Governance and transnational civil society: the problem of transnational rent-seeking

The expansion of transnational civil society challenges the regulatory reach of nation-states, both individually and collectively. One regulatory challenge is that transnational civil society organizations (TCSOs) can avail of opportunities to engage in, or facilitate, transnational rent-seeking in ways which benefit a small group of organizations or individuals but which impose significant social costs. This article suggests that certain roles played by TCSOs lend themselves to rent-seeking behaviour and it explores the hypothesis that TCSOs can engage in, or facilitate, transnational rent-seeking where they constitute transnational special interests and/or private transnational authorities. To this end, the article outlines a brief theoretical framework and applies it to case studies of two TCSOs, representing transnational trade associations and industry lobbies, and sports associations and regulators. While the conclusions here are tentative, the article argues for further research including refinement of the theoretical framework and empirical testing.     

Building European Union capacity to manage transboundary crises: Network or lead‐agency model?

In recent years, the European continent has witnessed a substantial number of “transboundary crises” – crises that cross geographical borders and affect multiple policy domains. Nation states find it hard to deal with such crises by themselves. International cooperation, thus, becomes increasingly important, but it is not clear what shape or form that cooperation should take. This article explores the growing role of the European Union (EU) in managing transboundary crises. More specifically, it reflects on the different ways in which the expanding contours of the EU's emerging crisis capacity can be organized. Using three “performative dimensions” – sense‐making, coordination, and legitimacy – the article discusses the possible advantages and disadvantages of a decentralized, network model and compares it with a more centralized, lead‐agency model. It concludes that the current network model is a logical outcome of the punctuated and fragmentary process through which EU crisis management capacities have been created. It also notes that the shortcomings of this model may necessitate elements of a lead‐agency model. Such “agencification” of networks for transboundary crisis management may well lead to a hybrid model that is uniquely suited for the peculiar organizational and political creature that the EU is.     

论我国如何建立政府危机管理机制

本文反思了政府在处理非典事件的有关行政行为,分析这次病疫恶化的原因,探讨中国加强政府危机管理的必要性,并借鉴有关国家处理危机事件的经验,根据中国实际情况并围绕着政府如何建立危机管理机制,从立法、政府、新闻媒体、民众和国际协作等五个方面作了探讨.     

An Assessment of Collaborative Governance in a Network for Sustainable Tourism: The Case of RedeTuris

This article presents a case study of a cross-sectoral organizational network created to promote sustainable tourism in Rio de Janeiro. We briefly introduce the topics of collaborative governance and sustainable tourism, and then describe the focal network and the methods used for the research. Findings are discussed in terms of three themes: 1) key elements of collaborative governance; 2) aspects of the network formation and development process; and 3) features of the Brazilian context that may influence the network's likelihood of success. We conclude with a comment on the role of public managers in a network such as this.     

Population genetic data of 38 autosomal InDels in San Basilio de Palenque,the first free town in America

In order to increase the information about Indels, we report allele frequencies and statistical parameters of forensic efficiency obtained typing a sample of 114 unrelated healthy individuals living in San Basilio de Palenque – Colombia using a panel of 38 autosomal InDels. No significant deviations from Hardy–Weinberg expectations were found except in the marker rs10629077 (p = 0.0002). The present database will be useful for forensic and paternity purposes for the region studied. Moreover, these additional markers can help forensic laboratories to solve parentage testing as well as to improve the analysis of degraded DNA samples.     

Revalorizing the Political: Towards a New Intellectual Agenda for African Civil Society Discourse

Who needs civil society? What is civil society useful for? While the foregoing and similar dilemmas dominated the early civil society literature on sub-Saharan Africa, this was soon followed by a steady shift to the analysis of non-governmental organizations. The shift foreshadowed the recent methodological approach to civil society research which emphasizes ‘measuring’ and ‘surveying’ civil society. In this essay, I contend that this approach, to the extent that it seems to totalize civil society as component voluntary associations that can be measured, deepens the crisis of understanding which it aspires to transcend. Yet, although I critique—and reject—this approach, I argue nonetheless that it ought to be seen as an opportunity to reinstate a more theoretically robust and politically driven imagination of civil society, one that problematizes, not just civil society organizations that are, ultimately, only an aspect of civil society, but the civil domain as a whole. While conceding that ‘measuring’ civil society has its own merits, I insist that it comes with a real danger of, first, reducing civil society to organizations, especially organizations that can be measured; and second, distracting students of African societies from the politicality that underpins much of the continent's socio-economic woes.     

