The Komi of the Kola Peninsula within ethnographic descriptions and state policies

For more than 100 years, ethnographic accounts have highlighted the non-nativeness of the Komi diaspora to the Kola Peninsula, contrasting it with the indigenous Sami population. Their legal status there has been a vexed issue unresolved by Tsarist administrators, Soviet ethnic policies, present-day ideas of multiethnic civic nation, and global indigenous activism. In the everyday life, however, there are no apparent differences between the two ethnic groups and their traditional lifestyles in the rural area of Murmansk region. Juxtaposing historical ethnographic accounts on the Izhma Komi with my fieldwork experiences among the Komi on the Kola Peninsula, I show how ethnographers uphold dominant ideologies and promote different state policies. The ambiguous ethnic and indigenous categorizations from their accounts reverberate in popular stereotypes, political mobilizations from below, and state policies from above. In this way, they make an interesting case for the practical problems of generalization and essentialism.     

美国工会应对经济危机的政策措施及启示

经济危机给美国工人阶级带来重大影响。美国工会视危机为创新工会工作和发展工会的大好时机，积极从国家层面和地区层面上采取措施积极应对经济危机以保护工人权益，虽然在宏观上收效甚微，但是其在地区层面上采取的策略和方法收效较好，值得我国工会借鉴。     

政治信任、情绪感染与政策执行

政策执行力是现阶段高质量发展的研究焦点及难点问题。依托计划行为理论和情绪感染理论，提出了考虑情绪感染调节作用的政治信任与政策执行关系假设，并基于162份有效样本数据，对其进行了实证验证。结果显示：(1)政策受众者对政府、政策、官员的信任程度，直接影响其对政策执行效果(尤其是经济绩效)的认知。(2)政策受众者的情绪感染力，会不同方向地干扰政治信任程度与政策执行效果认知之间的关系。具体而言，情绪感染对政治信任与行政绩效关系发挥了部分显著的正向调节作用，对政治信任与经济绩效关系发挥了部分显著的负向调节作用。     

The Impact of Advertising and Media on the Arab Culture: The Case of the Arab Spring,Public Spheres,and Social Media

The Arab world has experienced some unprecedented social movements, labeled by the media as the Arab Spring. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of public policy, advertising, media, and public spheres on the Arab Spring. The media and economic policies enacted in the Arab world in the 1990s played a significant role in changing consumer culture in the Arab region, resulting in significant changes in public policy. Two studies were conducted to test how the change in consumer culture along with new public polices in the region contributed to the uprisings.     

International democracy promotion and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa

This article offers an overview of the literature on international democracy promotion in relation to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It draws on the criteria of process tracing to evaluate the mechanisms, processes and episodes of democratization associated with international democracy promotion in the region. It finds that the literature lacks a clear account of how international democracy promotion relates to conditions for democratization and could pay greater attention to the role of media in either supporting or counteracting democracy promotion activities which impact democratization processes in the region.     

Meeting development goals: evidence from the Civil Society Education Fund

In recent years, the Civil Society Education Fund has supported national education civil society coalitions (NECs) in low-income countries so that they put pressure on governments and donors to implement the Education for All agenda and the Millennium Development Goal on education. This article draws on literature on global governance as well as on an extensive evaluation of the CSEF to explore the actual contribution of this initiative to the activity of NECs. The article highlights the achievements and shortcomings of the CSEF and includes a set of practical recommendations on the role of global civil society in international development processes.     

北京青年发展状况调查报告

为推动北京青少年工作的创新发展,全面深入跟踪研究北京青少年的发展动态,对北京青年群体开展了大规模的青年发展状况调研活动。调查涉及个人需求、社会需求、"十二五"与青年等多个层面,个人需求涉及到知识文化诉求、高质量高层次的闲暇生活、择业取向;社会需求涉及到社会组织认可、政治民主评价、媒体导向、理想信仰、社会和谐、社会保障、择偶观等。根据调查数据及分析,文化需求成为青少年发展不可规避的主要问题,在"十二五"期间,对于作为时代先锐和中坚力量的青少年,应对其各种需求深入了解,并切实提出一些具有借鉴意义的政策措施。     

Transnational policy networks in the migration field: a challenge for the European Union

The migration policy field is a multilayered and fragmented area still lacking a strong global and European regime. Nonetheless, different initiatives and fora have been promoted in the last decade to increase the international dialogue on migration, with the active participation of non-state actors, and particularly civil society organisations (CSOs). The article reviews selected initiatives undertaken at the UN and European level, whereby institutional representatives engage with CSOs in furthering migration policies. These initiatives and platforms may constitute transnational policy networks (TPNs). It explores signals towards the consolidation of more structured and ‘hard’ forms of participatory policy-making on migration issues, as well as obstacles present in this engagement dynamic. The key question addressed in this study is whether and how European institutions have engaged with the TPNs in the field of migration. The article also explores how some of the TPNs influence institutional policy-making at the EU level.     

Does European defence really matter? Fortunes and misfortunes of the Common Security and Defence Policy

This article examines how the defence component of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has been revisited over the last few years. It argues that while the CSDP has grown predominantly as a security – rather than defence – policy, the latest developments that include the creation of a military headquarter, the launching of a Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the new role for the European Commission in defence funding, attest to an evolution towards a more central EU defence policy. In the meantime, the article points to some structural impediments to the materialisation of European defence. The momentum says little about the form and finality of military operations that EU states will have to conduct so as to give a meaning to defence in a European context. Moreover, persisting divergences in the EU member states’ respective strategic cultures and institutional preferences – notably vis-à-vis NATO – are likely to continue to constrain European defence self-assertion.     

The EU and the Global Order: Contingent Liberalism

Abstract

Politicians, diplomats and analysts commonly assume that commitment to multilateralism and liberal norms is part of the EU’s very DNA. Increasingly, however, the EU’s commitment to the liberal global order is more selective. We demonstrate the shift to a more contingent liberalism by examining the EU’s recent record in relation to four different challenges: international trade; US leadership; Russian actions in the eastern neighbourhood; and security in the Middle East. We speculate on what this may portend for the EU’s self-identity, European interests and the integrity of the prevailing global order.