Protecting Individual Rights Through a Federal System: James Buchanan's View of Federalism

James Buchanan is a Nobel Prize winning economist and the founderof the public choice movement in economics. Public Choice playeda critical role in underpinning conservative attacks on thewelfare state in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. Asa committed supporter of free markets and strong skeptic oflarge governments, Buchanan has long supported the use of federalismto protect individual liberty, promote democratic efficiency,and help foster community values. This article reviews Buchanan'sresearch on the advantages of a federal system.     

Climate change adaptation in the Alpine Shire of Australia: a decision process appraisal

This study aims to integrate scientific knowledge from a variety of disciplines with local experience to describe, contextually and in detail, the impact of flood events on the community of the Alpine Shire and current mitigation efforts to alleviate and reduce these impacts. The Myrtleford Floodplain Management Study was the cornerstone of the strategy to address the goal of reducing flood damage in the community. It was found that the most consequential deficiencies in the Myrtleford flood mitigation scheme decision process are related to flaws in four elements of the process: the articulation of goals; the development of appropriate knowledge support; the effectiveness of promotion; and the ability to move from invocation to application. The Alpine Shire can be used as a microcosm that can represent adaptation challenges in other communities to climate change and extreme events. This research contributes to the development of the conceptual and analytical framework of integrated assessments, while making concrete contributions to the development of adaptive policies in Alpine Shire.     

Reducing Adolescents’ Perceived Barriers to Treatment and Increasing Help-seeking Intentions: Effects of Classroom Presentations by General Practitioners

The Building Bridges to General Practice (BBGP) program is an outreach initiative. It aims to reduce young peoples’ perceived knowledge- and belief-based barriers to engaging in treatment and to increase their behavioral intentions to consult a general medical practitioner (GP) for physical and psychological problems. By increasing intentions, the BBGP program aims to increase actual consultations with a GP for both types of problem. A quasi-experimental nested design was used to evaluate the effect of the intervention in three Australian high schools. A Treatment group (n = 173, M = 16 years) and Comparison group (n = 118, M = 15 years) completed questionnaires of perceived barriers, intentions and self-reported consultations with a GP. Questionnaires were completed 1 week before the intervention, 5 then 10 weeks post-intervention. The Treatment group, but not the Comparison group, showed reductions in perceived barriers over time, increased intentions to consult a GP for psychological problems and a significant correlation between intentions and subsequent GP consultations. Results support the utility of the intervention for improving adolescents’ beliefs, intentions and behavior related to consulting a GP for physical and psychological problems.

普京政权交接问题和俄罗斯外交

历史上俄国领导人的政治任期与俄的国际地位有一定的相关性。俄政权交接制度化程度较低,往往影响到国内和国际稳定。考虑到普京任内卓越的贡献和影响力,其政权交接问题对俄外交势将产生重要的影响。如果2008年普京离任,其外交方针将保持延续性,即普京的接班人将继续一方面把欧亚中部作为外交政策的优先着力点,另一方面努力保持与G7为代表的发达世界之间的和谐。受种种结构性因素制约,如果将来的权力交接出现失控,不排除普京时代的外交进程中断的可能。     

Online clustering,fear and uncertainty in Egypt’s transition

Does the uncertainty associated with post-authoritarian transitions cause political and social polarization? Does ubiquitous social media exacerbate these problems and thus make successful democratic transitions less likely? This article examines these questions in the case of Egypt between the 11 February 2011 fall of President Hosni Mubarak and the 3 July 2013 military coup, which overthrew President Mohamed el-Morsi. The analysis is based on a Twitter dataset including 62 million tweets by 7 million unique users. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, we demonstrate how clusters of users form and evolve over time, the density of interactions between them, and the flow of particular types of information through the clustered network structure. We show that the Egyptian Twitter public developed into increasingly isolated clusters of the like-minded which shared information unevenly. We argue that the growing distance between these clusters encouraged political conflict and facilitated the spread of fear and hatred, which ultimately undermined the democratic transition and won popular support for the military coup.     

A Macro-Social Exploratory Analysis of the Rate of Interstate Cyber-Victimization

This study examines whether macro-level opportunity indicators affect cyber-theft victimization. Based on the arguments from criminal opportunity theory, exposure to risk is measured by state-level patterns of internet access (where users access the internet). Other structural characteristics of states were measured to determine if variation in social structure impacted cyber-victimization across states. The current study found that structural conditions such as unemployment and non-urban population are associated with where users access the internet. Also, this study found that the proportion of users who access the internet only at home was positively associated with state-level counts of cyber-theft victimization. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.