解放思想的当代形态与阐释维度

解放思想是重大政治问题,又是理想生活问题。它是人与社会发展的共同需要,是一种与思想活动、生活行动和社会运动相互贯通的总体性和长期性过程。解放思想作为思想意识的形态,说明它不等于但又依存于、倾向于思想解放,它和思想解放融合在主体的生活世界之中。这是基于哲学世界观的认识维度。解放思想作为生活意识的形态,就是主体直面生活的开放态度、是主体从容生活作为发展意识的形态,说明它是推进全社会更彻底的思想解放、更协调的科学发展的社会精神气质。这是基于哲学发展观的建构维度。     

Sex isn’t Gender: Reforming Concepts and Measurements in the Study of Public Opinion

The importance of sex and gender to political behavior is reflected in the volume of work examining gender gaps in public opinion and partisan choice. Despite their centrality, sex and gender are poorly measured in survey research. The principal problem is the conflation of gender with sex in survey research. Consequently, gender is typically treated as a dichotomy, with no response options for androgynous gender identities, or indeed degrees of identification with masculine or feminine identities. We compare a new measure of genuine gender identification with a conventional measure of biological sex to determine whether the practice of using sex as a proxy for gender is sound. Sex is a fair proxy for gender, but for about a quarter of our sample, it is not. Moreover, greater nuance is gained when analyses incorporate a finer-grained measure of gender than is possible by using biological sex as a substitute. We argue that this is simply the start to an important conversation and that more research is needed to ascertain how we might best measure “gender” in the future.     

Should Britain Have a Written Constitution?

The question - ought Britain to have a written, more properly, a codified constitution - is perhaps wrongly put. The real question ought to be - why should Britain not have such a constitution… She is, after all, one of just three democracies without one.
There are two reasons why Britain has lacked a constitution. The first is that, historically, Britain never had a constitutional moment; the second is the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Today, however, Britain finds herself engaged in the process of gradually converting an uncodified constitution into a codified one. There is undoubtedly a case in principle for enacting a constitution, but perhaps it ought to wait until the process is completed.
There is, moreover, a tension between two types of codified constitution - a lawyer's constitution which would be long and highly detailed, and a people's constitution which would be short, but, inevitably, broadly-worded, and therefore open to interpretation by the courts.     

政府创新：社会资本视角

社会资本理论是研究政府与公民、民主与信任等之间关系的一种新范式。布迪厄从微观层面上将社会资本概括为一种资源集合;科尔曼从中观层面上将社会资本概括为一种社会结构;帕特南从宏观层面上将社会资本概括为一种价值规范。从本质上讲,政府创新是一个政府与社会互动的过程,与社会资本之间存在内在的结构性关联。社会资本是政府创新的基本变量,其中的信任因素是政府创新合法性的重要来源,支持信念因素是政府创新的基本条件,参与网络因素是政府创新的重要基础。在社会资本视角下进行政府创新的途径在于加强社会制度建设,实现传统社会资本的现代转型;支持公民参与网络建设,培育公共精神和发展基层民主;培育第三部门力量,以转变政府职能和增强政府能力。     

Public goods, group size, and the degree of rivalry

It is well established that the provision of a pure public good is increasing in group size if the good is normal. What I show is that if the good exhibits even a small degree of rivalry, then the individual level of consumption of the public good falls to zero in a large group. Thus, a strong version of Olson’s large group hypothesis applies to anything other than a pure public good. While individual consumption of the public good goes to zero in a large group, there is not a monotonicity result. If it is initially small, an increase in the group size may lead to an increase in the individual consumption of the public good.     

Middle Class China: Dreams and Aspirations

An important part of the China Dream is the development of a comfortable middle class lifestyle for all. This is not such a surprising development since a public discourse surrounding the emergence of a middle class has been in the making for over a decade. There is though nonetheless an apparent paradox in a Communist Party embracing the middle class. Understanding how and why this has occurred, as well as attempting to identify the consequences for social stratification in China is clearly important. While it would seem reasonable to attempt to analyse China’s middle class in terms of wealth, or occupation or even lifestyle, it is argued that this is fairly meaningless: in this context the middle class is more a discourse than social structure.     

