How to Get America Back on Track

The G‐20 supplanted the G‐8 as the executive committee of globalization as the emerging and advanced economies came together in the wake of the Wall Street crash to stave off depression. Now, each country is going its own way. In this section we examine whether the G‐20 can be saved, and what the countries within it must do to bring the global economy into balance.     

部分国际大都市处理社会分化的经验与启示

改革开放近三十年来,中国城市面临着全球化背景下城市职能的分工与协作,不断走向国际化.城市社会已从简单一元化向复杂多元化进行社会分化,社会利益结构发生了变动,形成了不同的利益群体.     

Food Intake and the Role of Food Self-Provisioning

This article investigates the role of food self-provisioning for the intake of nutrients of households in Mongolia. We analyse nutritional outcomes within and across urban wage employees, rural households with small herds, and pastoralists with large herds. Food self-provisioning significantly affects dietary quality and quantity. Farming food crops improves the nutrient intake. In contrast, animal husbandry increases the intake of calories and nutrients from animal sources, while it decreases the intake of carbohydrates and nutrients from vegetal sources. This finding suggests household-specific market failures due to remoteness exist. Last, exposure to a weather shock does not affect households’ calorie intake.     

For A New Bipolarity: China and Russia vs. America

A great historical transition is underway from American‐led Globalization 1.0 to Globalization 2.0—the interdependence of plural identities where no one power or alliance of powers dominates. The G‐20 is floundering as the immediate global financial crisis has receded. The United Nations and the old Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO—have lost their vigor and are struggling to adjust to the global powershift with the rise of the emerging economies. While Europe is paralyzed as the historic project of integration stalls, the world's two largest economies—the United States and China—are as yet unable to figure out how to share power. The danger now is that the geopolitical vacuum will invite assertions of national self‐interest that will unravel the rules‐based order that enabled stability and prosperity over recent decades. America's leading geopolitical strategist, China's most outspoken strategic thinker and one of Asia's leading global thinkers from Singapore offer their reflections on this state of affairs.     

从普京访美看俄美关系起伏

近半年来,原本就暗流涌动的俄美关系屡兴风波.为缓解紧张气氛,2007年7月初,俄总统普京出访美国;而这次出访前后两国的言论举措,似乎折射出了更多双边关系中的实质性内容.     

America in Shock

America is in shock. It is not because of the unusual sight of the first black President taking up residence in the White House. Barack Obama's profile, after all, is more familiar to the diverse population of today's ethnically and racially hybrid America than the fast disappearing WASP identity of George Bush. Sooner or later, but always, politics codifies cultural change, not the other way around. America is in shock because our economic and financial landscape is suddenly unrecognizable.     

America After Utopia

The French social critic and lapsed sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who died in 2007, is author of the highly acclaimed America and Cool Memories . One of the more poignant observers of America since his compatriot Alexis de Tocqueville roamed these lands, Baudrillard's insights, in the manner of the parochial universalism of Parisian post-Marxist intellectuals, dazzle some-where between the brilliant and impenetrable. Back in 1990, I sat down with him in the haute tacky Royal Palace motel in Los Angeles, which Baudrillard claimed was his favorite city. For him, LA was the closest thing to a center in this heterogeneous, ex-centric world.     

Privatization in Asia and Latin America

This article analyzes the political and economic predictors of privatization in 17 developing countries in Asia and Latin America, using an OLS regression model with panel-corrected standard errors and data from 1988 to 1999. The regression results show that two factors, which, have hitherto been either neglected or underemphasized in the privatization literature, play a crucial role in the pace and scope of, privatization. The first is a government’s revenue needs (defined in terms of interest payments on public debt as a percentage of a government’s total budget expenditures). An unsustainable interest burden leads to a significant reduction in the social and public spending of a government. This, in turn, impels incumbents to raise revenues through the sale of, state assets. The second factor that explains privatization patterns is the extant degree of, political opportunity (defined in terms of the governing politicians’ legislative strength and their security to remain in office). In addition, the results show that privatization is associated, with declining inflation and economic growth rates.     

美国未成年犯罪人的释放安置

基于未成年罪犯所具有的特点，对未成年罪犯执行自由刑的方式与内容也有别于成年罪犯的自由刑，在美国未成年犯罪人的释放安置是指只在监禁期后在社区里监督未成年人。释放安置是未成年人被关进行刑机关（原始刑罚）的最后成份，而不是由法官判处的刑罚，它的最基本功能是在社区里监督未成年人。紧随具有严格时间表的监禁刑之后，设计释放安置是要帮助未成年人过渡到“真正的世界”。