Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States

The United States is experiencing growing impacts of climate change but currently receives a limited policy response from its national leadership. Within this policy void, many state governments are stepping up and taking action on adaptation planning. Yet we know little about why some states adopt State Adaptation Plans (SAPs), while others do not. This article investigates factors that predict the emergence of SAPs, both in terms of policy adoption and policy intensity (goal ambitiousness). Applying the diffusion of innovation theory, I consider the relative influence of internal state characteristics, regional pressures, and test for conditional effects between government ideologies and severity of the problem. The results show interesting differences between predictors that influence policy adoption and ambitiousness. States are more motivated to adopt a policy when faced with greater climate vulnerability, have more liberal citizenry, and where governments have crossed policy hurdles by previously passing mitigation plans. The intensity of policies and goal setting, moreover, is more likely to be driven by interest group politics and diffuse through policy learning or sharing information among neighboring states in Environmental Protection Agency regions. These findings support an emerging scholarship that uses more complex dependent variables in policy analysis. These variables have the potential to differentiate symbolic from substantive policies and capture finer information about predictors of importance.     

What/who is still missing in International Relations scholarship? Situating Africa as an agent in IR theorising

This paper engages with non-Western, specifically African, scholarship and insight with the goal of highlighting the importance of African contributions to IR theorising. We highlight the Western dominance in IR theorising and examine the inadequacy of the major analytical constructs provided by established IR theory in capturing and explaining shifting reality in Africa. We argue that African insights, experience and ideas present a challenge to dominant IR constructs and knowledge within the international system, and that these insights, when taken seriously, would enrich our understanding of IR. We show this by problematising some central (often taken-for-granted) IR concepts such as the state, liberalism and individualism and underscore the need to reconstruct more encompassing ‘stories’ and images to innovate, revise and potentially replace some of the conventional ‘stories’ that have been told in IR.     

稳态条件下EDR车速的可信度分析

目的分析稳态条件(例如,无制动)下国内车辆EDR碰前车速的可信度,为EDR碰前车速的应用提供参考。方法在国外研究结论的基础上,选取国内1起既有EDR数据又有监控视频的实际案例,利用监控视频计算所得车速为参考值,分析事故车辆稳态行驶时EDR车速的可信度,并结合EDR车速的来源对其进一步分析。结果根据国外文献研究结果可知,车辆稳态行驶时EDR车速的相对误差在±4%以内。通过国内1起实例的分析,显示稳态行驶车速为120 km/h,EDR记录的碰前车速相对误差为3.886%。结论结合EDR车速来源的分析表明,稳态条件下,国内车辆EDR记录的碰前车速同样具有很好的可信度,可有效应用到相关的车速重建中。     

Gender Inequality,Social Reproduction and the Universal Basic Income

Despite extensive attention being paid to the effects of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) on society at large, there has been little analysis on the relationship between gender inequality and UBI. The purpose of this article is first to reflect on the feminist arguments in favour of UBI and then to examine some of these points by also considering other available policies. By looking into the role of women’s work in both productive and reproductive activities, it is argued that UBI should not be disregarded as a social policy. However, its transformative capacity to empower women and to strengthen their role in society should not be overestimated. In order to address this gap, policy makers should address misconceptions around gender norms and acknowledge the multiple forms of women’s work across the social relations of production and reproduction.     

Rethinking measures of democracy and welfare state universalism: Lessons from subnational research

ABSTRACT

Democracy and the welfare state are two of the most extensively studied concepts and themes in the field of comparative politics. Debate about how to best measure the two concepts has failed to contemplate the extent to which political and social rights are uniformly present across distinct regions of the national territory, despite the presence of substantial subnational research that underscores wide variation inside countries. We argue that this omission hampers our understanding of the two phenomena and we propose a new measure of democracy and healthcare universalism, which we call the Adjusted Measures of Democracy and Welfare Universalism. The new measures integrate territorial inequality into existing national-level indicators, providing a more accurate picture of country performance and opening the door to new, multi-level theory building.     

