Self-protection in Greece: sticking with groups,communicating, protesting,and fighting

Despite the international community’s responsibility to protect (R2P) mandate, we are years away from effective international enforcement mechanisms. It is therefore important that we better understand and seek to support local capacities for self-protection. Migrants and refugees in Greece have shown us four central ways they cope with insecure environments. They stick together in groups, communicate warnings of danger, protest when conditions are threatening, and fight when all else fails. This practical note offers three recommendations on how to support the capacity of displaced people to protect themselves.     

Access to infrastructure and human well-being: evidence from rural Nepal

This article documents the level of access to infrastructure and assesses its perceived impacts on human well-being in rural Nepal. The study found a more varied level of well-being in less remote communities and determined that the perceived impacts of access to infrastructure on human well-being is higher in more remote areas. Notably, access to roads received the highest priority among respondents, followed by drinking water and irrigation. The methodology and findings of this study have practical implications for rural development in hills and mountains where human settlements are highly dispersed and access is key to human well-being.     

Key challenges in Malawi’s paprika supply chain: new insights into contract farming

Contract farming is a vital tool for linking small-scale farmers with modern supply chains. This study explored challenges resulting from contracting in the paprika supply chain in Malawi. The study used focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and email correspondence with 100 supply chain participants. The identified challenges include: inadequate input provision via the contract, a lack of opportunities to bargain and participate in contract design, and side-selling. While the contract secured the outlet for paprika, it failed to provide a reliable paprika supply for the contracting company. Thus, Malawi’s case analyses the potential of contract farming to champion the development of vulnerable economies.     

Challenges and lessons learnt from a sanitation project in rural Bolivia

The University of Arizona chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA has faced multiple challenges involving community participation in rural development, in the Andean community of Marquirivi, Bolivia, both in rural design and in community participation. Despite successful construction of a shower house in 2014, the EWB-USA UA team experience with community participation revealed the numerous complexities involved in engaging successfully with communities. The importance of previous aid in a community with development projects also emerged as critical in shaping actions. This article discusses lessons learnt and recommendations for rural infrastructure projects, as well as the EWB-USA model of sustainable development.     

An effective sanctioning actor? Merging effectiveness and EU actorness criteria to explain evolutions in (in)effective coercion towards Iran

EU sanctions invoked in response to the Iranian nuclear crisis (2006–2016) were long considered to be of limited effectiveness in halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Recently, however, sanctions seem to have contributed to a breakthrough in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme. This article aims at explaining this evolution. It, therefore, designs a framework that explains why sanctions (fail to) change targets’ behaviour. Since the sanctions effectiveness literature lacks an integrated framework to explain evolutions in effective coercion, this article merges sanctions effectiveness variables and Bretherton and Vogler’s actorness criteria. Applying the resulting framework to two broad episodes of the Iranian case (2006–2013 and 2013–2016), this article provides a first test of the framework’s added value. It concludes that a full understanding of sanctions effectiveness requires consideration of external, internal, and in-between factors.     

Institutions and abused women: an interactional model to access justice in India

The discourse on domestic violence has steadily moved from solely the realm of private family affairs into the institutional domain, through changing perceptions and the enactment and enforcement of laws. This article aims to understand how women approach institutions and how institutions perceive, translate, and respond to complaints within human rights discourses. The study analysed all cases registered in a family counselling centre in Rajasthan, India, with ten cases then randomly selected for in-depth interviews. The institutions are a catalyst of social change; however, they need to partner with specialists for medical interventions, and network with line departments more effectively to improve social resilience.     

Legitimacy through targeted transparency? Regulatory effectiveness and sustainability of lobbying regulation in the European Union

Regulating interest groups’ access to decision makers constitutes a key dimension of legitimate and accountable systems of government. The European Union explicitly links lobbying regulation with the democratic credentials of its supranational system of governance and proposes transparency as a solution to increase legitimacy and regulate private actors’ participation in policy making. This lobbying regulation regime consists of a Transparency Register that conditions access to decision makers upon joining it and complying with its information disclosure requirements. The extent to which transparency‐based regulatory regimes are successful in ensuring effective regulation of targeted actors and in being recognised as a legitimate instrument of governance constitutes a key empirical question. Therefore, the study asks: Do stakeholders perceive the transparency‐based EU lobbying regulation regime to be a legitimate form of regulatory governance? The study answers by building on a classic model of targeted transparency and proposes perceived regulatory effectiveness and sustainability as two key dimensions on which to evaluate the legitimacy of the Register. The arguments are tested on a new dataset reporting the evaluations of 1,374 stakeholders on the design and performance of the EU lobbying regulation regime. The findings describe a transparency regime that scores low in perceived effectiveness and moderate to low in sustainability. Citizens criticise the quality of information disclosed and the Register's performance as a transparency instrument. The Register did not effectively bridge the information gap between the public and interest groups about supranational lobbying. In terms of sustainability, interest organisations appreciate the systemic benefits of transparency, but identify few organisation‐level benefits. Organisations that are policy insiders incur more transparency costs so they instrumentally support transparency only insofar it suits their lobbying strategies and does not threaten their position. Insiders support including additional categories of organisations in the Register's regulatory remit but not more types of interactions with policy makers. They support an imperfect regulatory status quo to which they have adapted but lack incentives to support increased transparency and information disclosure. Targeted transparency proves an ineffective approach to regulating interest groups’ participation in EU policy making, constituting a suboptimal choice for ensuring transparent, accountable and legitimate supranational lobbying.     

担当:一种科层运作的效能转化工具

以形式理性著称的理性官僚制理论上并没有担当的价值空间,但当代中国科层制处于传统、现代、后现代交织的社会转型之中,处于从历史官僚制向理性官僚制对接的转型时期,有必要继承传统伦理精粹,发扬使命型政党的红色力量,以担当的价值理性驾驭官僚机器的形式理性,发挥国家治理制度优势,实现国家治理效能.这就需要实现政策民主化与政策科学化...     

从具体行政行为的效力谈治安管理处罚中应注意的问题

行政行为具有公定力、确定力、拘束力和执行力四大特征。在治安管理处罚实践中,要做到行政行为的严肃性,就必须确保执法过程的法定程序完备,不能将自由裁量权超出法律规定的范围;行政行为一经作出,不可朝令夕改,确保处罚决定对违法行为产生拘束力。