Rethinking ‘Rape as a Weapon of War’

One of the most significant shifts in current thinking on war and gender is the recognition that rape in wartime is not a simple by-product of war, but often a planned and targeted policy. For many feminists ‘rape as a weapon of war’ provides a way to articulate the systematic, pervasive, and orchestrated nature of wartime sexual violence that marks it as integral rather than incidental to war. This recognition of rape as a weapon of war has taken on legal significance at the Rwandan and Yugoslav Tribunals where rape has been prosecuted as a crime against humanity and genocide. In this paper, I examine how the Rwanda Tribunal’s record of judgments conceives of rape enacted as an instrument of the genocide. I consider in particular how the Tribunal’s conception of ‘rape as a weapon of war’ shapes what can be known about sexual violence and gender in the Rwandan genocide and what cannot, the categories of victims legally recognised and those that are not, and the questions pursued, and those foreclosed, about the patterns of violence before and during the genocide.

儒家和谐治理观与国家治理的制度化--从制度文明视角扬弃传统和谐治理观

儒家和谐治理观对历史中国和现代东亚国家的巩固和发展起了重要作用,并可以为当今中国和谐社会的建设和国家治理提供可资借鉴的思想资源。但由于其存在着理论与制度不同构、制度资源太少的根本性缺陷,不能作为解决当今社会政治问题的现成方案。欲实现社会和谐和长治久安,必须重构现代治理观,走出重“政治人”建设轻政治制度建设的历史误区,开辟一条靠制度执政、靠制度治国的新路。制度建设和创新的核心是民主与法治,其中又以党和政府的制度改革为重点。对战略策略作出理性化的选择,则是制度变革成败的关键。     

Al-Qaeda’s Propaganda Decoded: A Psycholinguistic System for Detecting Variations in Terrorism Ideology

We describe a novel hybrid method of content analysis that combines the speed of computerized text analysis with the contextual sensitivity of human raters, and apply it to speeches that were given by major leaders of Al-Qaeda (AQ)—both in its “core” Afghanistan/Pakistan region and its affiliate group in Iraq. The proposed “Ideology Extraction using Linguistic Extremization” (IELEX) categorization method has acceptable levels of inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities. The method uncovered subtle (and potentially non-conscious) differences in the emphases that Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri put on the various components of their ideological justification for terrorism. We show how these differences were independently recognized as the crux of the rift in AQ, based on documents that were confiscated in Abbottabad following Usama Bin Laden’s assassination. Additionally, several of the ideological discrepancies that we detected between AQ “core” and its Iraqi affiliate correspond to schisms that presumably led to the splintering of AQ Iraq and the rise of ISIS. We discuss IELEX’s capability to quantify a variety of grievance-based terrorist ideologies, along with its use towards more focused and efficient counter-terrorism and counter-messaging policies.     

“伊斯兰国”对中亚地区的安全威胁:迷思还是现实?

对于"伊斯兰国"是否会对中亚地区安全构成威胁以及这种威胁的程度如何,国内外学术界的看法存在诸多分歧。"伊斯兰国"通过招募中亚地区的人员和对各国的边界进行袭扰,并通过意识形态宣传扩大其价值观在中亚地区的影响力等方式,的确对该地区安全形势带来了一定的冲击。不过,"伊斯兰国"对中亚安全形势的影响是有限的。这主要是因为,"伊斯兰国"在国际反恐联盟的打击下,地面作战部队被限制在叙利亚一伊拉克境内,无法在中亚地区开展直接的攻击。此外,由于中亚伊斯兰特殊的发展经历,使"伊斯兰国"的意识形态在当地缺乏群众基础。这些因素,决定了"伊斯兰国"对中亚安全的影响主要体现在促进该地区部分极端势力思想的进一步激进化或激励部分恐怖分子发起"独狼式"恐怖活动等。随着"伊斯兰国"的战场失利,部分"圣战"分子回流中亚,需要对"伊斯兰国"与中亚安全之间的关联性予以更多关注,并尽早研究对策。     

Criminalising Academia: The Protection of State Information Bill and Academic Freedom

This article assesses the implications of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill for academic freedom in South Africa, specifically for communications, media and journalism studies. The Bill requires the security cluster to classify sensitive documents on national security grounds. Academic teaching and research can help citizens to understand whether the security cluster is acting in the universal interest, rather than the interest of a political elite; it can also be used to assess media performance in reporting on national security matters. Using a critical approach to the concept of national security, I argue that the Bill favours secrecy over openness, and South Africa’s embrace of the human security definition of national security has contributed to the problem. This overemphasis on secrecy is likely to reduce the few spaces that exist in academia for critical, emancipatory work on security issues, which could hobble the sector’s attempts to understand the deeper processes at work in the security cluster. If such enquiry is marginalised, then the higher education system risks becoming an instrument for continuity rather than change in South Africa’s existing, highly unequal power relations: relations that are being maintained increasingly by force.     

