The Myth of the Failed State and the War on Terror: A Challenge to the Conventional Wisdom

Abstract

A central hypothesis in the articulated rationale inspiring the war on terror suggests that failed states play a key role in the international terrorist nexus and require external intervention and guided democratization. This logic is based on two related premises; first that there is a direct link between failed states and international terrorism, second that democratic governance reduces the recourse to terrorism. This article suggests that there is no causal link between failed states and international terrorism and that the asserted ability of democratic governance to catalyze a reduction in terrorism is exaggerated if not wholly inaccurate.     

铁路民警职业倦怠心理探析

探析铁路民警职业倦怠心理产生的原因并有针对性地进行防范和疏导,对维护民警的身心健康和提高铁路公安队伍的战斗力有着重要的现实意义。铁路民警消除了职业倦怠心理,就可以达到自我与职业的和谐统一,就可以创造辉煌的人生价值。     

谈侦查人员的挫折心理及调适

侦查人员在长期的侦查工作中,容易滋生心理上的职业弱点,形成某种挫折心理。这种心理上的“职业病”,干扰着侦查活动的进展,影响着侦查效果,严重的还会导致侦查活动的失败。本文就侦查人员在侦查活动中常见的挫折心理的产生、表现及调适的方法作了些分析。     

The Social Psychology of Policy Analysis

This article illustrates how some of the core concepts of social psychology can increase understanding of the practice of policy analysis. Policy analysis is shown to be a form of rhetoric subject to social psychological principles of attitude change. The article argues that policy analysts are primarily concerned with changing policymakers' beliefs about the consequences of alternative policies, but that preferences for alternative policies are largely the result of values. Values are formed and modified primarily by social comparison processes, conformity pressures, and the dynamics of group decision making rather than by rational argument. As a result, policy analysts could become more effective by addressing issues of values in their analyses or by mediating the social processes that might interfere with good policy choices.     

认知心理学在大学英语词汇教学中的优化作用

词汇学习是语言习得的重要方面,也是外语教学过程中的重要一环。从认知心理学的角度来认识大学英语词汇教学,阐明学生对英语词汇认知的过程和词汇信息加工过程,旨在提高大学英语词汇教学效果。     

基于战略地图的战略性绩效管理研究——以GW公司为例

通过战略地图来描述GW公司的战略,实现平衡计分卡四个层面(财务、客户、内部流程、学习成长)的整合,分解关系战略重点的绩效目标和指标,构建一个具有共同语言基础的可视化战略地图。     

腐败的社会心理探源与儒家廉政思想的现代意义

腐败是一种在人类社会的各个历史时期和各类文化群体中普遍存在的社会现象,但理论界对腐败的界定和成因并未达成共识。从社会心理学的角度来看,腐败是理性的个人经过高度精密的利益计算和反复权衡之后的结果,是经济人的原则入侵政治和社会领域的表现。腐败并非仅仅存在于公共的政治领域,任何职业和个人都存在腐败的可能。从源头治理腐败,需要根除滋生腐败的社会文化土壤,培育完善的道德和法律体系,增进个人的道德情操。我国传统儒家文化中含有的大量廉洁奉公思想可以为现代社会的反腐倡廉事业提供强大的思想源泉。     

积极心理学在大学生思想政治教育中的实证研究

积极心理学是当代心理学最新进展之一,积极心理学在我国教育实践中得到了较好的研究和运用.课题组以重庆工商大学旅游与国土资源学院为例,探讨如何运用积极心理学理念,开展新时期大学生学生思想政治教育,并提出了教育对策和建议,以期对思想政治教育工作有所借鉴.     

News Norms and the Strategic Timing and Content of Candidate Messages

Abstract

In this paper, we ask what sets of factors influence the timing and the content of presidential candidate press releases. Utilizing a unique data set, we examine the influence of internal campaign factors as well as external media factors on campaign information dissemination during the invisible primary season. We find that both types of factors may influence the timing of press releases; as to content, however, media norms are less likely to alter a candidate's general strategic message, which is dictated by his competitive status and national stature.     

