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.     

Fuel to the Fire: Natural Disasters and the Duration of Civil Conflict

Do natural disasters prolong civil conflict? Or are disasters more likely to encourage peace as hostilities diminish when confronting shared hardship or as shifts in the balance of power between insurgents and the state hasten cessation? To address these questions, this study performs an event history analysis of disasters’ impact on the duration of 224 armed intrastate conflicts occurring in 86 states between 1946 and 2005. I contend that natural disasters increase conflict duration by decreasing the state’s capacity to suppress insurgency, while reinforcing insurgent groups’ ability to evade capture and avoid defeat. First, disasters’ economic impact coupled with state financial outlays for disaster relief and reconstruction, reduce resources available for counterinsurgency and nation building in conflict zones. Second, the military’s role in administering humanitarian assistance can reduce the availability of troops and military hardware for counterinsurgency, prompt temporary ceasefires with insurgents, or both. Third, natural disasters can cause infrastructural damages that disproportionately hinder the state’s capacity to execute counterinsurgency missions, thereby making insurgent forces more difficult to capture and overcome. The combination of these dynamics should encourage longer conflicts in states with higher incidence of disaster. Empirical evidence strongly supports this contention, indicating that states with greater disaster vulnerability fight longer wars.     

Complying with Human Rights

ABSTRACT

The empirical assessment of how signatories of human rights conventions comply with their obligations has, so far, yielded conflicting results, especially regarding the compliance mechanisms that are the most promising to ensure improving human rights records. We argue that this is due to the fact that differences in compliance systems have been neglected and that different compliance mechanisms have been assessed in isolation, without considering possible interactions. To analyze this argument, we propose a novel way to assess the effect of these mechanisms by relying on a Markov-transition model. Our results show that human rights violations are time dependent and that the effect of independent variables is conditional on previous human rights violations as well as on the strength of human rights compliance systems.     

促进循环经济发展的税收政策探讨

随着各国环境资源瓶颈的日益凸现和可持续发展理念的不断深入,循环经济作为一种新的经济发展模式迅速发展起来。税收作为国家宏观调控的重要手段,在促进循环经济发展上具有其他经济手段无法替代的作用。该文简要探讨循环经济税收政策的理论依据,分析研究中国循环经济税收政策的发展现状,提出关于完善中国循环经济税收政策的对策建议。     

滨海新区构建生态新城的生态学解析及立法思考

天津滨海新区要建成生态城区,其开发开放离不开生态环境的保护与恢复。该文着眼于滨海新区开发开放中生态环境保护,基于该区生态环境现状,在分析天津市十一五环境规划相关内容的基础上,从生态哲学、环境立法角度对滨海新区的生态环境保护与建设进行了理论探索。     

环境刑法的伦理基础探析

本文首先将人与自然的关系划分为本体论上的主体共享关系、实践论上的主客体关系以及价值论上的主体共享关系和主客体关系。以此为基础,在人与自然价值论关系层面笔者展开了对主张主客体关系的人类中心主义与主张主体共享关系的非人类中心主义环境伦理观的利弊分析。考虑到弱式人类中心主义对公众道德水准的合理要求与刑法道德底线定位之暗合、刑法对人的预设模式之要求以及刑法的可操作,本文将弱式人类中心主义确立为环境刑法的伦理基础。     

Predicting Serial Killers' Home Base Using a Decision Support System

The effectiveness of a geographical decision support tool (Dragnet) forlocating the base of serial offenders was compared across 570 modelscomprised of a range of negative exponential functions, buffer zonecomponents, and normalization parameters. The models were applied to thebody disposal locations within each series for 70 U.S. serial killers. Twonormalization parameters were compared for all functions. The test ofeffectiveness was a specifically defined measure of search cost. Whenapplied to the Dragnet predictions it was found that the specially developednormalization parameter (QRange) produced the optimal search costs. Theoptimal search cost was also found to be for a function that did not includeany buffer zone. The optimal, average search cost across the whole samplewas 11% of the defined search area. Fifty-one percent of the offendersresided in the first 5% of the search area, with 87% in the first 25%. Allresided in the total defined search area. These results support thepotential for operational tools using such procedures as well ascontributing to our understanding of criminal's geographicalbehavior. The applicability to other forms of serial crime is considered.     

Climate Change and Environmental Security: For Whom the Discourse Shifts

This article explores the implications of the April 2007 United Nations Security debate on the security dimensions of a changing climate for international climate change politics. Specifically, our analysis focuses on whether and how security concerns have been addressed in past international political debates on climate change and considers whether the Security Council debate, which emphasized the threat of climate-related conflict, reflects a discursive shift. We elaborate on two general discourses on the relationship between environment and security, which we call environmental conflict and environmental security . Using content and discourse analysis, we demonstrate that both the historical climate change debate and the more recent Security Council debate have been informed by the environmental security discourse, meaning that a discursive shift has not taken place. We conclude by considering the possibility of a future discursive shift to the environmental conflict perspective and argue that such a shift would be counterproductive to the search for an effective global response to climate change.     

论美国的正当程序理念及制度对我国环境行政听证的启示--中美环境行政听证制度比较

美国联邦宪法的"正当程序条款"赋予了公民听证的权利,并在此基础上发展形成了一整套听证制度,环境行政听证制度经20世纪后半叶的不断发展也趋于完善,从而给予了公民充分参与环境决策以维护自身环境权益的机会和权利.相比之下,我国的环境行政听证才刚刚起步,有许多地方需要尽快完善.美国完善的环境行政听证制度可以为我们提供这方面的参考.