论我国行政问责制的现状及完善

行政问责是西方国家政治生活中的常见现象,也是体现民主和宪政原则的一种重要的制度安排。在我国,随着一系列重大责任事故的发生,我国行政责任中的引咎辞职制度逐渐呈现出制度化趋势。以责任控制权力,是最基本的权力控制措施。在我国特殊的政治行政体制和文化传统下,如何积极有效地完善这一制度成了我国理论界和实践界特别关注的问题。目前,我国着力推行行政问责,取得了积极进展,但还存在一些问题。根据我国行政问责制的现状,借鉴其他国家或地区的经验,针对我国的实际情况,完善我国行政问责制。     

法人与非法人组织的体系区隔及其突破——以“类型序列论”改造《民法通则》第37条

法人财产及责任的独立性,作为法人人格的财产制度基础,正受到实践中众多反例的动摇。这使法人与非法人组织间的体系区隔亦不再牢不可破。若忠实于由简单的财产共有,到财产高度独立的"完人化"的法人组织之间的,各组织类型的渐进性过渡的事实,则在进行各组组织形态的人为分级时,应当采取更为开放与自由的立法态度。在未来中国民法典中降低法人财产独立性的程度要求,取消法人独立财产责任的法人条件必选项之地位,突破法人与非法人组织的体系区隔,建立自然人——法人,二元民事主体格局。     

我国官员问责制的建构及完善

官员问责制在启动不到两年的时间里,就取得了引人注目的成就。在实践操作层面,惩治了一批不作为和滥作为的官员,给各级各类官员极大的震撼,对传统的“无过便是功”的为官之道以巨大冲击;在制度层面,从中央到地方,出台了一系列针对官员的问责制度,使官员问责走上规范化、制度化和民主化的轨道。由于问责制度尚处在草创阶段,权责不清,问责标准不明,问责主要局限于同体问责,异体问责力度不够,在问责过程中缺乏相应的救济制度,这些问题有待进一步建设和完善。     

The economic effects of judicial accountability: cross-country evidence

Judicial independence is not only a necessary condition for the impartiality of judges, it can also endanger it: judges that are independent could have incentives to remain uninformed, become lazy or even corrupt. It is therefore often argued that judicial independence and judicial accountability are competing ends. In this paper, it is hypothesized that they can be complementary means towards achieving impartiality and, in turn, the rule of law. It is further argued that judicial accountability can increase per capita income through various channels one of which is the reduction of corruption. First tests concerning the economic effects of JA are carried out and on the basis of 75 countries, these proxies are highly significant for explaining differences in per capita income drawing both on OLS as well as TSLS.

Complainants’ Views about Civilian Review of the Police: A Study of the Philippines

In search of effective control of the police, several countries have created civilian review boards. The Philippines recently adopted such an approach by establishing the People’s Law Enforcement Board (PLEB). The board is envisioned to enable citizens to participate in the process of police control. This study examines the perceptions of complainants about the board in a metropolitan area in the Philippines. Using surveys, the study aims to determine the integrity, legitimacy, and efficiency of the board as well as the satisfaction of complainants with the review board. The findings suggest that complainants were highly satisfied with the People’s Law Enforcement Board. Complainants also showed great concern for the legitimacy of the board and the timely resolutions of their cases. In addition, the study confirms previous studies’ findings on the predominant influence of case outcomes on complainants’ satisfaction.

Accountability infrastructures: Pragmatic compliance inside organizations

We trace the pragmatic turn in regulatory governance from the level of the state and civil society to the coalface of the regulated organization. Since the 1980s, an array of new regulatory models has emerged. These models, while distinct, are unified in two related tendencies. First, they support the devolution of responsibility for standard setting, program design, and enforcement to the regulated organization. This delegation of governance to the organization itself has catalyzed the creation of accountability infrastructures within organizations, a network of offices, roles, programs, and procedures dedicated to aligning the organization's operations with external standards, codes of conduct, ethical and normative expectations, and regulations. Second, the diverse regulatory models depend, often implicitly, on organizational accountability infrastructures that incorporate the tenets of pragmatist philosophy: inquiry through narration, adaptation to context, and problem-solving through experimentation. Reviewing the empirical literature on organizational compliance, we find ample evidence of inquiry through narration at the organizational coalface. However, we find limited evidence of narrating plurality in the organization and narrating experimentation as problem-solving, as these activities create tensions with internal and external parties who expect singular, stable representations of governance. These tensions reveal an important incongruity between pragmatic governance across organizations and pragmatic governance within organizations. We contribute to the regulatory governance literature by documenting this important shift in the locus of governance to the organizational coalface and by charting a new research agenda. We argue that examinations of regulatory governance should be retraced in three ways. First, attention should shift to the organizational coalface, recognizing and analyzing accountability infrastructures as the central contemporary mechanism of governance. Second, the long-standing focus in regulatory studies on why parties comply should shift to understanding how regulated parties manage themselves to achieve compliance. Third, analyses of compliance should examine the tensions in narrating adaptation and experimentation, and the implications of such tensions for the achievement of prosocial outcomes.     

