Adding to the Controversy? Civil Society’s Evaluation of the National Conference Dialogue in Yemen

ABSTRACT

This article assembles a picture of Yemen’s 2013–14 National Dialogue Conference (NDC) by collecting perspectives from local civil society organizations (CSOs), which are contrasted to the views of international commentators. Despite all efforts by internal parties as well as the international community, the dialogue failed to avert war, which broke out shortly after. Through interviews with 50 CSOs, we reconstructed the reasons for failure, as well as paying attention to the observed strengths of the dialogue. Half of the consulted organizations were directly involved in the NDC, either as an invited participant or in a brokerage role. The other half concerns outside observers. We identify aspects on which the opinion of the CSOs converge, but also highlight striking divergences depending on insider/outsider status. In contrast to the view espoused in the international literature, the CSOs overall feel that, in spite of all its procedural and substantive flaws, the NDC was a significant junction in the long road towards peace and stability and laid important groundwork for future dialogues.     

公职人员责任体系研究

公职人员行使公共权力，理应尽职尽责地履行义务，否则就应受到谴责或制裁，这就是责任。公职人员承担责任的形式有：政治责任、行政责任、刑事责任、赔偿责任和道义责任等。本文试图在深入剖析这些不同责任形式的基础之上，构筑中国公职人员的责任体系。     

Crisis and vulnerability in adolescent development

It was argued that adolescent development should be studied from a more relational and structural approach (cf. Damon and Hart, 1982). In the first study of 5986 Chinese students, two distinct self-concept dimensions were included and their relations to one another and to locus of control, extraversion, and test anxiety were compared across six primary and secondary grade levels. This was in contrast to past studies' focus on the overall change of single or global aspects of self-concept. It was found that self-concept of academic ability increased with age, whereas self-concept of appearance decreased with age. Both self-concepts were closely related. Locus of control was more related to self-concept appearance, and test anxiety to self-concept of academic ability. Extraversion was related only to self-concept of appearance. These relations existed mainly in adolescents (especially girls) and not in younger children. Midadolescence was found to be a critical period as both self-concepts showed quite drastic changes. Tentative evidence showed that the transition from sixth to seventh grade tended to have a dampening effect on the two self-concepts. Results from a second study of 701 secondary school students that included more self-concept dimensions lent further support to the findings of the first study. Crisis and vulnerability in adolescent development are discussed in the qualitative analysis of the relational changes.Ph.D. in social psychology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Research interests: Value and self-concept development, parental infuences, and deviant behaviors.     

The attentive spectators: Political participation of the Hong Kong Chinese

Based on a large-scale territory-wide questionnaire survey, this study purports to delineate the pattern of political participation of the Hong Kong Chinese. It is found that though the overall level of participation remains low, political activism has nonetheless increased since the early 1980s. Political participation in Hong Kong is primarily parochial and conventional in nature, yet there also exists a significant expressive and unconventional component. The mode of participation is fragmented and largely individualistic. Hong Kong Chinese are increasingly inclined to take collective actions, but participation mobilized by political groups is still limited. Hong Kong Chinese however pay much attention to politics. In view of the coexistence of high cognitive participation and low behavioral participation, Hong Kong Chinese can be appropriately described as “attentive spectators.” He is the author ofSociety and Politics in Hong Kong (1982) andHong Kong Politics in the Transitional Period (in Chinese, 1993)     

Construct accessibility and electoral choice

Chronic accessibility refers to a long-term bias to notice, process, and have available for recall certain types of information across a variety of different stimulus objects in a variety of different situations. This paper illustrates the usefulness of studying the chronic accessibility of political constructs in the field of political behavior. The chronic accessibility of four generic political constructs are operationalized: candidates, issues, groups, and parties. The accessibility of these four political constructs is shown to be relatively stable over time and to guide the processing of information about a wide variety of political objects. Next, a voting model is tested that identifieswhich voters will rely chiefly on issue orientations, group orientations, candidate orientations, and/or party orientations in making their vote decision. The voting model is validated across two distinct ways of operationalizing the political chronicities and three different election studies spanning a 28-year period. Finally, although this paper has focused onindividual political behavior, several ways that an information processing approach could shed light on macrolevel political questions are discussed.     

Negativity in political perception

The tendency for negative information to have more weight than equally extreme or equally likely positive information appears in a variety of cognitive processing tasks, but has rarely been documented empirically in politics. This paper provides evidence for two types of negativity effects in electoral behavior: negativity in the formation of impressions (of Humphrey and Nixon in 1968, of McGovern and Nixon in 1972, and of Carter and Reagan in 1980), and negativity as a consequence of impressions (in the 1974 and 1978 congressional elections). Both post hoc rationalization and the nonequivalence of the positive and negative information were examined and ruled out as artifactual explanations for these results. Discussion centered around two possible explanations for negativity, a cost-orientation hypothesis (which holds that people are more strongly motivated to avoid costs than to approach gains) and a figure-ground hypothesis (which holds that negative information stands out against a general positive background).     

The fraying of the socio‐economic fabric of Hong Kong

Abstract

Since the 1980s, Hong Kong has undergone momentous socio‐economic changes, which in turn have greatly affected public attitudes toward society and the economy. Interpersonal trust and the sense of community have weakened. Hong Kong as a society is increasingly seen as unfair in the sense that it is not perceived as a land of opportunities for the hardworking. The capitalist rules of the game are increasingly considered by the people to be unacceptable. Public demands for more governmental intervention in the economy, particularly in the area of income redistribution, are increasingly raised. Nascent feelings of class antagonism are palpable as economic inequalities are getting worse. As social conflicts of various kinds proliferate, public anxieties about Hong Kong's fraying socio‐economic fabric have come to the fore. People expect the government and the legal institutions to strengthen social order. At the same time, however, public trust of all social, economic and social authorities is declining. Accordingly, as social discontent and anxieties accumulate, the socio‐economic system of Hong Kong will face serious challenge in the years ahead.