Social Policy by Other Means: Theorizing Unconventional Forms of Welfare Production

Abstract

The goal of this special issue is to highlight the importance of unconventional social policies, theorize their development in comparison with traditional welfare state accounts and outline a new research agenda. In this introduction to the special issue, the editors present the concept of social policy by other means as encompassing two kinds of unconventional social policy (from the point of view of mainstream comparative research): First, functional equivalents to formal systems of social protection and, second, non-state provision of benefits. The concept builds upon a sizeable, but fragmented literature in comparative welfare state research. While numerous examples demonstrate that social policy by other means is more pervasive in both OECD and non-OECD countries than often acknowledged, a brief survey of the top 20 articles in the field reveals that this fact is not sufficiently reflected in the academic literature. With reference to both existing studies and the contributions to this special issue, the editors go on to explore (1) the different forms of social policy by other means, (2) explanatory theories and (3) their effectiveness in terms of social outcomes. They close by outlining a research agenda.     

Bricks in the wall: the politics of housing in Europe

Abstract

Housing has important economic, political, and social ramifications for Western Europe and beyond. Despite its importance in shaping economic and political outcomes, however, housing remains in the peripheral vision of major comparative political economy debates. This introduction to the special issue accomplishes four objectives. First it demonstrates how housing defies current political economy typologies by failing to conform to their theoretical and empirical predictions. Second it summarises the current state of housing research within political science, which still remains in its infancy. Third it highlights how the contributions in this special issue expand our understanding of how housing causes and is shaped by political and economic outcomes in Europe. Finally, this introduction concludes by outlining how the special issue contributions demonstrate housing’s importance for the welfare state, political preferences and electoral shifts, regulatory and redistributive policies, and financialisation and household indebtedness in Europe.     

货币演进的历史观与货币创造的政治经济学

一种流行的对现代货币理论的批评认为，现代货币理论忽视了金融市场在货币创造中的主体地位；现代货币理论的错误认识会导致政府对市场的过度干预。这种反对意见不仅误解了现代货币理论，而且建立在错误的历史观上，忽视了政府在市场经济中的重要作用。首先，现代货币理论形成了包括商业银行和政府在内的对货币等级结构的完整认识。其次，在历史上，财政作为货币创造主体的作用并没有让位于商业银行体系，相反，随着布雷顿森林体系的解体，国家财政的作用获得了极大的解放。再次，政府的货币创造具有生产性的一面，它在推动创新和生产力发展上扮演着重要角色；政府创造和回收货币并不是剥削，而是国家的公共目的所使然。最后，货币创造主体的制度设计及其争论的问题本质上是更深层次的政治经济学问题。     

国家赔偿责任的民法基础

历史上盛行国家无不法行为能力理论,据此国家不对其公务员履行职务时的侵权行为承担责任,公务员要自己承担赔偿责任。随着法治国家观念的确立,国家开始代替其公务员向受害人承担赔偿责任,即所谓的代位责任。也有国家确立了国家的直接赔偿责任,即自己责任。但无一例外,国家的赔偿义务均建立在民法基础上,以全额赔偿为原则。我国国家赔偿制度确立了独一无二的"个人不赔,国家不全赔"的赔偿模式,偏离了赔偿法所固有的民法属性,无法良好保护受害人。而其根源则在于欠缺对国家赔偿责任的历史与本质的全面理解。有鉴于此,应尽快修订《国家赔偿法》,确立国家的全额赔偿责任,更好地服务法治国家的建设。     

试析斯考契波的“国家自主性”理论

“国家自主性”是20世纪70年代以来兴起的概念，它表明国家重新进入政治研究的核心视野中。西达?斯考契波（Theda Skocpol）的国家自主性理论是在对非马克思主义国家观、马克思主义国家观以及新马克思主义国家观批判的基础上来进行构建的。其以现实主义、结构主义和历史主义的视角，在宏观层面剖析出国家的强制性特征、国家利益以及国家能力等要素，从而证明国家具有“潜在自主性”。斯考契波打破了传统国家研究的社会中心主义视角，将国家作为自主实体的研究推向了新的高度。