Reform Strategies Matter: Explaining the Perplexing Results of Regional Government Reforms in Norway and Denmark

Reforming the public sector often means imposing immediate costs on well-organised interests in return for longer-term, diffuse benefits to voters and taxpayers. Nonetheless, reforms sometimes are carried through. Investigations of this puzzle have followed two approaches: The first is structural and explains reforms as a consequence of the institutional setting in which policymakers operate. The second focuses on human agency. It investigates how reformers search for ways to overcome structural obstacles. This approach has lived a quiet life in recent decades. In this paper, we investigate recent attempts to reform the regional government level in Norway and Denmark. Despite very similar structural settings and political preferences, the reforms failed in Norway, but were successful in Denmark; failure and success being defined by the two governments' intensions. We argue that the explanation lies in the different reform strategies pursued by the central governments in the two countries.     

筹建亚洲基础设施投资银行的基本思路及对策建议

为促进亚洲地区互联互通建设和经济一体化进程,中国政府倡议筹建亚洲基础设施投资银行,得到东盟的赞赏和支持。筹建亚洲基础设施投资银行已经提上重要议事日程。本文拟阐述筹建亚洲基础设施投资银行的重大意义,分析筹建亚洲基础设施投资银行面临的困难和挑战,研究提出筹建亚洲基础设施投资银行的基本思路,建议筹建亚洲基础设施投资银行率先在中国—东盟区域实现突破,取得好的成效、积累一定经验后再逐步扩大到整个亚洲地区。本文设计了亚洲基础设施投资银行的性质宗旨与职能定位、机构设置与总部选址、资金来源与合作方式等,尤其对在中国—东盟区域起步的亚洲基础设施投资银行的合作方式、期初的股本资金、各国出资金额及所占比重进行较为深入的研究,提出可行性初步操作方案,抛砖以引玉,供决策参考。需要说明的是,本文提出的观点仅是我们个人学术观点,不代表任何组织和机构。     

论闭锁公司的范畴及代理问题

闭锁公司是一种股东紧密持股,绝大部分股东参与经营,且股权不能在现成市场上公开流通的公司形态。本文认为,受其组织结构、投资属性与市场环境决定,闭锁公司法律规制的重点在于：在股东高度自治与资本严格锁定的环境下,处理好大股东控制权的正当行使与小股东合理期待利益的必要保护之间的冲突与协调问题。     

Agency and outcome expectancies for crime desistance: measuring offenders' personal beliefs about change†

Abstract

While the majority of offenders eventually desist from crime, the internal psychological mechanisms hypothesized to drive the process of desistance and offender change have not been systematically measured. This study developed scales for assessing intention to change, or offenders' beliefs regarding their perceived ability to stay crime-free (agency) and expected outcomes for crime and desistance (expectancies). Incarcerated offenders (N=142) endorsed these beliefs in a way that is consistent with theories of offender change. The structure of beliefs suggests offenders with positive expectancies for desistance and negative expectancies for crime also endorse a higher sense of personal agency to desist. Outcome expectancies for desistance were unrelated to static risk variables, suggesting these measures may be complementary to risk assessment. Overall, the scales developed for this research showed high internal consistency and evidence for concurrent and construct validity. Refining the measurement methods and assessing recidivism outcome post-release should further advance this avenue of research.     

民法总则的使命及其应规范之内涵——以中国民法总则草案为探讨中心

所有现代欧陆民法法典,不论是法国民法典、德国民法典,抑或是继承两民法典之法典以及参考两民法典之法典,均设有民法总则之规定。中国最近有制定民法总则的计划,并已提出建议稿,但此前已经有了9个单行之民法法律规范,构建了松散型的民法典体例,而民法总则属于一体型民法典之构成部分,这就需要对以往民法法律规范重新整合。结合中国民法总则草案建议稿,对民法总则应加以规范之内容,以及法律原则、权利能力和行为能力、法人、民事客体、法律事实、民事责任等具体规范加以分析探讨,以期为制定科学合理的民法总则提供参考。     

广西农民专业合作社党的建设成效及其基本经验

随着农民专业合作社的蓬勃发展,合作社党建成为农村基层党建的崭新领域。基于广西部分市、县的实地调查和组织部门的相关资料显示：合作社党的建设提高了农民组织化程度、增加了农民收入、扩大了党组织覆盖面、充分发挥了基层党组织的战斗堡垒作用和党员的先锋模范作用。其基本经验是：把推进党的建设同发展农民专业合作社结合起来;合理设置党组织;将维护农民利益摆在首位,建设服务型党组织;始终保持共产党员的先进性。     

