The development of party rule in the judiciary: personnel changes and political transformation of the Nanjing government’s judicial center, 1927–1937

After the establishment of the Nanjing Nationalist government in 1927, the Guomindang (GMD) gradually founded a national regime and started to implement the principle of “governing the nation by the party.” But the party-rule was not implemented immediately and effectively. In the early years of the Nationalist government, its judicial branch mostly hired former Beiyang judicial officials, who generally pursued the ideals of judicial independence and politics transcending party lines, ideals established in the Beiyang period. In 1932, when Ju Zheng became the president of the Judicial Yuan, founding members of the GMD began to replace the Beiyang officials in the judicial center. This personnel change was completed around 1935. Meanwhile, due to national crisis and the GMD’s concern that the judicial status quo did not meet its political needs, the GMD began to emphasize the political nature of the judiciary and to advocate the party-ization of the judiciary. Consequently, eight years after the founding of the Nanjing Nationalist government, GMD party members began to obtain de facto control of the judicial center, symbolizing the completion of the shift from Beiyang judicial practices to GMD party-rule in the judiciary. Nevertheless, during the following years, the GMD failed to penetrate, dominate, and integrate the middle and lower levels of the judicial system, where the judicial ideals and personnel structures still strongly retained their Beiyang legacy.     

‘Your work is of no use to us…’: Administrative interests in ethnographic research (West New Guinea, 1950–1962)

Abstract

The extent of customary land in Samoa and the laws pertaining to its protection create a presumption of state dependence on the regulation of custom in effecting state policies within local contexts. The principal means of regulating custom in Samoa has been and continues to be through state court adjudication of conflicts over customary land and chiefly titles. The transitive nature of ‘custom’ and conceptions of ‘custom’ in Samoa created an opening for court influence in the construction of custom, if not custom's partial reinvention through the agency of the courts. This occurred principally through the courts’ privileging principles of English common law in confirming asserted land rights generally considered unenforceable at the time of Samoa's political partition. The courts re‐interpreted as customary, conceptions of land rights the colonial state's influence attempted to effect within Samoan society. But the source of the changes, and the courts’ role in promoting them, tended not to be equally reflected upon. To the extent such influence is ignored in analyses of Samoan land tenure and customary law, and reproduced within state policies and court adjudication of conflict, custom's social construction is left unexamined, assumed to be more general than it is, and likely to exacerbate tensions and conflict within Samoan society rather than reduce them.     

Governing Civil Society in Cambodia: Implications of the NGO Law for the “Rule of Law”

Abstract

This article reviews the introduction of the 2015 Law on Associations and Non-governmental Organisations in Cambodia (“NGO Law”) from 2011–17 and explores its connection to the rule of law. After outlining the content, definitions and regulatory environment related to the NGO Law, it provides a commentary on its initial application, and examines its potential articulation with other legislation (such as defamation and libel, telecommunications law and land law). I argue that the NGO Law should be characterised as a carefully crafted piece of legislation, developed and defended over time by the ruling political party to increase control and intimidation by invoking adherence to the “rule of law”. Narratives of national security, terrorism, neutrality and cultural cohesion have been interwoven with new regulatory requirements to obfuscate overt political interference. The article argues that the NGO Law intersects with, and consolidates, the recent trend of the government’s use of legislation as a political tool to control and manipulate political opponents and government critics. This is not to deny that there are areas of civil society action and service provision that require greater government control via regulatory compliance. Nevertheless, the state’s attempts to tighten civil space are being met with resistance and “work around” strategies from the plethora of diverse organisations functioning in Cambodia.     

Competing Visions of the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia: Power,Rhetoric and Governance

Abstract

This article introduces a special issue on the emergent relationship between the rhetoric and implementation of the rule of law concept in Southeast Asia. It thematically introduces four country case studies (Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam), and the case of ASEAN’s adoption of the rule of law in region-building, which are included in this special issue. We highlight how ideals that are arguably central to the “tradition” of the rule of law are being excised, marginalised, defended and/or undermined in Southeast Asian contexts. We emphasise how the very concept is deeply contested and far from neutral – at stake is the very notion of “law” for whom, and for what. The article offers insight into the social dynamics affecting how the rule of law is being interpreted by political actors and how it is being contested and consolidated via governance practices in the region, and proposes new avenues for research in assessing how the rule of law is operating in transitional and authoritarian state settings.     

