"三农"困境之探析

“三农”问题目前是制约我国农村发展的主要问题，“三农”问题形成的原因众多，本文着重从提高农民的素质、扩大农民的政治权利及农民的组织化问题等方面，具体提出解决“三农”问题的方法。     

Between ballots and bullets: elections and citizenship in and beyond the nation-state

This article approaches electoral acts and performances as central sites for the negotiation of citizenship relations. I argue that, in order to understand how these relationships are shaped, we must attend to governmental actors beyond the nation-state, from trade unions to criminal organizations. Focusing on the case of Jamaica, I show how non-state actors have come to play a central role in hybrid forms of governance, shaping citizens' allegiances to multiple, overlapping political communities. How are campaigning and voting affected by such multiple allegiances? What new understandings of citizenship can we develop if we take the role of non-state actors in the electoral process seriously? I suggest that we should study elections as a site where citizenship – understood here in its broad sense of membership of a political community – can develop both within and beyond the nation-state.     

Public sector personnel management in three African countries: Current problems and possibilities

Following visits to three less developed countries (LDCs) in Sub-Saharan Africa (Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe) to study public sector personnel systems, the author offers a review of personnel practice in Civil Service and parastatal organizations. In the main, despite a recognition that personnel issues were crucial to organizational success and thereby, ultimately, to economic development, the personnel function was found to be a largely reactive administrative operation, often combined with non-personnel ‘housekeeping’ roles and lacking a strategic role within the organization. Reasons for this restricted role are suggested and include a lack of alternative models of best personnel practice, the historical legacy of colonial administration, and the continuing need for administrative controls in the face of favouritism and corruption. Prospects for reform are considered in the light of current conditions and the view is advanced that changes in the personnel practices and policy are most desirable and urgent in the parastatal sector, and that a reformed parastatal sector might serve as a model for selective improvements to personnel management in the Civil Service.     

Science three,religion zero

His research focuses on biosociology and the social aspects of technology and environment.     

Boards of trustees,agency problems,and university output

The analysis and empirical evidence in this paper indicate that the structure of the boards of trustees of state universities influences the provision of higher education. The structure of the boards is important because it helps to define the constraints on the board members and on the internal agents of the universities. An implication of this study is that public universities can be made to function more like private ones by placing them under separate governing boards.These results are especially interesting when examining the trends regarding board structures. The trend over this century across the states has been toward increasing the number of universities under the jurisdiction of a single board. This analysis suggests that the trend is a response to political pressure from educators, not from taxpayers and consumers of higher education.     

Voting methods, problems of majority rule, and demand-revealing procedures

Gordon Tullock made fundamental conceptual contributions to the understanding of collective choices. Tullock balanced an optimism about the capacity of political choices to facilitate gains from exchange with a pessimism about the negative externalities attending having majorities control power and dictate choices for all. Tullock’s work on both sides of this divide is surveyed, examining both the problems of voting procedures, and the promise of the demand-revealing process he helped invent, in guiding the choice of political institutions.     

The Soviet Union and population: theory,problems, and population policy

Until the important public dialog on 3rd World population issues began in the Soviet Uuion in 1965, ideological limitations and bureaucratic interests prevented policy makers from recognizing the existence of a world of national "population problem." Since then, freer discussions of the Soviet Union's surprising decline in birthrate and labor shortages have led to serious policy questions. Conflicting policy goals, however, have resulted in only modest pronatalist policies. The Soviet population problem is a result of interregional disparities in population growth rates between the highly urbanized Soviet European populations with low birth rates and the least urbanized Central Asians with dramatically higher birth rates. As a result, these essentially Muslim people will provide the only major increases in labor resources and an increasing percentage of Soviet armed forces recruits. Policy planners are thus faced with difficult options. Current policies stressing technological transfers from the west and greater labor productivity, however, are unlikely to solve further labor shortages and regional imbalances. Ultimately, nonEuropana regions will be in an improved bargaining position for more favorable nationwide economic policies and for a greater role in policy planning.     

A study of how individuals solve complex and ill-structured problems

A number of factors cause individuals to use diverse strategies to solve problems. This paper presents a methodology for examining these differences in strategy. Verbal protocols are elicited to collect data on the cognitive processes occurring during problem solving. These data, codified into propositional representations, and non-parametric statistical comparisons are then used to evaluate the significance of strategy differences. These strategies are then mapped with dynamical graphs, with which we examine the task-independent and the task-specific cognitive representations the participants used. As an illustrative example we apply this methodology to study the influence of two contributing factors, professional training and national culture, on the strategies adopted by professionals to solve a complex and ill-structured problem (hunger in a country). The problem-solving strategies of professionals from different countries and trained in architecture, engineering, law or medicine are analyzed to show some intriguing differences in the general strategies adopted by individuals belonging to different professions, and the outcomes from using these strategies.     

