The Clean Development Mechanism: Institutional breakthrough or institutional nightmare

The Clean Development Mechanism, defined in ArticleXII of the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, is a crucial instrument to enlist developing countries participation in emissions limitation, to reduce industrialized countries compliance costs, and to facilitate resource and technology transfers. However, the CDM contains perverse compliance incentives and is beset with problems of credit definition, monitoring, enforcement, and potentially high transactions costs. This paper defines some important design safeguards and suggests an alternative approach should the Kyoto Protocol eventually be renegotiated.     

Framing Trade‐offs: The Politics of Nuclear Power and Wind Energy in the Age of Global Climate Change

This article outlines recent debates over nuclear energy and wind farms in an age of growing concern about climate change. Proponents of these technologies have used “trade‐off” frames to promote these technologies in the face of current and potential opposition to them. This article examines the nature and limits of the trade‐off frames being used and their probability of success. We argue that using the language of trade‐offs is generally a suboptimal framing strategy: trade‐off frames remind the public of the costs associated with particular policies, and therefore play into the hands of policy opponents. However, policy advocates may turn to them when the costs of a technology are well known and are perceived as high. In such cases, trade‐off frames may help to justify controversial policy solutions. Like any frames, the trade‐off frames used in the debate over climate change solutions both illuminate and obscure the deeper issues involved in energy policy reform.     

廉洁政治建设视野下的纪检监察公共关系构建

构建纪检监察公共关系是纪检监察机关综合运用公共关系理论争取公众支持,扩大社会参与,接受群众监督,塑造自身良好形象的一种职能活动,也是保持党同人民群众血肉联系的创新之举,更是以反腐倡廉实际成效推动廉洁政治建设题中应有之义。在廉洁政治建设视野下构建纪检监察公共关系,需要建立健全反腐倡廉工作公开机制,营造崇廉尚洁的社会氛围;拓展创新反腐倡廉工作参与机制,搭建科学有效的平台体系;健全完善反腐倡廉工作监督机制,提升队伍建设的内外合力。同时,从健全组织体系、掌握工作原则、注重系统培养等方面着手,增强纪检监察工作的针对性和实效性,从而为做好新形势下纪检监察工作提供有力保障。     

Politics in a Cold Climate: The Conservative Decline in Scotland

An important feature over the last 30 years has been the increasing shortfall in the Conservative vote in Scotland compared with England. The Conservative Party, despite social structural disadvantages in terms of housing tenure and social class, did unusually well until the mid-1950s, particularly among Unionists and Protestants. After considering the historical and religious factors explaining earlier Conservative political strength, it is argued that two factors help to explain the changing politics of the state in Scotland: the establishment of Scotland as a separate unit of economic management in popular perception and the greater dependence on direct state involvement. The Scottish economic dimension has made Scotland an ideological category largely incompatible with Conservative English/British national rhetoric as employed by Mrs Thatcher.     

廉洁政治的内涵与价值指向

根据社会主义的本质属性和政治文明的基本要求,廉洁政治强调在中国特色社会主义理论指导下,遵循廉洁的基本价值理念,以廉明的政治制度为基础,以廉洁的政治管理为主线,以公职人员廉正的从政行为为保障,实现政治清明、政府清廉、干部清正。社会主义廉洁政治发展必须以推动社会先进生产力发展为根本目标,以促进政治制度廉洁为政治行为准则,以实现人的全面发展为核心价值取向,为社会主义政治文明的发展提供政治伦理价值目标与文化支撑。     

Technology Innovation as a Response to Climate Change: The Case of the Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation of Alberta

Innovation is the central element of climate change policy in many jurisdictions. Reduced to technology development and linked to market‐driven priorities, innovation accommodates the interests of large emitters in the energy sector and underpins a sustainable development discourse that denies ecological limits to economic growth. This study examines the use of innovation as a key component of climate change policy in the case of Alberta's Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation, utilizing a political economy approach to explain the drivers of government funding priorities. An analysis of this technology fund's investments over nine years, under two different governments, revealed that nearly half of the revenue has been used to subsidize R&D in the fossil fuels industry in the name of clean energy development, and that this priority has continued despite recent government commitments under the Paris CoP agreement. The carbon levy system that generates revenue for the fund has been unsuccessful in incentivizing facility reductions, pointing to the need for more stringent regulation. Innovation as a framework for transition to a post‐carbon economy is severely limited by its exclusion of the roles of social knowledge and citizen participation in envisaging and designing paths for change.     

