Support for Strongman Rule in Ethnically Divided Societies: Evidence from Estonia and Latvia

Using data from Estonia and Latvia from 2004, this study maps and analyzes support for authoritarianism in ethnically divided societies. It develops and tests three explanatory models, focusing on socialization and the political and economic aspects of regime performance. Because the correlates of authoritarian support may vary by ethnic group, separate models are run for the ethnic majority and the minority. The results lend some support to all three theoretical approaches, although none of these can be considered to be a powerful explanation of support for authoritarianism. The determinants of support for strongman rule vary with ethnicity, suggesting that future studies on political support in multiethnic societies should systematically control for the effects of ethnicity.     

行政自由裁量基准质疑

行政自由裁量基准是近年来我国行政法学界和行政法治实践关注的热点,其在理论和实践中似乎都已趋于成熟.然而,这一命题存在重大理论误区和实践困惑:作为基准的规则将裁量行为变为羁束行为,将外部行为内部化,将行政个案处置抽象化,将行政权利变为行政义务.基于此,对行政自由裁量权的控制还是应当回归到法律原则中来.传统的自由裁量权控制原则如比例原则、重大事实的误认无效原则、正当目的原则和平等原则等都是有用的.在此基础上我们亦可以建构一些具有我国特色的裁量原则.     

论消费者的责任

近年来,西方一些国家的消费者政策发生了转换,消费者的知情权、消费者教育以及消费者的义务得以强化。国际社会还兴起了"消费者社会责任行动"。消费者责任实际上指的是消费者的义务,它分为消费者对自己的责任、对经营者的责任和对社会的责任三个方面。消费者保护法中应规定消费者的责任,但应仅限于消费者对自己和社会的责任,而不是对经营者的责任。作为消费者中的一个类别,金融消费者也应负相应的责任。     

金融支持民族地区文化产业发展研究

在文化产业发展进程中,金融的资源配置功能具有极为重要的推动作用。因此,必须系统整合文化产业链,促进民族地区金融与文化创意产业的有效结合,保障文化产业顺利发展。     

Reconceptualizing financial innovation: frame,conjuncture and bricolage

Abstract

This article argues for a reconceptualization of financial innovation which, as culprit and victim of the current crisis, is now damned by those who once praised it. But what is financial innovation? The dominant answers from mainstream finance and social studies of finance share variations on a rationalistic view whereby financial innovation is about improving markets or at least extending the sphere of rational calculability. Because improvisation is more important than the dominant perspectives can admit, this article proposes a new concept of financial innovation whose three main elements – frame, conjuncture and bricolage – are indicated by the title of this article. The importance of this problem shift is that it highlights the inherent fragility of this type of intermediary-led financial innovation where things will often miscarry and highlights the need for a more radical rethinking about policy responses to the financial crisis that began in 2007.     

Labour protest and industrial peace: Russian steelworkers’ encounters with economic reforms and unravelling social protections

Abstract

This paper is about knowledge limits and the financial crisis. It begins by examining various existing accounts of crisis which disagree about the causes, but share the belief that the crisis represents a problem of socio-technical malfunction which requires some kind of technocratic fix: the three variants on this explanation are the crisis as accident, conspiracy or calculative failure. This paper proposes an alternative explanation which frames the crisis differently as an elite political debacle. Political and technocratic elites were hubristically detached from the process of financial innovation as it took the form of ‘bricolage’, which put finance beyond technical control or management. The paper raises fundamental questions about the politicized role of technocrats after the 1980s and emphasizes the need to bring private finance and its public regulators under democratic political control whose technical precondition is a dramatic simplification of finance.     

Utility and excess: the radical sociology of Bataille and baudrillard

This paper consists of three sections. In the first in will attempt it will attempt to establish the theoretical centrality of the contrasting notions of utility and of excess in relation to their treatements within the ‘sociological mainstream’. The second section will introduce antother, radical sociological lineage extending from Nietzsche through Bataille and on to baudrillard. It will be argued that this ineage offers a more adequate approach to the analysis of the linked yet contrasting notions of utility and excess. These concepts will be approached, first, through the notion of general economy, in contrast to the theories and methods of restricted economy, particularly as it operates in the work of Bataille. The theory of Baudrillard will be situated as a treatment of the Problematic of excess in the modern age whereby utility and excess are no longer starkly and simply counterposed. Further, it will argue that Baudrillard's work reveals the importance of a radical theory of contemporary society, one which goes beyond not only restricted explanatory economies but also the notion of general economy itself. it is argued that the dominant strands of modern sociology are ocked within the methodological and theoretical structures of utility and of restricted economy and that this constitutes its fatal weakness. The specific maniestations of excess discussed are social violence, particularly sacrifice and death, transgression, ‘evil’ and the notion of ‘profitless expenditure’. The final section deals, briefly, with the theoretical and material consequences of ture'. The final section deals, briefly, with the theoretical and material consequences of the continue suppression, denial or domestication of this radical or marginal lineage.     

Risk illusion and organized irresponsibility in contemporary finance: rethinking class and risk society

Abstract

This paper analyzes the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to show how processes associated with risk society – the social production and distribution of systemic financial risk in a context of organized irresponsibility – are contributing to the intensification of contemporary class-based inequalities. Utilizing a framework based in Bourdieusian class resources, the analysis moves beyond Beck's rejection of the relevance of class relations to systemic risk, and his critics’ denial that risk transforms existing logics of distribution, to identify key shifts in the relation between contemporary financial risk, power and inequality. The conclusions of this study, showing how systemic financial risk in contexts of organized irresponsibility contributes to differential ‘risk-classes’, suggest that risk is a key source of contemporary inequality and that reconstructing the theory of risk society can illuminate these changes.     

Embedded policy preferences and the formation of international arrangements after the Asian financial crisis

New bilateral and multilateral arrangements emerged after the Asian financial crisis in the areas of financial assistance, financial regulation, and exchange rate stabilization. Strikingly, however, very few such arrangements emerged at the regional level. This paper argues that (1) the success of bilateral and international arrangements was the result of policy preference compatibility among East Asian countries and (2) the countries’ policy preferences can be explained as a function of their financial system features (securities-market-based or bank-credit-based) and external balance positions (capital-dependent or capital-sufficient). Although this framework cannot predict whether countries will agree on a particular policy proposal, it can explain the diversity of their proposals, the likely lines of conflict, the nature of their compromises, and why certain proposals succeed (or fail) even without the strong support (or opposition) of major powers.     

Subprime catalyst: Financial regulatory reform and the strengthening of US carbon market governance

The 2008 financial crisis has had an important, but neglected, impact on carbon market governance in the United States. It acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a domestic coalition that drew upon the crisis experience to demand stronger regulation over carbon markets. The influence of this coalition was seen first in the changing content of draft climate change bills between 2008 and 2010. But the coalition's more lasting legacy was its role in shaping the content of, and supporting, the passage of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd–Frank bill) in July 2010. Although that bill was aimed primarily at bolstering financial stability, its derivatives provisions strengthened carbon market regulation in significant ways. This policy episode demonstrates new patterns of coalition building in carbon market politics as well as the growing links between climate governance and financial regulatory politics. At the same time, the significance of these developments should not be overstated because of various limitations in the content and implementation of the Dodd–Frank bill, as well as the waning support for carbon markets more generally within the US since the bill's passage.