‘Knowledge management’: a case study of the World Bank's research department

This article looks at ‘knowledge management’, using a case study of the World Bank's research department, located in the Bank's Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC). Despite the Bank's presentation of its research arm as conducting ‘rigorous and objective’ work, the author finds that the Bank's ‘knowledge management’ involves research that has tended to reinforce the dominant neo-liberal globalisation policy agenda. The article examines some of the mechanisms by which the Bank's research department comes to play a central role in what Robert Wade has termed ‘paradigm maintenance’, including incentives in hiring, promotion, and publishing, as well as selective enforcement of rules, discouragement of dissonant views, and manipulation of data. The author's analysis is based both on in-depth interviews with current and former World Bank professionals and on examination of the relevant literature.     

提高执政党执政能力的道德维度透析

提高执政党执政能力对社会、对党自身有着深刻的道德内涵。党的执政目标充满立足于“为公”、“为民”的道德价值追求。能力建设体现着党对社会道德秩序的关切,适应了当前我国社会伦理关系协调的需要。通过党内民主建设将党的执政行为纳入以民主和法制为准则的伦理轨道,这是规范执政党自身行为和理顺社会伦理关系的根本保证。     

《行政许可法》的制度创新与政府治理模式的变革

《中华人民共和国行政许可法》在行政许可的设定、实施和监督检查等多个方面进行了制度创新,这些制度创新将把中国政府塑造成为“法治政府”、“有限政府”、“民主政府”以及“分权政府”,而这四个要素正是中国政府治理变革的基本目标所在,因而这种制度创新预示着中国政府治理模式的变革。     

Rights-based approaches to development: what is the value-added?

Advocates and activists for human rights are currently facing a paradox: the coexistence of profound challenges in familiar territory (civil liberties) alongside expansion into new areas. Rights-based approaches (RBAs) are a part of this latter expansionary stream. This article argues that four kinds of potential value-added can be claimed. First, value-added can be sought through direct, indirect, and strategic uses of the law. Second, value can also be added by re-centring the state and (re)asking the question about its appropriate role in development (delivery, oversight), and strategising engagement with the state. Third, in relation to accountability, RBAs add value by calling the state to account; building capacities of rights holders and duty bearers; and encouraging a new kind of ownership of human rights among NGOs. Fourth, the article explores claims that RBAs re-politicise development, redefining it as rights-based rather than based on benevolence; reclaiming or re-politicising the key (process) terms of development; addressing the root, structural causes of poverty and conflict, rather than the symptoms; and speaking truth to power. Not all of these contributions are unique to RBAs, however, and on all counts it remains to be seen if RBAs will deliver on their promise.     

哲学新思维与党的执政能力建设

分析党的执政能力建设研究中的特点或倾向,应从马克思主义哲学角度,系统而深入地研究当代中国共产党建设的新思路、新形态和新框架及其深层所蕴涵的哲学新理念、新思维,或从当代哲学的新理念、新思维来深层理解党的执政能力建设的深远意义。     

高职课程改革的特性分析及其路径选择

课程是高职教育的核心,高职的性质和功能都是通过课程具体来体现的。本文从高职教育培养应用型人才的目标出发,对其课程改革的特性作了较为深入的剖析,并提出了课程改革的路径选择。     

法学之殇

学非易事,磨砺以求,未必有所成,现如今法学论文人人会写,学术研究似为易事,这类现象的背后是学术出现严重失范、脱序现象。真学术必然要有创新,法学研究必须强调学术原创性,窃人立意,掠人之美,与剽窃词句如出一辙;创制一套新词,制造语言的魔障,也不足取。学者不能不没有一点“专利权”意识,某种学术观点既然有人提出,再当作自己的创见,便属“学术不端”。法学论著最重要的是思想,其价值应当表现在有原创性观点,做不到这一点之所谓“学术”不过是“表态式学术”。缺乏健全的学术批评是当今法学研究保持低劣化和“学术成果”泛滥成灾的一大原因。高质量的法学研究成果需要精工细雕,为减少垃圾学术,学者应有不写或者少写的勇气。     

Public advocacy and people-centred advocacy: mobilising for social change

Public and people-centred advocacy are shaped by the political culture, social systems, and constitutional framework of the country in which they are practised. It is the practice of advocacy that determines the theory, and not vice versa. If advocacy is not rooted in grassroots realities and is practised only at the macro level, the voice of the marginalised is increasingly likely to be appropriated by professional elites. However, the very credibility of advocacy practitioners depends on their relationship with mass-based movements and grassroots perceptions of what constitutes desirable social change.     

Corporate wealth or public health? WTO/TRIPS flexibilities and access to HIV/AIDS antiretroviral drugs by developing countries

Between 1994 and 2003, the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement of the WTO was refined to allow for flexibilities in the use of compulsory licences to import and export ‘generic’ varieties of pharmaceutical products, including ARV drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. After summarising this process, and assessing its implications in practice for developing countries, this article briefly places the current regime in a longer-term context of the institutional protection of patents in Britain and Europe dating from the nineteenth century. It traces how that pattern, which benefits major patent holders, continues to be present in TRIPS. The article goes on to demonstrate the continuity of corporate influence over the state, as expressed in the ‘TRIPS-plus’ conditions, which are appearing in bilateral free-trade agreements between the USA and either individual developing countries or regional groupings. This array of what amount to institutional obstacles to the sustained availability of cheap drugs presents serious problems for future operations of the supply chain for many imported medicines and, in the case of HIV/AIDS, has negative implications for the long-term clinical effectiveness of the most widely used drugs.     

Sustainability

As a consummately effective ‘boundary term’, able to link disparate groups on the basis of a broad common agenda, ‘sustainability’ has moved a long way from its technical association with forest management in Germany in the eighteenth century. In the 1980s and 1990s it defined – for a particular historical moment – a key debate of global importance, bringing with it a coalition of actors – across governments, civic groups, academia and business – in perhaps an unparalleled fashion. That they did not agree with everything (or even often know anything of the technical definitions of the term) was not the point. The boundary work done in the name of sustainability created an important momentum for innovation in ideas, political mobilisation, and policy change, particularly in connection with the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio in 1992. All this of course did not result in everything that the advocates at the centre of such networks had envisaged, and today the debate has moved on, with different priority issues, and new actors and networks. But, the author argues, this shift does not undermine the power of sustainability as a buzzword: as a continuingly powerful and influential meeting point of ideas and politics.