佛教传媒的台湾生存

谁能大量购买大众媒体的篇幅和节目时段,作为本身道场弘法宣传之用,通常也意味着,谁就能藉此快速窜升为台湾佛教界的大师。政商名流和名僧之间,经常互壮声势,一方面可拉拢相关的信众支持,一方面则藉此增加曝光率和提升社会的知名度。     

企业文化是企业生存和发展的源泉

二十世纪后期,出现了世界范围的文化热。企业文化也就是在这个大的背景下产生和发展的。一个国家,一个民族,一个地区在长期社会的历史过程中创造了独特的精神财富和物质财富,形成了自己独特的文化,被称之为社会文     

传媒、政府、政党--对近现代欧美国家传媒与政府关系之演进的历史考察

政治离不开传媒.自国家形成之日起,各色施政纲领、法律规章均借传媒得以号令四方,政府权威借此得以彰显.16世纪以来,传媒在政治中的作用愈益出色.作为近现代大众传播发祥地的英、美、法、德等国,其传媒的发展史,也是各国相应时期政治斗争的重要透视空.如何促成传媒与政府的良性互动,这正是本文在追述欧美主要国家传媒与政府关系之演进的历史时思考的问题.     

西方小规模政党的生存现状与成功条件:以德国为例

在西方多党制下,小规模政党尽管影响力不及大党,但为整个政党体制提供了必不可少的民主合法性与民主监督的功能,持久改变着政治生态。在德国,尽管小规模政党数量众多,但只有为数不多的政党能够在激烈的竞争中脱颖而出,甚至发展成为地位稳固的政党。究其成功要素,既有法律与政治制度等框架条件,也有政党在财政来源、组织结构、内部意志形成、政治纲领和议题设置、民意动员等多方面的能力,还有选民需求和社会环境的变化。     

马克思恩格斯关于无产阶级政党纪律的重要论述

马克思、恩格斯在建立和领导共产主义同盟、第一国际、第二国际以及指导欧洲各国无产阶级政党革命斗争的过程中,围绕什么是无产阶级政党纪律以及无产阶级政党为什么和如何加强党的纪律建设提出一系列重要论断。包括:无产阶级政党的纪律是建立在自觉基础上的习惯的团结一致;严格的党内纪律是建立集中统一的无产阶级政党的保证;无产阶级政党必须绝对保持党的纪律,否则将一事无成;重视无产阶级政党纪律的制定,强调党的纪律必须得到严格执行,党内所有成员必须一律平等地遵守党的纪律等。     

欧洲极右政党的发展

进入21世纪以来,欧洲政党政治的一个突出特点是极右翼政党的力量不断壮大。欧债危机爆发后,欧洲极右政党势头进一步上升,极右政党在选举中赢得相当比例选票,左右选情,威胁主流政党的情景呈现扩散和常态化趋势。不过,就目前状况而言,极右政党还受到选举制度、执政转型和国际舆论的制约,直接威胁欧洲政局稳定的危险前景还难以出现。     

欧洲右翼民粹政党的发展条件分析——以奥地利自由党为例

奥地利自由党曾拥有两届执政经验,目前是奥地利国民议会最大的在野党。在2016年的奥地利总统大选中,该党候选人诺贝特·霍费尔的强势表现再次说明了这一右翼民粹政党在奥地利政坛中的实力和影响力。卡斯·穆德的政党发展理论将右翼民粹政党崛起归因为供给侧因素和需求侧因素。借用这一理论框架,回溯奥地利自由党的发展历史,可以解释该党的强势表现不仅是全球黑天鹅现象的一个缩影,更是植根于奥地利的民族认同、政治文化和政治体制等一系列深刻的社会背景中,并与该党多年以来的发展之道密不可分。     

政党的转型和现代化

政党自从产生以来 ,就处在不断变革的过程中以适应环境变化的需要。社会主义国家的政党也经历了或正在经历着从革命党向执政党转型的过程。政党本身特别是执政党 ,必须与时俱进 ,通过政党的改革适时进行转型和现代化 ,才能保持生机和活力 ,才能长期存续下去     

重要的是把党内民主真正发展起来

作为一个有着7000多万党员的大党,中共对自己可能的蜕变和腐败一直是高度警惕的。为防范这种蜕变和腐败,采取的手段之一就是加强教育和进行整党。改革前不用说,改革后也是每隔几年在全党发起一次整党学习。     

小是重要的

“立乎其大,则其小者不可夺也。”这是老子的一句名言。“大河有水小河满”,在中国则是几乎人人皆知的一句口头禅。中国人长于宏观思维,概括总结提升拔高能力强,凡事均能大处着眼,喜欢谈大原则,大思路,大问题,大理论,气势宏伟,高屋建瓴。对于平凡小事,世俗小节这类等而下之的琐碎具     

Suicide and the media. Part II: Portrayal in fictional media

The association between the portrayal of suicide in fictional media and actual suicide has been debated since 1774, when it was asserted that Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther had led people to take their own lives. Since that time, a plethora of studies considering the association has been conducted. This review considered 34 studies examining the impact of fictional portrayal of suicide (in film and television, music, and plays) on actual suicidal behavior. It asked the question: "Is there any association, and if so, can it be considered causal?" Using strict criteria to establish causality, we found that the evidence was more equivocal than was the case for nonfictional reporting.     

