环境标准的规制能力再造——以对健康的保障为中心

保障人体健康应该作为环境法律的核心价值追求，而环境标准的性质和特征决定了环境法律保障人体健康的制度路径。但现实社会中，我国环境标准体系存在着内容缺失、灵魂缺失、定位不清、体系紊乱、思路偏差和观念滞后等弊端，决定了环境标准体系在保障人体健康中效果不佳。我们应相应地完善我国环境标准体系中以有效保障人体健康的核心目的和作为判断其绩效的标准、专门规定保障人体健康的环境标准规范，并相应地在立法技术上予以完善，最终发挥环境标准体系在保障人体健康中的作用。     

大力提升警情处置能力之管见

当前,铁路治安形势和安全维稳形势比以往更加复杂,警情发生接连不断,处置难度越来越高,因此,铁路公安机关要立足现实斗争和实战需求,不断更新警情处置理念,始终做好应急准备,规范指挥处置流程,严把重点关键环节,健全应急联动机制,切实做到及时高效处置。     

Negotiating Refugee Empowerment(s) in Resettlement Organizations

In-depth interviews with both organizational staff and refugee clients in two American refugee resettlement organizations explore how empowerment is communicated to and understood by refugees being “empowered.” This study found that while organizational staff professed empowerment focused on self-sufficiency as self-determination, in practice their communication to clients defined self-sufficiency a priori in economic terms. Refugee clients instead constructed empowerment(s) in economic, educational, personal, and family terms. These findings highlight the need for changes in U.S. resettlement policy and for theoretical and practical understandings of refugee empowerment to recognize polysemic and conflicting empowerments in different life arenas and from different positionalities.     

Coercive capacity and the durability of the Chinese communist state

Why has the Chinese communist state remained so durable in an age of democratization? Contrary to existing theories, this article argues that the strong state coercive capacity has survived the authoritarian rule in China. We demonstrate that the Chinese Communist Party has taken deliberate actions to enhance the cohesion of its coercive organizations—the police, in particular—by distributing “spoils of public office” to police chiefs. In addition, the state has extended the scope of its coercion by increasing police funding in localities where the state sector loses control of the population. We use and rely on mixed methods to test this theory.     

当代中国政治体制改革的演进逻辑

我国政治体制改革的思路主要立足于以下三个方面:选择适当的政治改革模式,选择恰当的改革时机,找准改革的突破口。经过30年的改革摸索,我国政治体制改革虽然取得了巨大的成就,但政治体制改革的步伐较慢。十八大报告中再次强调要更加注重改进党的领导方式和执政方式,保证党领导人民有效治理国家,这意味着今后政治体制改革的重点将是加强执政党执政能力的建设。     

家事协议的效力与认定

家事协议是由具备家事行为能力的家庭成员就家庭生活重要事项协商一致达成的约束所有家庭成员之协议。具体司法裁判中，家事协议效力应基于其与法律之多重博弈关系，通过考量司法政策取向、司法能力及其系统性影响等因素来认定和择取案件最佳裁判路径与效果。     

The Importance of Design in Affordable Housing: Lessons From Mutual Self-Help Housing in California

We focus on three nonprofit organizations developing mutual self-help housing and analyze their projects to examine how they are addressing cost increases. We find that instead of using simpler designs, they are developing more elaborate homes through intricate financing. We are critical of this evolution. First, we suggest that the original modest house design of mutual self-help housing allowed for more affordable housing through post-occupancy improvements and de facto incremental development. Second, after the modest design was replaced with a larger model, development costs increased. Despite financial innovations, including longer loan terms and secondary financing, participation by poor households dropped. Third, we urge a return to the modest housing idea. Fourth, we call for policymakers to better integrate design-based thinking in housing policy.     

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.     

The story of two administrative states: state capacity in Hong Kong and Singapore

Abstract

Hong Kong and Singapore are both typical administrative states with an efficient administration and a vibrant market, which had achieved rapid economic growth in the past decades. This article examines the trajectory of their state capacity, highlighting recent problems and challenges. Based on a conceptual framework that captures and links up four dimensions – namely polity, bureaucracy, economy and civil society – their commonalities and differences in response are discussed. Their experience should be of particular relevance to transitional authoritarian states in Asia such as China, which faces similar challenges to reform in the arenas of politics, administration, economics and society.     

Thickening Civil Society: Explaining the Development of Associational Life in Mexico

Scholarship has demonstrated the important role that associational life has played in democratic transitions, democratic consolidation, and making democracy work. Unfortunately, however, many countries that have recently completed the transition to democracy lack a strong history of autonomous associations. Given their importance, this research seeks to understand how nonprofit organizations emerge in current-day Mexico, a recent transition country with a traditionally weak associational life, historically controlled by the state. Through a comparison of four Mexican cities this research finds that a transition from one-party rule to competitive elections was necessary to break the incentives for clientelism. Even following the transition, however, the persistence of informal rules from the old regime operating in both government and society restricts the opportunities available to potential ‘public entrepreneurs’. As a result, such entrepreneurs are highly dependent on already existing social infrastructure to obtain necessary human, organizational, and financial resources.