Integrating Concerns with Climate Change into Local Development Planning in Cambodia

Integration of climate change adaptation with development planning at multiple scales is widely seen as preferable to reactive, fragmented, or highly centralized responses. At the same time, there are growing concerns on when intervention is most appropriate, the transaction costs of coordination, and the adequacy of institutional capacity at local levels, especially in developing countries. This article examines entry points and mechanisms for integrating concerns with climate change into local development planning in Cambodia. An institutional ethnography of the planning process indicates that subnational planning is participatory and flexible; and thus, provides plausible entry points to integrate climate change concerns. Case study methods applied to two externally supported, climate‐resilient development projects identify promising mechanisms and strategies, as well as obstacles to integration. A vulnerability reduction assessment tool and top‐up grant scheme both included promising deliberative and participatory elements from which lessons for future and elsewhere can be drawn. At the same time, key stakeholders concede that local integration more widely is hampered by multiple obstacles, including weak institutional capacity, low community participation, and lack of resources and incentives. Addressing these challenges requires political commitments for good governance, capacity development, and additional resources.     

Language and education laws in multi-ethnic de facto states: the cases of Abkhazia and Transnistria

Even after the conflicts of the early 1990s that brought them to their de facto independence, both Abkhazia and Transnistria remained strongly multi-ethnic. In both territories, no single ethnic group is an absolute majority and Russian is the language that is mostly spoken on the streets of Sukhumi and Tiraspol. Legislators of both entities felt the need to deal with multi-ethnicity and multilingualism, including in their constitutions, in laws related to education, or more directly with specific language laws (1992 law “On languages” in Transnistria; 2007 law “On the state language in Abkhazia”). The protection of linguistic rights that is formally part of the legislation of both territories finds limitations in practice. The language of education has proved to be particularly contentious, in particular for Moldovan/Romanian language schools in Transnistria and Georgian language schools in Abkhazia. Why are language laws in Abkhazia and Transnistria so different, in spite of the fact that they are both post-Soviet, multi-ethnic territories that became de facto independent in the early 1990s? The different approaches found in Abkhazia and Transnistria represent remarkable examples of language legislation as a tool for nation-building in ethnically heterogeneous territories.     

论我国法院判定专利权效力的界限——专利无效判断方式的原则与例外

学界对于专利侵权纠纷与确权纠纷解决“双轨制构造”批评颇多,有关问题的解决思路也争议良多、尚难以达成统一意见。专利法需要改革,但改革离不开理论支撑,不可违背基本法理“自说自话”。学者们尚未足够重视专利权有效性推定对于专利无效判断方式所带来的影响。明晰“双轨制构造”背后存在的法理基础,为专利法改革提供基础理论支持,显得尤为重要。在现有的法理基础上进行专利法改革,法院原则上应充分尊重专利局的确权职能,只有在例外的情况下,也即当然无效的情形下才能直接判定专利权效力。     

Complementarity of additionalities resulting from European Union funds: Perspective of the users of research infrastructures

The goal of this paper is to investigate the complementarity of three types of additionalities: input (growth of R&D investments), behavioral (changes in the internal processes of the entity), and output (leveraging social or private returns), occurring as the result of the 7th Framework Programme and Horizon 2020 European Union funds part INFRA. The empirical contribution is based on results of self-created questionnaires conducted in 2016 with the use of CATI/CAWI on the unique sample of N = 401 users of European Union research infrastructures from 32 countries. We create a Behavioral Additionality Index (BAI), which is a measurement tool that combines eight types (scale, scope, cognitive capacity, challenge, network, follow-up, management, and acceleration) of behavioral additionalities. Based on the results of a logistic regression, we find that there is a positive relationship between input and behavioral additionality, as well as between behavioral additionality and output additionality. This last link, however, is not shown to be strengthened by input additionality. No significant differences in the level of the BAI were found between EU countries based on their level of innovativeness as measured by the Summary Innovation Index (SII), although we can observe that less developed EU countries, as well as on non-EU countries, have higher BAI scores compared to developed ones. The overall results lead to the conclusion that the evaluation of public financial support has to be conducted not only for input, behavioral, and output additionalities separately, but must also take into account their complementarity—with its major focus on the behavioral aspects of this effect.     

