The 2008 Election

The 2008 presidential election will be significant both for domestic and for foreign policy. Issues of security in domestic policy will continue to trump issues of freedom. The difficulties of resolving our military presence in Iraq will be the first among many important issues the new administration must confront. In both domestic and foreign affairs the new administration will have to deal with the unanticipated consequences of inherited policies even as it creates its own agenda and its own set of unintended consequences.

US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution

The 2004 Orange Revolution failed to skyrocket Ukraine into the ranks of consolidated democracies. Some previous research claimed that, in the similar case of post-Rose Revolution Georgia, its vague democratic perspectives can be explained by, among others, a negative impact of politically biased US democracy assistance programs. This article examines five groups of US programs (electoral aid, political party development, legislative strengthening, NGO development and media strengthening) implemented in Ukraine in 2005–2010, and concludes that US diplomatic support for the pro-Western “Orange” leadership did not translate into political bias of US-funded democracy assistance programs.     

African Green Revolution,food sovereignty and constrained livelihood choice in Mozambique

This article examines the complicated food security agendas of the African Green Revolution and the food sovereignty models in Mozambique. Drawing on fieldwork conducted by the author in Mozambique in 2014 and 2015, the paper analyses how smallholder farmers engage with these two agrarian models. Whereas the literature frequently presents the African Green Revolution and the food sovereignty in oppositional frames, this paper finds that farmers in Mozambique utilize some of the tools that these models offer in complementary rather than competing ways. One such area is the use of commercial hybrid seeds and herbicides by some farmers associated with food sovereignty, an approach that runs counter to food sovereignty’s principles of agroecology. In Mozambique, farmers’ “lived experience” of food sovereignty is more a strategic response to their limited livelihood options, using whatever tools are available to them, rather than a resistance to power.     

Die Wiederherstellung des Marktsubjekts

The UK is generally considered a laboratory for styles of governance influenced by New Public Management: outsourcing, internal markets, targets, auditing. The shifts in governance style, and the new instruments that have accompanied them, were once synonymous with “Thatcherism” but have since been adopted and refined by New Labour. Early critical social scientific analyses deployed the Gramscian notion of hegemony to analyse this shift. This was followed by Foucault inspired analyses of “governmentality”. The latter focused more explicitly on the micro-level of conduct. This article follows that lead, but seeks to address the central puzzles thrown up by this experiment through Max Weber’s conception of a “bureaucratic revolution” and Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the constitution of a “market subject” via a “double movement”: a simultaneous loosening and tightening of control. The Weber-Polanyi approach allows us, we argue, to make the link more explicit between micro-level changes in the “conduct of life” (Lebensführung) and the meso-level instruments designed to bring about such a re-orientation of conduct. The article makes the case with reference to empirical material from a number of public services, notably education and health. Overall, the decisive factor is not a weakening of the state, but a change in its capacities and instruments.     

评俄国政党在1905年革命中的作用

1905年革命中,俄国各政党纷纷登上政治舞台,在推动革命进程中发挥了不同程度的作用。首先,从资产阶级在革命中的影响以及革命的进程看,资产阶级及其政党做出了重要贡献。其次,社会革命党在革命期间积极扩大在农民和工人群众中的影响,在推动革命进程中也起到重要作用。再次,作为俄国无产阶级的代表,社会民主党在革命中同样发挥了重要影响,但就其整体而言,不足以与资产阶级政党相抗衡,其作用是有限的。     

Historical origins of the party-army relations in the Soviet Union and China

It is established that Party-army relation followed a "separated" pattern in the Soviet Union as opposed to an "infused" pattern in China. This article explores the historical origin of this difference in the revolutionary periods. By analyzing the biographies of communist military elites, it argues that this discrepancy took shape before the revolutionary takeover and resulted from the differentiated intensities of warfare across Russia and China. In China, the numerous civil wars and military defeats, radicalized the old military structure and boosted societal militarization; thus, eroding the mutual exclusion between the military and revolutionaries. The effect was lesser in Tsarist Russia than in prerevolutionary China, making the old military a conservative and professional corporate that the Bolsheviks could not completely subordinate to Party control.     

试论土家族人民对辛亥革命的贡献

1480年鸦片战争后,土家族人民深受外国鸦片、宗教、商品的毒害和剥削。土家人温朝中、黄玉山领导黔江、咸丰的武装起义成为辛亥革命的前奏。辛亥革命中,一大批土家儿女积极投身武昌首义,土家族地区的人民积极响应,为推翻清王朝的封建统治用出了贡献。     

中国法治政体的始创辛亥政治革命的法治论剖析与省思

法治政体理论在根本上把法治理解为,只有立宪政体才会要求并实现法律统治的一个政体问题。建立民主立宪的法治政体是辛亥政治革命的目标。为达成这一目标,民国初年的《临时约法》等法律初步构建了中华民国法治政体的雏形,但这一政体也陷入多重困厄之中。孙中山等人对这一政体及其困厄进行了富有价值的探索与反思。从法治政体理论及民初缔造法治政体的实践出发,可以对治法型法治的思想观念进行比较性的检视。     

How Do We Study the Rise of British Capitalism?

The rise of English capitalism is a very long historical course, during which the English revolution erupted in 1640 is a crux and critical point for the reflection on the rise of English capitalism. The British have been persistently seeking some rational interpretation of revolution and capitalism since the eruption of the British Revolution about three hundred years ago. The British people attained a set of new perspective to understand and explain the British Revolution and the rise of the English capitalism since the historical method of Marxism was introduced into Britain in the early 20th century. In terms of the hundreds of years exploration by the English, particularly the new left, holism becomes a basic view of reviewing the rise of English capitalism; the historical method of Marxism is a basic mean; the necessary breakthrough is that causes of the rise of capitalism are expanded from simple economic category to social category and taking history as a mirror and connecting tradition with reality is the fundamental aim.     

论现代科技革命与和谐社会建设

相比第一、二次科技革命,现代科技革命体现出范围广泛、内容丰富,从理论研究到实际应用,其时间和空间大大缩短,对经济、社会的影响日益广泛和深刻的新特点。但同时现代科技革命也容易诱发新的社会矛盾,例如收入差距的贫富分化、价值观念和道德标准的转型以及对经济和政治体制的冲击与自身的创新行为等。现代科技革命对我国构建和谐社会至少具有以下意义:建设和谐社会是科技革命的前提;构建和谐社会不仅有利于避免甚至消除现代科技革命所产生的负面影响,对现代科技革命向生产力转化环节中起到润滑剂作用,而且也有利于在同科技革命互动中实现良性发展。