“明治维新”与日本近代立宪政治建设

近代以来,面对世界资本主义的崛起,日本为了摆脱被西方列强殖民化的命运,实现富国强兵,掀起了一场推翻封建幕府统治发展资本主义的社会变革--明治维新,立宪政治建设是明治政府建立发展资本主义必然结果,是日本实现富国强兵的历史要求。立宪政治有效地整和了社会力量,降低了社会发展成本,使日本在短时间内发展为世界强国。     

马克思政治起源思想的黑格尔主义来源及其早期论述

在批判和继承黑格尔政治哲学思想的基础上,马克思提出了社会个人主义的人学方法。在此基础上,马克思认为,现实的社会个人是政治(国家)的逻辑起点;政治是人的社会性和政治性的体现与对象化,政治是人的社会存在与活动方式;根源于人的社会本性和政治本性的政治是社会政治,政治国家(即国家政治)的形成就是对社会政治的扬弃。     

Oprah.com: Lifestyle expertise and the politics of recognition

The contemporary mediascape has been marked by a proliferation of popular TV genres in which the public appear as central protagonists. These genres are part of a broader shift in the relationship between media and audiences which challenges traditional conceptions of public service broadcasting and appear to represent a shift from media as public knowledge to media as constituting a space for diffuse popular engagement. A central feature of this shift has been the growing role of popular forms of expertise on television. This paper maps the main critical debates around participatory television and the role of the expert, from earlier work on talk shows to more recent discussions of reality and makeover TV. It notes a transition within the critical media and cultural studies literature from a focus on public sphere theory and questions of democratization to a growing concern with the role played by popular media culture in supporting new modes of governance based on the expert mediation of normative self-control. In this paper we analyze the role of experts on Oprah Winfrey's popular website Oprah.com, noting both the utility and limitations of a governmental perspective. Extending upon Foucault's notion of the productive nature of liberal subjecthood, the paper suggests the more positive role played by popular expertise in contributing to a media-civic culture articulated to a politics of recognition.     

Politics and Image: The Conceptual Value of Branding

This article argues that the brand concept is a powerful tool for understanding political images. It challenges typical economic versions of political marketing that tend to deemphasize the significance of communication, popular culture, and personality in politics and argues that the brand as a concept can bring together the economic and the aesthetic, rational choice and cultural resonance. It proposes a model of brand distinctiveness and argues that this may be useful both in the analysis of party communication and in the normative evaluation of that communication.     

Branding the Image of a Fox: The Psychological Profile of EU President Herman Van Rompuy

This article presents the branding case of EU president Herman Van Rompuy. The branding of the political image is at the heart of being “in control.” Political candidates, even those with a damaged reputation, are therefore challenged to produce an image that projects nothing but the positive side of their characters or the traits that fit the position they desire. Which are the personality traits required, in the given context, from a chief executive of the European Union? And which are the traits projected by Van Rompuy? This article introduces the psychological profiling technique by Immelman (2004 Immelman, A. (2004). Millon inventory of diagnostic criteria manual (2nd ed.). (Available from Aubrey Immelman, Dept. of Psychology, St. John's University, Collegeville, MN 56321, USA). [Google Scholar]) as a political marketing technique. Thanks to this personality assessment that refers to the public image, it becomes possible to brand the profile of the current EU president and to compare the personal profile with the desired one.     

Reclaiming Politics: Popular Democracy in Britain after the Scottish Referendum

Referendums are often criticised for being elite‐controlled and undeliberative. This article argues that the detailed, multiactor regulation of the Scottish referendum resulted in an elaborate legal regime which helped to overcome these potential pathologies, diluting executive control and facilitating an exercise in national public engagement. It addresses the troubled history of referendum use in the UK and contends that the Scottish process may well transform how referendums are now viewed. Indeed, one outcome of the Scottish process is likely to be a greater demand at UK level for the use of direct democracy in processes of significant constitutional change. It is by no means certain, however, that these demands for greater popular engagement in the process of constitutional change will be met, particularly when we consider the Smith Commission process, which marks a return to elite interparty bargaining.     

Going it Alone? The Choice of Political Union in British Politics

This article explores the inter‐related debates over Britain's relationship with the EU and that over the future of the UK. It argues that euroscepticism and Scottish independence are based on exceptionalist identities that now revolve around economic policy. Elite euroscepticism cleaves to a neoliberal vision of minimalist regulation, while advocates of Scottish independence claim Westminster's austerity policies make the British Union incompatible with social democracy. However, this presentation of the choice facing British voters ignores the serious contradictions that overhauling the current order entails. Both forms of exceptionalism fail to recognize the significant limitations of self‐government outside and within the EU. If Conservatives can contain their neoliberal flirtation with EU withdrawal they are very well placed to prosper electorally. The dilemma of which union(s) to choose might thus constitute the prelude to the entrenchment of the economic and political order that gave rise to such contestation in the first place.     

Codes in context: How states,markets, and civil society shape adherence to global labor standards

Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs – such as certification regimes and codes of conduct – that diffuse global standards. However, little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large‐scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, and market institutions promote supply chain factories' adherence to the global labor standards embodied in codes of conduct imposed by multinational buyers. We find that suppliers are more likely to adhere when they are embedded in states that participate actively in the International Labour Organization treaty regime and that have stringent domestic labor law and high levels of press freedom. We further demonstrate that suppliers perform better when they serve buyers located in countries where consumers are wealthy and socially conscious. These findings suggest the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation.     

Regime security,base politics and rent-seeking: the local and global political economies of the American air base in Kyrgyzstan, 2001–2010

Unlike the eponymous hero of the Kyrgyz epic, Manas, who united the Kyrgyz people, the American air base situated at Kyrgyzstan's Manas International Airport became a source of fracture in Kyrgyz politics after its establishment in late 2001 to support the US-led war in Afghanistan. Whilst international attention focuses on the geopolitics of a so-called New Great Game over basing rights in Central Asia, a more significant political and economic struggle concerning the Manas Air Base is related to its fuel supplies. The air base became a source of rent for the ruling elites and an object of controversy between the government and opposition in two successful uprisings, which removed presidents Askar Akayev and Kurmanbek Bakiyev from power (in 2005 and 2010, respectively). The air base's secret fuel contractors, with their unknown beneficiaries, offshore registration and low visibility, built close links to the regimes of the two ousted presidents. The lucrative and illicit contracts and subcontracts were purportedly used by both presidents and their entourages for personal enrichment and to strengthen their regimes but were ultimately a factor in their downfall. Drawing on the results of recent congressional and non-governmental investigations and interviews with representatives of the fuel-supply companies and members of the former regime, this work assesses the role of the US Manas Air Base in regime security and rent-seeking schemes during the Akayev and Bakiyev tenures. Thus, this article will contribute to the growing literature on rent-seeking in Eurasia's hybrid regimes and the external dimensions of regime security.