria, covering the outgoing 17th century until the end of the 19th century, in order to detect hints of marriage restrictions.The paper proves the well-known variety of marriage systems in pre-industrial and pre-modern times. It supports the idea that the presence of marriage restrictions hindered population growth, but the absence of such restrictions did not automatically foster more societal transparency and developmental chances in a modern sense, as mortality and inequality were very strong factors in pre-modern agrarian societies. In the end, the question of marriage restrictions was apparently posed and answered by privileged groups.     

Love,activism, and the possibility of radical social change in Mostar

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on the meanings and possibilities of social change in Mostar, a city more often associated with the seeming impossibility of eradicating ethno-national divisions and corruption that paralyses it. It focuses on the under-researched politics of grassroots activism by drawing on Hardt’s and Negri’s work on the political potential of ‘love’ to shape and propel radical politics. Overall, the article reveals the lack of a cohesive agenda of grassroots politics in Mostar, and asks whether love (that creates and sustains political movement) can educate, patiently, to the revolution.     

大陆、澳门两地反黑法之比较──兼谈对我国反黑法的完善

修订后的《中华人民共和国刑法》增加了黑社会性质犯罪的规定,与澳门反黑法相比,我国刑法中关于黑社会性质犯罪的立法显得过于宽泛,在司法实践中难以操作,通过对两地反黑法的比较,笔者提出了有关完善我国反黑立法的一些肤浅的建议。     

Corruption in the aftermath of war: an introduction

‘Corruption in the aftermath of war’ brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to enquire into the dynamics of corruption in post-conflict societies. This introduction discusses five themes, problematising and summarising key findings from the 10 articles included. First, we discuss the problems with the corruption concept, related to its moralising connotations and definitional vagueness, and propose viewing corruption as a collective action dilemma as a way of avoiding these moralising aspects. Second, we discuss post-conflict societies, and highlight the great varieties of ‘peace’ that that label can refer to. We suggest that the causes, dynamics and effects of corruption in post-conflict societies bear many similarities with those in other societies, but that the post-conflict situation often generates an intensification and entrenchment of corruption-related problems. Third, we analyse the dynamics between international interveners and domestic actors, and show the contradictions and tensions in international–domestic relations. Fourth, we argue that the inter-linkages between inequality, mistrust and corruption deserve consideration in the study of post-conflict societies, and that inequality in particular merits more attention. Finally, we discuss some methodological challenges encountered by the contributors in their studies of corruption in post-conflict societies.     

秘密社会与传统汉族社会结构

从社会学、人类学的角度 ,将传统中国的秘密结社置于中国社会结构、文化传统、制度体系及群体意识中予以考察 ,就会发现其形成和发展对政治、经济、军事、文化、宗教、宗族、人口等层面都产生了重大的影响。探究中国秘密社会的结构、类型、特征、功能 ,可以从整体上把握秘密社会与传统汉族社会结构的内在关系