Public Choice at the Intersection of Environmental Law and Economics

Management of environmental assets begins with a commons and ends with various legal institutions that assign property rights and control. Each step in the evolution of these legal institutions involves collective decision making. Public Choice analysis helps to explain the decision making process and institutional characteristics that emerge. A survey of Public Choice literature that addresses environmental issues illustrates how Public Choice sheds light on outcomes for the U.S. experience. In the absence of Public Choice theory, law and economics scholars would be hard pressed to explain why costly forms of environmental regulation seem preferred to apparently more efficient institutions and why the body politic seemingly accepts a high-cost, low-output outcome.     

知识产权的法律冲突与法律适用探微

知识产权国际保护体系的确立,使知识产权取得了在“国民待遇”和“权利独立”原则之下的间接的域外效力,从而产生了法律冲突和法律适用问题。知识产权的法律适用包括冲突法的适用和统一实体法的适用两个方面,两者互为补充,相得益彰,舍其一则不能使知识产权的国际协调充分到位。     

State Power and Penal Rhetoric: A Historical Analysis of the Prison System in Taiwan

The aim of this study is to present a construction of the history of the prison system in Taiwan in the context of the intertwined structures of penal discourses and the governmentality of the state. The prison system in Taiwan has been subject to different ruling political regimes, ranging from colonised, authoritarian to liberal-democratic systems between 1895 and the present. The history of imprisonment can be divided into six stages, each of which consists of distinct governmental strategies that shape prominent penal discourses. My purpose was to uncover the exercising power of governmentality, further shaping, guiding and affecting the penal discourses via rationalities and technologies upon which prison administration depends.

论警察超常思维

“超常思维”是人类大脑最宝贵的一种潜能,当代警务人员如何充分挖掘这种潜能,应着力于四个方面:缜密思考,这是培养超常思维的首要基础;敢于破旧,要立新,破旧必先行,摆脱“传统定势”、“上级定势”、“权威定势”等观念的束缚;善于想象,培养联想、幻想、灵感等想象思维活动;大胆创新,超常思维是“创新”的重要基石,“创新”是超常思维的最佳表现。     

论行政法对公民财产权的保护

行政法存在的根本目的是为了规范行政权,保障权利,同时也实现公益,这与对公民财产的保护是不相冲突的。现代行政只有做到有所为有所不为,才能与公民财产权之间形成良性互动,从而实现国家对公民财产权的有效保护。     

Governing the Safety and Security of the Malacca Strait: The Nippon Foundation between States and Industry

ABSTRACT

Despite long-standing sovereignty sensitivities, the Malacca and Singapore Straits have been the site of co-operative governance and regime building. Of note is the 2007 Co-operative Mechanism of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, characterised as a milestone achievement in regional co-operation towards improved safety and security in the Straits. Yet, well before the Co-operative Mechanism were also earlier instances of co-operation dating to the 1970s – specifically between the Straits’ littoral states under a tripartite framework and Japanese actors through the Malacca Strait Council. In addition to providing a template for the Co-operative Mechanism, these arrangements offer alternative models of governance and regime building that challenge conventional characterisations of “regional governance” – what it looks like, as well as its driving actors. This article considers the significance of these early efforts, with attention to the ways that the region’s developmental context bears on the actors, structures and processes of governance in Southeast Asia. Not only does this historical process of co-operation give expression to alternative governing arrangements composed of mixed actors and obligations, but an unconventional governance agent – the Nippon Foundation – has played an especially defining role in bringing actors to the table and substantiating the co-operative process.     

Bringing actors back in: political choices and sources of post-Soviet regime dynamics

One might summarize the state of the field of research into contemporary Russian politics as a “dismal consensus”: most observers believe that durable authoritarianism has consolidated itself, and there is very little chance of democratization in the foreseeable future. However, political regime changes are often launched and developed overtime as side effects of moves made by political actors, and their outcomes are not predetermined. This article aims to go beyond this “dismal consensus,” and revisits some of the arguments on the role of structure and agency in post-Soviet regime dynamics. Apart from the changes in structural variables, it reconsiders the role of the incentives and choices of self-interested political actors, who are not always omnipotent and well-informed strategists. The overall dismal tendencies nevertheless leave some “bias for hope” in the analysis of regime dynamics in post-Soviet Eurasia and beyond.     

Broadcasting agitainment: a new media strategy of Putin’s third presidency

This article argues that accounts of the Russian media system that tend to view the time from Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 2000 as a single homogenous period do not capture major qualitative shifts in state-controlled media coverage. By analyzing the output of Russia’s two main television channels during Putin’s third presidential term, we identify a range of distinctly new features that amount to a new media strategy. This involves a significant increase in the coverage of political issues through the replacement of infotainment with what we term agitainment—an ideologically inflected content that, through adapting global media formats to local needs, attempts to appeal to less engaged and even sceptical viewers. Despite the tightening of political control over the media following the annexation of Crimea, the new strategy paradoxically has strengthened the constitutive role played by the state-controlled broadcasters in the articulation of official discourse.     

The 15 July abortive coup and post-truth politics in Turkey

Contemporary developments throughout the world have been marked by post-truth politics. Epitomized by a disregard for truth coupled with a reliance on emotive arguments, the term ‘post-truth politics’ has not yet been adequately reflected upon by political or social theory. This article uses Turkey’s 15 July (2016) abortive coup as an entry point to address this gap and argues that the post-truth has altered both the grammar and vocabulary of politics. The term denotes the contemporary shift from a ‘regime of truth’ to a ‘regime of common sense’, which also operates as the discursive ground of new populisms. While treating three contending narratives of 15 July – ‘kamikaze coup’, ‘staged coup’ and ‘controlled coup’ – this article focuses on the post-truth elements in the government’s narrative performance that obstructed the pursuit of truth and set the conditions for a particular interpretation of the events of 15 July.     

Workplace regimes in Sino-Mozambican construction projects: resentment and tension in a divided workplace

Based on a qualitative study of Chinese-led construction projects in Mozambique, this article explores how Chinese engagement in the construction sector affects workplace regimes. The study addresses the following set of questions: What characterises these workplace regimes, and why do the workplace regimes give rise to resentment and tension amongst Mozambican workers? Furthermore, how is labour agency constrained or enabled within these workplace regimes? The data reveals that Chinese companies in Mozambique are granted great freedom to develop workplace regimes as they see fit, characterised by functional flexibility, low pay and few benefits. Furthermore, the creation of a divided workplace, with separate workplace regimes for Chinese and Mozambican workers, exacerbates resentment amongst Mozambican workers. The Mozambican workers employ multiple strategies to express their discontent, but labour agency is constrained by weak national institutional support, and lack of alternative employment opportunities in the local labour market.