一省之议会:咨议局性质发微

岑春煊1907年建议各省设立的咨议局,以及其后江苏绅士与安徽官绅所设计的咨议局,虽然在本质上都不是完全的议会机构,但设计者都将其定位为"全省"的机关,而非"地方"的机关。法部在批评岑氏的时候,更是提出,必须先建立地方议会,才能建立省议会,地方议会是咨议局的基础。1908年出台的通行全国的《咨议局章程》,将咨议局定位为"一省之议会"。在上奏《咨议局章程》的奏折中,在与于式枚辩难的过程中,宪政编查馆都强调,由于中国的行省不同于各国的"地方",咨议局不同于各国的地方议会,而是中国特有的省议会。清季对议会系统的规划,是国会、省议会与地方议会,而非国会与地方议会。今人多将咨议局称为地方议会,实错解了当时制度设计者的良苦用心。     

From Demographic Transition to Fertility Boom and Bust: Iran in the 1980s and 1990s

Although it is widely recognized that demographic transition is not an uninterrupted process, demographers and population economists have treated short‐term swings in fertility with a measure of curiosity. Iran's experience of population growth after the Revolution in 1979 points to a double paradox of a steep and unprecedented surge in population growth in the 1980s followed by a swift restoration of fertility decline in the 1990s. Both periods have been characterized by extensive socio‐economic and institutional changes combined with radical and far‐reaching sways in Iran's post‐revolutionary population policy. This article applies standardized decomposition analysis to separate out and quantify the proximate components of change in the crude birth rate during these two fertility ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ phases. The aim is to ascertain to what extent structural/demographic or behavioural factors can explain the dynamics of change in fertility and population growth in Iran since the late 1970s. Our findings point to a hitherto neglected role of population momentum in initiating the ‘Islamic baby boom’ as well as a more limited role for population policy in explaining the genesis(rather than the momentum) of both boom and bust phases.     

A Guarded Courtship: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in Iran from the Late 1940s to the 1960s

By bringing to bear previously unstudied Soviet archival documents and conducting firsthand interviews with former diplomats, the article traces the ways in which the Soviet Union sought out opportunities to reinvigorate deteriorated Soviet?Iranian ties through cultural organizations and events in Iran during the decades following World War II. A variety of Soviet cultural representatives—from wrestlers to classical musicians to scholars of Iranian literature—were marshaled for this effort, which bore unexpected fruit considering the modest expectations of the Soviet leadership, ideological differences between the two countries, and increasingly dominant US cultural projection. The connections between cultural ties and state goals, Iranian perceptions of Russia, and the Soviet/Russian sympathies of some members of the shah’s government are among sub-themes examined.     

由脱序到整合:清末外省财政机构的变动

清季外省财政机构通过裁局改制,经历了由纷乱无序到财权相对统一的重要转变。裁局改制前期注重节流主义,后期相对重视制度改变。光绪末年的财政改制主要是督抚司道的自发调整,宣统年间则是来自清廷“裁局改制”谕旨和度支部的督催。外省督抚虽遵照谕令实施变革,但却力图控制财政实权。度支部统一财政、强化各省藩司实权的愿望受到督抚的表面应付,实难如愿达到目的。由于机构整合过程中受到各种制度和人事影响,通过改制设立的省财政机构明显存在新旧杂糅的特征,在分科办事、职员构成和运行习惯上,未能与旧传统彻底区分。清廷和各省在财政机构的改制上,尚存在着“能力”与“努力”的各种约束,改制结果并不纯粹是积极的。     

Minimal State Theories and Democracy in Europe: From the 1880s to Hayek

Summary

This article deals with laissez faire arguments as distinguishable in Europe between the final decades of the nineteenth century and 1914. The focus is on Herbert Spencer and the British ‘Individualists’, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto, and the Frenchman Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Analysis concentrates on the relationship between laissez faire formulations and democracy, the latter amounting to the impact of the extension of the franchise on representative government. All the mentioned authors blamed the mechanisms of democratic government for the contemporary growth in state functions. While Spencer focused on the threat of a new class legislation after the demise of aristocratic power, Pareto and Leroy-Beaulieu viewed the pressure of lobbies and parties as the chief cause of the extension of state interventions. This article also aims to detect similarities and differences with more recent formulations. It is argued that Friedrich Hayek's achievement was to reconcile, against earlier perspectives, laissez faire with democracy. The reconciliation rested on a conceptualisation of democracy as a valuable method or procedure, onto which no values should be grafted.     

How incipient colonies create territory: the textual surveys of New Spain, 1520s–1620s

The study of colonial surveying and cartography has become key to understanding the history of European colonialism because of the recognition that land surveys and maps not only represent territory but form part of the process through which territory comes into being. While many studies have therefore focused on the history of instrumental surveying and cartography in New Spain, roughly equivalent to present-day Mexico, between the seventeenth and twentieth century, the textual surveys of the sixteenth century that helped to bring the initial colonial territory into being have gone largely unstudied. Content analysis of textual land surveys included in sixteenth-century viceregal land grants for sheep and cattle ranches demonstrates variation in references to distance, direction, and borders that begins to reveal a process of negotiation among local actors and centralized state power that was contingent on environmental, economic, and demographic differences between highland and lowland landscapes.