The Guidance Function of Cases of Misappropriation of Public Funds in Transitional China—With the Reference to Criminal Trial of the Supreme People’s Court of China as a Sample of Analysis

相对于贪污、受贿等传统型腐败犯罪, 挪用公款罪不是常态性罪名, 而是针对社 会转型刑法应对的成果。该罪的立法、司法过程中存在着诸多纠结, 这使得判例参考 的价值凸显。最高人民法院十分重视对该罪判例的公布, 这为现实裁决提供了指导和 参考作用。最近10年所公布挪用公款罪判例折射出司法的重心是: 注重主体身份的实 质公务性、从形式合理性理解“归个人使用”、慎重解释“公款”的内涵。判例公布 在有利于同案同判的同时, 也成为促进理论与实践的助推器。

关键词: 腐败犯罪 挪用公款 社会转型 判例 ?刑事审判参考?

Compared with the traditional offenses of embezzlement, bribe-taking and so on, the misappropriation of public funds is not a routine charge but a result of the response of criminal law to social transition. The fact that a number of difficulties have arisen in legislative and judicial procedures relating to this offense makes the value of case reference material significant. The Supreme People’s Court of China attaches great importance to the publication of cases of misappropriation of public funds, which offer guidance and reference for real-life adjudication. Cases publicized in the last decade reflect a judicial emphasis—they focus on the official nature of the duties performed by the subject, on understanding “for individual use” from the viewpoint of formal rationality and on a cautious interpretation of the connotations of “public funds.” Publicizing such cases facilitates reaching the same verdict in similar cases and at the same time acts as a catalyst for the advancement of theory and practice.     

America’s policy thinking in the age of Trump

What is striking in Trumpian economics – supply-side economics too – is the omission of economic growth. There is no awareness that nations at the frontier need indigenous innovation to have ample growth. The take-offs into sustained growth in 19th century Britain and America were fueled by dynamism from the grassroots up. Moreover, this stunted economics has no room for the rewards from participating in the economy besides the market wage – for the satisfaction of succeeding at what one is doing, the sense of flourishing as one’s career unfolds, and the thrill of venturing into the unknown.     

An Analysis of the Determinants of the Changes in China’s Foreign Exchange Reserves’ Nominal and Real Rates of Return

We use decomposition and regression to examine the reasons for the changes in nominal and real rates of return of China’s foreign exchange reserves between 2002 and 2009. The results show that the US financial market risk premium is the most important determinant of changes in the nominal rate of return, while the US dollar exchange rate and the bulk commodity price are the two key determinants of changes in the real rate of return. From empirically based research, one may conclude that the loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve increases China’s foreign exchange reserves’ nominal rate of return but decreases the real rate of return and that the European debt crisis has an uncertain impact on China’s foreign exchange reserves’ nominal rate of return but may well raise the real rate of return.     

Negotiating the ‘state of exception’: Gypsies' encounter with the judiciary in Germany and Italy, 1860–1914

The tensions between judicial and executive authorities regarding so-called Gypsies in fin de siècle Germany and Italy reveals an inherent contradiction between the universalist dictates of the modern Rechtsstaat and the requirements of building a national state free of perceived outsiders. The frustration of executive authorities with judicial authorities who insisted on protecting the universalist individual enshrined in law pushed executive authorities to utilize the ‘state of exception' to achieve their vision of the national community. Rather than choosing to create illiberal laws that would expressly exclude Gypsies from the national body, and would resolve the tension with the judiciary, authorities in Germany and Italy instead chose to go around the law by treating Gypsies as an exception not subject to the law. The state of exception not only deprived those labelled as Gypsies of a method of resistance, since many were able to use unwilling courts to protect them from over-zealous executive authorities, but also created a group of stateless people, persecuted and lacking basic human rights.     

Localization of Marxism in China and the Construc-tion of China’s Modernity

现代性在中国的生成与建构,是与马克思主义中国化历史地联系在一起的;中国现代性的建构,也历史地确定了马克思主义中国化的起点、任务与方向。马克思主义中国化的理论任务就是要求确立以建设为核心的观念、以促进人与社会的全面发展为主旨的马克思主义理论话语系统,构造一套符合全球化时代要求、有利于中华民族复兴及长治久安、并具有自检与防御机制及能力的开放性的社会、政治与文化体系。     

Four Methods That Should Be Mastered in the Study of the Historical Experience of the People’s Republic of China

