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.     

The 1892 General Election and the Eclipse of the Liberal Unionists

This article seeks to establish that the 1892 general election marked a major change in the relative positions of the parties in the Unionist alliance. Not only did it reveal the limitations of the Liberal Unionist Party's strategy and appeal in an age of increasingly organised, mass politics, but it also acted as a brake on the ambitions of the new leader of the Liberal Unionists in the house of commons, Joseph Chamberlain. It argues that the Liberal Unionist Party suffered a more severe setback in 1892 than has been recognized hitherto and that Chamberlain's attempts to revive his party both before and after the general election were now prescribed by the reality of the political position in which the party now found itself. Rather than regarding the fluid political circumstances of the 1890s as the outcome of an emerging struggle between increasingly polarised ideologies, it seeks to reinforce the significance of local political circumstances and the efficacy of party management in the growing dominance of Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour and the Conservative central organisers.     

A. V. Dicey and English constitutionalism

The jurist A. V. Dicey’s study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) has been since its publication the dominant analysis of the British constitution and the source of orthodoxy on such subjects as parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. This canonical status has obscured the originality of Dicey’s ideas in the history of legal and political thought. Dicey reworked the traditional idea of sovereignty into two separate concepts – legal and political sovereignty – in order to square the common law notion of the sovereignty of parliament with the democratic idea of the sovereignty of the people. He forged a new concept – ‘the rule of law’ – to explain the legal basis of liberty in common law countries in a manner that was both Benthamite and constitutionalist. Finally, he provided a democratic and anti-federalist rationale for maintaining the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. This majoritarian, centralist and utilitarian constitutionalism has been one of the most enduring products of Victorian scholarship. This article seeks to recover it in its original context and, in so doing, to show the value of reintegrating legal thought into the mainstream of modern British history and the history of political thought.     

Troubled Traditions: Female Adaptive Education in British Colonial Africa

This article examines African female education reform between the wars as a conjuncture of transnational philanthropic initiatives and state and missionary objectives on the ground. Through a comparative treatment of four schools in West, East and South-Central Africa, it shows that the search to recover and re-create the authentic African subject was a gendered process that aimed to critique one brand of colonialism (settler and industrial capitalism) by bolstering another (indirect rule). The schools at Achimota (Gold Coast), Kabete (Kenya), Hope Fountain (Southern Rhodesia) and Mbereshi (Northern Rhodesia) all idealised women’s traditional education as the key to offsetting the dangers of modernisation and preserving the integrity of the social body, and ‘adapted’ their curricula accordingly to their perception of women’s normative economic and social roles. However, the internal contradictions of this project stymied any possibility of implementing it in a cohesive way, and even its advocates and architects were often forced to admit the limits of tradition as a coherent logic or redemptive force. The gendered contours of adaptation, therefore, showed the potential of education to destabilise as much as to reinforce the shifting paradigms of the colonial project.     

林则徐关于"银贵钱贱"的认识与困惑

林则徐最初认为“银贵钱贱”是鸦片透漏白银出境造成的,但是到了1846年,当他看到西安市场上银价“忽低忽昂”,在不了解“杰科布定律”的情况下,最后他还是陷入一片迷茫之中,留下了“其理亦不可解”的感叹。     

政治和法治的钟摆——以国家观念(文化)史为视角

法治是人类经过长期的探索,才得以确立政府应该负责的一种信念。历史上,法治从对宗教自由和公德心的承认发展而来。国家在认可个人的宗教自由和公德心的同时规定了对自身的基本限制。西方现代法治进一步延伸了宪法控制政府行为的观念。法律制定是国家权力的明显体现,而被制定的法律是国家政策转化为行动的中介并对整个政府行为均具有约束力。这意味着政府当局不能采取任何与议会或宪法相抵触的行动,意味着法律优先于任何的、所有的其他政府手段,受到立法机关法律的、政治的首要性的支持。借助国家观念史的演进历史来分析,可以说明政治和法治的钟摆始终是在回答为什么必须使用国家权力,然后才是如何防止权力的滥用(即权力守法)这两个问题所代表的倾向之间摆动。     

唐代人物画理论中的历史意识

唐代人物画理论中有一个重要的思想倾向,这就是贯穿于其中的强烈的历史意识。这种历史意识主要是通过对绘画起源的考察,从而将绘画发展视为一个连续而完整的过程。     

生命的畸形博弈:清代命案中的顶凶现象新考

与历代诸多代人受刑的案件相比,清代命案中的顶凶案件有其自身的特点。顶凶案发生的原因和情节错综复杂,成为一种危害深重的畸形社会现象。发生时间表现为乾隆以降,数量逐渐增多;发生区域以福建、广东地区的械斗顶凶案件最为典型;立法过程表现为例文与司法的相互调适并趋向宽纵。从一手史料出发,对顶凶案件背后的生成机制和司法实践进行探寻和考证,可以在一定程度上揭示清代社会民众的政治生态、文化心理和价值取向,透视出官方与民间的互动实态。     

18世纪末至19世纪中期英国在印度的“文明使命”

在"文明使命"价值观的指引下,英国人在印度扮演的角色,既是征服者和殖民者,又是统治者和开化者.他们在治理与掠夺印度的过程中,摧毁了印度原有的社会与经济结构,推进了印度社会的近代化,用强力手段将古老的印度拉进了以英国为中心的世界资本主义体系.