Reforms of Administrative Law in the PRC and Vietnam: The Possible Role of the Legal Tradition

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-290
Author(s):  
Karin Buhmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Modern System

AbstractThe article takes its point of departure in administrative law and good governance as possible avenues for increased implementation of rights, including human rights. The author discusses the role that pre-modern East Asian ideas on governance and pre-modern administrative law and institutions for monitoring the executive's use of power may play for the substance and focus of the reforms of administrative law that have been undertaken in the late 20th century in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and in Vietnam. The article discusses the possible influence of ideas and institutions inspired by Confucianism and the School of Legalism, including such features as a meritocratic civil service, institutions for monitoring the executive and for dealing with complaints, instrumental use of law, and use of rewards, punishments and instruction to achieve the aims of the law. The author compares the prevalence of the features of pre-modern China and Vietnam with elements in legislation and institutions implemented under the late 20th century reform processes in the PRC and Vietnam. The article concludes that the legacy of the pre-modern system of administrative law and governance and related institutions appears to play a role in the modern reform process that is more than accidental, and that this legacy results in a relatively strong emphasis on a principle of legality in the legislation implemented under the reforms and in a relatively weaker emphasis on the principle of equality. The article suggests that features of the premodern legacy, especially the emphasis on exercise of executive power in accordance with law, may be explored as providing potential for contributing to an increased quality of public administration and an increased implementation of rule of law and specific rights, including human rights and rights of relevance to trade and investment. It is also suggested that these features of the pre-modern system may be explored by the development community and international organizations as potential for creating ownership and sustainability of governance and law reforms that are of interest to external partners of the PRC and Vietnam.

25th volume celebration paper Policies for the aged in the 21st century: more ‘structured dependency’ or the realisation of human rights?

2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER TOWNSEND
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Older People ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Individual Market

By the late 20th century, the plight of millions of older people in many developed countries was regarded as serious and was acknowledged to require concerted cross-national remedial action. Sociologists and social gerontologists only then were beginning to put together explanations rooted in the evolution of social policy and its corresponding institutions. One thesis that attracted support was that the dependency of the aged had been ‘structured’ by long-term economic and social policies. During the final decades of the 20th century, older people were perceived and treated, according to accumulating research evidence, as more dependent than they really were or needed to be. This had been fostered by the emerging institutions of retirement, income maintenance, and residential and domiciliary care. This development had been the responsibility primarily of the State, which tried to deliver welfare but also to accommodate the market. Forms of discrimination against older people had become, or continued to be, as deep as forms of discrimination against women and ethnic minorities. Such ‘institutionalised ageism’ had to be countered. Hopes were invested in anti-discriminatory policies that reflected good reciprocal relationships between the generations in many families and the rights of individuals of any age to human dignity and opportunities to practise their skills. The globalisation of the market and affiliation to neo-liberal policies, together with the simultaneous passage of various instruments of human rights, have changed the nature of the problem, and therefore the debate, during the early 21st century. This paper argues that the release and implementation during and after the Second World War of collective liberal egalitarian values, expressed in many countries in international statements on human rights, as will be shown, had a big impact on the design of public services, including those for older people. If the claims for the elderly in the welfare states of 50 years ago were exaggerated, as we can now safely conclude, the claims for older people today are even more exaggerated – at a time of heightened emphasis on individual rights and individual market powers. The various problems of ‘structured’ dependency persist, and seem set to grow in many parts of the world. Human rights offer a framework of rigorous analysis and anti-discriminatory work. Success depends on good operational measurement, and the incorporation of international and national institutions and policies that reflect those rights.

Pan-European General Principles of Good Administration in Finland

2020 ◽  
pp. 431-448
Author(s):  
Ida Koivisto
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Domestic Legislation ◽  
Normative Requirement

In this chapter the meaning and effect in the Finnish legal system of the Council of Europe (CoE) conventions and recommendations are discussed. Particular emphasis is placed on the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights and CoE law pertinent to good administration, administrative law and administrative law principles. The main finding is that, so far, the CoE provisions on good administration have found little room for application due to refined domestic legislation on these matters. Instead of being a follower Finland has been setting the pace in making good administration a central concept and normative requirement in constitutional and administrative law. Thus, although a two-way interconnection between the CoE and Finland can be detected, it could be argued that Finland represents a benchmark case. This development coincides with—and is partially affected by—the general ‘pandemic’ of good governance talk and enthusiasm over the last couple of decades.

scholarly journals NGOs as News Organizations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Wright
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Written Text ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Mainstream Press ◽  
Media Practices

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are not-for-profit groups, which are independent of commercial businesses and government agencies. They claim to serve various notions of the public good, including advocacy and service delivery. So the definition of an “NGO” is broad, including many different kinds of organizations, such as aid agencies, human rights, indigenous, feminist and environmental lobby groups. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, the predecessors of NGOs—pressure groups—tried to advance their cause by cultivating close relations with the mainstream press, and/or publishing their own periodicals. But from the late 20th century onward, many NGOs started routinely producing their own news content, including written text but also photojournalism, video, and sophisticated interactive projects. Some of this material is disseminated through “alternative” outlets, social media and activist hubs. But it is difficult for NGOs to gain a mass audience in these ways, so most major NGOs recruit or commission experienced journalists to carry out this work for them. Much of the research in this area has focused on either journalists’ increased dependence on NGOs, or on the restructuring of NGOs’ resources, priorities and working cultures in accordance with news norms. Most scholars have also focused on the work of international aid agencies and/or human rights organizations, as well as particular kinds of crises, such as famines, hurricanes and conflicts. The extant literature is heavily weighted toward organizations which are based in North America or Europe. However, a small but growing number of scholars are challenging this, exploring the news work of other NGOs and/or news outlets, in other countries, and during other kinds of news-making periods, including conferences, summits and “quiet” news weeks. These more diverse approaches to studying NGOs as news organizations have led to the theorization of NGO journalism becoming more nuanced. Researchers have shifted away from polarized, and somewhat over-generalized, assessments of the effects of NGO news-making, toward a greater awareness of complexity and heterogeneity. This has involved them using theory about organizations, institutions, fields and moral economies. However, the kinds of power which NGO workers are able to acquire by becoming news reporters is still under-theorized, and scholars still tend to avoid examining the frameworks they use as a basis for normative evaluation. Finally, changing media practices (including social media practices) and NGOs’ adoption of new communication technology (including satellite and drone imagery) means that this area of news work is still evolving very rapidly.