PPBS in Nigeria: Its origin,progress and problems

One of the normative models of budgeting prescribed for the Third World countries is PPBS. This paper examines the attempts made by the Nigerian Federal Government to make PPBS part of its budgeting system. Although the idea of PPBS was first highlighted by the 1974 Udoji Public Service Review Commission, it was only in 1980 that a serious attempt was made to start experimenting with PPBS. It was hoped that, by the end of the 1983, PPBS would be fully utilized in all the government ministries and departments. It was the intention of the government to use PPBS to achieve a ‘coordinated and comprehensive’ budgetary system that relates cost with output in order to achieve ‘quick results’ in the implementation of its programme. However, as at the end of 1986, apart from documentary reform (that is improvement in classification of expenditure categories in the budget documents), not much was achieved in Nigeria. In addition to the general difficulties encountered with PPBS in other places where it was tried, the effectiveness of PPBS was circumscribed by a variety of institutional, economic and political factors. The paper concludes by asking whether the exercise was not a retreat from the reality facing the country.     

Means of support,fertility, and social reproduction among peasants: three approaches

This article examines interpretations regarding the relationship between means of support and fertility, taking into account views on social reproduction among peasants, with emphasis on the way they are expressed in terms of indicators. The author begins with a brief summary of theories put forth by Malthus, and then examines Neo-Malthusian models which use as an independent variable, the amount of land and as a dependent variable, the number of children. He notes the existence of a positive ratio between these variables, and then demonstrates that in Chayanov's model, the number of children is used as an independent variable, while the idea of a positive ratio with the amount of land is still maintained. He compares these assumptions with those of Palerm, who suggests the existence of an inverse ratio between the amount of land available and fertility; this leads to policy implications contrary to those arising from neo-Malthusian models. The paper ends with a discussion of assumptions about the rationality, motivations, and guiding values the different approaches attribute to economic and demographic behavior among peasants.     

Policy on innovation in Australia: Divergence in definitions,problems, and solutions

Innovation has joined the mainstream in many nations as governments search for new ways to tackle challenging societal and economic problems. But Australia is seen to be lagging on innovation policy. Is this related to how governments define innovation? What do they regard as the problem they are addressing? What proposed solutions follow from this? This paper examines how Australian governments have defined innovation over four decades, signalling their policy intentions about how to make the nation more innovative. Definitions of innovation are analysed using 79 Australian (national level) policy documents published from 1976 to 2019. Close reading of these documents suggests two main definitions: innovation as technology, and innovation as culture. Topic modelling uncovers more differentiated themes, shows how definitions change over time, and demonstrates an association between definitions and political parties in government. The divergent approaches suggest a lack of coherence and continuity to policy on innovation in Australia.

Points for practitioners

• Innovation has expanded and broadened in its definition and governments and policymakers have paid increasing attention to it.
• In Australia, there are two main definitions of innovation used in policy—one related to technology and one related to culture.
• The technology view of innovation can be further divided into a focus on businesses or a focus on research and development (R&D).
• Different innovation definitions, problems, and solutions dominate at different times, with Coalition governments tending to favour business and technology over culture, and Labor governments doing the opposite.
• There are divergent approaches to policy on innovation in Australia which suggest a lack of coherence and consistency in policy over the long term.

     

Constitutional,legal and political problems of local government in Nigeria

The new Nigerian local government system was clearly intended by its creators to be a representative and democractic system of devolution. The speed with which elected councils have been dissolved and replaced by caretaker committees and state appointees contrasts strangely with the constitutional provision that there should be a system of local government by democratically elected local councils. The constitutionality of dissolution has been confused with the constitutionality of further local government reform. Dissolution should be seen as an emergency measure to be used rarely in cases of proven maladministration by a local government. Further reform and reorganization of a state's system of local government should be regarded as a legitimate power of the state legislature. The role given by the Constitution to local government should not be interpreted as entrenching the system. Constitutional amendment is not required should further reform be necessary.     

Political participation and three theories of democracy: A research inventory and agenda

Abstract.  This article proposes an agenda for political participation research aimed at providing empirical answers to questions derived from normative political theory. Based on a threefold distinction between responsive, participatory and deliberative models of democracy, the article first distinguishes three conceptions of political participation: as influencing attempts, as direct decision making, and as political discussion. Second, it is argued that each of the three models is associated with different desired consequences of political participation: equal protection of interests, self-development and subjective legitimacy. Third, a procedural standard is identified from which to evaluate the mechanism generating the three types of participation. By analogy with theories of distributive justice, this mechanism should be sensitive to incentives but insensitive to resources. The empirical questions thus implied are finally drawn together into an integrated agenda for future participation studies.