Advancing Knowledge through Grassroots Experiments: Connecting Culture and Sustainability

Since 2006, hundreds of communities in Canada have produced Integrated Community Sustainability Plans, based on a four-pillar model of sustainability and developed in consultation with residents and stakeholders. These community-based experiments have developed models, knowledge, and insights about the place of culture in local sustainability. Both conceptual thinking and planning practices regarding the role of culture in sustainable communities were at an embryonic stage when these initiatives took place. The discussions, plans, and implementation processes have advanced both theory and “leading edge” practices with regard to culture and community sustainability, illustrating the importance of a robust relationship between research and practice.     

国家治理现代化视阈下的法律、道德与组织规范关系

国家治理现代化须以系统完备、科学规范、运行有效的规范体系为基础。而法律、道德和"组织规范"共同构成现代社会的规范体系。因而,高度重视"组织规范"并正确处理好它与法律道德的关系,就显得十分重要。"组织规范"具有民间性、自主和自治性,有权制定并实施"组织规范",约束组织本身及其成员的相关行为。这些"组织规范"上承法律下接道德,但又不是照抄照搬,而是依"法无禁止即可为"原则独立存在。在中国继续深化改革和努力实现国家治理现代化的背景下,有必要重新认识三大基础规范的关系,从而有效发挥"组织规范"的作用,构建良好社会秩序。     

Poverty amid plenty: structural violence and local governance in western Congo

The protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has drawn sharp criticism regarding the model of liberal peacebuilding employed in the country. Critics emphasise the importance of local ownership of peacebuilding mechanisms at sub-national as well as national levels. This raises questions in relation to the popular legitimacy and efficacy of local mechanisms. Drawing on field research conducted in the relatively affluent province of Bas-Congo in Western Congo, this article highlights a lack of popular legitimacy for provincial-level political authority within the province stemming from an acute marginalisation of the population from local structures of power and wealth. The article also demonstrates the inefficacy of more local, village and neighbourhood-based political structures which, aimed at conflict mitigation rather than transformation, ignore the structural roots of local conflicts and do little to counteract the growing social distrust, conflict and disintegration within local communities.     

Promoting empowerment? The World Bank's Village Investment Project in Kyrgyzstan

This article examines the extent to which the World Bank's community-driven Village Investment Project empowered people to influence the choice of local investments (micro-projects) and to exact accountability from their leaders. It is based on qualitative interviews and group discussions in 16 rural communities. The research demonstrates that the project provided an effective mechanism for responsive infrastructure delivery to address local priority needs. However, it did not improve accountability either within or outside the micro-project boundaries. The project's bottom-up development model was not by itself sufficient to enable people to exercise power over local government officials and informal leaders in the absence of effective horizontal accountability institutions within the state.     

Democracy,development and chieftaincy along South Africa's ‘Platinum Highway’: some emerging issues

South Africa's ‘Platinum Highway’ (Generally referred to as ‘the platinum belt’.) – ‘a 150?km continuation of platinum group metals (PGM)-bearing reefs’ [Havenstein, R. (2004). “The Platinum Highway – Where Does It Lead?” Accessed May 10, 2011. http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/EBIT-Innovate/The_Platinum_Highway-where_does_it.pdf, 1] – has ushered in a new era of considerable accumulation of mineral revenues by a few traditional authorities on whose communal lands platinum ore is extracted. The Royal Bafokeng community in the North West province stands as an epitome of this phenomenon. However, not much is known about the relationships at local governance level, particularly the interface of mineral wealth and community development. Adopting the Bafokeng community as an empirical case in this article, I argue that, despite some observed benefits, vast mineral wealth is likely to deepen tensions between local power holders within the sphere of rural local governance, thus paradoxically hampering development, particularly in a context where traditional authorities are the architects and champions of resource-engendered community development.     