Defiant Retreat： The Relocation of Middle Schools to China＇s Interior, 1937-1945

This study focuses on the migration of middle school students to the interior of China after the Japanese invaded in 1937. It argues that the Guomindang （GMD） central government was generally successful in handling the 500,000 displaced students, making substantial efforts to monitor, register, educate, and provide training for them, as well as establishing government-run ＂national middle schools＂ during the war. Meanwhile, the GMD also exerted a strong influence on course curriculum, instructing educators how to implement the Three People＇s Principles and other party doctrines in classrooms. These processes expanded the state＇s hand in secondary education and allowed the GMD to include refugee students and schools in its wartime narrative of progress, praising the students＇ patriotic participation in defying the Japanese occupiers and their contribution to ＂national reconstruction＂ （jianguo）. However, there were still many challenges. Refugee students, teachers, and principals forcibly converted Buddhist temples into schools and clashed with local monks, farmers, villagers, and even the GMD military. With schools merging and moving inland, relocation also provided opportunities for unscrupulous administrators and teachers to exploit the situation for themselves, as government reports reveal many cases of corruption in the wartime schools.     

Case del fascio and the Making of Modern Italy

Abstract

In recent decades, scholars of modern Italy have identified Fascism’s effort to establish a new society as a hallmark of the regime’s engagement with modernism. Fascist party headquarters (case del fascio), the primary institution through which the party aimed to alter the character, habits, and attitudes of its citizens in the making of Fascist Italy, are largely absent from this discourse, despite their extraordinary importance to the regime. Through an analysis and discussion of the regime’s building activity in the rapidly developing working-class neighborhoods on the edge of nineteenth-century Milan, the city most closely associated with modern ways of life in the interwar period (and still today), this paper provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which the amenities, design, and location of party-controlled outposts were intended to advance the party’s objectives and communicate Fascism’s central place in the making of a modern urban landscape in the regime’s final decades.     

Propaganda by the Book: Contextualizing and Reading the Zhejiang GMD’s 1929 Textbook Essentials for Propaganda Workers

The Nationalist Party (GMD) had been writing and issuing documents of many types for some years before Nanjing was established as the capital of the Republic of China in 1927/1928. From its earliest days, doctrines were advanced via cause-oriented newspapers and journals. Even more important, the Soviet-sponsored reorganization of the GMD in the early 1920s had yielded a far-reaching party propaganda operation tied to Sun Yat-sen’s notion of political tutelage. But how was propaganda to work in practice? And at whom was it to be aimed? This article seeks to address aspects of these questions by assessing a textbook for propaganda workers that was issued in the name of the GMD’s Zhejiang Provincial Executive Committee’s Propaganda Department in October 1929, half a year after the GMD’s foundational right-wing Third Party Congress. Although Essentials for Propaganda Workers does not fully operationalize Sun’s version of political tutelage, it can nonetheless be seen to reflect the central party’s efforts to implement tutelage and supervision, not only of the Chinese masses suggested by Sun’s program, but also of party propaganda workers in Zhejiang. In that regard, it reveals the astonishingly rapid ideological realignment of the GMD into an anti-Communist party, not only at the national level, which is well known, but also on the provincial and lower levels. Drawing on material from the GMD Archives in Taipei, this article addresses issues of party organization, control, mobilization, inner party dynamics, and message content in the GMD’s propaganda activities in Zhejiang province in the late 1920s. “Propaganda by the Book” adds to our knowledge of the organizational practices of both the central GMD in Nanjing and the Zhejiang provincial GMD as well as to the social history of Republican China’s official print culture.     

