The Legal Complex and Struggles for Political Liberalism

理解政治自由主义的基础已成为过去15年来最关键的问题之一。非民主国家或正在转型的国家面临着全球压力，要求它们通过独立、有能力的司法机构建立温和的国家，允许公民社会开放，建立和保护核心权利，反对国家压迫。政治自由主义的这些要素也与成熟的民主国家相关，因为它们面临着行政国家的增长、对其安全的威胁以及根深蒂固的公民权利的潜在侵蚀。该项目旨在了解近几十年来法律复合体（律师、法官、法律学者的配置）对政治自由主义进步或后退的影响。它从几个方面做到了这一点：通过考察它们对当代政治转型的重要性；将国家范围扩大到东亚、非洲、中欧和东欧以及拉丁美洲；通过将成熟的民主国家与新民主国家、过渡政权和不自由的政权并列；通过将律师，法官和法律学者的动态纳入同一解释框架。该研究机构为特定国家汇集了大约20名法律和政治方面的专家，对法律的复杂性和自由主义进行个案研究。该项目是一项集体努力，参与者将在两个会议上进行深入讨论，比较和对比案例，并共同发展新的概念和理论，以涵盖案例的多样性。该项目将出版一本或多本书和一些文章，这些书和文章将紧密结合在一起，共同发展的理论框架，旨在作为更广泛和系统的调查的踏脚石，包括世界范围内的定量分析。

Understanding the foundations of political liberalism has become one of most critical issues of the past fifteen years. Countries that are not democracies or that are in transition face global pressures to build moderate states via independent, competent judiciaries, to permit the opening of civil society, and to institute and protect core rights against state oppression. These elements of political liberalism are also relevant for mature democracies as they confront the growth of the administrative state, threats to their security, and potential erosion of well-entrenched civil rights. This project seeks to understand the impact of the legal complex (configurations of lawyers, judges, legal academics) on advances towards or retreats from political liberalism over recent decades. It does so in several ways: by examining their salience to contemporary political transitions; by broadening the scope of countries to East Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America; by juxtaposing mature democracies with new democracies, transitional regimes, and illiberal regimes; and by drawing the dynamics of lawyers, judges, and legal academics into the same explanatory frame. The research enterprise brings together approximately twenty specialists on law and politics for particular countries to produce case studies of the legal complex and liberalism. The project is a collective effort where participants will deliberate intensively in two conferences to compare and contrast cases and to develop jointly new concepts and theory that can embrace the diversity of cases. The project will produce one or more books and some articles that are tightly integrated around the theoretical framework that is developed collectively, and is intended as a stepping-stone more extensive and systematic inquiry, including quantitative analysis, worldwide.