Regulatory enforcement against organizational insiders: Interactions in the pursuit of individual accountability

The UK Financial Conduct Authority has developed and implemented policies targeting individuals for regulatory non-compliance in the post-2008 crisis period. This article develops a tripartite framework that differentiates between individual–firm, regulator–individual, and regulator–firm interactions to capture the complexity of these enforcement proceedings. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders, administrative decisionmaking observations, and documentary analysis, it outlines the process of individualizing responsibility for non-compliance and finds that this approach poses evidential and investigative challenges for the regulator as a result of individual and corporate responses. The evidence shows that individuals are more likely than firms to engage in an adversarial response to an investigation rather than to settle. At the same time, through an inverse process of “corporatization” of the enforcement proceedings, firms may employ resources and strategies aimed at obscuring individual responsibility or binding together more closely the corporate and the individual case. The article concludes that the prospects of a successful outcome in investigating individuals depend not only on regulators' activities but also on corporate responses and on which managers are considered assets to the firm and which may be thrown to the wolves.     

Toward “hardened” accountability? Analyzing the European Union's hybrid transnational governance in timber and biofuel supply chains

The voluntary/mandatory divide is a constant feature of scholarly debates on corporate accountability for sustainability in global supply chains. A widely held assumption is that the addition of state authority to private transnational governance in global supply chains will “harden” accountability and, thus, promote more sustainable production. The state's ability to set legally binding requirements is expected to coerce companies into complying. The hybridization of private and state authority is seen to strengthen good practice in private authority. This empirical study questions these assumptions based on an analysis of two hybrid governance arrangements for sustainability in global supply chains: the EU's Timber Regulation (EUTR) and Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The results demonstrate that both EUTR and EU-RED yield sector wide efforts of compliance and to this extent can be seen as enhancing accountability in the sense of answerability. At the same time, we find that the policies in both cases are not more demanding, nor enforced strictly, the latter putting into question their potential to coerce companies. Further, a “hardening” of accountability is at least obscured as both EUTR and EU-RED have stripped private authority they employ in their hybrid transnational governance from the need to establish legitimacy with a broader audience. This makes legal compliance and cost-effectiveness the core factor for companies’ efforts to demonstrate compliance. Our findings hence question whether the EUTR and EU-RED have led to “hardened” accountability compared to private transnational governance, and ask for an empirical, more nuanced understanding of what there is to gain or lose from hybridizing private and state authority in transnational governance.     

市场信用监管的政府责任及其实现机制

实践表明,构建以信用为基础的新型监管机制对政府的市场监管具有重要的基础意义。本文综合学理和实践视野,探讨了市场信用监管体系的构成特征,即市场信用监管是以信用信息为基石的一系列制度安排的集合,是实现全方位监管、全过程监管、精准化监管的集合。其核心价值是完善市场资源有效配置机制,降低制度性交易成本和促进新型市场监管体系全面升级。采用制度主义的视角分析了政府在市场信用监管中的制度供给、制度执行、制度维护和制度创新四大政府责任,并用结构-过程的视角结合具体实践分析了事前、事中、事后阶段以及全过程监管中可创新的一系列监管规则和制度。     

Deepwater or Troubled Water? Principal–Agent Theory and Performance-Based Contracting in the Coast Guard’s Deepwater Modernization Program

In the mid-1990s, the United States Coast Guard began planning a modernization effort known as the Deepwater program to replace an aging inventory of cutters, aircraft, and small boats. This effort involved a consortium of corporations to develop a “system of systems” to meet performance-based requirements and build the new equipment. This article examines the Deepwater program through the lens of multilayered principal–agent theory and evaluates the performance-based contracting (PBC) method used to alleviate strains linked to accountability from the principal–agent relationship. The findings help better understand the dilemmas prescribed from multilayered principal–agent theory and PBC by illustrating the accountability issues faced by smaller organizations when engaging in complex, large-scale procurement.