Neo-patrimonial practices and sustainability of authoritarian regimes in Eurasia

The article analyzes authoritarian regimes within the post-Soviet territory in terms of informal practices (clannishness, clientelism and patronage) and their characteristics used by political leaders to form a power coalition. It has been argued that any of these informal practices determine a power coalition of a certain size, which is consequential for regime sustainability. Power coalitions formed on the basis of a clan-like nature is the least effective way to retain power and generally leads to regime destabilization. Clientelism, which allows for forming a power coalition on a wider basis, is a more effective strategy in terms of regime sustainability. Maximum regime sustainability is reached when patronage practices are used, which require more material resources and are only accessible to a limited number of wealthy states.     

检察办案风险点重点监控与处理机制的探讨

随着司法体制改革的深入推进,“谁办案谁负责、谁决定谁负责”的司法责任制落实完善,检察机关如何立足主责主业,有效防范检察办案风险,规范检察权的运行,化解社会矛盾,切实提高司法公信力,满足人民群众对民主、法治、公平、正义、安全、环境等方面的新需求,提供更优质的法治产品、检察产品成为新课题。文章从检察办案风险存在的客观性以及进行风险控制的必要性出发,对检察办案风险控制现状进行分析,从而进一步明确检察办案风险点并进行重点监控,并就在案管部门的协调监督下如何建立长效的检察办案风险处理机制提出意见建议。     

全面二孩政策与中国劳动力供给

人口是构成劳动力的基础,生育政策调整下生育水平变动引发人口规模与结构变动,从而对劳 动力市场尤其是劳动力供给产生重要影响。本研究在对我国计划生育政策的调整和演变、劳动力供给的状况与 趋势进行分析的基础上,进一步从宏观视角探讨全面二孩政策与我国劳动力供给的关系。总体来看,全面二孩 政策对政策实施后前十五年女性劳动力的劳动参与率影响十分有限,而从长远来看,对我国未来的劳动力规模 有一定的补充。另外,产业结构升级和技术发展背景下我国未来劳动力需求主要是质量和结构而非规模。因此, 进一步减弱了生育政策调整对劳动力市场的影响后果。     

Tianjin Binhai New Area: A Case Study of Multi-Level Streams Model of Chinese Decision-Making

The authors develop a new multi-level streams model in order to explain the Chinese decision-making process with regards to the top-down allocation of resources and administrative reforms. Using this policy model, the 2005 decision to upgrade the Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) to the national level can be regarded as a relatively rational choice with a series of interaction of political processes among the elites at the central and local levels such as the local officials and social elites, and central leaders. However, in the administrative system of economic development, there are disagreements and conflicts among different parts within and outside the TBNA. The central and the Tianjin governments are now trying to coordinate the relationship among local governments within the Circum-Bohai Region and within the TBNA through structural reform and personnel reshuffling.

民族区域自治法配套法规建设再探讨

<民族区域自治法>要发挥有效的保障作用,必须有一系列配套工程给以强有力的支撑.党中央和国务院非常重视民族区域自治法配套法规建设.民族区域自治法配套法规建设取得了一定成就,但还存在一些问题.国务院及其部委以及自治区和辖有民族自治地方的省、直辖市进一步完善民族区域自治法配套法规建设,是当前我国社会主义民族法制建设的紧迫任务和重要内容.     

The Artist is Present: performing the icon

This article considers the work of performance artist Marina Abramovi?, focusing on the use of reperformance, the practice of hiring others to recreate historical performance works, in her 2010 retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, The Artist is Present. Brawner utilizes Abramovi?'s artistic work with iconography and icon making and draws on her own experience as one of the retrospective's reperformers to highlight both the affective work that went into the creation of the show as well as its function as a religiously inflected meditation of celebrity and art stardom. The artist's work is explored through sources including New York Times art critic Holland Carter's turn of phrase “diva hokum,” a pejorative here reclaimed to mean the process of one's own icon making, a control of image and message that becomes integral to the structure of the work, and a balancing act between the performance and its afterlife.     

Women and War

Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black (1983) is a radical example of women's Gothic horror. It is a popular ghost story that has been successfully adapted for the London stage. In addition, it offers a social critique of motherhood and contemporary rhetoric surrounding the family. Scullion interprets the novel from several critical perspectives: feminist, psychological, biographical, generic and intertextual. Principally, however, she offers a reading of the novel that engages with its immediate historical context. The contention is that Hill's novel mediates women's anxieties about motherhood and autonomy during the early 1980s when the institution of the family in Britain was an ideological battleground. Set primarily during the 1860s, The Woman in Black exposes Victorian hypocrisy towards the unmarried mother, and indirectly probes the quasi-Victorian values promulgated in the 1980s, during the first term of a Conservative right-wing government. The protagonist of the novel, the eponymous woman in black, resists the lot of the so-called fallen woman. In her physical form, she refuses to submit to Victorian patriarchal values by attempting to reclaim her illegitimate child. In spectral form, she repeatedly inflicts suffering on families by causing the death of their children. Her excessive revenge knows no compassion, and recognizes no boundaries of place and time. Her ghost is never laid to rest. Neither is order restored by the closing pages. Thus the novel, as well as being a popular ghost story, challenges assumptions about women's 'natural' acquiescence and their unconditionally generous responses to husbands, partners and children. Shaped by the social climate in which it was written, The Woman in Black suggests that mothers under extreme pressure have the potential, like any other members of the family, for cruelty to children. Through its forceful rejection of either idealized or derogatory stereotypes of women, this novel belongs to the genre of radical Gothic horror.     

中美贸易摩擦对就业的影响及对策

在"美国优先"的指导思想下,美国特朗普政府对中国意图进行贸易战,借此振兴美国制造业,为底层劳动者创造更多就业岗位。贸易战争背后其实是就业战争。对中国来说,由于对美贸易依赖性较大,因而有可能对国内就业产生比较明显的就业冲击。极端情况下,将会使我国就业岗位减少350-580万个。因此,通过谈判协商是解决贸易争端的最佳策略。而进一步扩大实施"一带一路"发展战略,减少对少数国家贸易依赖,以及加快推进创新驱动战略,将有助于减轻贸易战对我国就业的影响。     

Climate Change and Marx in the Twenty-First Century,Part II

This paper comes in two parts. Part I, published in the June 2018 issue of this journal, opened with an examination of the relationship between Marx’s characterization of the centrality of commodity production to capitalism as a system, its destructive results on Nature and the global scale of the climate crisis confronting the 21st century. Following a discussion of these issues, Part I moved on to critically examine three models of political economy: Hayekism, Keynesianism and State Socialism. Part II takes the argument further by critically examining a fourth model, Green Keynesianism, currently being manufactured in response to the crisis of climate change, in order to show the inability of all four models to resolve the existential threat posed to humanity in the 21st century and beyond. I then proceed to posit, as a thought experiment, a now-necessary fifth model of political economy, Green Socialism, along with the building blocks important to its evolution as a coherent system. The paper concludes with a brief mention of both the ends and means that demand serious consideration if Green Socialism is to be realized.