Atomised Terror and Democratic Citizenship

This essay connects the 2103 Boston Bombings to the dynamics of a highly individualist, modern society. The perpetrators (Tsarnaev brothers) represent an atomized stratum of Americans, disconnected from communal institutions and organizations; socially insignificant men, ready to commit publicized, albeit isolated, acts of violence. With the exception of the World Trade Center, major terrorist attacks in the past two decades have been perpetrated by asocial, isolated individuals. An expansive security and welfare state is an inadequate response to atomized terror and is potentially problematic for our liberties. An approach more consistent with security and freedom is to nurture the rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship.     

Terror and the loss of citizenship

Terror in the name of God and the specter of returning fighters for the so-called ‘Islamic State’ have recently moved some Western states, including Britain, Canada, and France, toward revoking the citizenship of terrorists. To critics, this constitutes a ‘return to banishment,’ a ‘fate universally decried by civilized people,’ as an American Supreme Court Chief Justice put it in the late 1950s. In a double reflection on the changing nature of terror and of citizenship, this paper argues that denationalization is, in principle, the adequate response to terror. This is because terror, particularly of the Islamist kind, is no ordinary crime but attack on the fundaments of citizenship. But what is right in principle may not be the right thing to do, because denationalization raises serious practicality problems.     

教育的内在诉求:关涉学习者的幸福——兼论积极心理学对高校学科教学的启示

自20世纪末于美国问世以来,积极心理学便在诸多领域备受关注:它为心理治疗、教育教学乃至其他社会科学均提供了新的研究问题的视角。积极心理学关注幸福感,重在研究人性的积极心理品质,主张对问题做出积极的解释,强调文化环境对人的影响,致力于通过培养人固有的积极力量而使人更好地发展为健康幸福的人。教育旨在为学生一生的学习和幸福生活奠定基础,而积极心理学又被称为"帮助人类发挥潜能和获得幸福的科学",其对于高校学科教学的启示不容忽视。     

确保俄罗斯经济竞争力的战略思考

在合理配置国家资源条件下,使用指示性计划的国际经验表明,指示性计划必须结各国具体的经济、社会和政治情况。俄罗斯在融入全球化的过程中,需要建立起符合自身条件的市场机制,处理好全球化进程中俄罗斯国民税收体系改革和人力资本问题,从而使俄罗斯摆脱沦为西方发达国家原材料提供者的危险境地。要建成国家投资和创新的发展模式,走上可持续增长的轨道,并将居民的生活质量提高到一个新的水平,从战略的角度考虑,俄罗斯需要提高国家在社会经济发展中的作用,建立起社会取向型国家的劳动和社会福利关系。     

The United Kingdom National Security Strategy: the Need for New Bearings in Security Policy

The first ever UK National Security Strategy statement reflect shifts in perspective on the nature of security concerns and the character of risks and threats in an era of globalisation. However, the UK National Security Strategy itself is a major disappointment. It fails as an attempt to conceive of a genuine strategy. It also fails to engage explicitly and fully with key imperatives for UK security policy, such as Islamist terrorism and the emerging power of China. However, the UK National Security Strategy, despite being weak and disappointing, offers important new bearings on where the National Security Strategy and the government's means to security policy should go from here, identifying areas to strengthen and develop national security structures.     

The Politics of Climate Policy: Strategic Options for National Governments

This article summarises the results so far of an international investigation aimed at identifying political strategies that make it easier for national governments to take more effective action against climate change while avoiding significant political damage. The numerous strategic options identified included strategies involving unilateral action by governments, strategies of persuasion, damage limitation strategies, strategies that can be used in political exchange with other political actors, and strategies designed to improve the bargaining position of governments by altering the terms of political exchange. The article concludes with a shortlist of especially promising strategies.     

