Legitimacy and institutional purpose

ABSTRACT

Institutions undertake a huge variety of constitutive purposes. One of the roles of legitimacy is to protect and promote an institution’s pursuit of its purpose; state legitimacy is generally understood as the right to rule, for example. When considering legitimacy beyond the state, we have to take account of how differences in purposes change legitimacy. I focus in particular on how differences in purpose matter for the stringency of the standards that an institution must meet in order to be legitimate. An important characteristic of an institution’s purpose is its deontic status, i.e. whether it is morally impermissible, merely permissible, or mandatory. Although this matters, it does so in some non-obvious ways; the mere fact of a morally impermissible purpose is not necessarily delegitimating, for example. I also consider the problem of conflicting, multiple, and contested institutional purposes, and the different theoretical roles for institutional purpose. Understanding how differences in purpose matter for an institution’s legitimacy is one part of the broader project of theorizing institutional legitimacy in the many contexts beyond the traditional context of the state.     

The UN Security Council,normative legitimacy and the challenge of specificity

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how the general and abstract concept of legitimacy applies to international institutions, using the United Nations Security Council as an example. We argue that the evaluation of the Security Council’s legitimacy requires considering three significant and interrelated aspects: its purpose, competences, and procedural standards. We consider two possible interpretations of the Security Council’s purpose: on the one hand, maintaining peace and security, and, on the other, ensuring broader respect for human rights. Both of these purposes are minimally morally acceptable for legitimacy. Second, we distinguish between three different competences of the UNSC: 1) the decision-making competence, 2) the quasi-legislative competence, and 3) the referral competence. On this basis, we argue that different procedural standards are required to legitimise these competences, which leads to a more differentiated understanding of the Security Council’s legitimacy. While maintaining that the membership structure of the Council is a severe problem for its legitimacy, we suggest other procedural standards that can help to improve its overall legitimacy, which include broad transparency, deliberation, and the revisability of the very terms of accountability themselves.     

立法视角下的《反邪教法》立法必要性探讨

邪教犯罪是当前世界各国共同面临的重要社会问题，也是我国当前和今后一个时期预防与打击各种社会犯罪中的首要任务之一。本文梳理我国打击邪教犯罪方面的立法规定，针对我国邪教问题表现出来的复杂性和多样性，指出迅速制定出台《反邪教法》，从而对其进行有效的规范和控制。     

The legitimacy of occupation authority: beyond just war theory

ABSTRACT

So far, most of the philosophical literature on occupations has tried to assess the legitimacy of military rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts by exclusively employing the theoretical resources of just war theory. In this paper, I argue that this approach is mistaken. Occupations occur during or in the aftermath of wars but they are fundamentally a specific type of rule over persons. Thus, theories of political legitimacy should be at least as relevant as just war theory for the moral evaluation of occupations. This paper, therefore, draws on both traditions and argues that just war theory plays a limited role in identifying the purposes and appropriate agents of occupation authority, but that theories of legitimacy are necessary for explaining why and under which conditions foreign actors have the right to rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts.     

“凡进必考”可以提升基层公务员的专业自主性吗?--基于准自然实验的断点回归分析

"凡进必考"制度是我国选贤任能制度的重要内容,有利于我国干部队伍专业化建设,但现有研究对考试录用制度与专业自主性关系的解释存在不足。本研究提出了理论上的解释:"凡进必考"制度触发基层公务员与内部人利益分离机制;注重专业能力的"凡进必考"制度触发专业角色期待机制,两者均有利于专业自主性提升。本研究采集我国东中部10个城市基层公务员数据,使用断点回归与中介效应方法,实证结果显示:《国家公务员暂行条例》1996年在地方落实后触发利益分离机制;基层公务员专业能力对公务员制度变迁与专业自主性关系起到中介作用;2014年实施《党政领导干部选拔任用工作条例》开始限缩"公开选拔"适用范围对专业自主性产生负面影响。未来选贤任能制度完善中,如何平衡灵活录用与专业自主性是一个有待解决的问题。     

Federal Political Fragmentation in Mexico's 2015 Elections

The 2015 congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral elections in Mexico display the continuation of political changes that started 15 years ago. The most notorious change in 2015 is the electoral success of non-mainstream parties, which have increased their vote share vis-à-vis the mainstream parties, the Party of National Action (PAN), the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), and the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD). These mainstream parties lost important vote shares, although the PRI has shown itself to be more resilient to electoral volatility than the other parties. The increase of volatility in Mexico favours the alternation of the parties in power; however, it also increases political fragmentation. This article argues that in a context of growing electoral volatility and political fragmentation, presidential authority is weakened, giving rise to the dispersion of power to other levels of government. Furthermore, the article suggests that party volatility presents important territorial variation in Mexico.     

Coupling citizens and elites in deliberative systems: The role of institutional design

A significant shortcoming in contemporary deliberative systems is that citizens are disconnected from various elite sites of public deliberation. This article explores the concept of ‘coupling’ as a means to better link citizens and elites in deliberative systems. The notion of ‘designed coupling’ is developed to describe institutional mechanisms for linking otherwise disconnected deliberative sites. To consider whether it is possible and indeed desirable to use institutional design to couple different sites in a deliberative system, the article draws on insights from a case study in which a mini‐public was formally integrated into a legislative committee. The empirical study finds that it is not only feasible to couple mini‐publics to legislative committees, but when combined, the democratic and deliberative capacity of both institutions can be strengthened. To be effective, ‘designed coupling’ requires more than establishing institutional connections; it also requires that actors to step outside their comfort zone to build new relationships and engage in new communicative spaces with different sets of ideas, actors and rules. This can be facilitated by institutional design, but it also requires leaders and champions who are well‐placed to encourage actors to think differently.     

对增设未成年犯社区服务刑的探讨

社区服务刑融教育刑思想与赔偿理论于一体,符合刑罚轻缓化和行刑社会化的趋势。对未成年犯适用社区服务刑,既能体现刑罚的惩罚功能,又能达到刑罚教育预防的目的。     

略论我国第一个《刑法修正案》

笔者认为,《刑法修正案》不属于单行刑法,用“修正案”的形式补充修改刑法具有灵活性、便于适用性,能保持刑法统一等优点,但是我国第一个《刑法修正案》在立法技巧上仍不当地沿用了以往单行刑法的模式。     

试论惩罚犯罪的刑罚目的

探究刑罚惩罚犯罪目的的价值、刑法学界否认刑罚惩罚犯罪目的的原因以及我国刑罚惩罚目的的历史根源和伦理基础。刑罚惩罚目的是罪刑法定和罪责刑相适应原则对于刑罚目的的必然要求。刑罚目的应以通过刑罚惩罚犯罪,伸张社会正义作为其追求的价值目标。