秘密侦查性质的多维解读

传统上我国学术界普遍从手段或措施的角度对秘密侦查予以认识。这种认识缺陷导致人们对秘密侦查“神秘化”,秘密侦查法治化状况极差。从诉讼法理上而言,秘密侦查的性质应为一种侦查行为和诉讼行为,它具有自身的特征,与强制侦查行为和技术侦查行为有一定的区别。     

对肖日明侵犯商业秘密一案的法律分析

肖日明侵犯商业秘密一案,存在诸多争议,媒体以及法学界对该案予以较多关注。侵犯商业秘密罪应属结果犯而非即成犯,同时本案并未超过追诉时效,因而应追究肖日明及其所在单位侵犯商业秘密罪的刑事责任。     

论我国商业秘密保护中的竞业禁止

商业秘密保护中的竞业禁止是指对与特定营业具有特定关系的特定人的行为予以禁止的制度。我国关于竞业禁止制度的立法颇为零乱且不具操作性,应从竞业禁止合同的有效要件诸方面进行完善。     

侵犯商业秘密罪立法完善探析

我国刑法将侵犯商业秘密罪规定为结果犯,给司法实践带来许多困惑.实践中司法机关被拖入重大损失的认定上,导致对权利人保护不力,使一些本应由刑法调整的侵犯商业秘密行为未得到应有的处理,应改变将侵犯商业秘密罪规定为结果犯的立法模式.     

Governing sustainable palm oil supply: Disconnects,complementarities, and antagonisms between state regulations and private standards

The global palm oil value chain has grown in complexity; stakeholder relationships and linkages are increasingly shaped by new public and private standards that aim to ameliorate social and environmental costs while harnessing economic gains. Regulatory initiatives in the emerging policy regime complex struggle to resolve sector‐wide structural performance issues: pervasive land conflicts, yield differences between companies and smallholders, and carbon emissions arising from deforestation and peatland conversion. Identifying opportunities for more effective governance of the palm oil value chain and supply landscapes, this paper explores disconnects, complementarities, and antagonisms between public regulations and private standards, looking at the global, national, and subnational policy domains shaping chain actors’ conduct. Greater complementarities have emerged among transnational instruments, but state regulation disconnects persist and antagonisms prevail between national state regulations and transnational private standards. Emerging experimental approaches, particularly at subnational level, aim to improve coordination to both enhance complementarities and resolve disconnects.     

Regime type versus patronal politics: a comparison of “ardent democrats” in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Kazakhstan is home to the longest serving ruler in post-Soviet Eurasia while Kyrgyzstan is among the region’s most competitive polities. Do these regime differences correspond to divergence in political attitudes, as an extensive body of literature posits? Are Kyrgyzstanis more likely to strongly support democratic ideals? Are Kazakhstanis less likely? Contrary to expectations, data reveal the two populations to be attitudinally indistinguishable when it comes to strong support for practices associated with democracy. Whatever country differences we find are minor or statistically insignificant. We explain this convergence by shifting focus away from the political features that distinguish the two nascent democracy versus consolidated authoritarianism to those that they hold in common. Notwithstanding major constitutional reform in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, politics there, as in Kazakhstan, remains fundamentally patronal, or patronage- based. Mass attitudes, we argue, align in many ways with the countries’ shared patronal politics, rather than with their contrasting regime types.     

State–peasant movement relations and the politics of food sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador

This contribution argues that the articulation between the state and peasant organizations’ internal structures – the class characteristics of their mass bases, their leaderships and the modes of interaction between the two – is critical for determining the nature of contemporary struggles guided by the discourse of food sovereignty. It will show that that counter-hegemonic demands are not synonymous with counter-hegemonic practice; rather than struggling to replace the neoliberal food regime, many peasant organizations employ the food sovereignty discourse as a political tool in their negotiations with the state in order to access resources from within the prevailing neoliberal model, not to transform it.     

Measuring subnational democracy: toward improved regime typologies and theories of regime change

Social scientists have been limited in their work by the paucity of global time series data about subnational institutions and practices. Such data could help scholars refine regime typologies, improve theories of democratization and regime change, better understand subnational democracy, and illuminate issues of development, conflict, and governance. This article addresses the lack of data by introducing 22 subnational measures from a new dataset, Varieties of Democracy. Validity tests demonstrate that the measures’ strengths outweigh their weaknesses. The measures excel in covering all subnational levels for most countries, capturing different elements of subnational elections, and including a variety of dimensions of elections and civil liberties. The measures also offer unmatched global and temporal coverage. The article demonstrates how these strengths can provide scholars with the benefits described above.     

Weak states and uneven pluralism: lessons from Mali and Kyrgyzstan

We argue that certain important democratic practices and elements of pluralism are lasting features of political systems in many poor countries. Because of state weakness, such arrangements work to the benefit of both elites and citizens. The broader citizenry and civil society enjoy significant political freedoms and greater access to foreign aid. Elites tolerate these limited civil liberties and regular elections because they produce few costly consequences due to state incapacity. We evaluate this theory of ‘uneven pluralism’ in poor countries using evidence from a paired comparison of Mali and Kyrgyzstan. These two countries have experienced significant political turbulence, but on balance have shown a persistent and robust commitment to a free press, transparent elections, and respect for freedom of association. Our theory suggests that uneven pluralism is likely to continue in countries like Mali and Kyrgyzstan, even as significant limits on judicial independence, persistent corruption, and lack of government transparency make democratic consolidation unlikely.