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 Economics of Politics in Comparative Perspective Revisited: An Introduction

Political Behavior -     

地方政府职能转变的困局:一个强制性制度变迁的视角

政府职能转变合约的实施缺乏第三方承担,在第二方承担也缺乏力度的情况下,这个合约的实施主要依靠第一方--政府承担.转变政府职能实际上是中央政府主导的强制性制度变迁,制度接受者和制度决定者之间存在不同的效用函数,所以政府职能新制度无法通过行为自律在地方政府中得到充分实施;同时,中央政府作为第一方内部另一个主体,对地方政府职能转变的监管力度不够.这样,地方政府职能难以转变成为必然.     

Tradition and Change: Four People A Response to the Politics of Paradox

Helen Goodman, the Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland has responded to the Blue Labour Publication The Politics of Paradox, with Tradition and Change: Four People. Blue Labour's thesis is that a return to the ideas and practices prevalent at the foundation of the Labour Party—solidarity and reciprocity, can form the basis of significant social change. Helen views the thesis from the perspective of two communities—first the hill farmers of Teesdale, a paradigmatic community whose rights and way of life on the Commons have existed for over 600 years. Then she looks at the Durham Miners’ Gala and the needs of the former coalfields. Helen argues that in both cases, only government can take the national and international action they need. Secondly she looks at the stories of a mother and a priest. The importance of the welfare state in providing security and opportunities becomes clear. Helen confronts Blue Labour's criticism of women's independence and prays in aid the Archbishop of Canterbury on the need for a feminist analysis. She accuses Blue Labour of ‘drum and trumpet jingoism’.     

From Qualified Majority to Simple Majority: The Effects of the 1992 Change in the Finnish Constitution

This paper analyzes the consequences of the 1992 change in the voting rule in the Finnish Parliament. Before this reform, one third of all Parliament members could delay a law proposal for reconsideration by the Parliament. This rule was abolished in 1992 which meant that the Finnish Parliament finally adopted a simple majority rule to decide on new legislation. The empirical part of this article analyzes the effects of the reform on the parliamentary parties voting power. The voting power of the big parties increased compared to that of the small parties. However, the variation among smaller parties was greater. The biggest losers were medium size parties. Considering the government and the parliament as institutions, the emphasis clearly moved to the government. Considering parties in the government coalitions as a whole (adding up their share in the government and in the Parliament), the picture was quite clear. The opposition lost at least some of its voting power. This change was clearest in the case of the party government model in which the opposition lost its voting power completely.     

A Political Perspective on Contracting Out: The Politics of Good Times. Experiences from Danish Local Governments

Privatization has been on the political agenda for the last two decades. The literature points to two major explanations of privatization. One explanation is political-ideological, considering privatization to be a Liberal-Conservative strategy. Economic crisis or fiscal stress is the other main explanation of privatization. The two theses are investigated by evaluating the determinants of contracting out in Danish local governments. The analysis shows that fiscal stress is strongly, but inversely related to contracting out, while Liberal-Conservative political leadership is not associated with higher levels of contracting out than Social Democratic governance. Thus, the richer a local government becomes, the more it contracts out. Although party politics is not decisive for contracting out, the motivation seems to be political rather than economical. Specifically, it is argued that in a strongly decentralized public sector with influential public employees, contracting out is possible in good times when revenue and public expenditure are easier to increase, which reduces public employee resistance to contracting out.     

The Diffusion of Responsibility: An Alternative Perspective for National Policy Politics in the US

This article proposes a diffusion of responsibility perspective in analyzing post–World War II politics in the United States. Many analysts test the American system by a responsible party perspective, proposing reforms that will orient the system toward the goals of that model. Divided government has characterized much of the period since 1945 and identifiable (and wholly constitutional) politics has accompanied that development. The diffusion of responsibility alternative is characterized by a separated presidency, an expansive Congress, competition between the branches for shared power, and, absent a crisis, a tendency toward perpetuation.     

Combating Climate Change in the UK: Challenges and Obstacles1

There is a curious disjunction between the Labour Government's international actions and its domestic policy. Although Tony Blair did much to promote the climate change agenda on the international stage, domestically, with carbon emissions rising again, the Government will fail to meet its target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2010. This article examines the weaknesses in the Labour Government's domestic record and assesses the significance of the recent transformation of climate change politics. Several obstacles to the design and delivery of more effective policies are identified, which can be categorised as either problems of ‘environmental politics’ or ‘environmental governance’. It is argued that the recent politicisation of climate change has overcome some of these obstacles ‐ albeit temporarily ‐ but whether the pressure for further policy measures can be sustained, with a long‐term impact on environmental governance, remains uncertain.