中国公共外交:风生水起正当时

近年来,伴随着中国经济的高速发展和国际影响力的不断提升,中国公共外交开始受到越来越多的关注。2009年冬,外交部新闻司公共外交处升格为公共外交办公室,表明公共外交在中国总体外交中的地位获得了重要提升。尽管中国的公共外交机制目前仍处在建设和磨合中,但中国公共外交的新局面已经展现出了光明的前景。     

东北亚合作中的中国公共外交

东北亚地区是世界上最富有经济活力的地区之一,区内各国地理位置邻近,经济互补性强,相互之间的经济合作和交流也很有效,合作潜力很大。然而,长期以来,东北亚地区都没有形成区域性的合作机制,东北亚的合作仍处于一种非制度性和无组织的不稳定状态。制约东北亚地区合作的最主要障碍来自于地区认同弱,受制于历史恩怨、地缘政治和地区安全形势的影响,东北亚国家在推动地区合作方面受制于公众认同、社会舆论甚至意识形态,经济和社会交流层面的优势始终没有发挥出来。     

Assessing Public Participation Initiatives in Local Government Decision-Making in Malaysia

Increased public participation in government decisions contributes significantly to the enhancement of grass-roots democracy. This article assesses the level of involvement of local citizens in local government decisions in Malaysia. Public participation was assessed using questionnaires on the range and extent of initiatives used by local government. The questionnaires also probed citizens’ perceptions of these initiatives and expectations for greater citizen empowerment. Data were gathered from 206 local citizens randomly selected from six local authorities in the northern region of Malaysia. The findings reveal a desire on the part of local citizens to participate in their local government decision-making process.     

Public Scrutiny, Standards and the Planning System: Assessing Professional Values within a Modernized Local Government

Since the 1990s there has been a long-standing concern in government towards public sector accountability, management, efficiency and service delivery. A number of studies have attempted to analyse the multitude of individual changes and their manifestations through analyses based on a variety of institutional, policy and governmental distinctions. This paper attempts to specify the changes with particular reference to planning, and to consider the evolution of the public service ethic in planning towards more openness, scrutiny, transparency and efficiency with particular reference to the changing ethos of the professional employee. We first explore the  main impacts upon local government, the public service ethic and professional planning as a consequence of the Modernization agenda and freedoms and flexibilities initiative. We then look at how such changes have impacted upon the ethos and values in public service and planning. We draw on some evidence of Ombudsman cases to highlight issues of professional values in planning practice over the past decade before finally drawing these strands together in some conclusions. Our principal findings indicate that the much-trumpeted decline of services and standards may not have been as apparent as is sometimes portrayed and that internal professional attitudes and values towards the external changes may not have significantly altered over the same period.     

Present Situation,Problems, and Prospect of China's Public Servant Training

Abstract

Quality and ability of public servants, largely determined by education and training, are the key to the effective government administration. How to give full play to the effect of education in improving quality and ability of public servants is an important issue in the public servant training. The thesis reviews China's system of the public servant education and training, introduces and analyzes the basic training approaches as well as problems, and anticipates the future of China's public servant training.     

Republicanism in Mediated Society. A Comparative Analysis on Public and Private Evaluation Guided by the Theory of Symbolic Society

Philosophical and historical analyses of the relationship between the public and the private sphere suggest that contemporary men and women evaluate public affairs, politics and the state of society-at-large in the light of their private, particularistic concerns. That proposition is evaluated on the basis of the theory of symbolic society. This theory considers the process of detraditionalization as a shift in the mode of social control. From a situation in which the conduct of conduct is based on traditional roles, threat of scarcity and religious belief, societies shift to social control on the basis of, on the one hand a belief in an autonomous subject, on the other new socializing institutions like schools, mass media, advertising, consumption and therapy. When this theory is applied to the distinction between public and private sphere, three implications are drawn: (1) that the evaluation of the state of society and of personal life will be quite distinct; (2) that each of those evaluations is determined by different factors; and (3) that interpretative communities, created by similarities in the level of education and media use, have become more important for the evaluation of the state of society and less important for the evaluation of personal life. These hypotheses, which run counter the expectation that contemporary men and women evaluate public affairs in the light of their private concerns, are tested using multilevel analysis on comparative data of 18 countries (European Social Survey). The analysis shows how European modernization influences the structuring of evaluation of the private and public sphere in the sense predicted by the theory of symbolic society.     

The Politics of the Past in Dagestan: National Unity and Symbolic Revolt

Abstract

Dagestan is inhabited by numerous ethnic communities with their own languages, cultures and histories. However, despite its ethnic and cultural diversity, the republic’s authorities have consistently sought to promote a unified concept of Dagestani identity. This policy has been challenged by local ethnic nationalists concerned about the future of their ethnic communities, which they saw as being endangered by assimilation and marginalisation. This struggle to secure political and social benefits began in the Soviet period and reached its height in the early 1990s. Resentment was particularly widespread among the Kumyks and Lezgins. Their dissatisfaction with the status quo resulted in a competition between inclusive (national) and exclusive (ethnic) approaches, which in turn manifested themselves in debates over historiography. This essay analyses the development and outcomes of this struggle from the 1950s through to the early 2000s, with an emphasis on the early 1990s.     