“Les catholiques sont l’élite!”: représentations de l’espace politique par une minorité religieuse au Burkina Faso

Abstract

The Catholic Church occupies a privileged position in the religious arena in Burkina Faso. Having invested very early in the public arena of the country, it constitutes a vital actor in the socio-political landscape of the country as attested to by its involvement in the domains of education and health and its positioning as mediator in times of crisis. Based on a field survey conducted among members of the Catholic community (members of the clergy, religious and lay), this article studies the manner in which Catholics in Burkina Faso portray themselves as a religious community in the country’s political arena. It reveals that in Burkina Faso the Catholics portray themselves as a dominant religious minority in terms of politics due to their disproportionate engagement in the apparatus of the state. The article also shows that the Catholics in Burkina Faso see their dominant position as under threat, on the one hand, from competition by the Protestants and, on the other, by the rise of Islamism.     

Limits of regulatory governance change in the post-developmental state: Korean telecommunications market restructurings from a comparative perspective

This study explains the limits of institutional transformation in Korea from the developmental state to a post-developmental state, in terms of regulatory institutions instead of developmental institutions. The Korean state has taken advantage of the government's discretionary policy changes and power formed by both informal state institutions and informal policy networks, while the regulatory state has placed a special emphasis on social consensus as well as political support for changes of market institutions. New market rules and laws have also been inefficient and ineffective for fair market competition. Limits of regulatory governance change have occurred due to misalignments between informal regulatory institutions in the developmental state and formal regulatory institutions in the post-developmental state. State managers have created discretionary state intervention in policy implementation, politicized the roles of regulatory agencies, and brought ministry-type regulatory state institutions back in. The establishment of effective market institutions has failed due to informal market institutions (unfair and illegal market practices) that have interfered with the policy implementation of new formal market regulations.     

征收补偿中的主观价值

公平市场价值是征收补偿的通常标准,是自愿的买家愿意支付给自愿的卖家的价格,包含了财产对于财产权人的平均主观价值,不包含特殊的主观价值和自治价值。补偿超过平均主观价值的主观价值技术上不可能;财产权是法定的权利,负有社会义务,法律不补偿财产权人的过敏反应;补偿某些特殊的主观价值与宪法价值不兼容,还可能给财产权的策略性抵抗提供正当理由。许多域外征收法规定不补偿特殊主观价值,但特殊主观价值可以通过其他概念在个案中进入补偿。中国征收法采通行的公平市场价值补偿标准,没有规定主观价值的补偿,但主观价值可以通过社会稳定风险评估、补助和搬迁奖励部分进入补偿额。     

制衡资本权力——转型中国确保制度正义的关键

正义是政治的首要原则,社会基本结构的正义性是人类政治文明的核心表征。人类政治文明的发展历程充分表明,缺乏制衡的国家权力和资本权力往往成为现代社会中根本的压迫性力量。在中国政治发展的特定情势下,制衡资本权力逐渐成为转型中国政治发展的关键命题,是转型中国确保制度正义的关键。当然,有效规训资本权力的过程不单纯是一个企业主动承担社会责任的过程,更是一个涉及各个利益相关者之间平等博弈、公共协商和理性妥协的政治过程。在集中讨论转型中国制衡资本权力的现实必要性和基本途径的基础上,提出:在转型中国,制衡资本权力与构建正义的社会制度体系之间存在着密切联系,而国家自主、社会自治与价值均衡则共同成为有效制衡资本权力的前提条件。     

对公民受教育权进行司法救济之探讨

高校的招生行为直接影响到公民的受教育权。若公民的受教育权受到公立高校招生行为的侵害,对其进行司法救济是可行而且必要的。该司法救济的具体操作,应当遵循程序性审查、有限审查和对高校招生规章适当审查三大基本原则,同时应建立相应的国家赔偿机制。