The Blair Governments, Public Sector Reform and State Strategic Capacity

Two books at the end of the Blair era—by Michael Barber and Julian Le Grand—offer to redeem the ‘third way’. Both authors explore the political case for public sector reform and the means by which it can be accomplished. They explore a similar range of reform models: command and control; quasi‐markets; and devolution and transparency. But the circle between efficiency, client service and continuous improvement must be squared. Neither author considers the ‘learning by doing’ alternative. No less fundamentally, neither author addresses the political and technical challenges in developing strategy. How are issues to be aired in advance so as to expose evidence and perspectives? How are interests to be engaged and supporting coalitions formed? How are these processes to occur without executive commitment? How are unconventional ideas to be aired without being over‐ruled by populist or media sensationalism? These are the practical dilemmas that confounded Blair's efforts. These books invite a strategic conversation that is badly needed. But where in the political system can it be pursued?     

谈铁路反暴力恐怖中的防范与保卫

铁路联系着国民经济的各行各业,往往是恐怖分子进行恐怖活动的首选目标。事实上来自新疆、西藏等地的“东 突”、“藏独”民族分裂势力、暴力恐怖势力、宗教极端势力已对铁路构成了严重威胁。面对严峻的恐怖敌情,我们必须加强防 范与保卫工作,通过提高安全意识、加强安全措施,对可能遭受恐怖袭击的目标进行保护,防范潜在的恐怖威胁。根据铁路的 实际情况,防范工作重点是:建立和完善反暴力恐怖协调机制;加强反暴力恐怖宣传教育工作,树立全民防范意识;明确目标, 落实责任;运用手段,获取情报;加强对危险物品的监督管理。     

Community Policing,Homeland Security,and the Somali Diaspora in Minnesota

Over the past decade more than 40 young men have left the Somali diaspora in the US state of Minnesota to fight for foreign terrorist groups. In 2011, fearing similar radicalization across the country, the Obama administration began to emphasize the potential for community policing to enable police agencies to partner with local communities to prevent it. Subsequently, the US Department of Justice sought to make the state’s capital, Minneapolis-St. Paul, a national model for doing so. This article assesses the success of this goal and elucidates the principal lessons that might be learned from the ongoing process.     

Legitimacy and Coercion in Peacebuilding: A Balancing Act

ABSTRACT

Despite the tendency of the power literature to analyse legitimacy and coercion in isolation, both theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that coercion and legitimacy are not parallel lines but can interact in different ways, supporting or undermining each other. A methodical exploration of the relationship between legitimacy and coercion is important not only for improving the theoretical literatures on power and legitimacy but also in the light of the increasing interest in the power of legitimacy in statebuilding and peacebuilding. This article first analyses the overall interaction between coercion and legitimacy, and then explores the question that emerges from the interaction analysis; what level of coercion is permitted or required in order for a mission’s local legitimacy to be sustained? Finally, for the practice of peacebuilding, the article shows that an operation needs to understand its initial legitimacy standing with the local population, as this determines how much coercive force it can employ without undermining its overall legitimacy.     

North Korea's hegemonic rule and its collapse

Ideological leadership through the Party was at the core of the North Korean leaders’ hegemonic rule over the people, which resulted in the great popularity of Kim Il-sung. Marketisation in the wake of the economic crisis, however, significantly impaired the mechanism for rule by consent, especially by triggering the influx of outside information and undermining the Party's ideological education activities. The economic crisis led the state to adjust the mechanism of consent and coercion in such a way that the state's control over society could be restored by relying more on rule by force, which was demonstrated by the much stricter penal system, bloody purges and, most of all, military-first politics. This, nonetheless, was a temporary measure because, in Guha's terms, ‘dominance without hegemony’ would not be durable in the long term. The regime can sustain itself in the long-term only through the reinstatement of the consent mechanism, which disintegrated owing to the marketisation. However, as the marketisation, being beneficial to those who have power as well as ordinary people, is irreversible in North Korea today, the reestablishment of hegemonic rule would not be attainable.