研究中华人民共和国历史经验需要掌握一定的科学方法。既要研究新中国不同时 期的经验, 又要把各个历史时期的经验联系起来研究; 既要研究新中国各个领域的历 史经验, 又要从宏观层面对历史经验作综合研究; 既要研究新中国历史中的成功经 验, 又要注意对失误和挫折进行研究; 既要用今天的眼光研究新中国历史的经验, 又 要把经验放到特定的历史条件下研究。

关键词: 中华人民共和国历史经验 “文化大革命” 计划经济

It is necessary to master certain scientific methods in studying the historical experience of the People’s Republic of China; that is, we should study the experience of different periods of New China and at the same time study the experience of various historical periods as related to one another; we should study the successful experience of New China and at the same time study its errors and setbacks; and we should view the historical experience of New China from today’s perspective and at the same time study it by placing it under given historical conditions.     

‘Civic’ police and the condition of liberty: the rationality of governance in eighteenth-century England

In this article it is argued that previous attempts to understand the organization of eighteenthcentury systems of police have failed to take into account the political implications of governmental organization. Examining the office of constable in terms of the contemporary governmental imagination reveals that concerns with the independence of the officers and the need to ward against ‘corruption’ are not simply practical requirements. The unpaid, sequential nature of eighteenth-century police service was defined in terms of the classical model of civic duty, which saw active participation in government and the rotation of public office as key conditions of the free state, and as such the liberty of the citizens. This vision of freedom as a condition of freedom from dependence or domination, not an absence of interference, was instrumental in defining the way the system of police was debated and reformed over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Given that ‘police’ in this period represents a much wider programme of administration than the simple control of law and order, this has implications for our understanding of the structure of eighteenth-century government in general.     

The senator’s tale: the development of Bremen’s bourgeoisie in the post-1945 era

Were members of the German bourgeoisie capable of forming the foundation for a new self-understanding of post-1945German society? Or did they prove to be unsuited as agents of Germany’s new beginning? This article seeks to answer these questions by focusing on historical developments in the early phase of the Federal Republic of Germany as reflected in the biography of one prominent representative of the German bourgeoisie. Theodor Spitta, who was born in 1873, was elected in 1911as a senator for life in the government of the Free Hanse City of Bremen. Spitta was an outstanding representative of a generation socialized under the last German Kaiser, a generation which perceived itself as part of a politically liberal Bremen bourgeoisie. He feared the gradual decline, indeed the disintegration of his class. None the less – or perhaps for that very reason – he committed himself to the goal of restoring a regionally specific form of bourgeois life in the city of Bremen. Although Spitta declared a ‘farewell to the bourgeoisie’ in his autobiographical texts, that did not prevent him from actively pursuing the revival of a unique urban-bourgeois ‘spirit’. This spirit was to serve as a tool in promoting Bremen’s central political goal in post-1945Germany: the preservation of the city-state’s unique status within Germany’s federal system.     

On the instability of majority decision-making: testing the implications of the ‘chaos theorems’ in a laboratory experiment

In light of the so-called ‘chaos theorems’ from social choice theory, William Riker (W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1982) argues that the indeterminacy of majority rule leads to voting cycles making democratic decisions arbitrary and meaningless. Moreover, when the core is empty, majority instability correlates with the level of conflict among actors. This study uses laboratory committee decision-making experiments to provide an empirical test of both aspects of Riker’s argument. Committees make repeated majority decisions over 20 periods picking points from a two-dimensional policy space. The experiment manipulates committee members’ preferences and thus varies the existence of a core and the level of conflict between group members. The experimental results contradict Riker’s interpretation of the chaos theorems’ implications. Thus, the core exhibits less attraction than generally assumed. Moreover, an empty core is not associated with increased majority rule instability. Instead, conflicting preferences lead to more instability irrespective of the existence of an equilibrium.

     

Dynamic contractual incentives in the face of a Samaritans’s dilemma

We design a project funding contract that provides optimal incentives to agents, in a setting where both principal and agent enjoy the benefits of the project in a non-rival form once completed but may differ in their valuation. To do so, we study optimal incentive payments in a dynamic principal-agent framework in which the principal cannot observe the agent’s investment, but only completed projects, and faces a Samaritan’s Dilemma: he cannot commit to terminate the contract before completion of the project. The agent decides whether to undertake a (discrete) investment or consume all received funds. We find that the optimal contract is stationary, and that either transfers equal to investment cost are incentive compatible or the cost of the contract is decreasing with the agent’s valuation of the projects. Given the intrinsic valuation of the project by the agent, he is always better off signing the contract in contraposition with the general moral hazard result.     

