Asian Values and the Constitutional Order of Contemporary Singapore

This essay examines the economic and political developmentof the Republic of Singapore and the implications of its modelof state-led development. Sections 2 and 3 examine the strengthsand weaknesses of technocratically ordered economic growth. Sections4 and 5 consider the impact of technocratically determined macroeconomictargeting upon the management of a goal-oriented organizationalorder increasingly preoccupied with a designated citizen identity.The final section examines the implications of this attempt tomix impersonal rules with bounded governance structures of anEast-Asian provenance for constitutional political economy.     

Spontaneously Evolved Social Order versus Positive Legislation in English Constitutional History

Medieval institutions contain an important strain of spontaneous order, especially from the pre-Christian period. A series of irregular successions after the Norman conquest made royal charters increasingly important in establishing the sovereign's legitimacy. Henry I's coronation charter (1100) formed the basis of Henry II's aggressive program of reform legislation, as well as for Magna Carta (1215). Henry II aimed at restoring the legal and political institutions of his grandfather Henry I after a period of civil strife and social degeneration. The fact that almost all later charters grew out of Henry I's charter, combined with the fact that later charters expanded and refined legal and political institutions, establishes the evolution of spontaneous order in the English charters. This evolution continued throughout the middle ages as subsequent kings confirmed Magna Carta.     

The Emergence of Constitutional Rights

Constitutional rights are puzzling in that powerholders are likely to create rights favoring themselves or those on whom they rely to remain in power. Rights granted to all citizens alike, limiting the exercise of power, would appear anomalous. One can articulate a set of circumstances which must be present for constitutional rights to be formulated for the first time, in particular: widely felt abuse of power; overthrow of the ruler or profound crisis, driven by an 'encompassing coalition' of citizens. The article looks at the periods during which constitutional rights first appeared in the West. It also examines under what conditions they will be imitated elsewhere.     

The Demand for Constitutional Law

A growing concern in transition economies is the gap between the law on the books and the law in practice. The existence of such a gap has long been recognized even in countries with a long legal tradition and where, by and large, the formal law seems to be observed. In transition economies as well as in many emerging markets and developing countries, this gap appears to be especially pronounced. This paper argues that an explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the process of law development in these countries. They have extensively imported law from other countries in an attempt to stage a catch-up in legal development. This was facilitated by foreign legal advisors preaching the existence and transferability of best practice in other parts of the world. The missing link in this equation has been the demand for law. This paper seeks to explain the meaning of the demand for law in the context of evolving Russian constitutional law drawing extensively from research on legal transplants and the lack of demand for law in other areas of the law.     

同性婚姻的宪法之纬——《Same—sex Marriage and the Constitution》述评

当同性恋不再是罪，当同性恋也不再是病，当同性恋的性权利得到了更多的支持，主流意识形态必须面对这样的问题：如果非婚同居、性交易、性乱交都是同主流道德不相吻合的，那么如果拒绝了同性婚姻，同性恋还能怎么做?     

The Independence of the Italian Constitutional Court

It is often asserted that the Italian Constitutional Court is not independent of the Executive and Legislative branches of the government in Rome. We offer a view of independence that is congruent with bodies such as constitutional courts. We argue that the evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, however poor it may be, indicates that the Italian Constitutional Court is as independent as any other corresponding constitutional or supreme court of democratic countries. The evidence is not directly conclusive because the question, in the end, is not whether the judges, one by one, are independent, but whether the Court is independent. The evidence we offer pertains mostly to judges. If judges are independent, as that evidence seems to indicate, the Court is a fortiori even more independent.     

论转轨时期我国政府的主导作用

因市场发育程度和历史传统的不同,各国政府对经济的干预方式也不同。市场经济越发达的国家,政府干预经济的方式越间接、越灵活,越强调市场机制的作用;市场经济越不完善的国家,政府干预经济的方式越直接。本文根据转型时期我国所面临的实际状况,提出政府在经济发展中应发挥主导作用。     

Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development

We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining income levels around the world, using recently developed instrumental variables for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of institutions trumps everything else. Once institutions are controlled for, conventional measures of geography have at best weak direct effects on incomes, although they have a strong indirect effect by influencing the quality of institutions. Similarly, once institutions are controlled for, trade is almost always insignificant, and often enters the income equation with the wrong (i.e., negative) sign. We relate our results to recent literature, and where differences exist, trace their origins to choices on samples, specification, and instrumentation.     

The Austrian Theory of Institutions Applied to Science-Industry Relationships: The Relevance of Innovative Institutions

This contribution aims at using an Austrian approach of institutions to discuss specific institutional arrangements in the current working of science-industry relationships. By combining distinctive characteristics between Menger's and Hayek's research programs, we establish a typology of institutions that goes beyond the usual way to approach business institutions and allows us to identify transitory types of institutional arrangements called innovative institutions. We apply that Austrian approach of institutions and address its relevance to highlight some puzzling issues derived from empirical evidence. Then, innovative institutions reveal particularly suited to understand how public and private research work together in science-industry relationships.     

政府视角下以区域联想为核心的区域品牌伞构建研究

为了应对区域品牌建设中出现的一系列问题,区域管理者们不得不采取新的策略来发展区域经济。某些地区已经尝试将品牌伞策略应用于区域品牌的建设,构建区域品牌伞。探讨了以区域联想为核心的区域品牌伞的基本架构,并提出了影响作为区域品牌伞核心价值的区域联想可转移性维度。在国内外相关研究基础上,通过定性分析,提出区域品牌伞就是将区域品牌撑开成为伞状品牌,直接与产品相结合,作为其品牌或品牌一部分,构建一个以区域品牌为上层品牌,涵盖区域内一系列产品或品牌的区域品牌层级结构;影响区域联想可转移性的维度包括：强度、独特性、相关性、相似性、偏好性及抽象性。     

Political Learning: The Neglected Precondition of Constitutional Reform

This paper analyses the claim of constitutional economics that liberal economic policy requires far-reaching constitutional reform. The paper starts with a restatement of this claim and reinforces the rationale of the currently most influential variants of constitutional economics as represented by contractarian constitutional economics (Brennan, Buchanan), on the one hand, and Hayek s evolutionary theory, on the other. However, these constitutional proposals have shortcomings because the institutional preconditions of constitutional reform are not sufficiently reflected. Instead, I argue that, in face of economic crisis, a revision of in-period politics requires no more collective rationality than constitutional reform does. As a consequence, the introduction of new constitutional rules depends on political learning. The article concludes that constitutional rules in the sense of CPE can stabilise political learning but they cannot replace it.     

The Process of Government Centralization: A Constitutional View

Government centralization is not a law of nature. It can be explained on the one hand by the endeavor of locally elected representatives of national assemblies to form tax and expenditure cartels, on the other hand by the constitutional power of the federal government to take over state tax legislation and to act as a cartel enforcer. A case study provides empirical evidence and moreover shows that such cartels generate a higher tax level and perform badly in interregional equalization of per capita income. The relevance of constitutional power for explaining centralization seems to be confirmed in various countries.     

宪政经济学与中国经济改革的宪政问题

宪政经济学是现代西方经济学研究的重要分支，是经济学回归为“政治的经济学”的重要研究成果。它是对约束经济行为者和政治行为者的选择与活动的不同法津——制度——宪法规则的运转性质做出相关解释的经济学。而按照马克思主义经济学的理论。经济决定政治，经济发展从来也不能脱离制度的约束。从这个意义上讲，中国的经济改革本身并不是一个单纯的经济问题，更是一个以经济为核心、以宪法制度为框架约束的公共选择过程，理应以宪政的思维去理解和推进这项改革。