Environmental belief systems among Japanese and American elites and publics

This paper compares the environmental belief systems of elites and publics in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, and Spokane County, Washington State. The central question posed is whether the shared forces of postindustrialism generate similar belief structures among elites in nations with quite distinct cultural, political, and historical backgrounds. As a prototypical postindustrial policy area, natural resource/environmental politics is used as the specific issue domain of study. The results emerging from this comparative inquiry reveal substantial differences between the Japanese and American local area elites in the structuring of environmental beliefs, especially in the role of postindustrial orientations. The results also suggest much larger differences in belief system content and structure between elite and general public samples in the Spokane area than in Shizuoka Prefecture.     

社会主义民主政治建设的内在结构

发展社会主义民主政治是党的执政能力的重要体现。民主政治建设是一个复杂的系统性工程,其中政治价值、政治制度和政治主体是三个根本性的维度。社会主义政治价值的确立和发展是与之相适应的民主政治体系得以确立的一个重要的前提条件;社会主义政治制度建设体现这一政治价值,并为这一政治价值的实现提供保障;社会主义政治价值和政治制度都应是为实现绝大多数政治主体的根本利益服务的,离开政治主体,政治价值的创新和政治制度的维系都是不可能的。推进社会主义民主政治建设,要注意这一系统内不同方面、不同层次诸多内容的统筹兼顾。     

The political opportunity structure of the Dutch peace movement

This article analyses the political opportunity structure of the Dutch political system with respect to new social movements in general, and the Dutch peace movement in particular. It is shown that the prevailing strategy of the Dutch political system is one of integration, and that the dominant party on the left (the Social Democratic Party) went through a process of transformation which opened it up to the new challengers at precisely the moment when the cycle of protest of the new social movements took off. The consequences of the high degree of openness of the Dutch system are then documented on the basis of a detailed analysis of the alliance structure of the Dutch peace movement.     

Partisan and ideological belief systems: Do they differ?

In this paper a direct comparison is made between the cognitive content of ideological and partisan belief systems. A quasi-experimental design was used in a two-part study. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a partisan or ideological condition and asked to categorize and then scale contemporary leaders, groups, and issues as either Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. Results indicate that the meanings of partisan and ideological belief systems are quite similar — their cognitive attributes (issues, groups, and leaders) are interchangeable at the categorical level and highly correlated (r=0.86) in their degree of typicality. Political sophistication is determined to contribute significantly to the degree to which partisan and ideological belief systems are related. For politically sophisticated subjects (Ss) the two belief systems are highly related (r=0.90), whereas for low sophisticates, the belief systems are only moderately related (r=0.50). Sophistication also plays an important role in structuring Ss' own issue preferences. High sophisticates in both the liberal-conservative and Democratic-Republican conditions exhibit a greater level of issue constraint, which can be interpreted as either ideological or partisan constraint.Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1983.     

Committee structure and political preferences: The case of Norwegian local government

Abstract.  In Norway, as in the other Nordic countries, sector-based policy making in local government is considered a problem as it is alleged to take place at the expense of a more integrated approach. Inspired by American rational choice theories on committee power, this article first sets out to establish whether the distributive rationale of the present committee system actually does promote sector-orientation among local politicians. This approach is challenged by alternative theories on committee power, focusing on the informational rationale in specialisation and the relevance of partisanship . The findings suggest that all the three theories explain in part committee member' preferences, but partisanship is most important for explaining both spending preferences and preferences on organisational forms. The article goes on to explore whether recent local council reforms, intended to replace the sector-oriented system with strong committees by a new de-specialised system with weaker committees, are likely to curb the effect of sector on committee members' preferences. The conclusion here is not easy to draw, but it is clear that sector-orientation is not encouraged by the reforms; in fact, the opposite seems to be the case. What local councils may have overlooked, however, is the influence of the informational rationale on committees and their members. The analyses are based on data obtained from a random sample of 119 of Norway's 435 municipalities.     

西双版纳傣族传统政治形态中政治结构和过程探索

西双版纳傣族传统的政治结构是其政治权力的结构形式,包括其政权机构和实现政治权力的结构形式。本文主要通过其政治制度的分析,揭示其政治权力的实现方式。西双版纳傣族作为我国少数民族之一,其政治形态的发展变化在少数民族中具有一定的代表性,对其进行研究,有助于认识和把握我国民族政治的发展轨迹,从而加快我国民族政治的发展。     

Comparing political systems: Establishing similarities and dissimilarities

Abstract. Comparative political analysis at the macro-level of political systems can reduce the inevitably high complexity of such comparisons by the systematic matching or contrasting of cases, depending on the particular problem. Such 'most similar systems' or 'most different systems' designs, in Przeworski & Teune's terminology, thus constitute one of the major ways out of the usual 'small N—many variables' dilemma. This paper proposes a detailed and comprehensive method to establish such similarities and dissimilarities in a systematic and at all stages transparent way. The examples chosen refer to an analysis of the conditions of survival or breakdown of democratic systems in the inter-war period in Europe.     

Exit, collective action and polycentric political systems

Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School’s important contributions include the development of the concept of “polycentric” political systems and the demonstration that solutions to common-pool resource problems may be solved voluntarily by rational individuals, even in situations that resemble Prisoners’ Dilemmas. The program, however, pays little attention to how individuals’ ability to exit may affect the interaction in Prisoners’ Dilemma-like situations, for worse or better. We argue why this is a worthwhile consideration and survey results from public choice and game theory.     