Frenzies of the Visible

Hard Core is initially a historical study showing how the sexual explicitness of hardcore is located within cinema's initial promise of the visually real. The book is informed by a Foucauldian perspective on this 'will to truth; but also utilizes psychoanalytic and Marxist concepts of fetishsm and its discussion of the main hardcore films is through genre.Its aim is to show how a seemingly male-oriented discourse actually exhibits ambiguities and polymorphously perverse pleasures, therefore making it possible for women to gain some erotic purchase on pornography. However, there are a number of problems with this analysis; In its use of foucault, which promises a setting of pornography in more of a socio-political formation than is given: in the arguments on truth and fetishism, in the treatment of hardcore as a genre, which uses a restricted body of films to make a more general argument. A deeper attention to the institutional and social settings of varieties of pornography is therefore needed to give a more nuanced picture.     

How does the context make a translation happen? An activity theory perspective

Context is a critical topic in translation studies. The research into translation context has undergone a shift from the multidisciplinary investigation into one or a few contextual factors to conceptualizing it as contextualization, i.e. a dynamic process of the interactions among the contextual factors. Nevertheless, the mechanism of translation contextualization, namely, the problem of how the interactive factors enable a translator to bring a meaningful target text into being, is yet to be explored. Activity Theory is a cultural-historical framework to analyze social practices. It can provide an account of translation contextualization. In light of the framework, an activity itself is the context of a translator’s decision-making and translation contextualization is no other than the rule-governed actualization process of a translation activity, which is hierarchically realized through chains of actions and operations.     

Why is there no revolution in North Korea?

The paper critically assesses the Acemoglu–Robinson approach to revolutions, as it is focused on inequality of wealth or income rather than on collective-action problems. We show that income inequality is not a sufficient and not even a necessary condition for a revolution to occur. Rather, a necessary condition for a revolution is that any subpopulation can expect net benefits from it, for which inequality is not a precondition. As a result, a certain structure of commitment devices or their absence rather than inequality is crucial for explaining why revolutions sometimes occur and sometimes not.     

Radicalization as a reaction to failure: An economic model of Islamic extremism

This paper views Islamist radicals as self-interested political revolutionaries and builds on a general model of political extremism developed in a previous paper (Ferrero, 2002). Extremism is modelled as a production factor whose effect on expected revenue is initially positive and then turns negative, and whose level is optimally chosen by a revolutionary organization. The organization is bound by a free-access constraint and hence uses the degree of extremism as a means of indirectly controlling its level of membership with the aim of maximizing expected per capita income of its members, like a producer co-operative. The gist of the argument is that radicalization may be an optimal reaction to perceived failure (a widespread perception in the Muslim world) when political activists are, at the margin, relatively strongly averse to effort but not so averse to extremism. This configuration is at odds with secular, Western-style revolutionary politics but seems to capture well the essence of Islamic revolutionary politics, embedded as it is in a doctrinal framework.     

ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE ICAC*

Accountability is a vogue word. It has been around for a while now, but does not seem to be going out of fashion. Probably that is because the word reflects and reinforces a value system in relation to government and administration which is solid and good, not just a passing fad. If that is right, then the only difficulty with the notion of accountability is that it may be bandied round to such an extent as to become a mere slogan, a substitute for thought.     

Hangin' ten: The common-pool resource problem of surfing

Surfers face a common-pool resource problem, similar to that faced by fishers. Although the ocean shore is a common-pool resource, each wave is a private good. Coordination is essential if a surfers' dilemma is to be avoided. I model this situation as a two-person, two stage game. I show that for many cases the subgame perfect equilibrium is socially optimal. In other cases, the equilibrium is not optimal. I argue that for these cases a surfers' etiquette has evolved in response to this dilemma. A first-to-the curl, first-in-right rule ameliorates but does not fully resolve the dilemma. In addition, a locals-only policy, a policy in violation of the surfers' etiquette, may be a rational response to a growth of inexperienced surfers on the waves.     

再论犯罪现场的概念——兼与尤小文博士商榷

犯罪现场的概念有狭义和广义之分,狭义的犯罪现场概念是指发生犯罪行为的空间场所;广义的犯罪现场概念是指与犯罪行为有关的人、物、时、空存在及其内在联系的总和,其中,与犯罪有关的人、物、时、空要素是犯罪现场的四个维度,犯罪行为是联系各个犯罪要素的函数方程,犯罪现场的内在结构模型就是犯罪现场构成要素的立体图形.犯罪现场概念的研究应包括各种学科与层次的方法.犯罪现场学是专门研究犯罪现场的理论和知识体系的总和,是犯罪现场概念等理论发展到高级阶段的产物.犯罪现场概念与刑事侦查学理论体系有内在联系.犯罪现场的本质是犯罪活动的社会存在,其应用价值体现主要是解析犯罪线索和搜集犯罪证据.犯罪现场的概念是反映和联系犯罪存在和犯罪证据的桥梁.     

New evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic growth

It is often maintained that democracy is a luxury which comes at a price in terms of subsequent slower increases in national living standards. However, various recent cross-section studies on economic growth have found evidence that lack of civil and political liberties is negatively correlated with economic growth. Using a new measure of democracy, which is based upon the number of years that a country can be regarded as a democracy, the robustness of this relationship is examined. Both direct and indirect effects of lack of democratic liberties are analysed. Our main conclusion is that the relationship between democracy and economic growth is not rubust.     

Lobbying in developing countries: The Peruvian case

In the transparent exercise of democracy, there is a technique of persuasion called lobbying. The technique involves applying persuasion by representing one's own interests or the interests of third parties. In literature, lobbying is therefore related to interest groups and pressure groups. It is considered a key tool to guarantee equal conditions in the decision‐making process that promotes democracy and citizen control is transparency. Lobbying, also called interest management, is a legitimate activity that in Latin America has a bad press and consequently a bad reputation. However, it is a very important input into the democratic process. According to the NGO Legislative Directory: “It allows the general public to engage in the public decision‐making process, and it has the potential to improve the quality of public decisions by opening channels for diverse opinions and thematic experts.” It is an activity that is put into practice in all countries of the world and that has a regulatory background in most countries of the northern hemisphere and in some South American countries such as Peru and Chile. The general spirit of these norms is to “transform a suspected irregular activity into a deliberation and democratic game,” justify the Legislative Directory.     

Historical Contextualism Revisited

To deal with the methodological problems of historical contextualism, it is useful to distinguish between (1) Text, (2) Context, (3) History, (4) Contextualism and (5) Historicism.¹A text is by turn the outcome, and object, of all writing or research. A context is any perspective on a text, including the background data that one may append to it. History is a narrative, a story, which is focused upon a text or context - in as far as the two are the same, viewed as propositions 'Contextualism' is a methodological claim that valid history is only secured or demonstrated via the reconstruction of 'the context' - especially where the latter is to do with a perspective on the background to a text. Historicism is disinclined either to extract present moral judgements from, or apply them to, the past; it resists more broadly any form of social generalisation over extended units of chronological time²; it thereby displays a liability to overrate the importance of the sometimes 'spectacular differences' (Popper 1960: p.101) between various historical periods. Historical contextualism may be construed as a new variety of historicism. The emphasis of the present account is more broadly upon the logical futility of historical contextualism in general, and less upon its specifically historicist character.     

Locke, Sincerity and the Rationality of Persecution

According to the most influential contemporary reading of John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), his main argument against religious persecution is unsuccessful. That argument holds that coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling religious beliefs in its victims. I propose a different reading of the Letter . Locke's main consideration against persecution is not the unsuccessful belief-based argument just outlined, but what I call the sincerity argument . He believes that religious coercion is irrational because it is ineffective as a means of inculcating the right intentions in people. Once this alternative argument is placed at its centre, the Letter is seen to be a more fertile source of political argument than is suggested by alternative readings. In particular, the sincerity argument gives us a powerful reason for rejecting state moral paternalism, the doctrine that the state may use coercion to make people morally virtuous. If moral virtue depends upon people having the right intentions, and if coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling the right intentions in people, then state moral paternalism is ineffective and hence irrational.     

Whistleblowing and Compliance in the Judicial Hierarchy

One way that principals can overcome the problem of informational asymmetries in hierarchical organizations is to enable whistleblowing. We evaluate how whistleblowing influences compliance in the judicial hierarchy. We present a formal model in which a potential whistleblower may, at some cost, signal noncompliance by a lower court to a higher court. A key insight of the model is that whistleblowing is most informative when it is rare. While the presence of a whistleblower can increase compliance by lower courts, beyond a certain point blowing the whistle is counterproductive and actually reduces compliance. Moreover, a whistleblower who is a “perfect ally” of the higher court (in terms of preferences) blows the whistle too often. Our model shows an important connection between the frequency of whistleblowing and the effectiveness of whistleblowing as a threat to induce compliance in hierarchical organizations.