The Effects of a Police/Victim Assistance Crisis Team Approach to Domestic Violence

A police/victim assistance crisis intervention program was evaluated over a 6-month period for its effect on police-related outcomes. Police report data on crisis team cases (N = 96) were compared to a random selection of family violence cases (N = 80) that were not served by the crisis team. The crisis team cases generated more arrests; however, victim cooperation was lower than in noncrisis intervention cases. Implications for work with family violence and victim assistance are discussed, as well as needs for future research.     

社会法视角下的经济法探析

在"法律的社会化背景"之下,社会法兴起并不断发展壮大,逐渐成为了独立于公法和私法之外的第三法域。经济法和社会法在社会本位、调节手段等多方面有着契合之处,针对中国经济法发展中所存在的国家本位倾向和权力干预扩张的特性,社会法的社会本位思想及社会自治的调整手段等众多特点,对经济的发展无疑有着指导和借鉴价值。     

对“国家干预”的逻辑解析——基于经济法的视角

关于经济法的概念,学界有影响的观点主要有经济协调关系说、需要国家干预说、经济管理与市场运行关系说、国家调节关系说、新经济行政法论等。综观我国经济法概念的种种学说,"国家干预"是经济法概念的基本内涵。本文从逻辑学的角度对此进行阐释,以期进一步阐明经济法的本质和特征。     

Do the Root Causes of Civil War Matter? On Using Knowledge to Improve Peacebuilding Interventions

Abstract

The normative and practical success of the 1990s campaign on the right and responsibility to intervene to stop civil wars should be acknowledged so that policy and research can move on to the more pressing question of how we intervene and improve on currently inadequate results. This essay confronts a standard explanation, the failure to address the root causes of a conflict. It argues from academic research on three aspects – the knowledge on causes shaping current policies, the interests of those who matter in intervention, and the new research on civil war – that a focus on root causes would not improve outcomes and could even be counterproductive.     

The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization,Intervention, Statebuilding (Part II)

Abstract

The first part of this paper (in the previous issue) showed that the democracy promotion policies often perceived as characteristic of the New World Order are not so new. Rather, they were an integral part of the modernization theories and policies of the Cold War era. This second part of the paper shows that the democracy transition paradigm is based on precisely the same liberal assumptions as its predecessor and that, like the former, its theories and policies have widely been identified as failing. This failure leads to interventionist and statebuilding policies which in turn trigger resistances in target countries; a pattern already familiar from the Cold War period. We are confronted, thus, neither with a new world order nor with the end of history but rather with its repetition. And this repetitive cycle of counterproductive theories and policies, the paper concludes, will continue for as long as the liberal ideology underpinning it remains essentially unchallenged.     

The Structure of Government Intervention in African Agriculture

This article examines the determinants of various rates of agricultural subsidies (output, input, exchange rate distortions, and aggregate) using commodity-level data from eight African countries in the 1980s. Econometric results indicate that structural adjustment policies were more effective in reforming exchange rate distortions than in liberalising commodity markets. Output policies are determined within the national context while input subsidies are more responsive to commodity-specific conditions. Further-more, agricultural subsidies were strongly influenced by the degree of urbanisation and by the number of people per unit of arable land in a manner consistent with cheap food policy strategies.     

Reinventing the Hong Kong state or rediscovering it? From low interventionism to eclectic corporatism

Abstract

The low-intervention state of Hong Kong in colonial times did not originate from strong neo-liberal ideological convictions. It was an artefact of the colonial political configuration, a pragmatic governing strategy adapting to the political and economic needs at the time. Political changes, economic restructuring, divestiture and marketization of state institutions since the 1980s had brought a new state form after 1997. A new business and professional elite class, embedded in an eclectic corporatist structure, evolved and brought multilateral, ad hoc and particularistic bargaining, leading to more sectoral intervention after 1997. Fragmented state institutions nonetheless weakened state capacity, making it difficult for the post-1997 state to be highly penetrative, transformative or developmental.     

经济法之政府干预的宪政解读

宪政之于经济法的法治要求,意味着国家干预经济的一切活动都应当有相应的法律依据,国家干预经济的行为应该受到制约。经济宪政是以保障基本权利为基础、以社会本位为核心价值的宪政理念。为了实现政府干预的宪政目标,应限制行政权力,要求政府干预遵循法治化的进程,以确保宪政经济权利并接受违宪审查。     

The Political Economy of State Failure: A Social Contract Approach

By employing the contract approach of state theory, this article provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of state failure phenomena which puts the emphasis on structural conditions as the root cause of state fragility and state failure. The article argues that the deep social fragility of some post-colonial societies, augmented by self-serving external interventions by foreign powers, is at the heart of their failure. Deep social fragility makes societies unable to cooperate and thus renders them powerless to discipline their leaders. Meanwhile, by linking leadership survival to the decisions and policies of a self-serving foreign power, intervention provides flawed incentives to the state leaders, which increases their predatory behaviour. In such situations, state leaders, rather than strengthening formal state institutions, again intensify the collective action problem and increase social fragility as mechanisms for survival.     

Onwards and Sidewards? The Curious Case of the Responsibility to Protect and Mass Violence in Africa

This article approaches Responsibility to Protect (R2P) from the ground up. Selecting African cases of mass atrocity in the age of R2P, it identifies key general features of contemporary violence. The article goes on to consider the nature and extent of R2P practice in each case. The argument is that R2P engagements in these conflicts display a mixture of weakness and irrelevance. The result of this is that R2P has failed significantly to reduce human suffering in any of the cases dealt with. The article notes that this clear failure does not seem to perturb the mainstream of academic R2P discourses, which, although critical at times, remain confident that R2P is making some difference and represents the best way forward. The article explores how this kind of discourse is propounded in the scholarly work on R2P. This leads us towards an argument that R2P as a discourse and international project can run in parallel with continuing mass suffering in African civil wars without being profoundly troubled.