论BOT特许协议在我国西部的适用

根据当今中国适用BOT特许协议的立法现状,结合我国西部的发展前景,应加快对相关法律的研究、完善步伐,以推动BOT特许协议在西部开发中的适用。     

西部发展中城市治安形势与治安工作探析

城市社会治安随着中国加入WTO和西部大开发的实施,出现了新情况、新问题。公安机关必须更新治安管理理念,调整治安管理模式。强化流动人口对城市的归属感;树立服务为先的治安管理新理念;建立城市社会治安联动机制;提高社会自我防范能力。     

加快推进贵州民族文化建设的几点思考

在实施西部大开发,全面建设小康社会的伟大历史进程中,贵州民族地区如何抢抓机遇,加快推进民族文化建设,实现精神文明和物质文明协调发展,是一个值得深入思考的现实课题.文章就当前加快推进贵州民族文化建设亟待处理好的几个关系问题,阐述了作者的看法.     

当代西方青年道德教育管窥

当今世界正处在一场深刻的政治、经济、文化、科技、教育等全方位的社会变迁之中,受此影响,各国青年在道德价值观上也产生了一些新的特征和问题。这些都对当前各国青年德育提出了新的挑战。针对此西方发达国家进行了有益的探索并取得了一些积极成果。通过研究和借鉴西方国家青年德育的有益经验,结合我国国情创新青年德育的内容、方式、方法,对于我们有效开展我国青年思想教育工作具有非常重要的现实意义。     

明清之际:思想的冲突、批判与创新

明清之际,中国处在由传统社会向近代社会过渡的关键时期,无论是在政治、经济领域还是在思想、文化领域,旧的传统的思想观念与新的先进的价值理念在这一时期发生了激烈的碰撞,社会面临着一系列令人瞩目的价值冲突.明清之际最显著的社会特征之一就是经世实学思潮的出现.一大批提倡经世致用的思想家,在抨击理学空疏之弊的同时,竭力提倡经世致用、实学实用,从学风、学术上呈现出一股崇实黜虚、舍虚务实的新风尚,从而形成了一个代表社会进步方向、符合时代进步要求的学派--经世实学派.人文启蒙思潮是与经世实学思潮同时兴起的.怀疑、揭露、批判封建专制君主和封建专制制度,成为明清之际人文启蒙思潮的一个重要内容.明清之际,中国文化重道德伦理、重修身养性、轻自然科学的发展理路和格局随着西方科学知识的传入被打开了缺口,它使中国知识界在沉浸于儒家经典的同时,开始接触和吸纳西方的一些新知识、新思想,扩大和丰富了中国文化的内涵.     

South Caucasus from 1918 to 1921: history and historical parallels with the contemporary era

The republics that make up the South Caucasus today gained brief independence after the fall of the Tsarist Empire, before the integration of the region into Bolshevik Russia. This period, even though short, gives interesting historical background to understand the present. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to study the South Caucasian republics from 1918 to 1921 at the regional and international levels, paying particular attention to the historical continuities with the contemporary era (since 1991). The results of the study show three main parallels between the early twentieth century (1918–1921) and the present. First, the region is still internally divided (e.g. the unresolved conflicts). Second, externally, it is torn between sometimes opposing powers (e.g. Russia and the Western powers). Finally, third, the partnerships with international or regional powers still remain asymmetrical; consequently, the need to cooperate with Russia exceeds the aspirations of the Western powers toward the South Caucasus. Based on archival research, this study contributes to the historiography of the region and gives a framework for understanding the South Caucasus in contemporary international relations.     

Sustainability reporting by Australian local government authorities

This qualitative study investigates the Western Australian (WA) local government authorities’ sustainability reporting practices, in the absence of mandatory reporting guidelines, through content analysis of their websites. Calculations from comparing the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s disclosures with those of 140 local council websites were used to develop a sustainability reporting disclosure index. The findings indicate that sustainability reporting remains moderately practised by local government authorities, despite stakeholder demand for proactive disclosures. The discourse analysis shows that Western Australia’s strategic planning for sustainable development is the key force propelling councils towards sustainability reporting practices. The findings also suggest that WA local government authorities are increasing sustainability disclosures to legitimate their social and environmental initiatives. The findings have policy implications for regulators and/or government in Western Australia, with practical implications for local council authorities and/or managers in developing awareness of sustainable operations. The study also contributes to local government authorities’ growing awareness of sustainable service operations.     

