Transcendental institutionalism and global justice

In The Idea of Justice (2009 Sen, A. 2009. The idea of justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Amartya Sen distinguishes between ‘transcendental institutional’ approaches to justice and ‘realization-focused comparisons,’ rejecting the former and recommending the latter as a normative approach to global justice. I argue that Sen’s project fails for three principal reasons. First, he misdiagnoses the problem with accounts that he refers to as transcendental-institutionalist. The problem is not with these kinds of accounts per se, but with particular features of prominent approaches. Second, Sen’s realization-focus does not account well for the value of institutions of global justice. And even Sen agrees that reforms to institutions are urgently needed. And third, the distinction between transcendentalism and comparative approaches is implausible. I close by suggesting a strategy for an alternative institutionalist approach that can offer the kind of guidance for reforming the global order that Sen rightly takes as urgent.     

The Hyper-Hermeneutic Gesture of a Subtle Revolution

Abstract

I argue that Shakespeare's Timon of Athens exemplifies the concept of mourning play that Walter Benjamin had in mind when he wrote The Origin of German Tragic Drama. While others have interpreted the play in various ways, no one has attempted to understand Timon in a Benjaminesque manner that seeks to show the emergence of baroque tragedy as a new aesthetic form at odds with, and liberated from, classical tragedy's mythical foundation and instead premised on historical time and progress. In my discussion, I question the view that Timon possesses inheritable or transmissible human social bonds that can be the subject of annihilation as is the case in Shakespeare's other tragedies. Rather, Benjamin sees in allegory, as illustrated by Timon of Athens, the social condition of modernity replete with suffering, chaos, and violence, but devoid of real human bonds; indeed, it is without human meaning.     

“Embedded regulation:” The migration of objects,scripts, and governance

This paper asks why an officially unregulated market in pharmaceuticals in a least developed country, Djibouti, behaves as if it were strictly regulated, with limited access to a small number of high‐cost drugs. We use Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) to show that the explanation is more complex than critics of the international pharmaceutical industry have supposed. Regulation and property rights generated in developed countries have become embedded in the drugs and “black boxed” to the point of invisibility. This has allowed them to travel to Djibouti with the drugs, while maintaining their effects in action. This case study develops our understanding of the way in which materials that are not designated as regulatory agents may still have regulatory impacts through their ability to enrol complex networks of actors, rules, values, and practices. Finally, it argues against the notion of law as a fixed and distinctive space for action, as opposed to the ANT vision of a fluid and contingent order, where law is part of a socio‐technico‐legal alliance that happens to achieve certain effects.     

Crafting a Region While Intervening? Regional Discourses on Burundi

Peacemaking interventions do not only intend to facilitate desirable order in crisis contexts but, thereby, the participating interveners also struggle to attach meaning to their own position in the world. The African interveners, loosely organized around the ‘Regional Peace Initiative on Burundi’, engender an image of the self that affects the possibilities for political cooperation on the regional scale. Based on a discourse analysis of an extensive corpus of diverse voices from East and South Africa, it is shown that intervention politics increased regional awareness—but not in a linear manner. The idea of a progressive and autonomous East Africa was strongest in the first years of regional facilitation between 1996 and 1999, when the revival of the East African Community (EAC) was also simultaneously being negotiated. This regional impetus decreased with South Africa's more active participation in the intervention, which envisioned increasing its own country profile instead.     

The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization,Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)

Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion, intervention and statebuilding have once again been explicit features of American foreign policy. Current assessments of this return, however, overlook both their longer term history and their roots in liberal (and not just American) ideology. The contradictions and dynamics entailed in the liberal philosophy of history have already played themselves out once before, in the modernization theories and policies of the early Cold War period. Despite their academic and political failures at the time, the same assumptions now underpin democracy promotion in the post-Cold War period and show signs of the same dynamics of failure. In this two part essay, I argue that the repetition of such counterproductive policies constitutes a recurring ‘tragedy of liberal diplomacy’ in which the shaping of US foreign policy by assumptions deeply rooted in the liberal philosophy of history plays a central part in producing the very enemies that policy is designed to confront and transform.     

通识教育视域下我国高校思政课教学的困境与革新

通识教育是许多发达国家对大学生进行思想政治教育的重要途径。我国高校已将思政课列为大学生的通识教育课程之一,但在实际教学过程中却与通识教育的目标要求呈现出"两张皮"的现象。提高我国高校思政课的教学实效,教师必须深入分析教学过程中面临的诸多困境与挑战,不断转变教学理念、关注教学过程、革新教学内容、转变教学模式、营造教学环境和变革教学评价体系,实现教学方法体系的创新。     

机遇与挑战：羁押必要性审查制度研究

羁押在我国并非属于一种独立的强制措施,而是专指有关机关对犯罪嫌疑人（被告人）在法庭确定其有罪之前暂时剥夺其人身自由的措施。2012年刑事诉讼法（修正案）构建了相对独立的羁押必要性审查制度,从羁押必要性审查制度的建构背景看,该制度是人权保障价值的重要体现,也是我国检察监督理论制度的创新发展。然而由于我国法治发展的阶段性特征,羁押必要性审查制度在实践中可能面临着社会秩序需求、司法效率价值等多种阻碍因素,对此应该予以重视,并应进一步改革和完善。     

社会管理创新试点工作调研——以贵州警官职业学院开展政法挂帮工作实效性为视角

面对社会主义市场经济条件下构建和谐社会的新形势新任务,从全局和战略的高度,认真贯彻落实中央和省委的决策部署,准确把握新时期赋予的社会管理创新的历史使命和重大责任,紧密结合实际,找准政法挂帮着力点,发挥自身职能优势,突出特色,着力在推动社会管理的创新发展、维护和谐稳定、改善民生、服务基层上下功夫,力求社会管理创新取得实效。     

保险诈骗罪第4款解释路径的法律分析

片面共犯由于违背共同故意要件因而不属于共同犯罪,其不能对保险诈骗罪第4款的法律性质作出合理的解释。保险诈骗罪第4款既不属于法律拟制和注意规定,也不属于想象竞合和法规竞合,其是法律文本主义的当然解释,亦是大竞合理论下,适用从一重处断原则的当然结果。