Uncertainty at the EU's borders: narratives of EU external relations in the revised European Neighbourhood Policy towards the southern borderlands

This article analyses the role of narratives in European Union (EU) external relations in the revised European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and systematically explores how they operate in practice in the context of the EU's border management practices vis-à-vis the “southern borderlands”, in particular with respect to their inclusionary and exclusionary potential. Key EU documents and statements by EU agents, released throughout the first three years of Arab uprisings and pertaining to the revised ENP, will be subjected to a thorough examination which highlights four observations: first, in spite of the fact that the revised ENP is rooted in several narratives, some nevertheless dominate over others; second, the simultaneous presence of and recourse to different narratives contribute to an increase, rather than a decrease, of uncertainty in the EU's southern borderlands; third, despite a multitude of narratives which serve to legitimize EU action in the framework of the revised ENP, the latter perpetuates the logics of its predecessor by generating benefits mainly for the EU itself; fourth, that the first three years of the revised ENP have in practice demonstrated that an imbalance exists between on the one hand the original acceptance of the narratives by EU stakeholders and on the other hand their willingness to abide by them and fill them with life.     

Morphing the Demos into the right shape. Normative principles for enfranchising resident aliens and expatriate citizens

In this article I criticize, first, democratic inclusion principles that are indeterminate with regard to democratic boundaries and indifferent towards the structural features of polities. I suggest that a democratic stakeholder principle passes these critical tests and can be applied to democratic polities of different kinds. Second, I compare birthright-based and residence-based membership regimes at state and local levels and consider how they can accommodate international migrants. Third, I argue that these two regimes are not freestanding alternatives between which democratic polities have to choose, but are combined in a multilevel architecture of democratic citizenship, in which the inclusion and exclusion dynamics of birthright and residence mutually constrain each other and every individual is included as a citizen in both types of polities.     

Conclusion: agency,context and emergent post-uprising regimes

This conclusion summarizes the evidence explaining the divergent trajectories taken by post Arab uprising states in terms of multiple variables, each illustrated by an iconic case, namely: State Failure and Competitive governance (Syria), Regime Restoration and Hybrid Governance (Egypt) and Polyarchic Governance (Tunisia). Factors include the starting point: levels of opposition mobilization and regimes' resilience – a function of their patrimonial-bureaucratic balance; whether or not a transition coalition forms is crucial for democratization prospects. Context also matters for democratization, particularly political economic factors, such as a balance of class power and a productive economy; political culture (level of societal identity cleavages) and a minimum of international intervention. Finally, the balance of agency between democracy movements, Islamists, the military and workers shapes democratization prospects.     

行政诉讼司法建议制度的功能衍化

行政诉讼司法建议原本是一项裁判执行措施,但随着最高人民法院司法政策的变化,其发挥的事实功能被大大扩展。实践中,行政诉讼司法建议在规范性文件修改中发挥着功能性审查的作用。从社会变迁的视角观察不难发现,维稳压力、协调和解政策与地方发展型政府的模式变迁,诱发了对于行政诉讼司法建议的制度性需求,从而迫使司法建议成为行政诉讼工具箱中的重要工具。行政诉讼司法建议制度的功能衍化,为法社会学研究提供了一个极具价值的制度样本,亦为行政诉讼法的未来发展提供了背景材料。     

The Politics of Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction is a central concept in the framing of the legal world but it has received short shrift in mainstream legal theory. This article examines the prevailing conceptual forms of jurisdiction in order to retrieve space for the political. The study of jurisdiction is also the study of the political community that it invokes and authorises. The first part of the article examines the three forms that jurisdiction takes in contemporary scholarship (territory, community, governance) to show that each form overlooks some implication of the political community that is tethered to jurisdiction. The second part of the article flips the inquiry to demonstrate the oversight of jurisdiction in theories of sovereign exception. The emergent understanding of jurisdiction as political provides an anchor for the study of jurisdiction going forward and highlights the potential role for jurisdictional arrangements in contemporary public law and constitutional law settings.