The Political Foundations of the Eurocracy

This article explores the politics behind the design of EU regulatory institutions. The EU has established an extensive ‘Eurocracy’ outside of the Commission hierarchy, including over 30 European agencies and a number of networks of national regulatory authorities (NRAs). The article examines the politics of institutional choice in the EU, explaining why EU policy-makers create agencies in some policy areas, while opting for looser regulatory networks in others. It shows that the design of EU regulatory institutions – ‘the Eurocracy’ – is driven not by functional imperatives but by political considerations related to distributional conflict and the influence of supranational actors.     

The Political Consequences of the Crash

The financial crash of 2008 precipitated a major recession. It shattered the financial growth model that had dominated the previous twenty years and plunged the international economy into a period of economic and political restructuring of uncertain duration. The immediate origins of the crash lay in the lending practices associated with the sub-prime mortgages in the United States which produced the credit crunch in 2007, but the wider causes were the unbalanced character of growth in the international economy and the particular role played by finance. The crisis has been explained in a number of different ways, focusing on the behaviour of the financial markets, the institutional and policy conditions that made the boom possible and then undermined it, longer-term economic and policy cycles and the nature of uncertainty and risk in complex social systems. The political impact of the crash and the recession has not been uniform; it has been highly uneven, depending on the position of particular states in the international economy. The rapid interventions by governments to stave off financial collapse at the end of 2008 were successful, but at the cost of creating serious problems of adjustment for the future. The political debate around what were the causes, who should be blamed and what should be done is only just beginning, and the way this crisis comes to be understood will play a major part in determining how it is eventually resolved and how far-reaching will be the changes to the international economy and to domestic politics.     

社会主义政治文明建设与政治文化革新

要建设社会主义政治文明,不仅要积极推进社会主义民主的制度建设,而且必须认真进行政治文化的革新。为此,必须清除我国封建政治文化残余对发展社会主义民主的消极影响,吸收和借鉴人类政治文化的有益成果,努力建构适合中国国情、有利于社会主义民主发展的新型政治文化。     

政治文化与政治文明

政治文明是人类运用国家权力配置自身利益的进步状态,主要包括思想认识、心理意识、价值取向、行为方式等的提升和制度、机制、程序、规则等的完善两大部分。其中,政治文化是政治文明的灵魂,也是判定政治文明由低级向高级演进的重要尺度。忽视甚至离开了政治文化的政治文明,必将在实践中萎缩、退化,直至被人类社会政治发展进程所淘汰。     

政治学的双重分野——政治科学与政治哲学的概念辨析

政治科学和政治哲学是政治学研究方法的双重分野,是同一对象不同的研究视角.政治科学和政治哲学的使用都是有条件的,因此把政治哲学与政治科学进行错位思考是危险的.处于"多重转型"期的中国政治学研究需要处理好政治学、政治科学与政治哲学等问题,从而科学地确立中国特色的政治学理论体系.     

The Political Economy of the Enhanced HIPC-Initiative

Only three years after its endorsement bythe World Bank and the IMF, the HeavilyIndebted Poor Country (HIPC) – Initiativewas considerably altered and enhanced. Thispolicy shift can be explained as a resultof utility maximization behavior bynational and international politicians,international bureaucrats and NGO. Apolitico-economic model suggests that theoverall rise of HIPC default risk and thesymbolic value of the year 2000 have beenthe two major determinants of changes involume, eligibility, and conditionalityrequirements.     

政治文化与政治体制改革的关系

政治文化是在长期的社会历史文化传统的影响下形成的某种特定的政治价值观念、政治心理和政治行为模式。它主要包括政治主体对政治体系、政治过程等政治现象以及自身在政治过程中所处的地位和作用的一种态度和价值倾向。政治文化对一个社会的政治有重要影响 ,政治系统也影响政治文化的形成 ,本文试图从两个方面分析政治文化和中国政治体制改革的互动影响。     

加强党的政治建设：政治理想向政治实践转化的关键

政治理想向政治实践转化是一个艰难的政治建设过程。近代中国历史已经证明,中国共产党既抱有最符合人民期望的崇高伟大的政治理想,也具有政治理想转化为政治实践的成功经验和优良传统。与时俱进是党保持先进性的关键,中国共产党应深刻认识和把握新时代中国社会主要矛盾两个方面的变化,加强党的政治建设,推进马克思主义学习型政党和学习大国建设,强化党性修养提高党员干部政治免疫力,加强党引领网络文化意识形态的网络技术强党建设,最终将政治理想转化为政治实践。     

The Effects of Majoring in Political Science on Political Efficacy

This study tests, and finds support, for the hypotheses that a student who majors in political science will have stronger feelings of political competence and will be more willing to engage in hypothetical political actions than two peer groups: (a) those who major in other fields and (b) those who show an interest in politics but have not studied it. In a study of 1,083 undergraduates at two different universities, we find that senior political science majors have higher feelings of internal political efficacy than comparison groups and are more willing than their peers or than interested freshmen to say that they would engage in meaningful political action, especially joining organized groups.     

The Political Behavior of the Chinese Middle Class

For many, the future of China’s political development hinges upon the role of the newly rising middle class. However, little has been done to empirically examine the characteristics of the Chinese middle class. This paper is an effort to fill in this gap. It shows that, the Chinese middle class pays greater attention to politics and engages more in informal/personal activities in dealing with conflicts with government policies or officials. However, the behavior of the middle class as an aggregate is not significantly different from that of other classes when it comes to political activities that require greater civic engagement or greater courage to confront the political system. The members of the Chinese middle class are not ready to be agents of political development in action although they hold higher democratic attitudes in mind as shown in previous studies.     

The Political Economy of the Sino-Middle Eastern Relations

This paper attempts to understand the Sino-Mideast relations in terms of energy cooperation and the subsequent cooperation in the areas of trade and arms sales. It also examines the political economy of China’s energy policy toward the Middle East. The paper argues that the objective of China’s engagement in the Middle East is energy security rather than undermining the United States’ interests in the region. Contrary to realist assumptions, China is utilizing the existing Western institutions to achieve its goals in the region, a step highly welcomed and encouraged by Middle Eastern states. The paper attempts to develop a tridimensional and triangular approach to the political economy of the region in relation to the rapid pace of China’s involvement in the Middle East. Such involvement is generating substantial intellectual interests and anxiety among major players in the region in terms of its nature, goals and mechanisms. In so doing, China maintains a balance in its relations with protagonists in the region and skillfully navigates its national interest in the region.     

The Physiology of Political Participation

Political involvement varies markedly across people. Traditional explanations for this variation tend to rely on demographic variables and self-reported, overtly political concepts. In this article, we expand the range of possible explanatory variables by hypothesizing that a correlation exists between political involvement and physiological predispositions. We measure physiology by computing the degree to which electrodermal activity changes on average when a participant sequentially views a full range of differentially valenced stimuli. Our findings indicate that individuals with higher electrodermal responsiveness are also more likely to participate actively in politics. This relationship holds even after the effects of traditional demographic variables are taken into account, suggesting that physiological responsiveness independently contributes to a fuller understanding of the underlying sources of variation in political involvement.