Elite and Everyday Social Contracts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Pathways to Forging a National Social Contract?

ABSTRACT

The Dayton Peace Agreement ended the violence in Bosnia–Herzegovina, however, it also solidified antagonistic political identities leading to the creation of two social contracts: an ‘elite social contract’ involving primarily political elites of the main ethnic groups and an ‘everyday social contract’ involving ordinary citizens trying to manage a complex social and economic environment. The first social contract is hegemonic, however, alternative, non-nationalist views are slowly emerging. Grassroots groups, the surviving remnants of inter-ethnic coexistence, the integrating pull of market forces and the presence of a large diaspora all constitute resources for the creation of a resilient national social contract.     

Managing Power Transitions: Towards a 21st Century Concert of Powers

Power shifts and especially power transitions in the international system are often associated with (military) confl ict. Power Transition Theory (PTT) does offer an analysis of this phenomenon but no remedy. We suggest easing the tensions related to ongoing worldwide power shifts by introducing a new informal multilateral security governance institution, based on the idea of a concert of powers. The historical European Concert of the 19th century prevented the outbreak of great power wars for more than a generation by providing a cooperation framework, based on shared norms and common procedures. In this article we explore the possibility of utilizing a modernized concert of powers as a framework for managing the coming power shifts. In order to do so, we introduce two new elements in Power Transition Theory: (1) the importance of the (dis) satisfaction of the declining hegemon with the anticipated future order, and (2) a broader multilateral framework of major powers that overcomes the Power Transition Theory’s traditional bilateral “duel” situation. On this basis, institutionalized power transition management becomes possible. We then work out the norms, strengths and weaknesses of the historical concert and update it with a few new features that would be necessary for it to be successful in the 21st century.     

论高等学校实施性别教育的价值取向与可能性

以建构高等学校德育和专业人才综合素质培养的社会性别向度、彰显性别理论学术研究、规范高等学校性别知识体系建设、将性别教育纳入高师教育主流体系、加强对高等学校实施性别教育的教育行政管理为主要目标；以建构社会性别发展性高等学校德育模式、在高等学校人才培养方案中建构社会性别理论通识教育、在教师教育中实施社会性别意识教育为主要措施，发挥高校教育在促进性别平等发展中的积极作用，将是促进高校教育公平和消除性别歧视的有益探索。     

Peace-building and business elites in Guatemala and El Salvador: explaining the discursive ‘institutional turn’

ABSTRACT

The local business elites of El Salvador were generally in favour of the peace agreement and supported its negotiation and implementation in 1992, while in Guatemala the private sector reluctantly supported the peace process and, after the peace agreements were signed in 1996, the private sector sought to obstruct parts of its implementation. In the aftermath of the peace accords, business elites united around an ideology espousing a minimal state and a focus on market solutions to social problems. Although welcoming the security-related measures in the peace accords, business elites have often obstructed transformations towards more inclusive and democratic societies. However, in recent years there has been a change in discourse among influential business associations towards recognition of the need for strong state institutions and the need for institutionalised mechanisms for dialogue to find solutions to social problems. In this article, we seek to shed light on the significance of this discursive turn for continued peace-building.     

Demotic humanitarians: historical perspectives on the global reach of local initiatives, 1940–2017

Abstract

This article focuses on over 70 years of demotic humanitarianism from a grassroots perspective. Using the archives of Hudfam and Elizabeth Wilson as well as more recent oral history of local nongovernmental organisations in the West Yorkshire region of the United Kingdom, this paper seeks to cast a new light on the complex network of humanitarianism enabled by local groups. The concept of demotic humanitarians will be used here to denote the modest scale of this work, but also the humanitarians’ self-perception as local agents of internationalism acting within localised networks. From the creation of Hudfam in 1942 (before Oxfam but in Huddersfield) to the birth of the Christian African Relief Trust or local partnerships with Ghana, this article shows how entangled in other social and political initiatives demotic humanitarians were.     

论国际投资法的外交保护制度

国际投资法中的外交保护是指本国国民在国外遭受损害,依该外国国内法程序得不到救济时,本国可以通过外交手段向该国要求适当的救济。外交保护作为一项传统的国际投资争端解决机制,曾是一种主要的解决投资争端的方法,但是随着国际投资争端法律解决机制的完善,外交保护失去了其原有的地位。并且遭到发展中国家的反对,甚至在卡尔沃条款出现之后一度引发了其效力的争议。     

我国地方政府绩效评估指标数据仓库的代表性对象选取和构建——以江苏四市为研究点

在中国这样的大国,各个地区之间在自然、地理、历史、社会等很多方面千差万别,由于这种异质性的存在,地方政府绩效评估指标的设计是一项噪音很多的系统工程,利用数据挖掘技术建设绩效指标数据仓库并进行挖掘可以有效解决这种异质性问题。论文首先通过标准比的形式,探讨了如何在我国筛选研究对象问题,然后通过将数据挖掘引入政府绩效评估指标设计研究,并以Microsoft SQL Server 2005作为数据挖掘软件,以江苏四市(苏州、南京、盐城、徐州)作为研究对象,在处理国家统计年鉴、地方统计年鉴、部门统计年鉴、政府及其各部门的工作计划与方案、工作记录等海量信息的基础上建立了四市的数据仓库,为进一步进行指标挖掘打下了基础。     

我国地方政府职能优化的深层探析

20世纪80年代之后,随着新公共管理、治理、新公共服务理论的兴起,西方发达国家相继进行了地方政府改革与职能转变。改革开放之后,随着社会主义市场经济体制的确立,我国也相应调整了政府职能。但是现实中地方政府职能还存在着许多的问题,亟需优化与改善。以服务型政府为目标导向,从制度、组织、技术层面探索地方政府职能优化的路径。     

Issues of local ownership in Kosovo’s security sector

Local ownership represents an overarching concept in international development. However, its core principles have been occasionally neglected in the practice of state-building such as in the case of Kosovo. This paper explores relations between the international community and local actors in the process of Kosovo security sector development after 2008, when the country declared its independence. This article finds that externally-driven models were imposed in some phases of security sector development. The actions of the international community disregarded the local context and created distrust by the local actors. The study relies on extensive face-to-face interviews with relevant national and international stakeholders, a public opinion survey with a sample of 1102 respondents, focus group and personal observation.     

The Effects of Local Government Consolidation on Turnout: Evidence from a Quasi‐Experiment in Switzerland

In the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi‐experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non‐merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.