STI policy conventions in Uruguay. An analysis of political party platforms 2004–2019

Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) have been considered as critical tools in development processes, gaining growing importance in the public policy agenda. We assert that an intersubjective agreement about STI policy has emerged in Latin America from the beginning of the twenty-first century. This operates as a developmental convention which is based on a hybrid theoretical rationale from neoclassical economics and the innovation systems approach. This process has been analyzed from different perspectives of innovation and political economy studies. However, as far as we know, the role of political parties in the construction and reproduction of STI conventions has not been studied. After illustrating the general assertion with stylized facts from the whole Latin American region, we study the platforms that Uruguayan political parties presented in the national elections between 2004 and 2019. Text analysis techniques show that platforms of both left- and right-wing political parties were embedded in the current STI policy convention. However, critical discrepancies emerge in relation to policy implementation—the positive and negative agendas—which show that there has been political competition regarding the role of the state and of markets. This leads us to conclude that even though one can observe a shared set of building blocks on STI policy and development, there is competition within the current convention, suggesting that any agreement is illusory.     

Policy learning and change during crisis: COVID-19 policy responses across six states

Whereas policy change is often characterized as a gradual and incremental process, effective crisis response necessitates that organizations adapt to evolving problems in near real time. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in the case of COVID-19, which forced subnational governments to constantly adjust and recalibrate public health and disease mitigation measures in the face of changing patterns of viral transmission and the emergence of new information. This study assesses (a) the extent to which subnational policies changed over the course of the pandemic; (b) whether these changes are emblematic of policy learning; and (c) the drivers of these changes, namely changing political and public health conditions. Using a novel dataset analyzing each policy's content, including its timing of enactment, substantive focus, stringency, and similar variables, results indicate the pandemic response varied significantly across states. The states examined were responsive to both changing public health and political conditions. This study identifies patterns of preemptive policy learning, which denotes learning in anticipation of an emerging hazard. In doing so, the study provides important insights into the dynamics of policy learning and change during disaster.     

Policy conflicts in shale development in China and the United States

Policy conflicts are ubiquitous in many countries. Yet research on policy conflict is typically based on cases in western, democratic countries. As a result, little is known about the characteristics of policy conflicts in non-western countries, such as China, or how these characteristics compare to western contexts. The Policy Conflict Framework (PCF) was recently developed to help scholars identify, diagnose, and compare policy conflict characteristics. This research uses the PCF to guide a comparative analysis of the nature of policy conflicts in China and the United States. With interview data on policy actors from Chongqing, China and Colorado, USA, we present the findings by comparing the differences and similarities of policy conflicts in the two countries around shale oil and gas development. We conclude with the strengths and limitations of this comparative study of policy conflicts in China and other national contexts, along with recommendations for conducting PCF research in China.     

试论事实婚姻的认定及处理

本文认为事实婚姻在一定时期内是禁而难绝的社会现象,在力求杜绝事实婚姻发生的原则下,有条件地承认事实婚姻关系是符合实际的。     

Féminiser les noms de profession dans la langue judiciaire

Résumé  L’évolution de la société se traduit dans le langage. Au Moyen ?ge, notairesse, tutorresse et défenderesse rendaient visibles, dans les textes, l’épouse et la femme agissant dans la société. à notre époque s’emploient des noms, tels infirmière, institutrice et vendeuse, qui ne sont pas neufs. Simultanément, comme la femme accède à des professions réservées aux hommes, s’installent des appellations féminines nouvelles telles que (la) juge, (la) pénaliste, présidente, consœur, avocate, magistrate, huissière, enquêtrice. Au Québec, en Suisse, en Belgique et en France, des textes officiels recommandent la féminisation. Celle-ci suscite les passions parce qu’elle touche aux traditions, au savoir-vivre, aux préjugés, au souci d’égalité et surtout à l’identité de la personne. Même si des raisons culturelles et sociales freinent l’évolution des mentalités, la progression de la féminisation dans l’usage constitue un fait linguistique remarquable.     

Symbiosis Between Slavery and Feminism in Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's Sab?

Abstract— Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's novel Sub (1841) has been subject to many interpretations. Early criticism considered it as little more than a sentimental and shocking romantic story: the impossibly unconventional love of a black slave for a white woman. Later critics'have sought to establish Snb as a pioneering antislavery novel. This article will attempt to demonstrate that Avellaneda's main purpose was not to narrate a doomed love, nor to present a denunciation of slavery, but to express her feminist ideology, establishing the parallelism between the situation of black slaves and the oppression of white women in the bourgeois society of her time. However, we cannot say that Avellaneda created a symbiosis between slavery and feminism; the theme of slavery is only a metaphor, doubly shocking because it exposes her own emancipating ideas in an oppressive society that did not forgive those voices ivhich dared to transgress its norms. 0 1997 Society for Latin American Studies.