Commentary on the New Charity Undertakings Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Catá Backer

Abstract China’s new Charity Law represents the culmination of over a decade of planning for the appropriate development of the productive forces of the charity sector in aid of socialist modernization. Together with the related Foreign ngo Management Law, it represents an important advance in the organization of the civil society sector within emerging structures of Socialist Rule of Law principles. While both Charity and Foreign ngo Management Laws could profitably be considered as parts of a whole, each merits discussion for its own unique contribution to national development. Moreover, while analysis tends to focus on legal conformity of the Charity Law to the state constitution, little work has been done to analyze the relationship of the Charity Law to the political constitution of China. This essay seeks to fill that gap by considering the role of the Charity Law through the lens of the Constitution of the Communist Party of China. More specifically, the essay examines the extent to which the provisions of the Charity Law, and its underlying policies, contribute to the implementation and realization of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) Basic Line and in the context of the overall political policy of “socialist modernization which has served as the core of the political line of the ccp since the last decades of the 20th century. The essay is organized as follows: Section ii considers the specific provisions of the Charity Law, with some reference to changes between the first draft and the final version of the Charity Law. Section iii then considers some of the more theoretical considerations that suggest a framework for understanding the great contribution of the Charity Law as well as the challenges that remain for the development of the productive forces of the civil society sector at this historical stage of China’s development.

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Hanley

Chapter 6 turns to Fénelon’s theology, focusing on his treatment of hope and its significance for his political philosophy. It argues that he regarded hope not just as a key theological virtue, but also as a key virtue of political rulers and political reformers. Its discussion of the political implications of Fénelon’s theology proceeds in three parts. It first examines the role of hope in Telemachus. It then turns to the treatment of hope in Fénelon’s theology, focusing on three particular discussions: the place of hope in love, the relationship of hope to self-interest, and the place of hope in prayer. The final section turns to two aspects of Fénelon’s theology beyond hope which also have significant implications for his political philosophy: his understanding of the relationship of human being to divine being, and his arguments for the existence of God and their implications for universal order.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 762-779
Author(s):  
Santap Sanhari Mishra ◽  
Mohamud Mohamed Abdullahi

Corruption is the biggest obstacle in the way of human development. In a highly corrupt public life, citizens’ satisfaction seems to be a mirage. But can citizens’ satisfaction be possible even if there is less chance of sounding the death knell for corruption? To investigate this, this study examines the mediating effect of trust in democracy and civil society participation in the relationship of corruption and citizens’ satisfaction in the context of Somalia, considered to be the most corrupt country in the world. Using a survey, a total of 205 valid responses from public service users in Somalia were put into confirmatory factor analysis. The empirical results show the partial mediation of civil society participation and trust in democracy; however, civil society participation is more effective than trust in democracy in mediating the relationship of corruption and citizens’ satisfaction, because of less negative indirect effect.


Author(s):  
V. Litiaga

The article analyzes basic scientific approaches to the interpretation of the terms of «linguoculturology», «linguistic conceptology» and «linguistic concept». We consider the relationship of language and culture, and the role of the term «concept» in this regard. In the article we structured the term «concept» from a linguocultural point of view. These theoretical considerations are the basis for the study of ways and mean of forming a conceptual image of Kyiv Rus in the French medieval linguistic cultural picture of the world. The aim of this article is to examine the influence of the country’s image on shaping the bilateral relations between Ukraine and France in a linguocultural conceptual aspect. The article reveals the main semantic and linguoconceptual aspects of medieval French culture. It shows the links between historical and actual aspects of the conceptual sphere in the formation of public opinion in contemporary international relations. Despite the increasing interest of the scholars in the influence that the image of country may have on bilateral relations, this topic has been under‐researched. This article presents the author’s insights based on theoretical and empirical studies that could shed some new light on this important topic. By looking at the «linguocultural» aspect of the relationship between Kyiv Rus and France in the Medieval times the article gives a basic analysis of the process of country image formation since the tenth century and its impact on present times. The article also provides a basis for further linguistic research of this topic.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-251
Author(s):  
Vratislav Doubek

