Tackling unemployment in China: state capacity and governance issues

Abstract

This paper considers China's state capacity and changing governance as revealed through its policies to tackle unemployment. Despite high levels of growth, economic restructuring has resulted in rising unemployment over the last decade. The Chinese state has been able to manage job losses from state enterprises, demonstrating some state capacity in relation to this sector and some persistent command economy governance mechanisms. However both design and implementation of policies to compensate and assist particular groups among the unemployed have been shaped by weak state capacity in several other areas. First, capacity to gather accurate employment data is limited, meaning local and central governments do not have a good understanding of the extent and nature of unemployment. Second, the sustainability of supposedly mandatory unemployment insurance schemes is threatened by poor capacity to enforce participation. Third, poor central state capacity to ensure local governments implement policies effectively leads to poor unemployment insurance fund capacity, resulting in provision for only a narrow segment of the unemployed and low quality employment services. Although the adoption of unemployment insurance (and its extension to employers and employees in the private sector), the introduction of a Labour Contract Law in 2007, and the delivery of employment services by private businesses indicate a shift towards the use of new governance mechanisms based on entitlement, contract and private sector delivery of public-sector goods, that shift is undermined by poor state capacity in relation to some of these new mechanisms.     

European Union Training Missions: security sector reform or counter-insurgency by proxy?

With European Union Training Missions (EUTM) Mali and EUTM Somalia, the EU seeks to stabilize countries facing state weakness caused by intrastate conflict. While the EU formally promotes security sector reform (SSR) through its foreign policy, the EUTM missions in Mali and Somalia in one sense can be described as “counter-insurgency by proxy” as military trainees combat local insurgencies shortly upon graduation. This raises the question whether the EUTM missions are consistent with SSR aims, such as creating a security sector that is legitimate, sustainable, and under civilian control, or inadvertently risk contributing to negative side effects in the medium term. Based on extensive interviews in Belgium, Kenya, Mali, Sweden, and Uganda with personnel who either served in or planned these missions, this study analyses factors which hinder the EUTM concept from being fully consistent with SSR and identifies possible policies to ameliorate the risk of unintended side effects.     

Bargaining Through Arguing: An Empirical Analysis Based on Speech Act Theory

In a recent debate in political science, the terms "bargaining and arguing" have been construed as semantic opposites. The present article rejects this dichotomy and offers a new theoretical approach to clarify the logical and pragmatic relationship of bargaining and arguing as modes of the resolution of conflicts through communication. On the basis of speech act theory, a method for the empirical analysis of bargaining and arguing is developed and demonstrated with an example of conflict resolution by mediation. Four conclusions can be drawn. First, in empirical processes of communicative conflict resolution, in almost all cases both arguing and bargaining will be present. Second, only in the rare cases of pure conflicts over solely facts or values will arguing appear. Third, within the context of an interest conflict, arguing is not an alternative to bargaining, but a means for bargaining. Fourth, although bargaining and arguing have the potential to resolve certain types of conflicts, their success is difficult to predict and cannot be taken for granted.     

Sex and Capacity: The Management of Monsters?

The first consideration by a civil court of the test of capacity to engage in sexual relations – X City Council v MB, NB and MAB – is as recent as 2005. This article places this and subsequent cases in the historical context of the way in which the law has constructed the sexuality of persons with intellectual impairment. The article argues that, beginning with a series of rape cases in the mid to late nineteenth century, which recognised the concept of consent given through the expression of animal instincts, the law has accepted and deployed a model of intellectual impairment which understands expressions of sexuality in terms of an increasingly unstable opposition between vulnerability and danger, understood as the presence or absence of instinct, and as indicating an underlying ‘monstrosity’. The article argues that the historical continuity apparent in the modern case law is unfortunate and should be rectified.     

