美国国会涉台立法的新进展及其影响——基于第111—115届国会涉台法案的分析

第111-115届国会期间(2009—2018),美国国会涉台立法进入了一个新阶段,其提出涉台法案的核心诉求与上一个十年相比,立法意图更加具有指向性——服务于美国对华战略,分别紧随奥巴马政府的“亚太再平衡战略”和特朗普政府的“印太战略”两大主题。美国国会在相关法案中核心诉求主要包括:强化与台湾的“军事关系”、促进提升美台关系实质、协助台湾争取“国际生存空间”。美国国会涉台立法产生了多方面的破坏性影响,一方面,对美国政府的涉台政策施加了“刚性”约束力,严重损害了中国的核心利益,增加了中国政府解决台湾问题的难度;另一方面,这些涉台法案助长了“台独”分裂活动,破坏了中美新型大国关系的构建。     

America First? Trump,Crime, and Justice Internationally

ABSTRACT

“America First,” as presented by President Trump, argues for an international strategy that persistently places America’s interests above those of anyone or anything else. Consequently, Trump has reshaped the international perceptions of the United States and has created more difficulties for the U.S. in coordinating of global leaders in resolving complex issues in the world. This essay reflects on how Trump and the United States are viewed internationally, the impacts of Trump’s anti-immigrant and pro-White nationalist rhetoric, Trump’s responses to humanitarian crises around the globe, and the potential impact of Trump’s stance on global climate change. Given these considerations, it is questionable whether “America First” policy has made “America Great Again” in the eyes of the world.     

The Benefits of Globalization: Why More for South Korea than Mexico?

ABSTRACT

This article examines the arguments for globalization and analyzes Mexico’s “maquiladora experience,” which indicates that globalization alone does not bring about a higher standard of living. The primary reason that Mexico has not benefitted as much as might be expected from globalization has to do with the poor quality of its governance, referring especially to public administration. This assertion is supported by a comparison of Mexico and South Korea. In explaining South Korea’s greater success, Political Elasticity (PE) theory is introduced, suggesting that political power needs to become elastic in two meanings of this word: a “rubber band” meaning (referring to the ability of leaders to delegate power without losing or diminishing it) and “a balloon meaning” (having to do with the ability of leaders to reliably influence the behavior of the general public). Based upon studies of rural and industrial development, South Korea is shown to be more politically elastic than Mexico. This article concludes by examining the lessons that Mexico can learn from Korea’s experience.     

The Determinants of Collective Coproduction: The Case of Secondary Schools in Russia

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on parents’ participation in their children’s education via self-organizing through non-profit organizations (NPOs). The aim of this article is to uncover the factors which have an impact on Russian parenting organizations participating in collective coproduction in schooling. Quantitative analysis revealed three groups of explanatory variables: a) the “economic” variables, namely GRP per capita and poverty rate; b) a “high status” of a school; and c) variables capturing the “federal district effect” on the probability of collective coproduction. Results of the quantitative analysis highlight the significant discrepancies in regional conditions for emerging NPOs in coproduction in schooling.     

CONFIGURING A CONSTITUTIONAL STATE: OFFICIALS AND ASSEMBLYMEN AT THE 1909 SICHUAN PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY MEETING

Abstract

This article examines two potential configurations of the constitutional state at the time of Constitutional Reform. One was from Sichuan Governor-General Zhao Erxun, who claimed that “all political power belongs to the state.” The other was from the Sichuan assemblymen, who were inarticulate at first, but, when the meeting closed one and a half months later, firmly announced that “there would be no taxation without supervision.” Both views emerged during the 1909 Provincial Assembly meeting in Sichuan; via rounds of debates over forty-two bills, the differences between them gained sharp articulation as a clash of divergent political principles. There emerged not only a reaction of elite bitterness toward high-handed state policies but also a repertoire of political skills now in the practiced hands of an expanding circle of political leaders. The Sichuan Provincial Assembly meeting was a staging area for the revolutionary activism of the Railway Protection Movement two years later as well as for the development of both a new Chinese citizenship and a new relationship between the citizenry and the state.     

Micro-Finance,Women’s Empowerment and Fertility Decline in Bangladesh: How Important Was Women’s Agency?

