From Normative Debates to Comparative Methodology: The Three Waves of Post-Charter Supreme Court Scholarship in Canada

This article surveys the literature on the Supreme Court of Canada following the 1982 introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and argues it has taken place in three distinct “waves.” The first involved tentative, prospective, and normative arguments about the impact of the Charter on national unity and Canada’s political institutions. The second was characterized by the legitimacy debate, the dialogue debate, and qualitative examination of how other political actors responded to Supreme Court decisions. By contrast, the third wave, initiated by American scholars drawing from American research, has been less normative, more comparative, and methodologically rigorous. While this comparative shift has been beneficial, the retreat from normative questions contributes to a misplaced sense that important debates are now settled. We urge scholars to engage in intellectual cross-fertilization by drawing from third-wave contributions to address normative questions about the Supreme Court’s increasingly important role in Canadian politics.     

Renzi: the government,the party,the future of Italian politics

On 22 February 2014 President Napolitano appointed Matteo Renzi to the office of President of the Council of Ministers (the correct title according to the Italian constitution). Since then the 39-year-old secretary of the Democratic Party has launched a series of institutional, economic, and social reforms. Claiming that it was of the utmost importance to scrap the old political class and to put Italy back to work, Renzi has already produced significant but, to say the least, controversial changes, as well as many clashes within his party and in the relationship between Italy and the European Union. This article will explore where the changes in his style of governing and in his party will lead the politics of Italy.     

Australian politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This article examines how contributors to the Australian Journal of Political Science (AJPS) have conceptualised Australian politics over 50 years. It undertakes this task by examining key events in Australian politics that prompted vigorous debate. These include the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, its dismissal in 1975, and how this in turn generated discussion about the nature of responsible government in Australia. The republican debate of the 1990s shifted the focus. Since 2000, however, a few contributors to the journal have attempted to find a central focus for Australian politics in the controversy over the idea of the Australian settlement. Much recent discussion about Australian politics has been influenced by the ‘cultural turn’, and become particularistic. It is argued that despite their diversity, articles in the AJPS generally do not usually contribute to a narrative that sheds light on the larger, longstanding, structural issues of Australian politics.     

论体育与政治

体育既是体育,又是国家政治的一个有机组成部分,体育与政治有着密不可分的关系。“跳出体育看体育”是对体育加深认识的重要方法。     

Barrister gender and litigant success in the High Court of Australia

We examine the relationship between gender of the barrister and appeal outcomes on the High Court of Australia. We find that an appellant represented in oral argument by a female barrister, opposed to a respondent represented in oral argument by a male barrister, is less likely to receive a High Court justice's vote. However, we also find that the appellant disadvantage of having a female barrister present oral argument is (partially) offset in the case of liberal justices and on panels having a higher proportion of female justices. The extent to which the disadvantage is offset, and potentially turns from being a disadvantage to an advantage, depends on the degree to which the justice is liberal and the proportion of female justices on the panel.

本文探讨律师性别与诉讼结果之间的关系。我们发现这个过程并不对称。如果是由女律师上诉,而辩方是一个或一个以上男性律师,那么性别就是一个因素。不过并不存在相反的情况。我们具体发现,如果诉方是一个女律师,辩方为一男律师,诉方就不大可能获得最高法官的赞同。不过,我们还发现,如果法官具有自由主义精神,如果法官团的女性比例较高,那么女律师的不利情形就有可能被（部分地）抵消。被抵消的程度取决于法官自由精神的强弱,和法官团女性比例的大小。     

The persistence of white ethnicity in New England politics

There was a consensus among earlier students of New England politics that the political influence of European ancestry was fading by the latter half of the 20th century. We examine this proposition in recent times by exploring the role of ethnic ancestry in explaining the political divide in the region's presidential voting in over 1500 New England towns. Contrary to earlier predictions, ethnic origin does retain some explanatory power in models of recent voting behavior, and ethnic cleavages have not been entirely replaced by economic divisions in the electorate. Although the settlement patterns of the more established and numerous nationality groups (i.e. Irish and Italians) are less associated with partisanship than they were 50 years ago, the political salience of white ethnicity persists, suggesting that ethnic groups do not simply dealign or politically “assimilate” over time. Some groups maintain a strong identity in spite of upward mobility because movement from city to suburbs is selected not just on housing, income or school characteristics, as is usually the case, but on ethnicity too. Towns with significant concentrations of specific European ancestry groups lean Republican, even after we have accounted for the presence of other sources of political leaning and past voting tendencies, while Democratic attachments are undeniably strong in towns where the newer immigrant groups have settled. The “new ethnicity” (i.e. racial minorities) and the “old ethnicity” (i.e. white ethnics) clearly carry distinct political implications for this region's presidential politics.     

Mapping contemporary Catholic politics in Italy

This editors’ introduction opens a special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies on the topic of ‘Mapping Contemporary Catholic Politics in Italy’. It briefly identifies the political, sociological and ideational changes that have occurred in Catholic politics since the collapse of the Democrazia Cristiana party, and introduces the contributions to the special issue, highlighting the common threads and the important divergences in their analyses.     