Capacity Building for New Parliamentarians: Survey of Orientation and Induction Programmes

This article reports original research which built on conceptual issues previously identified by the authors. A survey of national parliaments sought information on orientation and induction programmes offered to first term members and on members' perceptions of those programmes. An overview of findings is presented and significant issues identified. Most programmes provided passive development through information and a handbook rather than active skill development. Few used training processes and techniques that were based on contemporary adult learning principles. There were sharp divisions over training and development in dealing with ethical issues. The findings suggest considerable potential for the further development of programmes and for sharing information about programmes in order to assist capacity building for parliamentarians and thereby enhance the performance of parliaments and individual members.     

The undoing of a unique relationship? Peace and security in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership

ABSTRACT

When the European Union (EU) and South Africa acceded to a strategic partnership, they expanded into new areas of partnership. One of these areas was peace and security, which is the focus of this article. The article argues that, although there appears to be a shared understanding of what security means, the strategic partnership has not been utilised significantly to further this understanding in practice. This is largely due to the EU's preferences for a continental, multilateral approach over the bilateralism of a strategic partnership. At the same time, South Africa sees its strategic partnership with the EU as being outside of its broader commitment to regional security. As a result the peace and security element of the strategic partnership has not been leveraged effectively despite several entry points for action. The article thus concludes that both the EU and South Africa need to re-think the current arrangement.     

Explaining interest group access to parliamentary committees

This article explains why parliamentary groups invite interest groups to the parliamentary arena. It argues that interest groups’ access to committees not only reflects policy-makers’ need for information and expertise but also party preferences and institutional factors such as the type of government, parliamentary committee structure and committee agenda capacity. Results show that interest groups’ access to the parliamentary arena increases under minority governments, in the case of highly conflictual issues, and when the number of permanent committees increases. Also, results demonstrate that parliamentary groups invite interest organisations following different logics – problem-solving or confrontation logic – depending on the type of functions they have to perform – legislative and oversight activities. The article uses a novel, comprehensive database with information on the appearances of all interest groups in the Spanish parliament from 1996 to 2015.     

Decentralization in Cambodia: New Wine in Old Bottles

The usual arguments for decentralization by its advocates are that it can achieve accountability, transparency, participation and democracy. In reaching these goals, however, proponents of decentralization reform have articulated concerns about whether government officials have sufficient capacity to implement decentralization policies, particularly at local level. This article asserts that in Cambodia, where decentralization has unfolded gradually since its adoption some 15 years ago, lack of capacity is not the main problem. Decentralization is designed and implemented as part of the ruling political party's strategy to strengthen its grip at the sub‐national level rather than as an exercise for improving accountability and democracy. Although decentralization is unlikely to lead to democratic gains, it does provide an opportunity for the rejuvenation of a patronage‐based party in ways that could increase state capacity and improve development outcomes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

农民集体土地所有权的权能

土地所有权的性质不具有唯一性,其权能结构与其性质相适应,不能将以私有制为基础的土地所有权的权能结构硬套在我国农民集体土地所有权之上。农民集体土地所有权的公有制基础、集体成员的集体共有权、集体土地的社会保障性、集体土地的资源性等特殊性质,决定了应当在公私兼顾的基础上,从民法上的财产私权性与社会法上的土地社会保障属性以及土地管理法上对社会公共利益的兼顾等多维度完善农民集体土地所有权权能,赋予农民集体土地所有权经济功能实现的权能、社会保障功能实现的权能以及因公共利益使其权能受到限制的利益补救权能,通过多项权能的体系化实现农民集体土地所有权的目的。     

Decentralization in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Decentralization in South Africa was entrenched in the new democratic constitution of 1996 and charged local government with bringing basic and other services to the population. Our in-depth empirical study of 38 municipalities across South Africa indicates that the experiment with decentralization has largely failed to achieve its main aims—democratizing local government and delivering adequate basic services to all communities. In order to provide some answers to the question as to why this failure occurred, we focus attention on the legislative over-burdening of local government and its concurrent lack of institutional capacity to actually turn legal obligation and decentralization principles into practice as two of the main and related causes for this failure. While the South African constitution gave clear mandates to local government, the issue of adequate institutional capacity for municipal government was largely overlooked or ignored altogether.