How oil autocracies learn to stop worrying: Central Eurasia in 2008 global financial crisis

Autocracies in developing countries are more likely to collapse during economic crises. Some influential works and popular media extend this argument to oil-rich autocracies, but cross-national empirical studies find little evidence to support this view. Yet, while the causes of their stability during boom periods are well understood, how oil-rich autocratic regimes remain stable during busts is underexplored. This article advances an explanation that refines and complements existing accounts. I argue that we need to take into account three interrelated factors that currently are likely to stabilize oil-rich autocracies: considerable savings, policy learning, and sustenance of coercive capacity. Leveraging evidence drawn from 40 original interviews, documents, news media, and academic literature, I investigate the role of these factors through a comparative case study of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan during the 2008 global economic turmoil. The findings highlight the ruling elites’ ability to amass sizeable savings that later provide safety cushions, to update their know-how through drawing lessons within and beyond fiscal policy, and to sustain coercive capacity without resorting to overt repression. Through economic crises, they may learn to not escape the “resource curse,” but to escape despite the “resource curse.”     

非传统安全共同体:一种跨国安全治理的新探索

随着大量复杂多变的非传统安全问题的出现,以"非军事性"为特征的"资源性"安全困境日益凸显,冲击着各国政府及跨国组织的现有安全政策和安全合作机制,传统安全共同体难以应对新的挑战。文章通过对安全共同体理论的反思,提出了建构"非传统安全共同体"的设想,对其特征、类型、动力、建构路径等进行探讨,并对多边主义进行了新的理论扩展。非传统安全共同体强调国家间面对共有威胁时的共同命运,提倡"类安全"意义上的联合与共享,是消解"资源性"安全困境的有效途径。"和合主义"以"优态共存""共享安全""安全共治"为核心范畴,是非传统安全共同体的价值前提,"多元多边合作"是建构非传统安全共同体的最佳方案。同时,积极参与全球、区域、次区域等各层次的非传统安全共同体建构,也是中国践行"命运共同体"理念的重要路径。     

Space,discourse and environmental peacebuilding

The concept of environmental peacebuilding is becoming increasingly prominent among peacebuilding scholars and practitioners. This study provides a brief overview about the various discussions contributing to our understanding of environmental peacebuilding and concludes that questions of space have hardly been explicitly considered in these debates. Drawing on discourse-analytic spatial theory, I discuss how the social construction of scale, place and boundaries are relevant for environmental peacebuilding processes and outcomes. This theoretical approach is then applied to the Good Water Neighbours project, which aims at improving the regional water situation and at building peace between Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. The results suggest that discursive constructions of space are important in facilitating, impeding or shaping environmental peacebuilding practices. Analyses of environmental peacebuilding, but also of peacebuilding more general, are therefore encouraged to draw more strongly on the findings of spatial theory.     

Intersections of gender and water: comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra,Ghana and Cape Town,South Africa

A large and growing body of literature suggests that women and men often have differentiated relationships to water access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences. From a feminist political ecology perspective, these relationships can be mediated by gendered labour practices (within the household, at the community level, or within the workplace), socio-cultural expectations (e.g. related to notions of masculinity and femininity), as well as intersectional differences (e.g. race, income, and so forth). While these relationships are complex, multiple, and vary by context, it is frequently argued that due to responsibility for domestic provision or other pathways, women may be particularly affected if water quality or access is compromised. This paper reports on a statistical evaluation of a 478 household survey conducted in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa in early 2012. Interrogating our survey results in the light of the ideas of gender differentiated access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences of water, we open up considerations related to the context of each of our study sites, and also invite possible revisions and new directions for these debates. In particular, we are interested in the instances where differences among male and female respondents were less pronounced than expected. Highlighting these unexpected results we find it helpful to draw attention to methods – in particular we argue that a binary male–female approach is not that meaningful for the analysis, and instead, gender analysis requires some attention to intersectional differences (e.g. homeownership, employment, or age). We also make the case for the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative work to understand these relationships, as well as opening up what might be learned by more adequately exploring the resonances and tensions between these approaches.     

中国环境资源法、能源法的现在与未来

中国环境资源法、能源法已经从第一代迈向第二代,其现在及将来的发展趋势体现在以下几个方面:在环境法、能源法的伦理学基础上,从狭隘的人类中心主义转向人与自然和谐共存;在立法宗旨和目的上,将从经济增长优先转向循环经济和清洁生产;能源法将更加限制常规能源的使用和开采,激励可更新能源资源的投资和经营。中国环境资源法律和政策的总体趋势是更加绿色化,以顺应国内及国际的双重压力。     

培育民族地区能源支柱产业的理论及实证研究——以贵州省少数民族地区为例

在经济转轨、经济发展模式变化的形势下,遵循经济发展理论,结合少数民族地区的实际,发挥其能源资源禀赋优势,培育能源支柱产业,实现其资源优势最大化,是促进少数民族地区经济发展社会进步的必然选择。     

资源失灵与阻抗力--基于M村婚姻暴力现象的研究

解释婚姻暴力时资源正功能论和资源负功能论并存,现实中女性拥有较多资源也可能长期遭受婚姻暴力,构成本文所谓"资源失灵"现象。本文通过对资源概念进行界定及分类,厘清问题本质,考察农村家庭中妻子面对婚姻暴力时经济资源失灵的过程与机理,揭示家庭背景、社区文化等结构资源对个体经济资源的主导作用,从阻抗力的角度思考相关对策。女性具有的男权中心性别观念会扭曲其对经济资源的主观认知,抑制其资源利用能力,导致资源失灵。家庭因素、社区环境等结构资源通过社会化过程影响个体的观念系统,也会以社会支持方式促进或压制经济资源的作用。婚姻暴力阻抗力能减少受暴女性对施暴者或者婚姻关系的依赖性,其产生需激活相应的外部结构资源,并激发个体的意愿与决心。     

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.     

加强浙江省水资源管理和水资源费征收的思考

水资源是人们日常生活的必需品,是经济发展的基本要素和基础资源。随着经济社会的快速发展,水资源短缺、水环境恶化等问题日益突出,可开发利用的水资源越来越少。因此,全面推行依法治水,加强水资源的统一管理,加大水资源费征收力度,加强污染治理,建立节水型社会,已显得十分迫切。本文全面分析了浙江省水资源的现状和存在的主要问题,并对加强水资源管理和水资源费征收提出了建议。