清末民初上海公共租界会审公廨法权之变迁(1911～1912)

清末民初,上海公共租界会审公廨法权较之以往发生了重大的变化。《申报》对此作有较为详细的报道,以此为考察材料,通过对法权变化内容的分析和这一过程的动态重构,以期从中透视变乱之际中外权势转移的动态情景,并得以多层面、多视角得认识中国法制近代化的艰辛历程。     

Foreign and comparative politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This article reviews analyses of foreign and comparative politics published in the Australian Journal of Political Science over the past 50 years. The article uses a thematic approach, reviewing five broad regional areas: the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; New Zealand and the Pacific; Canada, the USA and Western Europe; China and the rest of Asia; and Africa and the Middle East. The article assesses changes in the attention given to particular regions and countries over time, and highlights countries that have received relatively little attention. The article uses a Presidential address in 1985 by David Goldsworthy as a key reference text for assessing the study of foreign and comparative politics in Australia since 1966. The main shifts in overall attention since the early 1990s have been a decline in the historical study of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and increased attention to New Zealand.     

A new era and new themes in Italian politics: The case of Padania

Abstract

By calling for the independence of Padania from the rest of Italy, the Lega Nord has recently drawn a great deal of attention to itself. In support of this campaign the Lega has actively introduced mythical and Utopian models onto the Italian political scene, combining a degree of cultural innovation with a certain political adventurism. This article focuses on these elements, beginning with the events of the autumn of 1996 when the Lega organized a ‘grande festa’ along the banks and in the towns of the River Po aimed at marking the birth of the new nation of Padania. The principal events of the festival were dominated by the many performances of the League's founder and leader, Umberto Bossi, whose speeches were full of pseudo‐religious or pseudo‐prophetic elements. Though the festival ended in Venice with a unilateral declaration of independence by the Lega and its followers in the north, it did not lead to any immediate political consequences. Nevertheless, the situation in Padania is marked by a complex mixture of identities. The Lega has not just introduced new methods of political opposition, it has also brought many subjects (local cultures, regionalism, the right to self‐determination) into the Italian political debate. Furthermore, it has used the language of the sacred and of ‘origins’ to create new characters, new calendars and new sacred sites.     

The politics of identity,recognition and multiculturalism: the Kurds in Turkey

The politics of identity and recognition regarding the Kurds in Turkey has gained momentum since 2002 but has never been implemented fully. The rightful critics emphasising the continuity of the State's authoritarian character, however, have not so far analysed if their own normative suggestions are theoretically consistent and sociologically grounded. Based on the Author's fieldwork and contemporary social surveys, this article shows that there are conflicting views within the Kurdish community about the forms that the politics of recognition could take. By exploring the conflicts of interest within the Kurdish community from a bottom‐up approach, the article concludes that the recognition of an authentic Kurdish identity is problematic sociologically. It is also more likely to harm than help the Kurds in the country from a normative perspective. The article explains how the quest for an authentic Kurdish political identity and attempts to generate it actually limit the individual autonomy and exacerbate the disparity between the Turks and the Kurds in the country.     

The politics of conflict: a constructivist critique of consociational and civil society theories*

ABSTRACT. This article presents a (critical realist) constructivist critique of both consociational and civil society/transformationist approaches and their crude understandings of politics and the prospects for political change. Consociationalism's primordialist or essentialist foundation leads it towards a world‐weary, pessimistic, conservative realism about how far ‘divided societies’ may be transformed. Advocates of the civil society approach, in contrast, take an instrumentalist view of identity and are optimistic that a radical transformation can be achieved by mobilising the people against ‘hard‐line’ political representatives. The constructivist approach can provide a framework in which a more complex and nuanced understanding of identities is possible. This better equips us for understanding the prospects of bringing about desirable political change. The first part of this article is a critique of Nagle and Clancy's consociationalism. The second part provides a brief outline of a constructivist critique of both the consociational and civil society understandings of politics and their contribution to understanding the politics of managing conflict.     

The spatial diffusion of party entrepreneurs in Swedish local politics

Theoretical expectations predict instances of party formation to be unusual. It is therefore puzzling that new ‘non-national’ parties became increasingly common in Swedish local councils between 1973 and 2002. This article sets out to answer why party formation became an increasingly popular strategy throughout these years. I show that previous research has not provided satisfactory answers, and argue that existing theories are of limited use explaining this development. It is suggested that a diffusion mechanism may explain why new parties became increasingly common in Swedish local councils. Theoretically, it is argued that an entrepreneur who creates a new party inspires potential entrepreneurs in neighboring municipalities to repeat this at later points in time. A geographical clustering of municipalities where these parties exist is therefore expected. Support is found for this assertion. The result is important since it outperforms the alternative ‘local contextual’, socioeconomic hypotheses previously tested in this empirical setting.     