Abstract This article examines the rise of the nascent intellectual and business bourgeois elites of the Czechs and Slovaks, focusing on the transformation of their cultural program into a political one. The article takes a comparative approach and investigates the relationship of political programs to prepolitical identities, zooming in on the parameters of a broader Czech and Slovak state identity, including the role of the center (Vienna, Pest, Prague, or Pressburg) or language (analyzing both its unifying and divisive roles in bridging the ideas and visions of the emerging local elites). As I argue, in the case of the Czech and Slovak nationalist movements, we can observe a transition from a prepolitical to the political program in the mid-19th century itself.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101-138
Author(s):  
Per Selle ◽  
Kristin Strømsnes

A vibrant civil society is important in a democratic system, and society’s contact with, opposition to and control of the political system is crucial for the democratic system to survive. In this chapter we look at the relationship between the Sámi Parliament and Sámi civil society from several perspectives: those of the party leaders and representatives, the civil society organizations, and the voters. We find that Sámi interest and participation in civil society is at the same level as that of the population at large when we measure participation in Sámi and Norwegian organizations combined. We also find that the level and type of contact between the parties represented in the Sámi Parliament and Sámi civil society organizations is limited, and that little points to these organizations having an important advocacy role. Their control and opposition role is weak. We conclude that the political role of Sámi civil society is weak and challenging for the Sámi political system and democracy.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-234
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Schoenblum

The paper is concerned with the relationship of taxation to conceptions of the state and the community. The paper contends that public finance theorists have focused little attention on what, precisely, the state is and the role of subnational and supranational communities, even though understanding the state and these communities is essential for grasping how tax revenues are really distributed. The failure of public finance to do so is explainable by the powerful faith in the expertise of theorists and bureaucrats and abstract models for social welfare, whether or not they work or would be agreed upon and implemented via the political process.


Author(s):  
Yevgeniy Ye. Abekhtikov

The article is devoted to the problem of proletarian culture, the history of the creation and functioning of the Proletkult organisation. The author considers its theoretical basis, the practical implementation of which proved to be problematic. The work shows that all Marxist intellectuals believed that proletarian culture has nothing to do with the bourgeois one. Alexander Bogdanov, the most infl uential ideologist of the Proletkult, believed that the proletarian culture is developed by the newest proletariat, which he called «industrial». An analysis of the majority of his statements shows that the intelligentsia and peasantry was not even considered to be involved in the creation of the new culture by Alexander Bogdanov. However, during its heyday, the Proletkult was a refuge for intellectuals who devoted themselves to the service of Revolution and the Communist Party. The article also draws attention to the problem of the relationship of the creators and organisers of the Proletkult with the Soviet state and the Bolshevik Party. The Proletkult claimed autonomy in the sphere of culture, completely rejecting the idea of submission to any state institution. However, Lenin evaluated the Proletkult negatively, considering it to be not only useless, but also harmful. Part of Lenin’s problem with the Proletkult was Alexander Bogdanov personally, as he would be the rival of the former at one time and, possibly, could be the political rival in future, using the Proletkult as an organisational base


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 80-99
Author(s):  
I A Kravets

The article examines the legal nature and mission the constitutional teleology, the role of teleological function of the constitution in the Soviet and modern Russian legal system, the concept and types of constitutional legitimacy, the relationship of constitutional legitimacy and political and ideological foundations of the constitutional system, the nature and limitations of the principles of political pluralism, multi-party system and ideological pluralism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 843-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ost

This article is part of the special cluster titled Generation ’68 in Poland (with a Czechoslovak Comparative Perspective). Whereas much of the European right greeted the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 with a critique of its legacy, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party was largely silent, both because 1968 did not usher in a counterculture and because the protests were directed against the communist party. And yet the Law and Justice party detests the legacy of 1968, for three reasons: 1968 was shaped by the left, ’68 activists and their values played a key role in the ensuing opposition, and because the right actually sympathizes with the communists of 1968, then dominated by nationalists. The right thus traditionally attacks the legacy of 1968 by attacking 1989 instead, when ’68’ ers played a central role and new left progressivism could finally emerge. That began changing early in 2018 when Poland’s parliament passed its Holocaust-speech law banning calumny against the “Polish Nation.” The resulting criticism brought 1968 back with a vengeance, with the right openly inhabiting the role of the national-communists, and beginning to attack Poland’s 1968 directly. Shedding new light on the diverse meanings of 1968 and the relationship of the right to national communism, the piece ends by looking at developments through Bernhard and Kubik’s theory of the politics of memory.


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