10 December 2024, Issue 5

    

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  Research on Instrumental Constitutionalism in Post-Mubarak Period

  Zhang Xiaohu, Xiong Suqin

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 5-37.

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  Under the influence of the Arab Spring in 2011, Egyptian situation remained unrest. Since President Mubarak resigned, House of Representatives closed repeatedly, chaos continued until the military overthrew the Freedom and Justice Party(formed by the Muslim Brotherhood government). In the meantime, Egypt's Constitution has been revised several times. Due to the disadvantages of Instrumental Constitutionalism, the conflict between the military's authoritarian rule and Morsi's Islamization legislation has been extremely intense. The conflict on Egypt's Constitutional Amendments became the key factor of Egypt's Constitutional Reform. At the beginning of 2014, the new Constitution Draft of Mansour's transitional government has passed referendum with a high vote, but the crisis was still there. And new amendments were introduced to Egyptian constitution in 2019. Whether the new constitution can bring stability and development in Egypt? How can Constitutional Negotiations be achieved between differing political factions? How can SCAF play a unique role? Whether the public will and constitutional demand can be fulfilled? These problems will be the key which helps the Egypt get out of the constitutional crisis.
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  A Study on Constitutional Amendment during Myanmar's Political Transition—Based on the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar

  Zhai Yida

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 38-71.

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  The Constitution is the fundamental law of a country and lays down the legal basis of the political system. Myanmar is one of the few countries in the world where a military regime has long been in power. It handed over political power to an elected government in March 2011, but before that a constitution with stringent standards for amendments was made to guarantee the military's vested interests. Over the past 10 years, different political forces in Myanmar have struggled for the constitution amendments, but substantial results have not been achieved. The military clique staged another coup d'état in 2021 to overthrow the democratically elected government. Since October 2023, the army has suffered a series of defeats in battles with local resistance forces, affecting the political prospects of Myanmar. Among the several prospects for Myanmar's future political transition, constitutional amendments based on the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar would be a candidate. Constitutional amendments involve not only the text of the Constitution, but also is related to political actors who have distinct interests and have different reactions to the amendment. Therefore, in the process of political transition of Myanmar, constitutional amendment must take into account political actors. This article examines two cases of constitutional amendments in Myanmar since 2010, both of which have failed. Adopting the method of “legal formalist political science,” I analyzed the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, and put forward the main contents, the principles, and paths of constitutional amendment.
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  A Study on Moroccan Constitutional System: Modern Elements and Structural Features

  Ding Chenxi

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 72-108.

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  The Moroccan constitutional system serves as a quintessential example of a “composite constitution”, seamlessly blending traditional and modern elements. The traditional component traces its origins to Morocco's historical “Commander of the Faithful” institution and its continuation in the constitutional text, while the modern elements are adopted from the mixed system of the French Fifth Republic. Existing literature lacks systematic research on the modern elements of Morocco's constitutional system from the perspectives of comparative constitutional law and legal transplantation. The 1962 Constitution of Morocco was transplanted from the 1958 Constitution of France, bearing similarities to the constitutional framework of the Fifth French Republic. However, compared to the French President, the King of Morocco enjoys greater power. The constitutional practice of the 1962 system has never experienced a “divided majority” or “co-habitation” situation, and the country's political system exhibits characteristics of a “super-presidential system” with dominant royal power. In terms of the structure of executive power, the King leads the executive branch with singular dominance. In the structure of legislative power, the King has numerous powers to influence and intervene in legislation. Regarding the relationship between the government and parliament, the “rationalized parliamentarism” transplanted from France has led to an imbalance in the parliament's ability to check the government. Although the constitutional transplantation has introduced modern elements into Morocco's political system, limitations still exist.
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  Reviewing the Constitution by the Constitutional Court of South Africa: From a Perspective of Sociology of Constitutions

  Li Hongji

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 109-133.

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  During the transition period of South Africa at the end of the 20th century, the newly established Constitutional Court of South Africa had the function of reviewing the constitution. In 1996, the Constitutional Court of South Africa examined the new Constitution of South Africa and the Constitution of the Province of Kwazulu-Natal, mainly on the basis of the Interim Constitution of 1993 and constitutional principles, thus influencing the constitutional order of the new society of South Africa. From the perspective of the sociology of constitution, the Constitutional Court of South Africa in the transition period played a special social function, guaranteeing the continuity and unity of the constitutional order of South Africa, and promoting the transformation of South Africa from an unequal racial order to an equal constitutional order.
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  Israel's Constitutional Revolution: An Examination of the Roles and Boundaries of Judicial Empowerment

  Cui Hanyu

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 134-161.

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  The judicial review system has been a focal point of legal reform in numerous countries, but this kind of system reform aiming at judicial empowerment cannot produce good social effects. Taking judicial review as a tool of political game will seriously affect judicial independence and the function of power restriction. The political motivations and effects of the Israeli constitutional revolution in the 1990s fully demonstrate the functions and limits of judicial empowerment. The political motivation of the Israeli Supreme Court to promote the constitutional revolution made the judicial review system thus established fail to give full play to its positive role in the construction of democracy and rule of law, but made Israel fall into the abyss of political judicialization, intensified the power struggle among different interest groups in the country, and had a negative impact on the stability of national politics. The research on the internal and external causes of the Israeli constitutional revolution provides us with experience and samples to analyze the functions and limits of judicial empowerment, and helps us to reflect on the path choice of the rule of law reform in modern countries.
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  Interpretation of the Constitution and the Expansion of Fundamental Rights—By Analzing the Indian Supreme Court's Privacy Jurisprudence

  Chen Xixi

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 162-190.