Rule of Law Expedited: Land Title Reform and Justice in Burma (Myanmar)

Abstract

The development of rule of law is touted as one of the most important considerations in Burma (Myanmar) today, yet its meaning is highly contested after fifty years of military rule. This paper will examine how the rule of law in Burma’s transitional political environment has been influenced by the legacies of military rule and the government’s development policies since 2011. A series of laws introduced by the Thein Sein government under the rubric of rule of law and good governance had a significant impact upon small hold farmers across the country. While some laws specifically related to farmers and their land, others encouraged private investment in the land used by farmers. The combined effect of these laws was to formalise the pattern of land grabbing that had developed under the previous government and to encourage land speculation. Moreover, they show how an expedited procedural rule of law incited conflict and further injustice. Any progress towards substantive justice and a more democratic rule of law must keep pace with improvements in the country’s limited administrative and judicial capacities. Whether, and how far, Burma can develop and move beyond a thin or procedural rule of law will be tested as the country experiences life under the NLD government.     

Human Rights and Multilateral Lending: The World Bank,Argentina, and the United States, 1976–1978

Abstract

Since its establishment at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, the World Bank (WB) has been expected to follow a self-imposed and vaguely defined principle of ‘neutrality.’ According to this principle, the decisions made by the WB and its officers were expected to be based purely on economic criteria, with no input from political considerations. By focusing on the generous support that the WB provided to the dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, especially during its formative period (1976–1978), the article examines the concrete aspects of this neutrality and the different ways in which each party involved interpreted and used it. Drawing on never previously consulted WB documents and additional primary sources, it maintains that at a time when the US, the strongest member-state in the WB, strove to make multilateral lending contingent on improvements in the human rights arena, the WB’s alleged ‘neutrality’ provided it with the means and justification to support a regime that egregiously violated those rights. Whatever the exact nature of this so-called neutrality, what is clear is that it was used to enable the WB and member states to ignore US instructions and support a right-wing regime determined to substantially liberalize Argentina’s economy.     

试论元朝中央政府对畏兀儿地区的统治

章依据元代畏兀儿书及汉史籍探索元朝政府治理畏兀儿地区的措施,考述其在畏兀儿地区的行政建设以及亦都护地方政权的性质与职掌。认为蒙元政府对其所统辖的畏兀儿社会的间接军事行政统治,乃是通过自上而下的蒙古制度与自下而上的当地制度之间相互交叉渗透的结合而实现的。     

ASEAN as a “Rules-based Community”: Business as Usual

Abstract

In establishing the ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN political elites emphasised their commitment to the rule of law. The definition of the rule of law adopted in the ASEAN Charter mirrored UN reforms that recognised the rule of law as interlinked with democracy and human rights. This commitment raises questions, given the various tactics employed by the grouping’s authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes to silence dissent. This article critically assesses this apparent shift in regional governance. It first maps the inclusion of rule of law rhetoric in agreements since ASEAN’s foundation, and then examines the form and implementation of dispute settlement mechanisms. It finds that dispute settlement mechanisms have consistently retained the scope for protracted political and bureaucratic negotiation between disputing parties, and “opt out” clauses that enable their contingent application. These findings undermine claims regarding the development of a “rules-based community”, and indicate the continuation of rule by law rather than rule of law. The emphasis placed on ASEAN’s rule of law reforms by elites suggests, then, the rebranding of this political project in support of the ASEAN Economic Community so as to create confidence for investors in the region’s juridical environment.     

Saved by the Civil War: African ‘Loyalists’ in the Portuguese Armed Forces and Angola's Transition to Independence

ABSTRACT

The article examines the trajectories of ‘loyal’ African troops in Angola before and after the demise of Portugal's authoritarian regime in 1974. It starts by placing the ‘Africanisation’ drive of the Portuguese counterinsurgency campaign in a historical perspective; it then explores the rocky transition from colonial rule to independence in the territory between April 1974 and November 1975, describing the course of action taken by the Portuguese authorities vis-à-vis their former collaborators in the security forces. A concluding section draws a comparison between the fate of Portugal's loyalists in Angola and the one experienced by similar groups in other ex-Portuguese colonies. The choice of Angola has the advantage of allowing us to look into a complex scenario in which the competition amongst rival nationalist groups, and a number of external factors, helped to produce a more ambiguous outcome for some of the empire's local collaborators than what might have been otherwise expected.     