Abstract

As Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has argued “[Bangladesh’s development achievements have] important lessons for other countries across the globe, [in particular a focus on] reducing gender inequality”. A major avenue through which this emphasis has been manifest lies, according to this narrative, in enhancements to women’s agency for instrumental and intrinsic reasons particularly through innovations in family planning and microfinance. The “Bangladesh paradox” of improved wellbeing despite low economic growth over the last four decades is claimed as a paradigmatic case of the spread of both modern family planning programmes and microfinance leading to women’s empowerment and fertility reduction. In this paper we show that the links between microfinance, empowerment and fertility reduction, are fraught with problems, and far from robust; hence the claimed causal links between microfinance and family planning via women’s empowerment needs to be further reconsidered.     

A Dialectical Approach to Online Propaganda: Australia’s United Patriots Front,Right-Wing Politics,and Islamic State

Abstract

This article examines how the United Patriots Front (UPF), an Australian far-right organization, has communicated its ideology with reference to right-wing politics in Australia, Western Europe, and the United States, and through allusions to Islamic State. The investigation uses critical discourse and documentary analysis and a framework derived from the theory of Pierre Bourdieu to analyze textual and audiovisual postings on UPF Facebook pages, YouTube channels, and Twitter accounts. Relevant to the discussion are Bourdieu’s interdependent theories on “doxa” as a condition in which socially constructed phenomena appear self-evident, and “habitus” and “field,” which explain how structures and agents, through their reflexive behavior, become dialectically situated.     

The Rise and Fall of a Crimean Party Boss: Nikolai Vasil’evich Solov’ev and the Leningrad Affair

Abstract

This essay focuses on the career of N. V. Solov’ev, a prominent Stalin-era official and little-known victim of the 1949 Leningrad Affair. When treated as a case study, Solov’ev’s life and times illustrate a variety of important things about Stalinism as a whole. Most obviously, Solov’ev’s rapid ascent into the party nomenklatura during the interwar years exemplifies the dramatic trajectory that many in party service enjoyed during this period. Once in office, Solov’ev promptly embraced the Stalinist political culture that had promoted him there, at times even emulating the general secretary himself. Finally, Solov’ev’s postwar disgrace and ruin reveal much about the broader functioning of this political system, particularly in regard to Joseph Stalin’s concerns about the USSR’s emergent party elite.     

The Blue (White and Red) Orchestra: a soundtrack for the country that never was

The aim of the paper is to go beyond the commonly accepted view of Sarajevo’s Plavi orkestar (The Blue Orchestra) as the 1980s “teen pop-rock sensation” and illuminate the less conspicuous, but nevertheless crucial, political dimension of the band’s music and visual aesthetics. This will be done by discussing several “pieces of the puzzle” essential to understanding the background to and motivations behind Plavi orkestar’s political engagement in the second half of the 1980s: (1) the “Sarajevo factor;” (2) the Sarajevo Pop-rock School and the New Primitives “poetics of the local;” (3) the generational Yugoslavism; (4) the New Partisans “poetics of the patriotic;” and (5) the post-New Partisans “hippie ethos.” The concluding section of the paper will reflect on Plavi orkestar’s resurgence in 1998 and explore the question of the band’s continuing resonance within the post-Yugoslav and post-socialist contexts. An argument underlying the discussion of all of these elements is that Plavi orkestar’s Yugoslavism of the 1980s is best understood as a soundtrack for the country that never was (i.e. a popular-cultural expression of what, from the viewpoint of a particular generational cohort and its location in the “Yugoslav socialist universe,” the community they thought of as their own ought to have been but never really was), and that the current value of this soundtrack lies in offering not only a particular window into the pre-post-socialist past but also in being a symbolic referent for a certain kind of retrospective utopia that gauges the realities of the post-socialist – that is, neo-liberal capitalist – present and, in so doing, figures as a “normative compass” for the life of dignified existence.     

Will Black Lives Matter to the Police? African Americans’ Concerns about Trump’s Presidency

ABSTRACT

Based on a 2017 national survey of 1,000 Black Americans, perceptions regarding the implications of Donald Trump’s election as President on race relations, police-minority relations, and police treatment of Black citizens in the United States were examined. Findings suggest the existence of a “Trump Effect.” With minor variation across demographic groups, the survey respondents expressed overall negative perceptions concerning the effects of President Trump’s election. In particular, they expressed the belief that his presidency shows that the United States is a racist society, will strain police-minority relationships, and will create a climate in which African Americans are more likely to be arrested or subjected to police violence. At issue is not just African Americans’ distrust of President Trump but, importantly, whether his emphasis on “law and order” and dismissal of minority-group concerns attenuates the legitimacy of law enforcement in the eyes of African Americans.     

