A view from the policy community: a new strategic narrative for Europe?

ABSTRACT

Reflecting on the results presented in articles in this special issue, European leaders should take greater account of external perceptions in crafting the European Union's strategic narrative and guiding its actions. Failure to do so has impaired external policies like the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy and Eastern Partnership. Leaders emerging from the Arab uprisings perceived the EU as complicit with their countries’ former anciens régimes and Russian leaders see EU support for democracy and the market economy in former Soviet states as duplicitous and instrusive. Awareness of such perceptions should be filtered into EU decision-making, without validating views that European officials and diplomats consider misleading.     

行政处罚第三人研究——对一个行政处罚案件的展开

在行政处罚案件中,涉及到第三人的案件大量存在。但是现行行政处罚法中并没有明确地设定第三人制度,这对案件的处理带来诸多障碍。设立第三人制度有利于案件的正确处理,有利于维护第三人的合法权益,有利于处罚决定的接受和执行。第三人的设立符合法律公平正义原则和行政法基本原理,可以降低执法成本及节约社会资源。在行政处罚案件中,法律应赋予第三人具有参与权和救济权等权利,这样便于第三人积极参与行政处罚程序,保证其合法权益的实现。     

论行政处罚中当事人的申辩权——对行政处罚听证程序的几点思考

随着我国法治化进程的进一步加快 ,在行政处罚时充分尊重当事人的申辩权将成为社会发展的必然趋势。听证程序是行政处罚普通程序的重要组成部分。本文从听证程序的性质与功能、听证程序的组织机构和主持人、听证程序过程的设计以及听证过程中的有关行为的法律效力等方面对当事人申辩权的影响作了论述     

The classification of electoral systems: Bringing legislators back in

It is widely assumed that electoral institutions shape politicians' incentive for personal vote-seeking, with important behavioral and policy consequences. Yet, there is a surprising lack of consensus on how to compare real-world electoral institutions. Using new data this paper examines how legislators' own perception of their electoral incentives in fifteen democracies correspond to some of the most seminal classification schemes in political science. Our survey of 2326 legislators – the empirically broadest study of personal vote orientation so far conducted – demonstrates that legislators do not always understand electoral incentives in the same way scholarly rankings do, highlighting the need for scholars of political institutions to justify their choice of classification scheme. If not, an entire body of literature may be misguided.     

我国程序性辩护的现状和完善

在对抗式司法理念的指导下，加强犯罪嫌疑人、被告人的诉讼权利，强化其辩护权以及实现控辩双方平等武装成为刑事诉讼立法的焦点。伴随我国刑事诉讼理论研究的不断深入，程序公正在刑事诉讼法中地位的提高．程序性辩护逐渐进入立法者的视野。《刑事诉讼法修正草案》确认了程序性辩护制度，并构建了相应的配套机制．但是依然存在一定的缺陷，应当从构建司法审查制度和优化程序性制裁机制两个方面进一步予以完善。     

Voter perceptions of parties’ left–right positions: The role of party strategies

Left–right semantics help voters simplify the complex political reality as they reduce party views on a variety of issues to a single dimension. Less studied, however, is the question of how voters arrive at parties’ left–right positions and how parties can influence voter perceptions. In this article, I demonstrate that the party can shape the voter’s understanding of the content of its left–right ideology by using three strategies: avoidance, ambivalence, or ambiguity. Specifically, the party may avoid or de-emphasize, embrace a conflicting position, or becloud its position on the controversial issue; by so doing, it induces voters to place less weight on this issue when perceiving the party’s left–right position. The empirical analysis connects voter and party data from 21 European democracies in the period 1996–2014 and finds empirical support for the effectiveness of these strategies. In particular, the study finds robust empirical evidence that strategic avoidance, ambivalence, and ambiguity strongly moderate the association between the party’s perceived ideological brand and its underlying issue content.     

Do parties perceive their voter potentials correctly? Reconsidering the spatial logic of electoral competition

Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this gap, we develop analogue measures of a party's perceived and its actual voter potential for each competitor in a party system. Combining elite and mass surveys conducted in Germany, we show that perceived and actual voter potentials depend on spatial considerations but also that not all parties are able to correctly evaluate their potentials. These deviations can be traced back to differences in the perceived placement of political actors between elites and citizens. This supports the spatial logic of party competition but it also points to potential pitfalls for strategic behavior of political parties.     

刑法谦抑性理念的本土化探究

刑法谦抑性理念内发于刑法法益保护和人权保护机能谐和,融括了限缩、补充、经济和轻刑的基本理念。着眼于此,以本土化的视角探究刑法谦抑性的理念的价值内涵、适用土壤以及建构路径,有助于推进我国刑事法治建设。     

在我国刑事诉讼中确立并完善程序性辩护的探讨

程序性辩护是与实体性辩护相对应的一种辩护权行使方式,它是针对公安司法机关在刑事诉讼中的诉讼行为的合法性向中立的裁判者提出申请或者质疑,请求其作出权威的程序性裁判,使被侵害的权利获得司法救济,进而间接地证明被追诉人无罪或者罪轻的一种辩护方式.当前程序性辩护在我国法律中有所体现,但尚未形成完整的体系,且现有规定存在诸多不足...