Donald and Winston at the Ministry of Alternative Facts

Sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four and other dystopian classics have risen in response to the audacious attempts of President Donald Trump to manipulate public opinion by circulating “alternative facts” throughout the presidential campaign and since his November 2016 election victory. Various statements by Trump and his advisors that exemplify what has come to be known as the “post-factual world” account for the meteoric rise and final breakthrough of Nineteen Eighty-Four to the top of the bestseller lists in spring 2017.     

Implementing Program Budgeting in the Serbian Ministry of Defense

The Republic of Serbia's Ministry of Defense (MoD) is attempting to implement a program‐oriented, multi‐year budgeting system in 2010. This paper reveals several challenges that threaten the success of this initiative. First, we find that the proposed budget system confuses organizations and programs. Second, there does not appear to be a centrally coordinated effort to implement program budgeting, leading to significant disparities in comprehension, organization, and implementation amongst the subordinate commands in MoD. Finally, there is a distinct lack of communication within the MoD regarding the necessity of a program budget and how the process should move forward. These issues inhibit the implementation of program budgeting in the MoD and diminish the possible gains associated with the multi‐year, programmatic allocation of defense resources.     

论大部制下政府业务流程优化与再造

各级政府如何适应中央大部制改革？一个可行的办法是运用网络技术,根据公众的需求,打破传统的部门分工制管理模式,按照业务流程规律,进行优化与再造,形成面向公众的扁平式管理体制,以实现政府管理体制与社会主义市场经济同步发展。     

Development of E-Governance and Electronic Services in Ministry of Finance

Over the last two decades, government has made essential changes in order to improve public administration functioning. These changes were driven by a new government philosophy. The key concept in this new public policy is to connect information society, and public administration. In this context, the purpose of this study is through analyzing the process of computerization of public administration to determine the specific services provided electronically to the National Revenue Agency （NRA） in Ministry of Finance. Ministry of Finance and NRA are the administrative bodies that are reformed significantly in this field. E-governance is a political concept and philosophy which includes principles and the public administration working mechanism. E-government is electronic services provision platform that uses information and communication technology. The extensive monitoring and analysis lead to conclusions in two key areas--legal and technical organization. The lack of consistency between governments and the total reorganization of some areas of the state causes difficulties in implementing cyber plan in administrative services. There are other essential weaknesses that corrupt the system electronic reforms. It is important to be created a digital broadband market in Bulgaria. This will integrate the network systems of Bulgarian official institutions in a common electronic network.     

论“大部制改革”的纵深策略——决策、执行与监督制约与协调的视角

"大部制改革"是我国目前行政体制改革中的制度亮点,同时也是国外市场化程度较高的国家普遍实行的政府管理模式,但是结合国情,"大部制改革"在我国向纵深进行也存在着诸多难点.针对现存的难点,有必要在宏观和微观的层面上从决策、执行与监督相互制约与协调的框架内提出相应对策,以保证"大部制改革"向纵深进行的力度和持续度.     

统筹型大部制改革:党政协同与优化高效

以加强党的全面领导为统领,推进党和国家机构职能优化协同高效,形成党政协同与优化高效、新型的统筹型大部制改革。改革要坚持和加强党的全面领导、围绕目标体系统筹改革设计、着眼职能转变推进政府改革。改革从三职能到五职能、从微调到深度重组、从分设到党政协同、从议事协调到决策等方面进行体制创新。党政机构职能机构体系的统筹、部门间职权职责划分与协调、部门调整后职能与机构融合、机构重组人事安排与分流人员、依法推进各类组织机构改革问题,尚有待通过理论探索与现实实践予以解决。     

Investigating Ministry Names for Comparative Policy Analysis: Lessons from Energy Governance

This commentary contends that ministry names offer a valuable construct for furthering the state of comparative policy analysis. Using energy governance as an example, this study shows that ministries’ names are stable in some countries but subject to changes in others. Furthermore, there is variation in the ministries’ names over time. Creating or maintaining a ministry that explicitly mentions “energy” is interpreted as signaling enhanced political attention to this issue, whereas removing the referral to “energy” signals the opposite. The names of ministries responsible for energy matters also affect energy policy outputs. Drawing on 43 OECD and BRICS countries, the empirical analysis shows that countries which have ministries in place that mention “energy” together with “economy” in their names are swifter in adopting renewable energy targets. Ministries that mention “economy” along with “climate” and/or “environment” also have an inclination to be faster in adopting such targets, but the coefficients fail to reach conventional levels of statistical significance. Given this finding, it appears worth pursuing this line of research further.     