From the ‘cape of despair’ to the Cape of Good Hope: letters of the emigrant poor in early nineteenth-century England

This article draws on an unusually rich archive to explore the motives and mentality of poor English emigrants in the early nineteenth century. In 1819, the Colonial Department advertised a subsidized emigration scheme to South Africa; 2000 people wrote letters of application preserved in the National Archives. In studying the emigrant poor, historians have been primarily dependent on numerical data derived from passenger lists. The letters of application of 1819 allow more nuanced conclusions about the circumstances and the aspirations of the poor emigrant at a time of severe economic distress. The correspondence shows which trades were particularly drawn to emigration, particularly the framework knitters and the weavers who had lost not only their regular income but their trades. The letters also shed light on the gender tensions which lay beneath the surface of what was promoted as family migration. Most telling of all, the letters show that among the poor there was more to the decision to emigrate than fatalism and passivity. Poor emigrants expected to have to work for their living, but with the reward of greater security, enhanced prosperity, and – in the case of the male majority – the achievement of ‘independence’.     

Mothers’ communicative cues and the development of infants’ helping: Linking participation and problem solving in the first year of life

There is an ongoing debate on the role of socialization in the development of infants’ helping. Although opportunities for the socialization of early helping are rare in problem solving (bystander intervention), there are many opportunities for socialization in participation (working alongside others), and infants’ experiences of participation could socialize problem solving indirectly. The present study links participation and problem solving conceptually by drawing on a Hebbian concept of indirect learning and through a study examining mothers’ communicative cues in both forms of helping. Forty mother-infant dyads engaged in two semi-structured helping tasks, a participation task and a problem-solving task at five, eight, and ten months of age. Mothers’ communicative cues and infants’ return of the object were examined using coding schemes adapted from prior research. Mothers used similar communicative cues (reaches, give-me gestures, and verbal requests) in both tasks, and more maternal scaffolding contributed to greater object handover. Infants showed higher object handover in participation tasks. The findings, framed in Tomasello's neo-Vygotskian account of prosocial development, offer a synthesis of the debate on the role of socialization where prosocial behavior emerges first between people, and then becomes individualized.     

Rolling with the shakes: an insight into teenagers’ perceptions of recovery after the Canterbury earthquakes

Natural disasters are harmful worldwide events that inflict multiple psychosocial impacts on disaster-exposed individuals. A significant proportion of affected individuals are teenagers (13–18 years old) who, compared with adults, have been historically overlooked in disaster research. The literature is particularly sparse concerning teenagers’ recovery from natural disasters, specifically what recovery means to them and the contributing factors towards their positive recovery. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to gain deeper insight into this largely unexplored area by conducting five focus groups with teenagers (16–18 years) who experienced at least one of the Canterbury, New Zealand, earthquakes since and including the initial September 2010 earthquake. This study directly asked teenagers about their recovery over the three years after the initial earthquakes, with data being analysed using thematic analysis. Two main themes were identified: (1) perceptions of recovery, with three sub-themes (i) knowledge and being less frightened, (ii) talking about the earthquakes and (iii) shift in perspectives; and (2) contributing factors to recovery, with three sub-themes (i) participation in the community response, (ii) returning to school and (iii) the rebuild of Christchurch. These factors provide insight into how we can better support the recovery process for disaster-exposed teenagers to reduce long-term distress.     

‘We’re Civil Servants’: The Status of Trauma-Informed Care in the Community

ABSTRACT

Trauma-informed care (TIC) in social service organizations means that the organizations operate with the understanding that everyone involved has possibly experienced trauma in their lifetime. This qualitative study examined local service organizations’ usage of the 5 main principles of TIC: safety, trustworthiness, collaboration, empowerment, and choice (as developed by Fallot & Harris, 2006). Ten focus groups (n = 69) and 6 individual interviews (n = 6) with employees from administration through management were interviewed such that almost all facets of each agency were represented. The participants were asked about their agencies’ policies and practices for utilizing the 5 principles of TIC. The results suggest that the vast majority of organizations in this study implemented many of the principles of TIC with clients, though they had not labeled their practices as “trauma-informed.” However, although clients were receiving TIC, some of the principles were neglected as they pertain to staff, such as choice and empowerment. The findings of this study suggest that agencies are unaware of the relevance of TIC as it relates to staff. It is recommended that future research examine whether the use of TIC in agencies prevents “burnout,” high turnover rates, and vicarious traumatization of staff.