Managing furia latina: the making of a Romanian football system and style of play

This article investigates the creation of a Romanian football style and system of play, best espoused by the Romanian national teams of the 1990s. It does so by engaging the works of Virgil Economu (1896–1978), undoubtedly the leading Romanian practitioner in the field. The analysis develops around the notions of furia latina – Latin fury – and “élan” and traces their elaboration and implication at two different historical periods, the interwar and the postwar. Premised on these notions, Economu sought to develop a distinctly Romanian style of football play, one emphasizing speed and individual technique. The successes of Romanian football in the 1980s and early 1990s, the rise of the midfielder Gheorghe Hagi, and the popular meanings attached to them are all intimately connected with Economu’s contributions. Overall, my arguments document football’s crucial role for modern Romanian nationalism.     

Mujahideen Mobilization: Examining the Evolution of the Global Jihadist Movement’s Communicative Action Repertoire

Abstract

Drawing on Tilly’s notion of “repertoire of action,” this article shows how the evolution of the global jihadist movement’s communicative action repertoire has increased the potential resonance of its discourse. It foresees the construction of the global jihadist movement’s discourse of mobilization as the result of the evolution of its network of actors, the context in which its communications are undertaken, and its adaptation to new communication technologies. Accordingly, it argues that the decentralization of the global jihadist movement has led to a widening of its communicative action repertoire and a diversification of its discourse offering.     

A Big Bang for Japanese Mandarins? The Civil Service Reform of 2014

In 2014, the largest reform since the US postwar occupation was enacted in Japanese civil service. It was designed as the final step of the two-decade-long effort to restructure the “1955 System,” that is, the politico-administrative system developed under the Liberal Democratic Party’s hegemony. Its purpose was to remold Japan’s independent-minded bureaucrats into the elected officials’ obedient servants. Unfortunately, the reform is unlikely to deliver expected results. The failure’s major reason concerns the fact that Japanese bureaucracy’s unusually large role in policymaking paradoxically discourages elected officials to use their major reining tool against it, namely, appointive power.     

“Scientific independence”, capacity building,and the development of UNESCO’s science and technology agenda for Africa

Abstract

This article analyses the shifting rationales for scientific collaboration in the work of the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the science sector in Africa from the late colonial period through to the era of capacity building. Focusing on the late colonial period and the post-independence decades of “national science” in Africa, it analyses UNESCO’s role in science policy, engineering training, and natural resources research. It demonstrates that in the era of national science UNESCO’s activities were couched in the language of independence: developing capacities in the sciences was regarded as the key to obtaining “scientific independence” to match the recently obtained political independence. This marked a significant change from the 1950s when UNESCO based its operations in Africa on collaborations with the European colonial powers. The article argues that the link between scientific independence and political self-determination gave way as UNESCO rebranded scientific capacity-building activities as efforts in the pursuit of an unclearly-defined common good.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Factors Affecting the Use of Social Networks in Human Resources Recruitment

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the use of social networks towards recruiting human resources for organizations. Through an in-depth review of the relevant literature, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among the sample and collected data were analyzed using PLS-Software. Results revealed that 50?75% of organizations use social networks in their organizations and all the identified effective factors in the use of social networks for human resources recruitment were confirmed, except for “hope for performance”. “Facilitating conditions” have the highest impact on the usage of social networks in recruiting, “Social influence” identified as one of the most important factors in people’s behavioral intention for the usage of social networks in recruitment and “Effort expectancy” had the least impact on behavioral intention. In addition, Gender and the level of education have no impact on the behavioral intention and the behavior of usage of social networking.     

BETWEEN STATE AND SERVICE INDUSTRY: GROUP AND COLLECTIVE WEDDINGS IN COMMUNIST SHANGHAI, 1949–1956

Abstract

Group weddings have commonly been associated with Republican China under Guomindang rule. Wedding ceremonies involving multiple couples, however, continued to be held in the People’s Republic of China throughout the 1950s and after. During the early 1950s, Shanghai’s commercial group wedding agencies marketed their services to local couples, and district governments organized what they termed “collective weddings,” hoping that couples would be more amenable to state marriage registration if they could participate in a ceremony. In 1956, the municipal government considered instituting a unified collective ceremony across Shanghai. By examining meeting minutes, letter exchanges, and records of internal government and business discussions, this article explores entrepreneurial and governmental attempts to standardize Shanghai’s group and collective weddings. Although commercial group weddings and state collective ceremonies served different purposes, their proponents faced similar organizational difficulties in the search for a standardized, economical wedding ceremony befitting “New China.”     