基于大部制模式的地方政府机构改革刍议

推行大部制是地方机构改革的重要创新举措。但作为一场深刻的政府自我革命,地方政府在推行大部制的进程中面临着职责同构、部门利益、机构磨合、代理缺位等诸多困境。为使地方政府大部制改革顺利推进,应采取的策略是:进行政府职责和机构的再设计;科学平衡决策权、执行权和监督权;构建部门协调联动机制;加快社会组织的发展与改革。     

Studying Chinese Foreign Policy Narratives: Introducing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Conferences Corpus

The paper presents an original corpus of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conferences. The dataset is a unique source of information on official positions and diplomatic narratives of China mapping almost two decades of its foreign policy discourse. The corpus contains almost 23,000 question – answer dyads from 2002 to 2020 ready to be used for analytical purposes. We argue the dataset is an important contribution to the scholarship on Chinese foreign policy stimulating further research using corpus based methods while employing both qualitative and quantitative strategies. We demonstrate possible applications of the corpus with two case studies: first maps the diplomatic discourse towards the US under the presidency of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping (employing quantitative tools), while second analyzes narratives concerning the South China Sea disputes (employing more qualitative approach).

     

Geoffrey Vickers and lessons from the Ministry of Economic Warfare for cold war defence intelligence

Abstract

Geoffrey Vickers is the forgotten man of British intelligence. As the UK’s economic intelligence supremo at the Ministry of Economic Warfare and the Foreign Office between 1941 and 1945, Vickers transformed the craft of economic intelligence in both strategic and operational spheres. In the policy arena he was the driving force behind the economic and industrial planning of civil administration of liberated Europe. Vickers was also an intelligence theorist of the first rank whose legacy survived in his holistic conception of economic intelligence, its centrality to decision-making in peace and war, and the scope and evolution of the Joint Intelligence Bureau and defence intelligence.     

The Bureaucratic Approach to the Financial Revolution: Japan's Ministry of Finance and Financial System Reform

While all industrialized countries have enacted financial reforms over the past decade, Japan's Ministry of Finance (MoF) officials have crafted a distinctive approach to reform. They have managed to pursue their own agenda while at the same time responding to international market pressures and domestic political demands. This article examines Japan's "financial system reform," the process by which the MoF has recast the regulatory barriers between different types of financial institutions, such as banks and securities houses. Financial system reform represents an extreme case of a common Japanese policy pattern—the bureaucratic-led bargain—in which Japan's bureaucrats, rather than its politicians, organize the bargains that eventually emerge as policy. Two ministry policy councils deliberated for seven years before the Diet passed comprehensive reform legislation in 1992, and the ministry continues to redefine the reform at the stage of implementation today. While MoF officials have been forced to make concessions to industry groups and to adjust to unforeseen developments along the way, they have maintained overall control of the reform process. In fact, this article suggests that they have been remarkably successful in promoting their own peculiar interpretation of the public interest and in preserving and, in some cases, enhancing their own power.     

The Western secret services,the East German Ministry of State Security and the building of the Berlin Wall

The main reason for the closure of the East–West sectoral border in Berlin on 13 August 1961, and the ensuing construction of the Berlin Wall, was to prevent refugees from fleeing the German Democratic Republic and so keep the Communist state in being. However, new evidence shows that the border was also closed for security reasons, as the Communists claimed – they called it ‘the securing of the state border’ (‘die Sicherung der Staatsgrenze’). The open border with the West in Berlin was the main cause of the GDR's intense security crisis in the 1950s and its closure gave the state greater stability. The security advantages to the Communists of closing the border were so obvious that the Western secret services had long feared that they would do precisely this. In particular, the West's spy chiefs saw that Khrushchev's ultimatum of November 1958 over Berlin was in part designed to put an end to their operations. Although they did not see precisely what action would be taken, they expected some measure or other to deprive them of their base in West Berlin; they saw also that the closure of the sectoral border was a distinct possibility. Far from being unanticipated, the security measure taken by the Communists in August 1961 was one of the most long-expected and carefully-prepared-for events of the twentieth century.     

自然资源公平分配与分享视角下的环境权——基于哈尔滨小岭水泥公司诉环保部案的思考

哈尔滨小岭水泥公司诉环保部案实际上揭示了作为主观权利的环境权的存在,也揭示了环境权生成的一种有效路径,即在自然资源公平分配与分享框架下,环境权作为一种分享自然资源的权利,可以通过限制自然资源开发权的管制性规范而确立.管制性规范由此成为环境权的确权规范与环境资源的分配规范.也正因为环境权要通过管制性规范来确立,私法意义上的环境权纠纷往往要通过行政复议、行政诉讼等公法方式才能得到彻底解决,从而使得环境权救济呈现出环保机关、环境权人与环境侵权人多方参与的多边形态.     

独立学院学风建设思考

学校主要靠办学质量赢得生源,对于独立学院,更是如此,学风状况是衡量独立学院办学水平的标准之一,目前独立学院的学风存在很多问题,既有学校的因素,也有学生自身以及社会的因素,那么就应从这些原因入手着力去改善。