Voter perceptions of parties’ left–right positions: The role of party strategies

Left–right semantics help voters simplify the complex political reality as they reduce party views on a variety of issues to a single dimension. Less studied, however, is the question of how voters arrive at parties’ left–right positions and how parties can influence voter perceptions. In this article, I demonstrate that the party can shape the voter’s understanding of the content of its left–right ideology by using three strategies: avoidance, ambivalence, or ambiguity. Specifically, the party may avoid or de-emphasize, embrace a conflicting position, or becloud its position on the controversial issue; by so doing, it induces voters to place less weight on this issue when perceiving the party’s left–right position. The empirical analysis connects voter and party data from 21 European democracies in the period 1996–2014 and finds empirical support for the effectiveness of these strategies. In particular, the study finds robust empirical evidence that strategic avoidance, ambivalence, and ambiguity strongly moderate the association between the party’s perceived ideological brand and its underlying issue content.     

关于北京市交通事故处理模式的研究

随着我国经济的迅速发展,民主与法制建设愈加完善,如何以迅速、高效的方式处理交通事故,已经越来越受到社会各界的关注。目前,北京市交通事故处理模式已经显露出很多问题,为了更加适应当今形势发展的需要,应当改革交通事故处理模式,使其在法律、法规的规范下越发完善,进一步维护交通秩序,保证交通安全。     

The Influence of Advisers and Decision Strategies on Foreign Policy Choices: President Clinton's Decision to Use Force in Kosovo

In the following paper, I analyze the influence of advisers and domestic political factors on President Clinton's decision to use force against Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs in Kosovo in March 1999. I present an analysis and examination of President Clinton's decision-making process, using press reports, personal speeches, etc. In other words, I attempt to trace the process by which Clinton came to the decision to use force in Yugoslavia. Specifically, using the poliheuristic theory, I argue that President Clinton's decision was influenced by noncompensatory domestic political calculations and the strong influence of his Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright. Examining how advisers interact with one another, their status in the advisory group, and the manner in which presidents solicit information from advisers will further our understanding of how, when, and under what conditions national security-level decision makers make decisions.     

IT职业技术培训课程的教学策略分析与应用

传统的教学策略对学习者实际应用能力和自我学习能力的培养重视不足,对实践的认识及其地位的认识无法适应IT职业技术培训课程注重应用和更新迅速的特点.本文针对各类IT职业技术培训课程的共同特点,通过对比传统的教学模式,分析了该类课程的教学策略以及策略的应用.通过在课程中对这些策略进行应用,可以有效地加强学习的效果,并使学生易于将所学知识有效地运用于工程实践.     

Livelihood strategies and performance of Ghana's health and education sectors: exploring the connections

The public sector in Africa is riddled with widespread ineffectiveness. Although some countries have implemented various reform programmes with the support of international development agencies, the results so far have been disappointing. One reason for the failure is that the policies have focussed more on achieving macroeconomic stability than making the organisations effective. This article explores a fundamental problem of the policies—the need to focus on the human component of organisational performance. Using education and health organisations in Ghana as examples, the article advances a hypothesis that the livelihood strategies of public sector employees and the performance of their organisations are interconnected. Specifically, it is argued that as public sector employees have become more dependent on multiple sources of income, they have developed multiple social identities, which influence the culture of their organisations. The organisational culture may have encouraged employee effectiveness in some cases, but for most organisations, it has resulted in practices that perpetuate inefficiency and poor performance. To be successful, public sector reform policies must therefore involve deliberate efforts to change organisational cultures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

我国地方政府间无序竞争的危害、动因及对策分析

地方政府间的有序竞争为我国经济的发展起到了积极的作用,但地方政府间的无序竞争具有较大的危害,它威胁到国民经济发展的战略平衡.无序竞争的动因主要包括政企不分,职能不清,地方政府财政收入最大化的压力,现行考核机制不尽完善等方面,而优化政府架构,开展区域政府合作,深化财政管理体制改革,重塑政府绩效评估体系是消除这种无序竞争的对策.     

Security in the name of human rights: the discursive legitimation strategies of the war on terror in France

This article aims to question the discourse on “the war on terror” developed by the French President in the wake of the two terrorist attacks that occurred in France in 2015. Drawing from critical discourse analysis, it explores the discursive legitimation strategies deployed by President Hollande to legitimate France’s securitarian response to the two attacks. It reveals how the defence of human rights served as an overall justificatory framework, through rationalisation, appeals to authority, and moralisation. It argues that Hollande implemented a discursive manipulation of reality to shield his actions from criticisms of illiberalism, all the while reframing the notion of human rights, undermining it and paving the way for an authoritarian-driven executive.     

Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections,The Netherlands 1997–2014

Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We contribute to the literature on party platform change by theorizing and assessing how party performance motivates parties to change their platform in-between elections. We built a new and unique dataset of >20,000 press releases issued by 15 Dutch national political parties that were in parliament between 1997 and 2014. Utilizing automated text analysis (topic modeling) to measure parties’ platform change, we show that electoral defeat motivates party platform change in-between elections. In line with existing findings, we demonstrate that parties are backward-looking.     

ACTA对我国国际贸易的影响及其应对策略

发达国家认为现有的TRIPS协议,虽一定程度上提高了国际知识产权的保护水平,但其在知识产权执法实践方面仍然不完善。所以,欧、美、日等主要发达国家又发起并制定了反假冒贸易协定(ACTA)。协议要求成员国强化打击假冒和盗版行为的力度,建立更高标准、更具体、更强硬的知识产权全球执法框架,并建立一个类似于世界贸易组织和世界知识产权组织国际机构以外的理事机构。ACTA的签订必将对国际贸易产生重要影响,尤其会给发展中国家的国际贸易造成巨大冲击。因此,应认真分析协议可能给我国带来的负面影响,并采取相应对策。     

Beyond trade unions’ strategy? The social construction of precarious workers organizing in the city of Buenos Aires

The paper presents preliminary findings of qualitative research, case study based, on the organization and collective mobilization of two groups of precarious workers in the city of Buenos Aires. Contrary to research that looks at trade unions’ institutional strategies for organizing precarious workers and at workers’ responses to these, the article starts with a bottom-up approach centred on workers’ self-activity. This helps to show empirically how a complex net of structural and contextual factors, which includes the spatial organization of the labour process, the institutional and legal framework and the socio-political context, creates material circumstances that generate processes of workers’ association. This approach is rooted in long-standing theoretical debates about the structuring of workers’ collective interests and action and helps to ground debates on the perspectives of precarious workers’ organization within the context of currently and locally existing capitalist relations rather than in more abstracted trade unions’ strategies and responses.