Prosecutorial regulation in the Global South: Environmental civil litigation by prosecutors in China compared to Brazil

Brazil's successful prosecutorial civil action against polluters could be a regulatory example for the Global South. This paper analyses whether such regulation could also develop without the major political, institutional, and legal reforms that spurred it in Brazil. To do so, it analyzes China, where similar reforms have so far not occurred, but where prosecutors have recently started to initiate civil litigation against polluters. It finds that prosecutorial civil litigation in China has only a limited regulatory effect or potential. Prosecutors in China are influenced by conflicting incentive structures that reward one‐off lower level test cases with an innovation bonus, while structurally stimulating a focus on general crime fighting. Ironically, as a result of such incentives, the recent legal reform, toward providing standing for prosecutors in public interest litigation, will, in contrast to Brazil, decrease rather than increase the regulatory effect of these cases. These findings have implications for understanding how the interaction between regulatory independence, legal reform, and regime type shapes possibilities for regulatory innovation in the Global South.     

The authoritarian logic of regulatory pluralism: Understanding China's new environmental actors

Over the last decade, Chinese citizens, judges, and prosecutors have started to take action against industrial pollution, pluralizing a regulatory landscape originally occupied by administrative agencies. Regulatory pluralism here has an authoritarian logic, occurring without the retreat of party‐state control. Under such logic, the party‐state both needs and fears new actors for their positive and negative roles in controlling risk and maintaining stability. Consequently, the regime's relation to regulatory pluralism is ambivalent, shifting between support and restriction. This prevents a development of a regulatory society that could bypass the regulatory state. Theoretically, this special edition argues for a subjective definition of regulation in a context of pluralism. Moreover, it finds that regulatory pluralism need not coincide with a decentring of regulation. Finally, it highlights how entry onto the regulatory landscape affects the non‐regulatory roles of new actors, creating unintended consequences for regulatory pluralism.     

Regulatory dynamism of environmental mobilization in urban China

In China, urban middle class mobilization against potential pollution risk has become increasingly common. This article examines this phenomenon through a detailed case study of a 2009 anti‐waste incinerator campaign in the Panyu District of Guangzhou, which culminated in a sizeable public protest and government U‐turn. This episode revealed tension between the narrow, state‐centered regulatory model fixated on end‐of‐pipe pollution control, and a much broader decentered approach advocated – and practiced – by project opponents, which incorporated public consultation and much greater emphasis on upstream waste reduction and sorting. In the process, the Panyu campaign progressed beyond a case of “regulation by escalation,” whereby beneficial regulations are belatedly enforced following populist pressure. Instead, it transformed into an open dialogue between a plurality of actors, including citizens, journalists, experts, and officials, about what regulation should constitute and who should determine acceptable levels of risk. By focusing on the processes through which regulatory issues emerged and changed during the Panyu campaign, this article highlights the regulatory dynamism of environmental mobilization in a context of regulatory uncertainty, and campaigns against “locally unwanted land uses” more broadly.     

民国时期争取女子财产继承权的社会思潮与观念变迁

清末民国时期,男女平等思想发展、传统宗族制度衰落以及现代婚姻家庭继承理论和思潮的传播,促成了中国传统女子财产继承权的近代嬗变。在这一特殊的历史时期,争取女子财产继承权的社会思潮和观念变迁巨大。     

Some issues on the Internationalization of Chinese Economics Periodicals

The internationalization of Chinese economics periodicals is a process of being well known, accepted and applied worldwide. It is affected by many factors, such as the Chinese scientific development level, the difficult extent of cultural communication, transmission methods, self-quality, the extent of openness, and the size of international targets. In particular, transmission methods and self-quality are two controllable variables. Digitization can accelerate the internationalization process of Chinese economics periodicals in form. The essence of internationalization of Chinese economics periodicals is to make it an international periodical that can be possessed, shared and applied together all over the world. Only when the Chinese national features are integrated with the international community can the Chinese economics periodicals really reach a higher level in its internationalization.     

Realising the Right to Health for Young People in South Africa—Some Reflections

Abstract

The right to health is enshrined in the South African Constitution as well as a range of international and regional human rights treaties which South Africa accepts. Yet empirical data reveals some of the challenges faced by South African youth—childhood diseases, HIV/AIDS and such like. There are evidently challenges realising the right to health in practice. Nevertheless, South African courts have led the international field in recognising the justiciability of economic and social rights such as the right to health. Having reviewed the applicable laws and jurisprudence, the paper will conclude that a more holistic human rights-based approach offers perhaps the best way forward.     

China’s Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities

This article examines the production of China’s “ghost cities” and constant urban expansion to challenge the dominant conceptual narrative of rural-to-urban migration as the driver of urbanisation. It argues that behind China’s “miraculous” urbanisation story is a powerful ideological commitment to urban growth as the “royal road” to modernity and assessment of political performance. Local governments have a wide-ranging “tool-kit” for pursuing urbanisation, ranging from administrative border-drawing to expropriation of rural land and investment in expanding urban infrastructures. Urbanisation is the destination to which all paths seem to lead. Indeed, local states pursue the construction of new urban space, even when doing so harms them financially. But why? The concept of phantom urbanisation names the process whereby constructing the aesthetic form of the urban is even more important to local state actors than economic, demographic or environmental repercussions.     

Estonian nationalism through the postcolonial lens

ABSTRACT

The article approaches the controversial topics of (post-)Soviet Estonian nationalism from the perspective of Postcolonial Studies, drawing upon nationalism theory, as well as comparative literary and cultural analysis. It is argued that the global context of postcoloniality allows reflective intellectual space that enables analysis of Estonian nationalism’s problems and potential in their cultural and political embeddedness, without idealizing or demonizing it.     

Alleviating poverty through resource provision: The case of a South African agricultural project

The article documents the findings of a qualitative study that assessed the sustainability of providing resources for poverty alleviation. It argues that access to resources does not assure livelihood security. The study also argues that the ability to sustain resources, rather than merely facilitating access, assures poverty alleviation and livelihood security. Using a qualitative research method and the sustainable livelihoods approach, the article assesses the activities and performance of a small group of women in a government-sponsored agricultural project. The findings reveal that exited projects struggle to sustain themselves and that assetting alone – without skills, capacity, sense of ownership and a clear focus – does not yield the sustainability necessary for poverty alleviation. The conclusion is made that although resources are a necessary first step towards poverty alleviation, sustainable resource management should be highly valued in the process. The article recommends that agriculture-based development projects not be seen as the only option for the rural poor, as knowledge of farming is indeed crucial.     

Ecologies of relation: post-slavery,post-apartheid,and rethinking race across the Atlantic in Zakes Mda’s Cion

This article will argue that Zakes Mda’s 2007 novel Cion stages a dialog, one where two “Souths” – South Africa and the American South – speak to one another and give a critical voice to an under-acknowledged history of transatlantic discursive exchange on race and racial governance. Mda’s fictional South African critique, of an America still struggling with the cultural and political legacies of slavery, gestures towards a history of exchange between the two countries that in many ways is representative of a more global dialog on racial segregation during the first half of the twentieth century – of which both southern (US) segregation and apartheid are seminal examples. Moreover, this article explores various conceptualizations of race as well as the governance of racial relations as they have been articulated through ecological imaginaries, and especially between South Africa and the Southern United States over the course of the twentieth century. In this article, I argue that not only can apartheid (as well as pre-apartheid segregation) be rethought of as part of a global conversation on race and thus less as a South African anomaly, but also that the United States through its examples of various racialist technologies was highly influential across the colonial and apartheid worlds.