产权与法律赋权在减贫中的作用评估

Assessing the role of property rights and legal empowerment in poverty reduction

减少贫困的斗争仍然是发展面临的最大挑战之一。在法律上为穷人赋权的方法是学术界和政策圈近期发起的一次尝试,目的是为解决贫困问题寻找办法。法律赋权主要关注的是正式与非正式司法系统以及体制结构的作用,主张法律赋权的学者认为,合法的、无偏向的法治会使个人获得摆脱贫困的权利和机会。本文着重探讨了法律赋权主张的四大支柱之一——产权。本文对以往在经济学、地理、法律、哲学等领域里发表的有关贫困和产权主题的著述作了学科间文献回顾,一方面指出哪些方面需要作进一步研究,另一方面希望填补已有法律赋权文献中的某些缺失部分。作者发现,倘若按照法律上为穷人赋权这条思路走下去,就必须承认深入开展问题化(problematise)的必要性:研讨"贫困"和"产权"的概念;本地、国家和国际制度结构之内、之间的各种权力关系的角色;还有驱动国家层面上的治理和政府行动的激励因素。

The fight for poverty reduction continues to be one of the greatest challenges for development.The legal empowerment of the poor approach is one recent attempt,within both academia and policy circles,to offer solutions to this problem.With a focus on the role of both formal and informal judicial systems and institutional structures it is argued within the approach that legitimate and unbiased rule of law would bring individuals empowerment and opportunities for moving out of poverty.In this paper we focus on one of the four pillars of the approach-property rights.We conduct an interdisciplinary literary review of what has been written on the subjects of poverty and property rights within the fields of economics,geography,law,and philosophy.With the review we aspire to fill some of the current gaps in the existing legal empowerment literature as well as to indicate areas where further research is required.We find that to move forward with the legal empowerment of the poor approach it is necessary to recognise the need to further problematise:the concepts of 'poverty' and 'property rights';the role of power relations within and between local,national,and international institutional structures;and the incentives driving governance and state action at the national level.