Video Links to Presentations 'Corporate Governance & The Public Interest'

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

The European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) is an international scientific non-profit association providing .a forum for debate and dialogue between academics, legislators and practitioners, focusing on major corporate governance issues and thereby promoting best practice. ECGI recently concluded its conference in Asia, co-organized by the University of Tokyo and co-hosted by the EU Delegation to Japan. Links to videos of some of the presentations follow.

Flora Sapio: Comment on the Measures for the Designation of Charitable Organizations of the People's Republic of China

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

On 14 July 2016, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China issued the Measures for the Designation of Charitable Organizations (Opinion Soliciting Draft) for public comment (English version). The issue of the designation of status is critical for civil society organizations. The extent of the constraints on the discretionary authority of decision making administrators becomes the linchpin of the statutory scheme.   

My colleague, Flora Sapio, provided some quite valuable comments to the Ministry.  She has given me permission to share these on this site. Her Comment on the Measures for the Designation of Charitable Organizations appears below.  

Sovereign Wealth Funds and Transnationalization of Corporate Governance Norms--SWFs as Shareholders and the Exercise of Public Power in the Private Sphere

Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the Government Pension Fund Global, has been a leader in forging a new approach to the outward projection of state authority through global private activities.  Norway has provided an architecture of governance that sits astride the borders of market and state, of public and private and of national and international. Undertaken through its sovereign wealth fund, Norway is seeking not merely to project public wealth into private global markets, but also to construct a complex rule-of-law centered framework that blends the imperatives of a state based public policy with a rules based governance system that incorporates domestic and international norms. To this Norway adds a policy-oriented use of traditional shareholder power to affect the behavior and governance of companies in which the Fund has invested. (Explored HERE).

Critical to the success of the the project of public regulatory governance through state activities as a private actor, has been the institutionalization of rules for active shareholding where the state, through its SWF, owns an equity stake in  a private enterprise. Norway had been quite transparent in this effort. In 2016 the Pension Fund Global Investments manager, Norges Bank, distributed  its Global Voting Guidelines.  

This post describes and considers the Global Voting Guidelines and their effect on the internationalization of corporate governance through the private economic activities of states. It is an excellent example of the application of regulatory governance  at the implementation stage--where the state serves as the aggregator of internationalized standards, which it constructs to suit its own tastes, and thus constructed uses its investment ministries not merely as oversight agents but as active agents, exercising discretion in the form of shareholder rights to participate and exit. 

Larry Catá Backer Reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition"

 By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30522776

This Post includes Larry Catá Backer's reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition." It is part of a group of reflections on that essay.  The Introduction to this series noted:

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. That episode remains sensitive in China, and like other great transformative events in human history, continues to reverberate in countless ways. It's cultural artifacts have acquired a global dimension--from Mao Zedong's Little Red Book (毛主席语录), to the mythologies of the Red Guards as an archetypal force that saw its pattern repeated across the globe (e.g. here, here, here). 

Recently Gao Dawei on his blog 高大伟 在美国华盛顿人的博客 published a remarkable essay on the Cultural Revolution first anonymously and then under the author's name, Zhou Ruijin (English) (中国语文) (Text of the article copied from the China Elections and Governance website ). That essay, Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition (皇甫欣平：文革反思万言书) By Huangfuxinping [Zhou Ruijin 周瑞金 ], harks back to an ancient Chinese practice of presenting such 10,000 character petitions "sometimes at great personal risk, to criticize current policies and suggest a change in thinking." . at . According to that website, the article was published under the pseudonym in China but was removed from many sites shortly after appearing.   

The essay includes much to think about, not just in the Chinese context, but in any context in which one party, or elite group, has developed a structural basis for its leadership of the state and its governmental apparatus.  That applies as much in Marxist Leninist states (to which the essay is directed) as it does in theocratic states (the clerical elite) and Western states (the socio-economic-political elites).  To that end, Flora Sapio, Jean Mittelstaedt and I thought it might be worthwhile to add very brief reflections on this essay. 

Introduction

Flora Sapio

Jean Mittelstaedt

Larry Catá Backer (白轲 对周瑞金)

Jean Mittelstaedt Reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition"

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30522776

This Post includes Jean Mittelstadt's reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition." It is part of a group of reflections on that essay.  The Introduction to this series noted:

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. That episode remains sensitive in China, and like other great transformative events in human history, continues to reverberate in countless ways. It's cultural artifacts have acquired a global dimension--from Mao Zedong's Little Red Book (毛主席语录), to the mythologies of the Red Guards as an archetypal force that saw its pattern repeated across the globe (e.g. here, here, here). 

Recently Gao Dawei on his blog 高大伟 在美国华盛顿人的博客 published a remarkable essay on the Cultural Revolution first anonymously and then under the author's name, Zhou Ruijin (English) (中国语文) (Text of the article copied from the China Elections and Governance website ). That essay, Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition (皇甫欣平：文革反思万言书) By Huangfuxinping [Zhou Ruijin 周瑞金 ], harks back to an ancient Chinese practice of presenting such 10,000 character petitions "sometimes at great personal risk, to criticize current policies and suggest a change in thinking." . at . According to that website, the article was published under the pseudonym in China but was removed from many sites shortly after appearing.   

The essay includes much to think about, not just in the Chinese context, but in any context in which one party, or elite group, has developed a structural basis for its leadership of the state and its governmental apparatus.  That applies as much in Marxist Leninist states (to which the essay is directed) as it does in theocratic states (the clerical elite) and Western states (the socio-economic-political elites).  To that end, Flora Sapio, Jean Mittelstadt and I thought it might be worthwhile to add very brief reflections on this essay. 

