Afro‐Cuban Religion,Ethnobotany and Healthcare in the Context of Global Political and Economic Change

‘Globalisation’, driven by neoliberal‐based policies, can be seen to have significant impacts on ethnobotanical practices, particularly through the commercialisation of traditional knowledge and rise in identity‐based social movements. Despite its relative political and economic isolation in comparison to more ‘neoliberalised’ areas of Latin America, local‐level shifts occurring in post‐Soviet Cuba are similar to those occurring elsewhere in the region. Afro‐Cuban ritual activities have proliferated, particularly in Havana, leading to an increased dependence on the rich magico‐medicinal pharmacopoeias employed in hybridised religions such as santería and palo monte – suggesting that ‘globalisation’ may have profound, albeit indirect, implications for even the most economically marginalised countries such as Cuba.     

Regime Change and Conflict Recidivism within Rivalry: Interludes in Disputes

How does regime change affect the risk of militarized disputes? Within the democratic peace literature, there is disagreement over whether it is democratization, autocratization, political dissimilarity or political instability that is particularly perilous. I distinguish four perspectives from this literature and test their attendant hypotheses on a dataset of conflict episodes within enduring rivalry from 1816 to 2001 using survival analysis. I find that both democratization and autocratization reduce the hazard of dispute recurrence in enduring rivalries. After controlling for selection bias, the effect of democratization was robust whereas the effect of autocratization was not. Democratization also has the additional property of terminating rivalries; autocratization does not. Together, the results imply that democratization is better at promoting a transition from rivalry to peaceful relations than is the autocratization of a rivalry dyad.     

Turkish Popular Presidential Elections: Deepening Legitimacy Issues and Looming Regime Change

This paper examines the politics of presidential elections in Turkey with particular reference to the 10 August 2014 presidential elections. It starts by scrutinising the change in the presidential election system from parliamentary to direct popular vote. It then probes the implementation of the new election rules, candidate selection, and the conduct of the campaign, followed by analysis of the election results and their influence on the Turkish record of democratisation. The paper concludes that the move to a partisan president elected by popular vote entails democratic dangers if the new incumbent does not abide by his or her constitutional role and attempts to intervene in government policy.     

Strong Societies, Wed Parties: Regime Change in Cuba and Venzula in the 1950s and Today

The literature on the origins of democratic institutions is split between bottom‐up and top‐down approaches. The former emphasize societal factors that press for democracy; the latter, rules and institutions that shape elites' incentives. Can these approaches be reconciled? This article proposes competitive political parties, more so than degrees of modernization and associationalism, as the link between the two. Competitive political parties enhance society's bargaining power with the state and show dominant elites that liberalization is in their best interest; the parties are thus effective conduits of democracy. In the context of party deficit, the prospects for democratization or redemocratization are slim. This is illustrated by comparing Cuba and Venezuela in the 1950s and 1330s.     

应对全球气候变化:中国的贡献——兼评托尼·布莱尔《打破气候变化僵局:低碳未来的全球协议》报告

全球气候变化是人类面临的共同挑战,中国也是全球气候变化的最大受害者之一。由于成本和收益分担不均等问题,应对气候变化的全球治理面临很大困难。总体而言,减排的成本损失有限,但收益显而易见,而不减排的成本却相当高昂。发达国家和发展中国家都应调整其经济结构承担减排义务。中国有能力也有必要积极参与减排,应对气候变化,为世界做出绿色贡献。     

中亚公共行政管理的经济作用:分权与混合政体

本文旨在研究中亚公共行政管理组织导致该地区经济发展结果的方式,探讨了中亚地区公共行政管理中主要的劣质要素,尤其关注政体与公共行政管理之间的联系.本文同时概述了中亚国家作为行政管理改革内容的分权和权力下放,论及了正式的分权和非正式的各级政府间的权力分配.     

