Two sides of the same coin: can campaigns generate support for both human rights and retributive violence?

ABSTRACT

Do framing strategies that are effective at encouraging pro-social behavior, such as participation in human rights campaigns, also mobilize support for violence within the same subjects? We use an experimental research design to examine individuals’ reactions to personal, humanizing narratives about past victimization. Participants are randomly assigned to one of eight treatment groups, which variously highlighted the humanity of the subject, the intensity of the past violence, and/or an evocative photograph of the subject that underscores her loss and vulnerability. We expect narratives that emphasize the subject’s humanity will encourage the audience to see the subject as innocent and as a victim, but also to feel angry about her experience. As a result, individuals will be more likely to defend the subject’s human rights, and to condone her use of retributive violence. We find that humanizing narratives lead respondents to simultaneously support a human rights appeal on the subject’s behalf and her use of retributive violence. Perceiving the subject in the narrative as innocent or as a victim mediates these effects, but anger often does not.     

我国流域水资源可持续利用的法律问题及对策

实现流域水资源的可持续利用,对于保障和促进我国经济社会的全面、协调、可持续发展具有重要的现实意义和深远的战略意义.我国流域水资源现状是人均占有量少,流域分布不均,浪费严重,污染加剧.流域水资源存在的法律问题主要是立法理念陈旧,法律法规相互冲突,水权界定不清晰,流域生态补偿的法律制度缺失,公众参与立法制度缺位.解决的法律对策是转变指导思想,更新立法、执法理念,制定流域法,建立系统的流域管理机构,建立水权制度和流域生态补偿法律制度,建立完善公众参与制度.     

Institutions and Economic Performance: The Use and Abuse of Culture in New Institutional Economics

Important research programs within New Institutional Economics advance culturalist arguments to explain failures of economic development. Focusing on the work of Douglass C. North and Avner Greif, this article argues that such arguments rely on an essentialist conception of culture that is both historically inaccurate and analytically misleading. Greif’s work in particular rests on a selective use of empirical data that ultimately distorts the deductive models that are at the core of his work. As a result, both scholars use culture to account for outcomes that are more adequately explained as the product of social conflict and political struggles—struggles in which culture plays a far more contingent and destabilizing role than the one they attribute to it. What is needed, I argue, is to link arguments about the persistence of inefficient institutions with a sociologically informed conception of culture as an ensemble of resources that enhance rather than constrain the scope of individual agency. To come to terms with the effects of culture on institutional formation and change it is necessary to replace the essentialism articulated by North and Greif with a strategic-instrumentalist view in which culture is compatible with a wide spectrum of economic behaviors, individual actions, and thus institutional trajectories.

Institutions and Development in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis

We review the theoretical literature on the concept of institutions and its relationship to national development, propose a definition of the concept, and advance six hypotheses about institutional adequacy and contributions to national development. We then present results of a comparative empirical study of existing institutions in three Latin American countries and examine their organizational similarities and differences. Employing the qualitative comparative method (QCA) proposed by Ragin, we then test the six hypotheses. Results converge in showing the importance of meritocracy, immunity to corruption, absence of “islands of power,” and proactivity in producing effective institutions. Findings strongly support Peter Evans’ theory of developmental apparatuses.

东北振兴中地区文化产业的发展策略

东北振兴的过程,是计划经济体制向社会主义市场经济体制转换的过程,同时也是文化注入工业、文化经济的含量在社会生产结构中的比重逐步提高的过程。由于受历史传统、地理环境以及计划经济体制等因素的影响,东北存在着技术装备落后、产业结构"老化"等问题。与之相应,人的思维方式、行为方式、文化观念等也存在"老化"现象。因而,东北文化产业的深度拓展,既是东北振兴的重要内容,也是推动东北振兴的强大动力。     

日本政府对企业人力资源开发支持政策变迁对我国的启示

以"终身雇佣制"为基础的"企业培训"为日本的经济发展提供了人才保证,可以说是日本经济实现高速增长的支柱之一。但随着日本国际、国内经济环境的变化,为实现从后发展经济向工业化经济转变而形成的日本型经济体制开始动摇。支持日本经济发展的强有力的"日本型企业培训"由于失去了制度保障而受到了很大的冲击。针对上述情况,为促进企业积极、持续地进行人力资源开发,以保持日本经济发展的可持续性。日本政府在支持企业人力资源开发方面政策采取了一些政策,值得我国政府学习和借鉴。     

论法治之法

法治的实现以法制为前提,而良法又是法治的题中之义,也是法治的有力保障.本文试图从立法原理、立法宗旨、立法程序以及法律的价值取向等方面来分析何为良法,以求探讨在法治建设中如何使立法真正走上良性的发展轨道.     

恐怖主义的发展过程及思想渊源

作为国家政治斗争的特殊表现形式,冷战后国际恐怖主义对国际社会的安全构成了　极大的威胁。尽管世界各国都意识到恐怖主义的危害性,但对恐怖主义的认识还是千差万别　,造成国际反恐怖合作举步维艰,打击效果不显著。从历史角度分析,恐怖主义的发展经历　了四个不同的发展时期,各个时期表现出不同的特点。近现代恐怖主义的发展还与一些极端　思潮关系密切,这些思潮,如宗教极端思想、无政府主义、种族主义、新纳粹主义等等,对　恐怖主义的发展起到指导和推动的作用。     

论西部大开发战略和甘肃非公有制经济的发展

西部大开发战略为甘肃非公有制经济的发展提供了良好的机遇。甘肃非公有制经济的发展又会进一步促进西部大开发。通过对西部大开发与甘肃非公有制经济辨证关系的分析 ,认为非公有制经济在甘肃经济大开发中具有重要作用 ,藉此提出甘肃借西部大开发推动非公有制经济快速发展的对策建议     

Turkey – from tutelary to delegative democracy

Guillermo O’Donnell’s influential work ‘Delegative Democracy’ set the discourse on a peculiar type of democracy. Lying between representative democracy and authoritarianism, the uniqueness of delegative democracy lies in its features, including an absence of horizontal accountability, strong centralised rule, individual leadership with unchecked powers, a cult figure embodying the nation and clientelist practices. While delegative democracies seem to arise out of presidential systems, Turkey, though a parliamentary system, has also displayed the distinctive features of delegative democracies. This paper identifies three characteristics of delegative democracy, which are responsible for the lack of democratic consolidation, if not the erosion of democracy itself: anti-institutionalism, an anti-political agenda and clientelism. Arguing that delegative democracy is the best concept with which to examine contemporary Turkey, the paper lays out how, post-2011, Turkey has demonstrated the three elements of delegative democracy. The final section discusses the implications of the Turkish case for scrutinising the very possibility of delegative democracy in parliamentary regimes.