Suicide and the media. Part I: Reportage in nonfictional media

Numerous studies have considered the association between media reporting and portrayal of suicide and actual suicidal behavior or ideation. This review considered 42 studies that have examined the nonfiction media (newspapers, television, and books). Consideration was given to the extent to which inferences could be made about the relationship between portrayal of suicide in the given media and actual suicidal behavior in terms of: the strength of its association; and the extent to which it could be considered causal. The review demonstrated that there is an association between nonfictional media portrayal of suicide and actual suicide. The association satisfies sufficient of the criteria of consistency, strength, temporality, specificity and coherence for it to be deemed causal.     

Crises and unpredictability in developing countries

Developing countries have suffered most of the financial crises in the context of the process of economic and financial globalisation. Both current and previous crises have revealed that unpredictability is a feature common to all the episodes which occurred during the process of globalisation. Although certain alarms went off, any of those external financial crises were actually predicted by the advanced methods in use for prediction and country risk analysis. Taking into consideration the information above, the aim of this paper is to check the ability to foresee external financial crises in developing countries of both the country risk index published by Euromoney and the Credit Ratings variable included therein. We have focused on the external financial crises that took place between 1992 and 2011, that is, in a full globalisation era. The results are negative. It appears that neither the index nor the sovereign ratings are able to reflect early enough the vulnerabilities that arise previously to the setting off the crisis episodes. This leads us to conclude that the existing models of country risk have limits. Thus, it would necessary to develop new instruments to measure this risk, considering uncertainty as an essential feature of the current economic and financial environment.     

New media and governance in conflict

The role of new media in shaping the interactions of formal and informal leaders with their audiences is frequently misunderstood and often narrowly focussed on electoral processes and political competition. By weaving together strands of scholarship on political communication and political settlement while engaging with concepts of hybrid governance and leadership more prevalent in the African studies literature, this article takes a different, wider focus. We attempt to knit a framework that challenges normative assumptions on institutional communicative practices and considers the role of power, leadership and communications in both exacerbating and mitigating violent conflict in emerging and consolidating democracies. By bringing together disparate strands of scholarship that are rarely in dialogue, we question a characterisation that contrasts vertical mainstream media with more horizontal and inclusive social media, arguing that a more nuanced view of the political significance of these spaces is required, one that highlights their interplay and blurs the boundaries between online and offline. In doing so, the article places power at the centre of analysis to examine how entrenched relations of patronage can be left unscathed, transformed or even reinforced by networked forms of communication.     

Privatisation and economic growth in developing countries

This article re-examines the relation between privatisation and economic growth. Previous studies that have attempted to measure this relationship have concluded that privatisation has had a sizeable positive effect on economic growth. Our study uses data for 63 developing countries over the time period 1988–97. It uses the framework of an extreme-bounds analysis (EBA) to conduct a cross-country growth regression analysis. Our findings contradict earlier results, but reaffirm the view that effective competition and its regulation may need to accompany privatisation to make a positive impact on economic growth.     

Mass media, cultural attitudes, and suicide. Results of an international comparative study

Many studies indicate that the suicidal behavior in a society is affected by the suicide stories publicized. Cultural valuations appear in the way media present self-destruction. The reflection of sociocultural attitudes toward suicide can be observed and analyzed in these texts. In this research, reports about suicide (n = 2203) in the years from 1981 and 1991 taken from daily newspapers were gathered--three central and regional papers in each country. A content analysis was performed of the suicide reports in Hungary (n = 244), Japan (n = 684), the United States (n = 265), Germany (former West n = 458, former East n = 60), Austria (n = 405), and Finland (n = 81), on the basis of the following variables: mentioning of the name, personal data, prominence of the suicidal person, qualification of the suicide, methods, motives, positive or negative consequences, alternatives, and the expression(s) used to refer to the act. After a coding process, an analysis was conducted as to whether any significant differences existed in the rate of the several characteristics in the countries from the point of view of the possible imitation-identification and of the cultural differences are the most important findings interpreted.     

Privatization in developing countries: ideal and reality

In both developed and developing countries, governments finance, produce, and distribute various goods and services. In recent years, the range of goods provided by government has extended widely, covering many goods which do not meet the purist's definition of “public” goods. As the size of the public sector has increased steadily there has been a growing concern about the effectiveness of the public sector's performance as producer. Critics of this rapid growth argue that the public provision of certain goods is inefficient and have proposed that the private sector replace many current public sector activities, that is, that services be privatized. Since Ronald Reagan took office greater privatization efforts have been pursued in the United States. Paralleling this trend has been a strong endorsement by international and bilateral donor agencies for heavier reliance on the private sector in developing countries.

However, the political, institutional, and economic environments of developing nations are markedly different from those of developed countries. It is not clear that the theories and empirical evidence purported to justify privatization in developed countries are applicable to developing countries.

In this paper we present a study of privatization using the case of Honduras. We examine the policy shift from “direct administration” to “contracting out” for three construction activities: urban upgrading for housing projects, rural primary schools, and rural roads. The purpose of our study is threefold. First, we test key hypotheses pertaining to the effectiveness of privatization, focusing on three aspects: cost, time, and quality. Second, we identify major factors which affect the performance of this privatization approach. Third, we document the impact of privatization as it influences the political and institutional settings of Honduras. Our main finding is that contracting out in Honduras has not led to the common expectations of its proponents because of institutional barriers and limited competitiveness in the market. These findings suggest that privatization can not produce goods and services efficiently without substantial reform in the market and regulatory procedures. Policy makers also need to consider carefully multiple objectives at the national level in making decisions about privatization.