传统法治文化对当前地方法治政府建设之启发

中国传统法治文化是中华几千年国家治理的智慧结晶,在不同历史时期具有不同的文化特点,也存在自诞生之初就无法克服的不足之处,如强调人治、维护宗法、重刑轻民等。但是,传统法治文化有很多值得我们吸收改进的有益之处,尤其在教民、治吏与息诉这三点上,对当前地方法治政府建设有着重要的借鉴意义。本文结合包括福建本地的一些法治实例,阐述传统法治文化的特点和不足,以"从严治吏"为重点,对如何更好的建设地方法治政府提出几点个人思考和建议。     

The prefects and party‐state relations in Fascist Italy

Abstract

This is a study of the prefects, the arm of central government in the provinces, under the Fascist regime. Using the author's own survey of those appointed prefects after the decision to establish the ‘totalitarian’ state, it considers the phenomenon of the ‘Fascist prefects’ in relation to the progress of career officials, methods of recruitment and the prevailing bureaucratic culture, in order to assess the extent of the ‘Fascistization’ of the Interior Ministry. It then looks at how both career and ‘Fascist prefects’ actually operated on the ground and their relations with the Fascist Party in the provinces. The article concludes, on the evidence of continuing party‐state conflict throughout the 1930s, that there was a ‘totalitarian’ regime in the making.     

‘Attaque and Break Through a Phalanx of Corruption . . . the Court Party!’ The Scottish Representative Peers' Election and the Opposition, 1733–5: Three New Division Lists of the House of Lords of 1735*

In the early 1730s, Archibald Campbell, the earl of Ilay, gained a dominant position in Scotland, and Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister, entrusted him with the distribution of patronage there. Ilay took full advantage of this power, and controlled the votes of the financially weak Scottish peers in the election of 16 representative peers. The excise crisis of 1733–4, however, changed the political scene in Scotland. Although they had been chosen as supporters of the court party, some of the Squadrone Volante members (the duke of Montrose and the marquess of Tweeddale) and two courtiers (the earls of Marchmont and Stair) raised a standard of revolt against Walpole and Ilay. The Scottish opposition co‐operated with the English country party (‘the Patriots’) and such Scottish tories as the duke of Hamilton. In the 1734 peers' election they launched a challenge to the ministry, but the opposition was crushed by a bankrolled election campaign organised by the court party. Although the English and Scottish opposition petitioned in the house of lords to criticize the ‘undue practices’ of Walpole and Ilay at the election, the ministry was backed up by English and Scottish courtiers and bishops, and overwhelmed the opposition. Three new division lists related to the aftermath of the Scottish election shed much light upon the party alignment of the upper House in the middle of the 1730s.     

The misadventures of socialist anticommunism from the end of the war to the collapse of the Berlin Wall

Abstract

The article aims to highlight the features of socialist anticommunism in Italy from 1945 to 1991, with particular reference to Giuseppe Saragat and Bettino Craxi, and with regard to the intellectual activity of Ignazio Silone. Anticommunist socialists aimed at delegitimizing the communists, but they themselves were also delegitimized by the communist party of Palmiro Togliatti and Enrico Berlinguer. Naturally, the form of delegitimation changed over the years, from Saragat’s stance in the 1940s and early 1950s to his position later on. The kind of delegitimation carried on by Bettino Craxi’s socialist party was more successful, however, compared to the one implemented by Saragat’s small party. For this reason, it was fiercely opposed by Berlinguer and the communist party.     