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  The Supreme Court of India has gone through three stages on the question of whether the right to privacy is protected by the Constitution, which are denying the right to privacy as a fundamental right, assuming the right to privacy as a fundamental right and affirming the right to privacy as a fundamental right. By analyzing the privacy jurisprudence of Indian Supreme Court, this paper outlines the development of the right to privacy and the interpretation of related constitutional provisions, and points out that the theory of constitutional interpretation of the Supreme Court of India has undergone a transition from original interpretation to “living constitution”, and such a transition is made through the transition from textualism to structuralism at the level of methodology. This shift in the Supreme Court of India, which took place mainly in the aftermath of the Emergency, reflects a change from a positivist view of law to emphasizing the spirit of the Constitution, which has enabled a range of rights, such as the right to privacy, which are not enumerated in Part III of the Constitution, to be brought within the scope of protection of article 21 of the Constitution by means of a structuralist approach to constitutional interpretation.
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  Construction of Subjectivity: The Russian Orthodox “Narodnoct” Concepts in the Perspective of Pochvenichestvo

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 191-224.

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  The Pochvenichestvo is a striking ideology of philosophy, religion, aesthetics, history, literary criticism and culture in the indigenization movement of Russian Thought in the second half of the 19th century. Among them the theoretical discussion of the Russian religious “Narodnoct” has always been a core conception of pochvenics such as Dostoevsky, Gregory, Strahov. In terms of this concept the Pochvenichestvo's advantage lies in successful combination of “Organic Life” principle with essence of the Russian national spiritual faith, and thus a subjective construction about the Russian religious “Narodnoct” was achieved in the historical pedigree and theoretical pattern of Russian ideological development. In other words, the pochvenics regard the Russian national cultural spirit with the core of Orthodox religion as the target of cognition, and consider the Russian national spiritual life as a living freedom and loving organism that has not yet been impregnated utterly by Western rationalism, and try to explore and construct a kind of Russian nationalized cultural criticism theory beyond Slavophile but mainly based on inheriting its “Narodnoct” ideology in the first half of the 19th century. This national cultural criticism theory has the same clear Russian cultural values and spiritual connotations as the Pochvenichestvo movement itself, and thus has an important historical influence on discussions about Russian national character and its spiritual essence, developed by different Russian theoretical circles in different periods.
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  On Economic Research from the Perspective of Regional and Country Studies——Strategies, Methods, Practices and Challenges

  Yang Chongsheng, Qin Beichen, Dou Bin

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 225-258.

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  Further developing regional and country studies as a subject is an important task in contemporary China's theoretical discussions and policy practices, but there is no consensus on how to conduct research on economic issues from the perspective of regional and country studies. This paper is committed to constructing a research paradigm for economic issues from the perspective of regional and country studies on the basis of discussing existing economic methodology, and takes the author's research practice on South African industrial parks as an example. On the one hand, the research on regional and country studies can draw on some research methods of modern economics to improve the scientific nature of the research, especially the rationality hypothesis, causal inference methods and randomized controlled trials; on the other hand, when conducting research on economic issues, regional and country studies can break through the disciplinary boundaries of economics and use methods such as fieldwork in anthropology and sociology to bring new contextualized knowledge to make up for the shortcomings of economic methods in understanding regional and country characteristics. At the same time, there may be a great tension between “desk” and “field” research. How to deal with the tension is one of the most important challenges in the research of economic issues from the perspective of regional and country studies. This article provides the first systematic approach to exploring economic research from the perspective of regional and country studies, and provides cases and reflections on research practice. This approach shows the great potential of combining methods of and beyond economics, and also demonstrates the importance of fieldwork skills and practice in talent training.
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  Knowledge Production and Talent Cultivation in Area Studies from the Narrative Perspective

  Tan Meng

  Area Studies. 2024, (5): 259-288.

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  The “narrative turn” in the latter half of the 20th century has spurred epistemological and methodological innovation in social science research, offering reflective ideologies and a consciousness of subjectivity that are significant for understanding the disciplinary construction of Area Studies in present-day China. As a primary discipline within the interdisciplinary studies category, knowledge production and talent cultivation in Area Studies are intertwined, with the accompanying discussions and practices showcasing “a hundred schools of thought” while also seeking a more systematic and sustainable consensus. Grounded in the importance of narrative to human society and the practical demands of Area Studies' disciplinary construction, this paper delves into the theoretical essence, generative logic, and agency of narrative to explore the interwoven logic and experience of knowledge production and talent cultivation in Area Studies. It posits that transforming narrative structures, developing narrative subjects, and enhancing narrative capabilities could be avenues for fostering the mutual reinforcement of theory and practice in interdisciplinary construction. Conceptually, narrative serves as a lens to dissect the “locality” of existing regional research and knowledge production, revealing the subjectivity and historicity of “global writing”; empirically, narrative as a process showcases the diverse development of academic practices in Chinese Area Studies, aiding in understanding the interactions during China's “global writing” efforts; practically, narrative as a strategy becomes a key lever for advancing knowledge production and talent cultivation in Area Studies. On this basis, the paper clarifies the experiences and mechanisms for achieving knowledge transformation via academic research, then explores possible pathways for narrative-driven dialogue, thereby enhancing the expandability and sustainability of Area Studies.