Uncontrolled urban housing in interwar Greece: the rise of the city in urban and national politics

The case of urban housing in interwar Greece was unique. After the end of the war in Asia Minor in 1922 almost 1.3 million Greek Orthodox refugees transferred from Turkey to Greece in the first obligatory exchange of populations in world history. Until that time accommodation and property were the privilege of the rich and there was no consideration for public housing as welfare to cater for the needs of low-income people. This paper explores how the impact of uncontrolled housing in the urban centres of interwar Greece led to the emergence of the town in urban and national politics. It will investigate how the uncontrolled housing defined different spatial configurations and reflected various forms of power relations. It will examine how the need for housing of the masses of refugees led to the collapse of the limited infrastructure and had a catalytic effect on town planning. It will also analyse how urban issues were raised on the political agenda and the way that cities produced electoral behaviours that changed the political map of the country.     

The disciplinary politics of antagonistic nationalism in militarized South and North Korea

After the Korean War (1950–53), the two militarized Koreas governed each and every member of society in similar ways through their disciplinary politics of antagonistic nationalism. The existing studies of state formation in the two Koreas have neglected an aspect of state power that was neither necessarily top‐down nor violent from above but also reproduced from below. In both South and North Korea, especially from the 1960s to the 1970s, state power had internal dynamics that penetrated the day‐to‐day activities of most citizens and led them to actively accept and participate in nationalist rule. This article explores an understudied aspect of the two Koreas' state power that was disciplinarily diffused in people's everyday practices through reproduction of aggressive nationalism from below and the organic construction of the individual body and nation.     

Political Staff in Executive Government: Conceptualising and Mapping Roles within the Core Executive

Political advisers are attracting increasing attention in Westminster jurisdictions. Typically, scholars focus on the corrosive impact they allegedly have on elements of Westminster convention and practice. We argue that a concern with accountability detracts from other important matters, including understanding and theorising ministerial advisers' roles. In this article we address these issues using primary data from a survey of ministerial advisers in New Zealand. We draw on Maley's typology to classify advisers' activities according to the contribution they make to executive government policy-making. We then theorise these activities through the lens of the core executive. We conclude that ministerial advisers are increasingly important actors in governing environments characterised by complex resource dependencies, modes of operation that are as often relational as they are hierarchical, and bargaining relationships that are often positive and not zero-sum in nature.     

Fallout from the thunder: poetry and politics in Seamus Heaney's District and Circle

This article examines Heaney's preoccupation in District and Circle (2006) with international political events during this ‘new age of anxiety’, and how he initially approaches these circuitously through a return to originary, boyhood experiences. Such momentous acts as the attacks of 9/ll, the ‘War on Terror’ and the London bombings are filtered through, juxtaposed with and illuminated by episodes both from the ancient past and Heaney's family history. In attendance, as always, throughout the latest volume is the poet's diverse literary ancestry, a reminder of how his work exemplifies core claims made in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919), where Eliot argues that ‘what makes the writer most acutely conscious of his own place in time’ is ‘the historical sense’, ‘a feeling for the whole of literature’ from Homer onwards. Thus, alongside its detailed address to politics and such crucial literary matters as structure, form and metaphor, the essay repeatedly returns to the intertextual ‘presences’ which haunt and animate Heaney's continuing creative project.     

Post-electoral politics in Italy: institutional problems and political perspectives

A dysfunctional electoral law and an obsolete bicameral Parliament contributed to the surprising results of the 24–25 February 2013 Italian elections, which have solved none of Italy's institutional and political problems. This article briefly analyses the distribution of votes, stressing especially that the success of the Five Stars Movement derives from the dissatisfaction and the protest of a significant sector of the electorate. Beppe Grillo, like Silvio Berlusconi, is a political entrepreneur, who through patience, hard work and commitment has constructed an organization with a wide geographical following. The presence in Parliament of the Five Stars Movement made the election of the President of the Republic very difficult. President Napolitano was obliged to accept an unprecedented second term and then led the Democratic Party, the People of Freedom and Civic Choice to form an unusual government, almost a sort of Grand Coalition. The government is here briefly assessed. The article ends underlining two critical aspects of the situation. Neither the Italian parties nor the party system have succeeded in reaching a satisfactory level of consolidation and stability. This means that the President of the Republic has been obliged to make good the shortcomings of the political parties. Even malgré soi, the President's behaviour has given rise to a situation in which his own position raises the urgent need for institutional reforms along the lines of the semi-presidential mould of the French Fifth Republic to bring to a close Italy's overlong political transition.     

北宋前期审刑院与宰相的司法复审权

审刑院设立于宋太宗淳化二年,罢废于神宗元丰三年,专门负责天下上奏的疑难案件的复审工作,是北宋前期国家最高司法机构之一。审刑院的设立,对宰相的司法权产生了很大的影响,双方对中央司法复审权的争夺十分激烈:在宋初,宰相拥有充分的司法复审权;太宗淳化二年审刑院设立后,宰相淡出司法复审领域,审刑院完全掌握了复审权;从仁宗中期开始,随着相权的整体攀升,宰相的司法权不断扩大,最终使审刑院由独立于宰相到沦为其附属。