Public Participation and Public Service Modernization: Learning from New Labor?

The public participation agenda is a significant element of public service reform in Europe and beyond. This article examines how citizen participation in local public services was conce ived and enacted under successive New Labor governments in the UK during the period 1997–2010. It is suggested that the emphasis on public participation was central to the ethos of New Labor. This accounts for the persistence of the participation agenda even in the face of scant empirical evidence that specific engagement and empowerment initiatives were successful. Significantly, there was no single New Labor participation narrative. There were instead several distinct strands, drawing variously from the Party's received traditions of State welfarism, corporatist central-local relations, municipal socialism, Blairite managerialism, and, lastly, mutual cooperativism. The article assesses the legacy of New Labor and public participation in the UK before drawing wider conclusions relating to international experience.     

Chinese—Indian relations and the process of building confidence: Implications for the Asia‐Pacific

China's traditional approach to security questions appears to be antithetical to the cooperative security approach that has been adopted by ASEAN and by embryonic multilateral organizations such as the ASEAN Regional Forum. Yet, in the course of normalizing relations with India, China has shown itself willing to explore the kind of confidence‐ and security‐building measures associated with this approach. Although it was a change in interests that prompted China to explore the worth of such measures, nevertheless cooperative security ideas have proved helpful in defusing tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. Possibly as a result of its experience with India, there are indications that China has become more receptive to the use of a cooperative security framework elsewhere in the Asia‐Pacific, most notably in dealing with the ASEAN Regional Forum. Its involvement in this process has increased the diplomatic and economic costs that would be incurred should it decide to use force to make good its irredentist claims in the South China Sea.     

Two ways of realizing justice and democracy: linking Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen advocates democracy defined as ‘public reasoning’ and ‘government by discussion’. Sen’s discursive approach facilitates the exercise of political freedom and development of one’s public capacities, and enables victims of injustice to give public voice and discussion to specific injustice. It also responds to the contested nature of ‘universal human rights’ and the need to clarify and defend them via public reasoning. However, Sen’s approach leaves intact the hegemony of a liberal form of democracy that prioritizes political and civil rights over social and economic rights and thus precludes alternative democratic forms, most notably a form of cooperative democracy that politicizes social and economic activities in the pursuit of local and global justice. Sen’s ‘government by discussion’ must combine with cooperative democracy and a global ethos emphasizing cooperation (and action) over privatization in order to address our most serious global injustices, including exploitation, inequality and poverty in the Global South, accelerating destruction of the environment and biodiversity, and global warming and climate change.     

Beyond the Blame Game: Political Strategies for State Funding Reform

There is growing concern that intergovernmental financial relations in the Australian federation are becoming increasingly acrimonious and dysfunctional. This paper argues that it is necessary to analyse State funding as a whole, including the critical relationship between State‐level taxation and its reform and the broader Commonwealth Grants Commission regime, if we are to establish a system of State funding which is financially sustainable, promotes economic efficiency and is broadly congruent with established norms of Australian federalism. Above all, based on international experience, we argue Commonwealth leadership is required to achieve this goal. We conclude with a case study concerning resource taxation which demonstrates how the Commonwealth could provide leadership using a ‘bundled’ approach to policy reform. It is argued that such an approach has the potential to alleviate wider intergovernmental conflicts which currently afflict Australian federalism.     

Level of services,spatial dependence and allocative efficiency in local governments

In the public economics literature expenditure needs, allocative efficiency and spatial dependence of local governments costs have been widely analysed separately implying bias estimations of the expenditure needs at local level. An original procedure that simultaneously takes into account the standard level of services, the allocative efficiency and the spatial proximity among Municipalities, has been proposed. The estimation strategy has been applied on a very detailed database of more than 4,000 Italian Municipalities for the year 2013.     

协同主义的追问与我国民事诉讼的未来

协同主义的理论来自于德国,协同主义的支持者主张,诉讼中法官和当事人应当协同发现案件事实,适用法律.同时他们认为协同主义作为一种全新的诉讼模式,是对当事人主义和职权主义的超越,我国的民事诉讼应采用这种模式.这些主张者误读了西方的民事司法改革,这种理想化的理论不仅缺乏说服力,也不符合我国的国情和实际.未来我国的民事诉讼不是走向协同主义,而是在坚持和深化辩论主义的前提下通过具体的制度完善,提升当事人的程序主体性.     

新型农村合作医疗制度实施过程中农民参保意愿及补偿机制研究——来自西安市长安区农村的调查

本文以对西安市长安区的调查研究为基点,对新型农村合作医疗制度实施过程中的农民参保意愿及补偿机制问题进行了了解和分析,并提出相应的解决对策。     

全球治理与国际竞争法的网络模式

由于新自由主义理论的勃兴和市场机制的内在张力,国际社会步入了国际化市场经济阶段。国际化市场经济要求国际社会建立国际竞争机制解决国际市场失灵。在"洛克式"的国际体系下,借助全球治理理论建立一个多层次的国际竞争治理网络模式是国际社会现实的选择。多层次的国际竞争治理网络模式可以借鉴经济学的联邦财政理论和体制竞争理论确定各个层次的管辖权划分。     

论我国农业经济中的组织创新

增加农民收入是我国现实经济中的重大主题,农业中的组织创新对这一主题具有极为重要的实践价值和理论意义。在世界农业发展史中,农业的组织创新是渐进式的,其演化样式则是从联合到合作,从“非产权维系的交易联合”到“基于交易的产权结合”。农业中的合作经济组织的基本功能是实现第二层含义的规模经济。合作经济组织保留了农户对土地的占有权,单个农户的土地规模没有发生变化,但重要的是,通过联合与合作,统一面向市场、统一对外经营的生产同类型产品的土地规模得以扩大,因此,农业的生产成本减少和交易费用降低是自然的结果。