Voting Advice Applications and the Estimation of Party Positions – A Reliable Tool?

Data contained in Voting Advice Applications (VAA s) is not only a prerequisite for the vote recommendations they provide but can also be used for estimating party positions in low‐dimensional spaces. Given that VAA s can be designed differently in terms of their number of items and their measurement level, how much can one trust the party positions obtained from this source? We tackle this question by exploiting relevant variation in a real‐world setting: three VAA s offered at the 2017 Lower Saxony election. Despite substantial design differences, the policy spaces extracted through an inductive scaling approach are highly convergent. Simulated random item removal from the pooled dataset of all three VAA s furthermore suggests that about 40 items yield satisfactory reliability of the party positions. Finally, we find that a priori assigning VAA ‐items to ideological dimensions is potentially problematic as the interpretation of resulting party spaces may differ from the ones derived inductively.     

积极构建和谐劳动关系 努力维护职工队伍稳定——访内蒙古自治区总工会副主席姜言文

工会是党领导下的工人阶级群众组织,紧紧围绕党和国家的大局开展工作,努力维护职工队伍和社会稳定,是工会组织义不容辞的责任.近年来,在开放、多元的社会环境和信息化条件下,面对劳动关系领域出现的新情况、新变化,内蒙古自治区各级工会组织始终把维护稳定作为工会工作的重要内容,采取有效措施,努力把中央、自治区党委和全国总工会关于维稳工作的各项要求切实落到实处,在推动保障和改善民生,维护职工队伍和社会稳定等方面发挥了积极作用.     

马克思劳动权利思想的内涵及其启示——基于《资本论》的文本分析

作为马克思主义政治哲学的核心范畴,权利在《资本论》中被核心表征为了劳动权利。马克思通过对劳动所有权的权能分离、劳动权利与资本权力的冲突展开对劳动权利的阐释,完成了对劳动权利的核心内涵的事实判断。也正是基于这一指认,马克思在《资本论》中以劳动权利的未来图景为启示,搭建了以保障劳动权利的劳工权益为手段,以劳动权利的价值评价为目的的框架,以期使劳动权利获得自由的价值从而实现人的自由全面发展。     

A political settlements lens onto Egypt’s critical junctures and cyclic violence (2011–2014)

Abstract

While there is a copious body of literature explaining Egypt’s political trajectory post-Mubarak through the lens of democratisation and transition theory, this paper argues that by using a political settlements lens, a less linear reading of the events can be offered, which highlights several attempts through both peaceful and violent means of arriving at negotiated agreements. The paper analyses the forging of three political settlements, one informal (2011) and two formal (2012, 2013) following the demise of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the influence of intrinsic, instrumental and resultant violence on power configurations. It argues that the formal political settlement forged in Egypt in 2013 following the ousting of President Morsi cannot be read independently of the exclusionary outcomes of the informal political settlement forged in 2011 and the demise of the Fairmont Agreement of 2012. The paper relies on empirical data, including survey and focus groups undertaken in 2013–2014, complemented with secondary literature in Arabic and English.     

Military Integration,Demobilization, and the Recurrence of Civil War

ABSTRACT

Peace agreements often include provisions for the military integration of the conflict parties, involving an increase in government forces, and at the same time requesting demobilization and thus a reduction of military personnel. Depending on the modalities and magnitude both can be strong signals of a commitment to the peace process. However, tensions between these two concepts can also endanger post-conflict stability. The empirical analyses of 77 post-conflict societies show that civil war is more likely to recur if rebel forces are kept separate during the military integration process and if the military plays an important role in post-conflict economies.     

Town twinning and political support

Does town twinning foster citizens’ political support of the European Union? This study investigates the relation, which is maintained in politics and academics but still calls for empirical evidence. We distinguish between two levels of analysis, namely individual and context level, and differentiate in accordance with David Easton’s modes of political support specific from diffuse support. The corresponding hypotheses are tested with a unique dataset, which embraces survey findings of more than 12,000 respondents from 28 randomly selected municipalities in Germany. The main conclusions that emerge from the analysis are: First, town twinning does promote political support of the European Union on the individual level. Second, there are positive effects on specific and diffuse support. Thirdly, there is no relationship between local activity in twinning affairs and political support.     

试析中国的政治稳定问题

政治稳定与否,关系着国计民生,关系着一个国家在国际上的地位,更关系着本国国民的幸福生活和前途。我国的政治稳定将依法治国作为总方略,将以人为本与发展作为其核心理念和关键点。为了寻求保持我国政治稳定的路径,必须要从党的建设、政府职能的优化和完善以及文化建设的角度进行把握。     

Taiwan in the Caribbean: a case study in state de-recognition

The rich and complex recent International Political Sociology (IPS) literature on state recognition has completely ignored the process of de-recognition. The present article uses the case study of Taiwan’s efforts to preserve its ‘diplomatic allies’ in the Caribbean in order to fill this gap. Taking advantage of the IPS development of the constitutive theory of recognition, it introduces and analyses the concept of state de-recognition while emphasizing the deep contradiction between present international law principles and the political reality of national identity building as well as the de-linking of political science and international law understandings of recognition made possible by the progress of the constitutive theory. De-recognition is perceived as resulting in a hierarchical relationship between recognized and de-recognized political entities that is arbitrary and ethically questionable as it ultimately reflects the denial of the right to self-determination of peoples.     

从公安微博发展看构建和谐警民关系若干误区和出路

与传统的沟通方式相比,微博的网络特质内在地与现代警务需求在公开性、时效性、传播性、语言风格等方面高度契合。看似公安微博建设的问题,实质上反映出公安机关在构建和谐警民关系上的某些误区。公安微博的建设发展,必须珍惜和总结既往的经验和教训,顺应民意要求,始终与和谐警民关系建设精神内核与价值追求相统一。     

Comparative grand corruption and protection pacts among elites: the cases of Ao Man Long in Macao and Hui Si-Yan in Hong Kong

Although Transparency International has consistently ranked the governments of both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), both under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), much higher on the clean governance scale than the PRC itself, the reality is that the two special administrative regions witnessed two prominent cases of political corruption comparable to the mainland corruption. These were the Ao Man Long case in Macao and the Rafael Hui Si-yan scandal in Hong Kong. This paper examines the two cases of political corruption in both Macao and Hong Kong and makes comparisons and contrasts between them. It argues that individual greed contributed to the two cases of high-level bureaucratic (grand) corruption in Macao and Hong Kong, implying that institutional safeguards against corruption, such as the establishment of anti-corruption commissions, and the scrutiny of the mass media, are by no means adequate. In other words, institutional mechanisms against corruption in the HKSAR and MSAR do have loopholes that need to be plugged. Moreover, protection pacts between a minority of government officials and the business elites can be formed because of their close personal connections, strengthening the possibility of grand corruption.