Liberia an(d) Empire?: Sovereignty, ‘Civilisation’ and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century West Africa

ABSTRACT

In the 1840s, Liberia was a black settler state on the West African coast which avowedly supported the connected ideologies of Christianity, commerce, and ‘civilisation’. However, from the 1870s, as the rest of West Africa began to be divided up into colonies, adherence to these ‘Western’ values did not spare Liberia’s leaders from some of the disruptive consequences of European expansionism. This article frames these consequences in the context of commercial clashes between the Liberian state and European traders (and their companies). These clashes predated Liberia’s declaration of independence in 1847, worsened thereafter, and later became increasingly politicised with the stricter enforcement of colonial law in the region in the 1870s, partly as a result of economic crisis. On the coast, Liberian officials struggled legally and militarily to stave off the activities of European smugglers with diplomatic backing. In the interior, commercial alliances were forged with local authorities in an attempt to keep out the French and the British, in particular. Conflicts over the collection of customs duties, the setting of borders, and, ultimately, the nature and extent of Liberian sovereignty, reached a climax during the Berlin Conference (1884–1885). The Conference led Liberia, by 1904, to implement its own version of colonial ‘indirect rule’: first and foremost to safeguard its independence, secondarily as a tool of expansion. In spite of major losses Liberian leaders were ultimately able to strengthen the country’s standing as a member of the international community of nations.     

战时大学校园中的国民党:以西南联大为中心

During the Anti-Japanese War, universities became an important arena for the competition between GMD and CCP, as well as the contention among various nationalist factions. The GMD branch in the National Southwest Associated University was the most active one among its university party branches during the wartime. About half of the professors joined the GMD, and the university authorities also tolerated professors and students in other parties and factions. The professors made up a heterogeneous group that included “democratic fighters” like Wen Yiduo and “faithful party members” like Yao Congwu. The co-existence of intellectual elites belonging to different parties and factions created a highly tolerant “fortress of democracy” on campus. Translated by Zhou Weiwei from Lishi Yanjiu 历史研究 (Historical Research), 2006, (4):125–148     

明清两淮盐务道员建置新考

盐务道员是明清政府为管理食盐产销设立的重要职官。万历末年,明廷为催征盐课以供辽饷,先后创设整饬、疏理两淮盐法道。天启以后,党争剧烈,道臣清理盐法成效不彰,崇祯朝致力恢复运司专管盐法的旧制。清代重新调整盐官制度,合并运使、盐道为“管盐法道运使”,又新设监管场产的“分巡盐务道”和职司岸销的“通省盐法道”。盐务道员由朝廷差遣官变为地方盐务机构,与专管盐课钱粮的运司衙门共同成为包衣盐差的直属办事机构。皇帝为独揽两淮利权,又令两江总督兼总理盐法,与包衣盐差相互制约。道光年间,盐差因整顿不力奉裁,盐政改归总督管理。咸同军兴以后,运司、盐道的职权被招商、督销等局侵夺,两淮利权遂归总督,成为晚清督臣专权的财政基础。     

Colonial Rule,Cultural Relations and the British Council in Cyprus, 1935–55

ABSTRACT

This article offers an examination of the British Council’s early stages of expansion in Cyprus under British rule, from 1935 to 1955, before the start of the Greek Cypriot anti-colonial struggle (1955–59). It argues that the British Council’s development and quality of activities in the British colony were affected by various factors such as the peculiar political difficulties encountered in the island due to the rise of Greek nationalism and the growing influence of the Church of Cyprus over the local public; the mismanagement of the local British Institutes by some of the Council’s representatives; and the financial stringencies hindering the Council’s ambitions. Through the investigation of primary material, accessed at the Cyprus State Archive in Nicosia (Cyprus) and at the National Archives in London (UK), the article traces and critically analyses for the first time the Council’s early steps in colonial cultural policy-making, using Cyprus as a case study. During the 20-year period under examination, British experiments in culture attempted to attract the Cypriots’ interest and convince them of the importance of the British connection. The British and colonial governments envisaged that through cultural influence they could safeguard the consent of the governed. In this way, British presence in Cyprus could be retained and Britain would be able to protect its strategic, political and economic interests in the region. However, research reveals that the Council’s efforts in the colony were more often than not misguided, its activities proving ineffective, its hopes misplaced. Although the aspiration was that the British Council should be a powerful instrument of Britain’s foreign policy in the colonies, this article shows that in Cyprus it had a tumultuous childhood. Caught up in the realities of the Second World War, the rise of nationalism, the thread of communism, and amid the climate of Cold War, the British Empire was coming at an end, while the British Council was fighting to survive.