Anti-Iraq War Protests in Turkey: Global Networks,Coalitions, and Context

This article examines how Turkish citizens participated in protests against the Iraq War and why civil society organizations were able to mobilize tens of thousands of people across the country despite the institutional weakness of the Turkish peace movement. The Iraq War case is important in that its scale and level of protest mobilization were unprecedented based on any other anti-war protests in Turkey. Using content analysis of newspaper reports of anti-Iraq War protest events, this article maps the patterns and forms of protest against the Iraq War and argues for the importance of global networks, coalitions among organizations, and political context for protest mobilization.     

The Global Gold Mining Industry,Junior Firms,and Civil Society Resistance in Guatemala

Over the past two decades, the gold mining industry has increased its activity in Latin America. Growing contestation and conflict around gold mining projects have accompanied this shift. This article draws from the case of Guatemala, where metal exploration has grown by 1,000 per cent since 1998, to illustrate how the proliferation of small ‘junior’ firms – together with neoliberal investment policies and suitability of mineralisation – set the stage for fly‐by‐night gold mining and, therefore, intense resistance from host communities to mineral development.     

Democracy Without Parties? Political Parties and Regime Change in Fujimori's Peru

Political parties are critical to Latin American democracy. This was demonstrated in Peru, where an atomized, candidate-centered party system developed after Alberto Fujimori's 1992 presidential self-coup. Party system decomposition weakened the democratic opposition against an increasingly authoritarian regime. Since the regime collapsed in 2000, prospects for party rebuilding have been mixed. Structural changes, such as the growth of the informal sector and the spread of mass media technologies, have weakened politicians' incentive to build parties. Although these changes did not cause the collapse of the party system, they may inhibit its reconstruction.     

Change and Continuity under an Eclectic Social Security Regime: The Case of Turkey

This article discusses how changes in the welfare regime are shaped by the inherited institutional setting as well as by politics with reference to the particular case of Turkey, where the former social security system combined Bismarckian conservatism with informality and clientelism. Both the reassertion of traditional forms of solidarity and the discovery of social rights as an aspect of equal citizenship figure in the currently emerging social solidarity models. The ability of political actors to defend these contesting models is likely to influence the ongoing transformation of the countryãs eclectic welfare regime.     

Governmental Change in a President-Parliamentary Regime: The Case of Russia 1994-2003

Two specialists on Russian politics examine governmental stability and change in Russia from 1994 to 2003, using opinion poll results, economic and election data, Duma stenograms, memoir and biographical literature, press reports, and current-events almanacs. Rival explanations are assessed for variations in governmental stability over time and compromise over governmental composition. Bargaining, constitutional, and political-contextual explanations are examined.     

Continuity and Change before and after the Uprisings in Tunisia,Egypt and Morocco: Regime Reconfiguration and Policymaking in North Africa

While the scholarship on the Arab uprisings is increasingly complex and intellectually refined, this special issue considers an aspect that so far has failed to attract sustained scholarly attention, namely continuity and change. This introduction provides the framework underpinning the special issue as a whole and discusses all the articles composing it, while elaborating on the scientific contribution that the examination of continuity and change before and after the uprisings can make to our understanding of politics in the region.     

Global Warming in Asia-Pacific: Environmental Change vs. International Justice

The preponderance of evidence from reports on climate change suggests that China and East Asia will face major environmental challenges, most of them unwelcome. In the following article, Paul G. Harris, associate professor of politics at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, introduces some of the underlying ethical considerations with regard to climate change justice and equity. He explores how justice is part of the broader international politics of climate change, the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, its 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the ongoing negotiations concerning how to implement it. The emphasis is on the more practical debates, their codification in international instruments, and the ways in which East Asian countries perceive them. Harris concludes that increasing knowledge of the uncertainty and adversity from climate change has raised awareness among East Asian countries, but concerns about justice and equity mean that worries about climate change do not translate easily into national action.     

Making Space: Social Change, Identity and the Creation of Boundaries in the Central Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract— In rural Latin America, communities and their boundaries are changing due to government intervention, immigration, temporary migration and changing patterns of consumption. This article investigates the conflicts that arise from these changes and the impact they have on the creation of boundaries in a peasant community in the Ecuadorian Andes. It also discusses how the creation of community and household boundaries are linked to ethnic identification during rituals and daily life.