Continuity and change in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

Abstract

The aims and outcomes of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela are fiercely contested. A sympathetic view sees the possibility of Left revolutionary transformation as destabilised by aggressive US and domestic opposition actions. Detractors trace an authoritarian path from President Hugo Chávez’s election in 1998 to an inevitable socialist implosion under his successor Nicolás Maduro two decades later. This article emphasises continuities between the Bolivarian Fifth Republic and the Fourth Republic that the Revolution displaced. These account for the limitations of the transformative process. Historical institutionalism explains the reproduction of rentier practices and centralised state management and political organisation, culminating in cascading crisis across regime types.     

中国女性主义批评实践20年的回望

女性主义自20世纪80年代初被引入国门以来,其间经历了两次批评实践的高潮.但在本土化的过程中也暴露出不少问题,如过度偏执于性别文本与性别价值,以至因批评的格式化与概念化而陷入自说自话的境地,忽视对女性美学的总结、对自身理论体系的建构以及对本土性别研究资源的整理等.只有高度重视上述问题,才能避免使中国的女性主义实践走向日益僵化的境地.     

精神分析自身心理学的诞生：一种社会学的阐释

精神分析自身心理学的出现,因应了美国人精神状况的深刻变化.20世纪中期美国社会由工业社会向后工业社会转型,这导致了美国社会价值观和意识形态的深刻变化,导致传统家庭结构的解体.享乐主义疏离了人际关系;性解放思潮一方面破除了性禁忌,另一方面导致离婚率上升;女权主义运动一方面使妇女走出家庭,获得独立,另一方面淡化了家庭成员间的情感关系.社会文化、价值观和生活方式的深刻变化,导致结构性神经症越来越少,自身障碍越来越多.精神分析从研究心理冲突,特别是从研究与俄狄浦斯情结有关的心理冲突,逐渐转向研究自身的发展,从而导致精神分析自身心理学的诞生.     

Personalised parliamentary behaviour without electoral incentives: the case of the Netherlands

Most theories of legislative behaviour explain the behaviour of MPs through electoral incentives. However, they fail to explain variation in parliamentary activity when individual electoral incentives are largely absent. This article studies MPs’ activity in such a parliament: the Dutch Tweede Kamer. It examines four clusters of incentives that may drive parliamentarians to be active. Party and committee environments provide the best explanation for the level of activity of individual MPs. Reselection and promotion prospects explain MPs’ behaviour, but only under more particular specifications. Re-election prospects were not found to affect activity levels.     

Not Centralisation but Decentralised Integration through Australia's National Mental Health Policy

This article challenges dominant perceptions of Commonwealth centralisation in Australia's federal system. While recognising the Commonwealth has entered a range of policy fields not anticipated by federal founders, it argues this does not equate to a generalised unidirectional and hierarchical orchestration of state/territory functions. The crucial case of mental health policy is presented as an alternative scenario in Australia's federal experience. Theoretically key challenges from the multi‐level governance literature are proffered against the centralisation thesis. These include queries about the origins of Commonwealth directives and assumptions of zero‐sum notions of state/territory autonomy. Brief empirical analysis highlights the role of the Commonwealth as a conduit of horizontal and vertical flows of knowledge through the national mental health policy agenda. Given disconnect and diversity between national ambitions and their realisation at state/territory level, it is argued better proceduralisation through bottom‐up peer dialogue and feedback present alternative routes towards decentralised integration.     

The irreversibility of history: the case of the Ukrainian crisis (2013–2015)

Abstract

Today’s Ukraine figures as the land of irreconcilable differences, on the verge of disintegrating into different parts. Issues regarding nation-building processes, national identity types within the main ethnic communities, as well as regional political preferences have all become critical. Thus, this paper examines how enduring regional political preferences, embedded in a fragmented and porous national identity framework, have been serving as destabilizing factors in the eastern part of the country. The conclusions offer an understanding of the 2013–2015 crisis, while they can also be extrapolated to other regions of the ex-Soviet space.     

The Dynamics of Intra-jurisdictional Relations in the Inuit Regions of the Canadian Arctic: An Institutionalist Perspective

One of the most exciting developments in Canadian federalism has been the emergence of Aboriginal self-governing regions. This paper constructs a theoretical framework for exploring the evolution of intra-jurisdictional relations in the self-governing Inuit regions of the Canadian Arctic. Intra-jurisdictional relations in these regions are characterized by a unique set of relationships between elected governments and organizations that represent the beneficiaries of land-claims agreements. Using the literature on historical institutionalism, we argue that the nature of Inuit intra-jurisdictional relations following the establishment of self-government can be explained by the institutional choices made prior to the signing of land-claims agreements and/or self-government agreements. To illustrate the potential of our framework for analysing Inuit intra-jurisdictional relations, we briefly examine the experiences of Nunavut, an Inuit-dominated region and the newest territory in the Canadian federation.     

Democratic Governance: A Genealogy

This essay draws on my book, Democratic Governance (Princeton University Press, 2010), to provide a genealogy of governance and to explore its implications for democracy. My arguments can be quickly stated: governance rose and spread as a consequence of new modernist theories and the public sector reforms that were inspired by these theories; policy actors respond to the challenges of governance by supplementing representative institutions with yet more modernist expertise.     

Post-9/11 institutionalisation of European Union counter-terrorism: emergence,acceleration and inertia

Abstract

This article applies a historical institutionalist perspective to an empirical analysis of the sources and characteristics of the institutionalisation of European Union counter-terrorism. Drawing upon the work of Stone Sweet, Sandholtz and Fligstein, this paper critically analyses the impact of external crises in the form of major terrorist attacks on the emergence of counter-terrorism as an area of European governance. It also highlights the key policy and institutional developments, studies the role of policy innovators on the institutionalisation of counter-terrorism and supports the relevance of ‘transformative’ or ‘evolutionary’ models for the understanding of institutional change in this domain.