Electoral volatility and parties’ ideological responsiveness

For a number of decades now, scholars have been indicating that ties between citizens and parties are eroding. As a consequence, electoral behaviour has become more volatile and also more unpredictable. The consequences of this process of change on parties’ strategic behaviour have, however, received little attention. In this article, the impact of dealignment on parties’ strategic behaviour is examined, with the focus being on the extent to which parties are responsive to the mean voter. The expectation of dealignment allowing parties ‘to move around more freely’ leads to the hypothesis that parties are more responsive in a context of dealignment. The analyses provide evidence that is in line with this expectation. Ideological responsiveness is conditioned by the level of volatility in the electorate. The conclusion to draw from these results is that dealignment, which profoundly affects voters’ behaviour, leads parties to become more responsive to the mean voter.     

Partisan effects in morality policy making

Current comparative policy research gives no clear answer to the question of whether partisan politics in general or the partisan composition of governments in particular matter for different morality policy outputs across countries and over time. This article addresses this desideratum by employing a new encompassing dataset that captures the regulatory permissiveness in six morality policies that are homosexuality, same‐sex partnership, prostitution, pornography, abortion and euthanasia in 16 European countries over five decades from 1960 to 2010. Given the prevalent scepticism about a role for political parties for morality policies in existing research, this is a ‘hard’ test case for the ‘parties do matter’ argument. Starting from the basic theoretical assumption that different party families, if represented in national governments to varying degrees, ought to leave differing imprints on morality policy making, this research demonstrates that parties matter when accounting for the variation in morality policy outputs. This general statement needs to be qualified in three important ways. First, the nature of morality policy implies that party positions or preferences cannot be fully understood by merely focusing on one single cleavage alone. Instead, morality policy is located at the interface of different cleavages, including not only left‐right and secular‐religious dimensions, but also the conflicts between materialism and postmaterialism, green‐alternative‐libertarian and traditional‐authoritarian‐nationalist (GAL‐TAN) parties, and integration and demarcation. Second, it is argued in this article that the relevance of different cleavages for morality issues varies over time. Third, partisan effects can be found only if individual cabinets, rather than country‐years, are used as the unit of analysis in the research design. In particular, party families that tend to prioritise individual freedom over collective interests (i.e., left and liberal parties) are associated with significantly more liberal morality policies than party families that stress societal values and order (i.e., conservative/right and religious parties). While the latter are unlikely to overturn previous moves towards permissiveness, these results suggest that they might preserve the status quo at least. Curiously, no systematic effects of green parties are found, which may be because they have been represented in European governments at later periods when morality policy outputs were already quite permissive.     

Trying not to lose: The electoral consequences of unilateral reform efforts and the social pact formation process

The existing social pact literature claims that governing parties offer social pact proposals because they anticipate they will receive an electoral benefit from social pact agreements. Yet the available data on social pacts inform us that in a substantial minority of cases social pact proposals fail to become social pact agreements. In an effort to better determine the political calculations made by governments before they propose a social pact, this article examines the effect of implementing reform legislation unilaterally, social pact proposals, social pact proposal failures and social pact agreements on the vote share of government parties in 15 Western European countries between 1981 and 2006. It is found that social pact proposals do not have any electoral consequences for governing parties, unilateral legislation and social pact proposal failures reduce the vote share of governing parties, and social pact agreements provide an electoral benefit to parties in minority governments only. These findings suggest that governing parties propose social pacts in a good faith effort to complete a social pact agreement; and that such an agreement is not a way for these parties to gain votes, but to avoid the electoral punishment associated with enacting unpopular reforms unilaterally.