Technology,Reason and Globalisation?—O Brother!

The Coen Brothers' movie O Brother Where Art Thou is a ragbag of intertexts and gags that also pays very serious attention to questions of community and culture, class and race. In tracing the path of the protagonists through De-pression-era Mississippi, it takes its audiences through the experience of social transformation, from superstition and local concerns to a supposedly brave new (global and technological) world. Although the film is set in a distant time and place, it is informed by a very contemporary issue—the politics of technology, and its relation to the forces of globalisation. It is also a film that exemplifies what Certeau describes as the "cleavage which organizes modernity", a cleavage designated by the terms "science" (which is predicated on a law of rationality, and an imperative to explain, control and order) and "culture". We analyse the work of the film by drawing on the writings of Manuel Castells, Arjun Appadurai and Armand Mattelart to trace its explication of the questions of progress and communication in a world increasingly dominated by neo-liberal values.     

SPLM–NCP asymmetrical power relations jeopardise the implementation of the CPA and the future of the Sudan

ABSTRACT

The political instability that has characterised Sudanese politics since independence is attributable to political exclusion, economic neglect and marginalisation. Discrimination based on religion, language and culture has constituted the main contradictions between the masses of the Sudanese people (periphery) and the politically dominant Arabised Nubians (centre) in all the different politico-ideological hues experienced by the nation. Attempts to resolve this contradiction have left the structural imbalances inherited from the colonial administration of the Sudan intact. This explains the resurgence of war, particularly in Southern Sudan. The recent peace agreements between the National Congress Party (NCP), namely the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A); the Darfur Peace Agreement with the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) (Minawi); the Cairo Agreement with the National Democratic Alliance and the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement with the Eastern Sudan Front, have left the NCP still in firm control of the oppressive state machinery. The CPA power-sharing protocol awarded the NCP a majority which institutionalises a power asymmetry that the NCP utilises to obstruct implementation of the CPA and delay the process of democratic transformation.

This article analyses the asymmetry in the NCP–SPLM partnership and power relationship. It assumes that the tragic death of Dr. John Garang de Mabior is a major cause of the political weakness demonstrated by the SPLM since 2005. This power imbalance jeopardises the CPA implementation and the future of the Sudan as a state.     

O tratamento jurisdicional das liberdades comunicativas na sociedade da informação no brasil

The study part of the proposed constitutional foundations laid in the model of the democratic rule of law, guided by convictions more human and sympathetic, in contrast to previous models carved under the aegis of dissociated financial aspirations of the relevance of a social growth. Among the arguments contained in the Constitution, it becomes two faces of freedom of expression —freedom of the press and the right to information— both in order to corroborate the importance of these values within a democratic society. Moreover, focusing on virtual relationships, we seek to understand what the decision-making positions in Brazil, in relation to press freedoms and the right to information. Finally, mention was made that there is the seat of the two main national courts (Supreme Court and Superior Court of Justice), negative bias over the Internet, going on, but the actual implementation of communicative freedoms, individual cases interpreting the light of constitutional prism and nuances that requires the digital environment, as a new reality in which human relationships are given.     

论董事的概念

从形式意义上而言,董事是由公司选任产生的经营决策者或管理者;从实质意义上来说,董事是处于董事职位上的任何人。但形式意义上的界定具有明显不足。董事不仅是一种身份或职位,更是一个功能性概念。在公司实践中,某些主体并不具有董事职位或身份,却行使着董事的职权,或者对公司施加经营决策上的影响,成为公司自主经营的一种外在的异己力量。另外,一些董事的职责和功能被侵蚀或扭曲,成为了一种异己力量或者变异的身份。各国立法对这些现象的规制有一定的差异。我国立法上对上述问题的规定急需完善。