Vietnam: Assessing the achievements of Doi Moi

Following a decade of reform and the 1988–89 stabilisation programme, Vietnam appears well‐positioned to become a new East Asian ‘dragon’. Below, the main macroeconomic dimensions of the reform process are examined. In particular, improved terms of trade for food agriculture is seen as a key determinant of stabilisation; more generally, it is argued that the authorities have rightly given broad priority to macro‐stability over micro‐efficiency. While the process of institutional change is necessarily a lengthy one, rising domestic and foreign savings will help sustain rapid growth, mitigating any adverse distributional consequences of reform. The Vietnamese experience clearly contains lessons for other ‘market transition’ economies.     

全球治理中的中国进程:以中国减贫治理为例

随着新兴大国的崛起,传统上由西方世界主导的全球治理体系开始受到来自世界多极化的挑战。以减贫领域为例,中国国内贫困治理的成功经验为全球减贫治理提供了多样化的解决方案。中国减贫治理强调主权国家在贫困治理中的主导性作用,国内各种社会力量的整合运用,通过发展解决贫困问题,立足国情、有效利用国际援助及对外援助的去意识形态化。中国开始将这些来自国内实践的有效经验合理整合到全球减贫议程中,促进相关治理机制改革及内容调整,进而为其他发展中国家的国内贫困治理提供极具参考价值的理念和方法。     

The Russian March: Investigating the Symbolic Dimension of Political Performance in Modern Russia

In this study I analyse the Russian March—a political performance which emerged in 2005 and which has developed from a protest ritual into one of the most important public and visible events organised by the Russian ultranationalist movement. The focus of the current analysis is the symbolic structure of the march, which is examined at three levels—cognitive, emotive and archetypal. The case study of the development of the Russian March highlights the paradoxes of the politics of performativity in Russia as well as the interaction between ideological codes and discursive frames in the Russian nationalist movement.     

Local Government Finance: Assessing the Central Governmant's Contribution

It is widely believed that between 60 to 66 per cent. of local authority expenditure (or income) is met by grants from central government alone. This popularly held view is challenged in this paper through a consideration of the current system of funding. We begin with the rate support grant procedure and identify some common sources of misunderstanding; these concern the definition of the rate support grant itself and the true nature of relevant expenditure. This leads us to examine the question of local authority miscellaneous income from fees, sales, rents and other sources from which we conclude that its contribution is underestimated. However it is general knowledge that besides miscellaneous income local authorities derive their income from two other principal sources namely, government grants and local rates. Accordingly the remainder of the paper examines in turn the contribution of these three sources towards (i) local authority revenue expenditure in respect of rate fund services, (ii) local authority revenue income and (iii) local authority income including both revenue and capital receipts. In no instance does central government's share approach 60 per cent. Thus, it would appear that the contribution of government is being overestimated while that of miscellaneous income underestimated. The implications of this are discussed.     

Public management: first approximations

Public Management as a synthesis of business management and public administration confronts some severe conceptual problems that are rooted in the dissimilarities between business and government. In the two books reviewed, the authors attempt to build concep- tual frameworks for studying public management which minimize the importance of many of these differences. As a result, both books come closer to meeting the expanding market for texts which present management tools and techniques than most of the other texts written in the past few years using a “Public A.dministration as Political Science” approach. Nevertheless, both books still fall considerably short of providing a coherent and comprehensive solution to the problem of defining the scope and substance of the field of Public Management. Therefore, Public Management, as presented in these books, remains largely a truncated field of study limited to issuestof internal management control and ,cost effectiveness. For the field to flourish, it must find a way to bridge and dissolve the dichotomies between politics and administration, policy and management, and political and technical rationality.     

中国对世界经济稳定发挥了积极作用

在二次大战后最严重的世界经济危机下,国际社会高度关注中国经济的表现,期待中国为实现全球经济复苏发挥更大的作用。到目前为止,中国已经尽力,初步交出了成绩优良的答卷,但是实现世界经济恢复最终需要国际社会的共同努力。中国经济率先复苏对稳定世界经济的积极作用 中国GDP的同比增长率于2007年二季度达到12.6％的高点后,     

China's collectivisation puzzle: A new resolution

According to total factor productivity trends in Chinese agriculture, China achieved productivity gains both when collectivising (1954–58) and when decollectivising (1979–84) its agriculture. If the productivity gains from decollectivisation were due mainly to eliminating the incentive problems of collective farms, how the initial collectivisation could also have been associated with gains in productivity presents a major historical puzzle. We suggest as an answer the possibility that agricultural production in China was widely organised on a household basis until 1958, despite the collectivisation of property rights, and that the formation of the agricultural producers’ co‐operatives reduced the inefficiencies in factor allocation that existed following China's land reform.     

中国外交进入多边时代

2008年以来,国际政治、经济格局发生了深刻变化,而中国外交在继承的基础上进行了许多创新和调整,其中特别令人瞩目的一点是,多边外交在中国外交中的分量显著增加,其地位有了质的飞跃。