Introduction

Flora Sapio

Jean Mittelstadt

Larry Catá Backer (白轲 对周瑞金)

Flora Sapio Reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition"

 By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30522776

This Post includes Flora Sapio's reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition." It is part of a group of reflections on that essay.  The Introduction to this series noted:

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. That episode remains sensitive in China, and like other great transformative events in human history, continues to reverberate in countless ways. It's cultural artifacts have acquired a global dimension--from Mao Zedong's Little Red Book (毛主席语录), to the mythologies of the Red Guards as an archetypal force that saw its pattern repeated across the globe (e.g. here, here, here). 

Recently Gao Dawei on his blog 高大伟 在美国华盛顿人的博客 published a remarkable essay on the Cultural Revolution first anonymously and then under the author's name, Zhou Ruijin (English) (中国语文) (Text of the article copied from the China Elections and Governance website ). That essay, Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition (皇甫欣平：文革反思万言书) By Huangfuxinping [Zhou Ruijin 周瑞金 ], harks back to an ancient Chinese practice of presenting such 10,000 character petitions "sometimes at great personal risk, to criticize current policies and suggest a change in thinking." . at . According to that website, the article was published under the pseudonym in China but was removed from many sites shortly after appearing.   

The essay includes much to think about, not just in the Chinese context, but in any context in which one party, or elite group, has developed a structural basis for its leadership of the state and its governmental apparatus.  That applies as much in Marxist Leninist states (to which the essay is directed) as it does in theocratic states (the clerical elite) and Western states (the socio-economic-political elites).  To that end, Flora Sapio, Jean Mittelstaedt and I thought it might be worthwhile to add very brief reflections on this essay. 

Introduction

Flora Sapio

Jean Mittelstaedt

Larry Catá Backer (白轲 对周瑞金)

Reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition"--Flora Sapio, Jean Mittelstaedt and Larry Catá Backer.

 By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30522776

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. That episode remains sensitive in China, and like other great transformative events in human history, continues to reverberate in countless ways. It's cultural artifacts have acquired a global dimension--from Mao Zedong's Little Red Book (毛主席语录), to the mythologies of the Red Guards as an archetypal force that saw its pattern repeated across the globe (e.g. here, here, here). 

Recently Gao Dawei on his blog 高大伟 在美国华盛顿人的博客 published a remarkable essay on the Cultural Revolution first anonymously and then under the author's name, Zhou Ruijin (English) (中国语文) (Text of the article copied from the China Elections and Governance website ). That essay, Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition (皇甫欣平：文革反思万言书) By Huangfuxinping [Zhou Ruijin 周瑞金 ], harks back to an ancient Chinese practice of presenting such 10,000 character petitions "sometimes at great personal risk, to criticize current policies and suggest a change in thinking." . at . According to that website, the article was published under the pseudonym in China but was removed from many sites shortly after appearing.   

The essay includes much to think about, not just in the Chinese context, but in any context in which one party, or elite group, has developed a structural basis for its leadership of the state and its governmental apparatus.  That applies as much in Marxist Leninist states (to which the essay is directed) as it does in theocratic states (the clerical elite) and Western states (the socio-economic-political elites).  To that end, Flora Sapio, Jean Mittelstaedt and I thought it might be worthwhile to add very brief reflections on this essay. 

The essay follows  (English) (中国语文).  Later posts include the equally brief reflections of the three of us:

Introduction
Flora Sapio

Jean Mittelstaedt

Larry Catá Backer (白轲 对周瑞金)

No. 162 李荣山：共同体的命运 ——从赫尔德到当代的变局 No. 162 Lirong Shan: "A common destiny - from Herder to the contemporary changing situation"

This is the second in the series o essays that were presented at the “来华外国人与近代中国法” 国际学术研讨会 "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law" International Symposium Conference 

李荣山：共同体的命运 ——从赫尔德到当代的变局 Lirong Shan:  "A common destiny - from Herder to the contemporary changing situation"

The essay was posted to  叁會學坊, the San Hui Fang Workshops microblog and it follows below 中国语文 only.

Call for Papers: 2016 Conference of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand

I am happy to pass along a call for papers for the 2016 Conference of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand.  The Conference is hosted by the Law Futures Centre, Griffith University Law School in conjunction with the Southern Cross University School of Law and Justice. The Conference will be held from 30 November to 3 December 2016 in Brisbane.

The Conference theme is Disruption, Temporality, Law: The Future of Law and Society Scholarship.  It offers a marvelous opportunity both to take stack and to advance the discipline. The Call for paper and Conference description follows.  It may also be accessed HERE.

Call for Inputs--UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment

John H. Knox, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment (former Independent Expert on Human Rights and the Environment) and Henry C. Lauerman Professor of International Law has been advancing his mandate. (See HERE, HERE, and HERE, HERE, HERE,  HERE. and HERE).

(John Knox)

Professor Knox is currently preparing his thematic report on biodiversity and human rights, to be presented at the 34th session of the Human Rights Council.

He has circulated a call for inputs which follows. For those interested in this important work this is an opportunity to engage in an effective way. I would be especially interested in the intersection of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the work of Professor Knox. For those committed to a Comprehensive Treaty for Business and Human Rights, this also provides an opportunity to suggest the connections between Professor Knox's work and the substance or principles underlying the treaty effort.