Human Rights and Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pramod K. Nayar
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Ariel Dorfman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modified Forms

The field of human rights (HR) and literature has expanded in the last two decades. Fiction, poetry, memoirs, and graphic novels with HR themes have been examined, and also cognate fields like popular culture and HR, humanitarianism, and the history of HR itself. The literary, with its emphasis on the human ‘subject,’ the formation of this subject, and the hurdles that confront its formation, is appropriate for the study of how humans are conceptualized as deserving (or not) of rights, and the conditions in which the human loses her humanness. Victims, perpetrators, and bystanders are characters in literary texts that critics study as models of subjectivity. The literary text asks us to imagine the nature of the human person, the universal state of human vulnerability, and the situations in which this vulnerability is prised open for exploitation. The entries here consist of those that engage directly with literary texts but also with frames, contested and debated, that define the human, and without which a rights regime cannot be put in place or modified. Forms and aesthetics that are central to the documentation, witnessing, and communicating the urgency of HR themes in various genres are also necessarily a part of this bibliography. Various forms and genres in literature—across ages, geocultural formations, and nations—have addressed the theme of HR, explicitly or implicitly. The war novel, for instance, is more concerned with mass HR violations such as genocide, rape, and continuing trauma. The child-abuse novel is focused on individual HR. Plays by authors like Ariel Dorfman, (e.g., his Resistance trilogy) use theatre to speak of unspeakable horrors like torture. In the late 20th century, especially in the wake of Art Spiegelman’s pioneering Maus, numerous graphic novels, comics, and pieces of comics journalism have sought to document atrocity and HR. Testimonial texts and fiction by victims have constituted a globally visible genre, again since the last half of the 20th century.

Reason, Faith, and Feelings

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Conor Gearty
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Uk

The principle of requiring executive power to be justified works well where that justification is rooted in reasoned argument, and it is even more effective when it is also required to be tested against substantive human rights principles. But what happens when the justification supplied for coercive action by a state is rooted in a socio-legal tradition that is not rooted in the liberal and constitutionalist tradition? In such circumstances the power may continue to be mediated by law but the veneer of legality and of human rights compliance will be thin indeed. Judicial decisions drawn from the UK and the European Court of Human Rights are deployed to demonstrate the point and so to highlight one of the difficulties about mapping Dyzenhaus’s argument onto the politics that we encounter today rather than the politics we would like to have.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Ulrich Stelkens ◽  
Agnė Andrijauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Main Research

The Introduction outlines the notion, the main features, the sources and the scope of the pan-European principles of good administration developed within the framework of the Council of Europe (CoE). It elaborates on their relationship to EU administrative law in describing the characteristics of EU administrative law and contrasts it with the characteristics of ‘CoE administrative law’. Moreover, the Introduction discusses the commonalities of the research on the pan-European general principles of good administration with the research on European human rights law and the quest for a ‘European rule of law’. It furthermore examines the general concepts of ‘good governance’ and ‘good administration’, the differences between them and the relevance of these notions for the research on pan-European principles of good administration. It finishes with a presentation of the effectiveness of pan-European principles of good administration as a main research question and the approach thereto taken in this book.

Good Governance

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
Henk Addink
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Right

Good governance is a legal concept and a cornerstone of the modern state. It is the most modern of the three cornerstones of the state, whereas the rule of law and democracy concepts are the more classical yet still lively cornerstones. The legal system of the state requires further specification by norms and enforcement and the concept of good governance plays an important role. Three steps can be distinguished in the positivation of the concept: the identification, the internalization, and the enforcement of good governance. There is a direct link between good governance and human rights which can be illustrated by different articles in international human rights treaties. The latest developments are related to the right to good governance. Important also are the development of most of the originally unwritten principles by the judiciary which are later more or less codified and the internationalization of national administrative law by the development of principles of good governance including principles of good administration.

Implementing Human Rights through Administrative Law Reforms: The Potential in China and Vietnam. By Karin Buhmann. [Copenhagen: Djof Publishing, 2001. 603 pp. €59.00. ISBN 87-574-0756-8.]

2002 ◽  
Vol 172 ◽  
pp. 1065-1103
Author(s):  
John Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Discretionary Power ◽  
Governance Reforms

In her interesting and useful book, Karin Buhmann evaluates the potential for civil rights and ‘good-governance’ reforms to improve public administration and human rights in China and Vietnam. She argues that ‘good governance’ reforms promoting transparency and accountable discretionary power, more effectively enhance human rights observance than civil rights dialogues. The book examines the pre-modern indigenous roots of administrative rule in China and Vietnam, searches for comparative East Asian human rights and then evaluates complementalities between Western ‘good governance’ and East Asian public administration.

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