Sub-prime mortgage lending: a cultural economy

Abstract

Developing cultural economists’ concerns with the assembly of agency in financial markets, agency in sub-prime mortgage lending in the United States is shown to have been made up through calculative devices of risk. Credit reporting and scoring provided for the targeting, sorting, pricing and governing of customers in terms of risk. The securitization of mortgages into risk-structured financial instruments made possible extended lending. Interest-only adjustable rate mortgage products called up mortgagors who, as leveraged investors, embraced risk in a rising property market. The current sub-prime mortgage crisis is understood in critical terms as a moment when the contradictions of these risk devices and their incapacity to capture the uncertain future have come to the surface, and agency in sub-prime lending has been disassembled. Cultural economy is thus shown to make a distinctive contribution to the politicization of sub-prime that stresses the ambiguous politics of calculation.     

Regulating finance after the crisis: Unveiling the different dynamics of the regulatory process

It is now widely recognized that regulatory failures contributed to the onset of the global financial crisis. Redressing such failures has, thus, been a key policy priority in the post‐crisis reform agenda at both the domestic and international levels. This special issue investigates the process of post‐crisis financial regulatory reform in a number of crucial issue areas, including the rules and arrangements that govern financial supervision, offshore financial centers and shadow banking, the financial industry's involvement in global regulatory processes, and macroeconomic modeling. In so doing, the main purpose of this special issue is to shed light on an often understudied aspect in regulation literature: the variation in the dynamics of regulatory change. Contributors examine the different dynamics of regulatory change observed post‐crisis and explain variations by accounting for the interaction between institutional factors, on the one hand, and the activity of change agents and veto players involved in the regulatory reform process, on the other.     

Writing about Rwanda since the Genocide: Knowledge,Power and ‘Truth’

This debate article reflects upon four articles recently published in this journal as part of a special Forum on Rwanda (Volume 8, Issue 4, 2014)—released to coincide with the 20-year commemoration of the 1994 genocide. In doing so it highlights what this author considers to be a crisis in contemporary ‘Rwanda studies’. This crisis—referenced and reproduced to some extent in all four articles—combines methodological (‘how can we write about Rwanda?’) and epistemological (‘how should we write about Rwanda?’) uncertainty against a backdrop of highly polarized, partisan and sometimes personalized research agendas. In exploring this phenomenon, the study explores not only the role of academics (mainly European and Rwandan) but also of the Rwandan government itself, highlighting the rise of ‘activist polities’ such as that in contemporary Kigali. These regimes consider knowledge production to be an aspect of their own sovereignty and this poses fundamental challenges, as yet largely unacknowledged, to parts of Western Africanist scholarship.     

Large-scale land deals,global capital and the politics of livelihoods: Experiences of women small-holder farmers in Chisumbanje,Zimbabwe

Abstract

Large scale land acquisitions by foreign conglomerates in Zimbabwe have been a recurrent phenomenon within the last five years. This has led to land deals being negotiated with state, individual and nongovernmental actors, leading to the production of agro fuels. This article investigates how the large scale commercial land deals have affected the livelihoods of women small holder farmers, the role of global capital in entrenching discrimination of women and how the politics of resource use and distribution has become a central force in shaping livelihoods in Zimbabwe's communal areas. The article is based on field work that was conducted in Ndowoyo communal area, in Chisumbanje village, from July 2011 until April 2012. The methods used for collecting data were in-depth interviews with the women, interviews with officials from the Platform for Youth Development, a nongovernmental organisation, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, focus group discussions and personal observations that involved interactions with the women. In 2011, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, both bio fuels companies owned by Billy Rautenbach started green fuel production operations in Chisumbanje and this has led to the altering of the livelihoods systems of women smallholder farmers. The argument seeks, first, to demonstrate how the company‘s green fuel production systems have led to the loss of land for women and the redefinition of tenure in a communal area. Secondly it explores how the company has been involved in political issues that have undermined the role of development for the women and, thirdly, the article investigates how the women have created livelihood alternatives in an area which has been transformed from a communal rural area into almost an urban area. It concludes by suggesting the need to give primacy to women centred notions of agency in coping with the negative implications of commercial land deals on women‘s livelihoods.