"自然法"理念是马克思主义法学的精髓

马克思、恩格斯不仅继承了西方历史上"自然法"高于一切制定法、人为法、实在法的传统,而且把"法",即由社会生产力和经济事实所呈现出来的"社会律"作为自然法则予以强化。认为法之所以演变为法律,不过是经济规律的自然发展所至,人们只有把"法"的自然本质———生产力发展的规律从经济事实中发掘出来,才能正确真实地表达"法律"。为此,他们将"自然法"的内容进行了革新,从另外一方面强化了西方自古以来"自然法"的传统理念。     

The new U.S.-China rapprochement： A view from Africa

The U.S. and China recently held a ＂dialogue＂ at the behest of policy makers in Washington for the mutual benefit of their governments and people and ostensibly the rest of humanity as well. Coming at a time of increasing quest for natural resources by many countries including China and Chinese obviously bourgeoning influence in Africa, that Washington decided to engage Beijing certainly, not only betrays U.S. apprehension over the emergence of a strong competitor for Africa＇s resources but also an attempt to whittle down China＇s growing international stature especially on the African continent. While the Chinese will not likely succumb to the U.S., this new found rapprochement between the two will certainly intensify the resource scramble in Africa. Whether the ＂severe＂ interest for African resources will benefit the continent or not depends on how African countries are able to manage the ensuing resource race between the U.S. and China.     

Being Positive About Positivism

Book reviewed in this article:
Matthew H. Kramer, In Defense of Legal Positivism: Law Without Trimmings     

Injustice and Employees' Destructive Responses: The Mediating Role of State Negative Affect

The focus of this study was employees' destructive behavioral intentions (i.e., exit, neglect, and aggressive voice) as a result of perceived injustice. In order to get an indication of the generalizability of the results, two studies employing different methodologies were conducted among different samples: a survey study (Study 1) among 244 female maternity nurses from The Netherlands, and a vignette study (Study 2) among 71 male and 43 female employees from an international company in South Africa. Furthermore, the second study tested whether the effects of injustice on destructive behavioral intentions were mediated by state negative affect. Two models appear to fit the data well. The first model suggests that interactional injustice gives rise to negative behavioral reactions through an increase in state negative affect. The second model shows that procedural justice can buffer the negative effects of low distributive justice. Specifically, employees report more negative affect and, subsequently, a stronger tendency to leave the organization only when both distributive and procedural justice are low. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Stakeholder involvement in collaborative regulatory processes: Using automated coding to track attendance and actions

Regulation increasingly mandates collaborative approaches to increase stakeholder input and streamline approval processes. However, understanding how to maintain stakeholder involvement over the course of a long collaborative process is vital to optimize effectiveness. This paper observes more than 700 stakeholders involved in developing and implementing a dam operating license over 16 years. We use text mining and Bayesian hierarchical modeling to observe meeting attendance and recorded actions in meeting minutes. We find that involvement decreased after the initial planning phase, but steadily increased through license development and implementation. After the regulatory mandate to consult with external stakeholders dissolved, overall attendance declined while attendance stability increased, meaning that the non‐mandatory stage involved a smaller cadre of dedicated actors. This indicates that high‐performing mandated stakeholder involvement processes rely on a constrained group of conveners to sustain interaction and have less turnover than what might be expected given existing evidence from grassroots involvement; assumptions about group dynamics based on involvement in grassroots processes may lead to improper predictions about who will participate, and how, in processes where stakeholder involvement is mandated.     

The Natural Law Foundation of the Market

In answering three important questions related to natural law, this paper offers a coherent explanation of the market. We argue that the market, rather than a mechanism that simply serves narrow self-interests, finds its legitimacy in the ethical origins of the market order. The need for law to support and sustain the market, including by imposing necessary limits on the freedom of the market players, flows from those ethical origins.     

Funding,capabilities and the use of child soldiers

Recent years have seen increased scholarly attention given to the issue of child soldiering. Primarily dedicated to the decision-making calculus of rebel groups, this body of work has generally emphasised supply-side versus demand-side arguments. We contribute to this growing literature by explicitly investigating a previously untested aspect of the latter. Prior scholarship has made vague references to a potential association between economic endowments and child soldiering, including natural resource wealth, but scant empirical attention has been given. We argue that the specific type of endowment has important consequences for the decision to utilise child soldiers. We argue access to and exploitation of lootable natural resources (e.g. gemstones) to be especially likely to promote the use of child soldiers due to their ease of access, the low skills required to harness them and the heightened likelihood that groups will become more profit-oriented. A systematic cross-national investigation of rebel groups provides robust evidence that lootable resources such as diamonds and gemstones are strongly associated with the use of children, while non-lootable resources such as oil are not.     

How democratic decentralisation facilitates,sustains, and interrupts market-driven development in India

Democratic decentralisation has emerged as an instrument to implement market-driven development, and elected bodies now extend commercial inputs for commodity production and link households to firms. However, the nature of market-driven development under this condition is understudied. This article focuses on an Indian case where, while access to market inputs was shaped by political capital with elected leaders, narrowing market participation, leaders – now market intermediaries – fostered trust in firms, helping sustain market participation. Conflicts over electoral politics interrupted market production. Markets rely on state institutions and are intertwined with politics, contrary to market proponents’ claims that markets stand above society and are unmediated spaces of exchange.     

Climate change research in bilateral development programmes: experiences from India and Peru

This article reflects on the merits and shortfalls of bilateral research programmes aimed at strengthening climate change research capabilities, using the experience from two programmes, the PACC and IHCAP in Peru and India, respectively. The study highlights key aspects of these types of bilateral programmes, namely: capacity; performance, salary and appreciation; funding; bureaucracy and hierarchy; publishing; and data sharing. Furthermore, it emerged that these programmes would benefit from a more extensive consolidation phase of the research activities and partnership rather than rapidly transferring into out- and up-scaling phases.     

Participatory modelling and development practice: artisanal fishers in Nicaragua

Development plans with insufficient knowledge about local realities, and that do not share technical or planning details with the target communities, bedevil development practice. This study used a form of participatory modelling in three fishing communities in Nicaragua to enable fishers to explore their economy and the potential impacts of fishery-based development projects. Co-designing a model of the fishing economy in the form of a board game created a forum in which facilitators and participants could arrive at a shared understanding of local fishing practices and the costs and benefits of strategies for addressing the fishers’ priorities.