President or Predator? The Social Construction of Donald Trump in a Divided America

ABSTRACT

During the presidential election, numerous women accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment and/or assault. Then a presidential candidate, he denied these complaints and said the women were all untruthful – a position he has continued to espouse. To explore “who the public believes,” we commissioned YouGov to conduct an opt-in online survey of a national sample of 1,000 Americans. Notably, half of Americans (51.0%) believed that “the women are telling the truth when they reported that Mr. Trump sexually harassed or assaulted them” versus 23.1% who sided with the president. Nearly two-thirds (64.9%) stated that it was unlikely that all the women were lying, and 3 in 5 Americans (60.5%) supported President Trump’s impeachment by the U.S. Congress if these accusations could be proven. Informed by research on political psychology (especially Haidt’s The Righteous Mind), the data are explored to see why Americans embrace divergent moral narratives – with some seeing Mr. Trump as a truthful president and others seeing him as a predator unworthy of the office he holds.     

Turning Back the Clock? Violence against Women and the Trump Administration

ABSTRACT

The Trump Administration has engaged in a systematic rolling back of protections, regulations, and a host of other social safety net programs for vulnerable people, leaving over half of the population in dismay while others celebrate archaic triumphs. In this context, our focus is limited to the Trump Administration’s efforts—through law and words—to turn back the clock for women. We examine the reinforcement of overt forms of inequality rooted in patriarchy through domestic law as well as Trump’s misogynistic attitude and language toward women. Given that his words hold a greater significance now that he is President of the United States, he has a “gold-plated” pulpit to share and spread his misogynistic hostile rhetoric and propaganda: anti-women objectification, devaluing, and demonization through hegemonic “wordfare” while feeding and fueling sexism across the country. We conclude by suggesting that Trump’s rhetoric and that of other leading political figures are contributing to a darker time for those not in the white elite heteronormative order with short and long term implications and harm. We caution that the current dangers posed by these attacks are entering us into an endemic misogynist normal: retroactively moving the Country back in time at a dangerous speed.     

Anatomy of a Riot: The Social Imaginary,Single Women,and Religious Violence in Niger

This article asks us to rethink the models that have conventionally represented the coming of Islam to Africa: that of a pre-established entity, given from the outside, coherent, monadic, unity, like an already formed identity. Using Lacanian challenges to conventional notions of identity, this article contests the above version of Islam, viewing it as an incarnation of the imago: always there, always obeying the logic of a model of transmission into Africa as a reception from abroad. The conventional representation of its irruption into Africa has always involved the misrecognition of an identity as a pre-existent, already-whole form, wait ing to be born, presumably in complete unity. What this model ignores is that the language and form of what it came to recognize and name as Islam were already there, and that the Islam that formed its newlyconscious sense of self was grounded in the same act of misrecognition as characterizes the mirror stage, that is, the stage at which the subject comes to state: “This is who I am.” In order to rethink the identitarian model, this article evokes the figure of the dead father, the “McGuffin” on which turns the drama of Hampaté Ba’s Wangrin and Sembène Ousmane’s Faat Kine. In both works, the act of exhuming the father’s body takes on a degree of fantastical importance because it situates the struggle between two competing mirror stage tendencies: narcissism and aggression, tendencies around which all forms of subject-identity formation take place.     

RECALLING BITTERNESS: HISTORIOGRAPHY,MEMORY, AND MYTH IN MAOIST CHINA

Abstract

For Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, the socialist transformation after 1949 was not only a political and administrative construction, but also a process of transforming the consciousness of the people and rewriting history. To fight lukewarm attitudes and “backward thoughts” among the peasants, as well as their resistance to rural socialist transformation and collectivization of production and their private lives, Mao decided that politicizing the memory of the laboring class and reenacting class struggle would play a significant role in ideological indoctrination and perpetuating revolution. Beginning in the 1950s, the Party made use of grassroots historical writing, oral articulation, and exhibition to tease out the experiences and memories of individuals, families, and communities, with the purpose of legitimizing the rule of the CCP. The cultural movement of recalling the past combined grassroots histories, semi-fictional family sagas, and public oral presentations, as well as political rituals such as eating “recalling-bitterness meals” to educate the masses, particularly the young. Eventually, Mao’s emphasis on class struggle became the sole guiding principle of historical writings, which were largely fictionalized, and recalling bitterness and contrasting the past with the present became a solid part of PRC political culture, shaping the people’s political imagination of the old society and their way of narrating personal experience. This article also demonstrates people’s suspicion of and resistance to the state’s manipulation of memory and ritualization of historical education, as well as the ongoing contestation between forgetting, remembering, and representation in China today.