Education and mass belief systems: An extension and some new questions

Using the SRC/CPS's national election surveys from 1956 to 1976, this paper investigates the effect of education on consistency among the public's domestic policy opinions. Evidence from both gamma correlations and factor analysis indicates that education has neither a strong nor a linear effect on issue constraint over the 20 years covered by the data, for the lowest and the highest education strata consistently show the highest levels of constraint. We do not conclude, however, that education is unrelated to recognition of ideological concepts, for almost one-half of the lowest education stratum do not use liberal and conservative terms. We conclude that issue constraint does not directly translate into ideology and suggest some new directions that future research should take if we are to evaluate effectively the effect of education on opinion structuring.A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 1978 Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.     

Demographic structure and the political economy of public education

This article examines the relationship between demographic structure and the level of government spending on K-12 education. Panel data for the states of the United States over the 1960-1990 period suggests that an increase in the fraction of elderly residents in a jurisdiction is associated with a significant reduction in per-child educational spending. This reduction is particularly large when the elderly residents and the school-age population are from different racial groups. Variation in the size of the school-age population does not result in proportionate changes in education spending, thus, students in states with larger school-age populations receive lower per-student spending than those in states with smaller numbers of potential students. These results provide support for models of generational competition in the allocation of public sector resources. They also suggest that the effect of cohort size on government-mediated transfers must be considered in analyzing how cohort size affects economic well-being.     

论政治文明与政党制度建设的关系

政治文明的实质和核心是政治民主化 ,其核心表现形式是制度文明。文明的政治制度化发展程度 ,事实上是一个事关人类政治文明发展的核心问题 ,在这个问题上 ,体现着一个国家和民族的政治智慧。笔者认为 ,随着人们价值观的变化 ,媒体的变化和政治发展的变化 ,政党体制也必然发生变化。在社会主义政治文明建设中 ,在政党制度建设问题上 ,执政党和参政党构成一个共同政治体系的两个方面 ,共产党处于多党合作的核心地位 ,起着领导作用 ,当代中国政党制度建设的关键在中国共产党     

The structure of political cognition: A new approach to its meaning and measurement

Recent studies of political beliefs have largely abandoned the traditional concern with their ideological content for a newfound interest in their cognitive content. This interest in shared cognition has shed new light onwhat people think about politics, but it has largely ignored the question ofhow people think about politics. This paper addresses one important dimension of that void by considering the structure of political cognition and, more specifically, how that structure varies across people. It uses a schematic approach to (1) develop a general unifying theory of the structure of political cognition; (2) suggest the political implications of different types of cognitive structure; and (3) develop an easily administered and construct-valid methodology for measuring the structure of political cognition. By way of illustration, this methodology is used to measure the structure of individuals' political cognitions about issues in their community.     

论社会转型期大学生科学政治信仰的重建

基于政治信仰在社会进步和人的自身发展中不可替代的作用,探讨大学生政治信仰危机的实质和根源,具有重要现实意义和学理意义。大学生政治信仰的确立必须发挥思想政治理论课的主渠道作用,增强信仰教育的有效性;创造良好的政治信仰教育的社会环境;积极开拓政治信仰教育的新方法。     

思想政治教学与青年人生格局的生成

人生格局是一个人的内化修养,一旦自然生成将会受益终生。要重视高中思想政治教学在青年学生人生格局生成中的基础性作用,引导青年学生以人生大格局的坚定性支撑起人生理想的崇高性、人生信念的坚定性、人生奋斗的持续性、职业规划的长远性。为达到此目的,就要务求思想政治教学的实效,教学素材选择方面实现从试题化到生活化,教学理念方面实现从"单打独斗"到"协同作战",思想政治课教师成长方面做到终身学习。     

经济体制与政治稳定形态的关系探析

马克思主义认为,经济基础决定上层建筑,有什么样的经济基础,就会出现什么样的维护这一经济基础的上层建筑.计划经济产生静态的政治稳定,市场经济要求动态的政治稳定.静态政治稳定南于其封闭性和停滞性,与当前中国丰十会发展的方向和目标相背离.动态的政治稳定是新时期中国惟一可以选择的政治稳定形态.     

民族区域自治制度在中国的形成和演进

从制度演进的角度来考察中国的民族区域自治,它从中国共产党处理国内民族问题的基本政策发展为一项国家制度,这项制度走过了从一个创制、构建到巩固和成熟的过程。在中国的历史上发挥了巨大的作用,调整并理顺了民族关系,维持了民族的团结和国家的统一,促进了少数民族地区的发展。但是,该制度本身还需要继续完善,而且制度环境又发生了许多新的变化,因此,发展和完善这项制度,仍然是一个值得深入研究的课题。     

苏联官僚特权制度的产生和影响

许多学者指出,苏联改革失败和解体的原因之一是其存在庞大的官僚特权集团。计划经济体制下,官僚成为了进行国家生产管理活动的主体。为了实现国家的经济增长和均衡,苏联中央需要将发展经济的动力传递到官僚集团中去。与直接监督的强制性激励手段相比,特权作为诱导性的激励手段,其交易费用远低于前者。然而,这一特权制度并不能真正使官僚产生促使经济增长和均衡的动力,相反,它还方便了官僚的欺骗行为。这一制度的后果并不是经济增长,而是经济的严重衰退和苏共执政基础的削弱。