Who Promotes Protection? Economic and Electoral Influences on Trade-Related Position Taking in the Senate

Existing studies of Congressional behavior devote little attention to understanding legislators' trade-related positions outside the context of roll call votes. Using a new dataset on bill sponsorship that spans 15 Congresses, the author explores the factors that affect a senator's propensity to introduce protectionist trade bills, including state-level manufacturing characteristics, economic cycles, and electoral vulnerability. The results provide support for a number of the prominent economic-based explanations for trade policy preferences, including the Heckscher-Ohlin and Ricardo-Viner models, and also draw attention to several additional economic and political influences on policy outcomes. Beyond trade politics, these findings have implications for the expanding body of research on bill sponsorship as well as the literature on the role of Congress in U.S. foreign policymaking.     

当代中国政治安全的现实逻辑和终极价值

在当代中国国家安全体系中,政治安全是国家安全的根本与保障。中国特色社会主义的政党制度、国家政权、国家制度的同构性以及中国共产党领导一切的一体性决定政治安全(政权安全)之根本地位。中共十八大以来,以习近平为核心的党中央将维护政权安全作为政治安全的核心问题和首要问题,而政权安全的实质是中国共产党的执政安全。执政安全的标准就是确保中国共产党的领导地位和执政地位绝对巩固。中国共产党的执政地位不仅是历史的选择,更来源于为人民谋幸福而集聚起的民心民意,执政安全决定于人民安全,即保障全体人民当家做主的政治权利不被侵蚀和破坏。因此,从根本上讲,当代中国政治安全的终极问题就是中华人民共和国全体国民政治权利的安全。它不仅关系到国家的长治久安,更与中华民族的复兴和人民的福祉休戚相关。     

Europe's Role in the United Nations

Two years after the popular mobilisations in Egypt and Tunisia of early 2011, post-uprising authorities, including the Islamist parties that came to power, have failed to deliver on the demands for social justice that triggered those protests. They have responded to past and present socio-economic challenges by adopting measures that are in clear continuity with previous regimes and lacking any coherent long-term vision of economic reform. Indeed, albeit with differences between the two countries, post-uprising authorities, lacking experience and competence, have not fully broken with the old system in reconfiguring power relations within and outside state institutions and have continued to adopt a top-down approach to economic decision-making.     

The building of the democratic tradition in South Africa's trade unions after 1973

This article traces the emergence of the democratic union tradition in the trade union movement that emerged in the wake of the 1973 strikes in South Africa. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that attributes the emergence of this tradition solely to a generation of young white union activists and labour-supporting intellectuals, the article argues that this tradition owes its origins to a multiplicity of sources. The article emphasises the social character of trade unions and how they bear the imprint of the historical and cultural heritage and social experiences of their members and leading activists. Thus the article challenges the notion that a social group enters into new associational forms as a tabula rasa. Instead, it claims that the building of the democratic union tradition in South Africa is not just an outcome of intellectual influences but significantly was shaped by the workers' ‘lived experiences’.     

德国综合安全观：理论缘起、历史演进与实践评估

德国首份《国家安全战略》以“综合安全”为要义,具有理论逻辑和历史脉络可循。德国综合安全观兴起于冷战后,其内在逻辑是对欧洲主义安全观的继承性发展,聚焦两极秩序瓦解后的经济与社会秩序稳定以及应对域外冲突,注重非传统安全,安全参与者包含国家与非国家行为体。克里米亚危机后,传统军事威胁回归欧陆,德国综合安全观“防御性”与“韧性”融合并重。俄乌冲突冲击欧洲安全秩序,德国综合安全观愈发重视国家与联盟防御,并通过“多元化”与“联盟政治”等手段推进“去风险”策略,增强经济与社会韧性,同时也呈现出泛安全化、价值观化与权力政治的特质,其影响力辐射至“印太”地区与对华政策上。然而,德国综合安全政策实践仍面临诸多挑战。防御上,德国提升国防的政治承诺与其军事资源尚不匹配。韧性上,德国“去风险”策略受国际权力对比变化、中国市场红利、德国政界与商界意见的异质性以及德国国内经济成本的制约。为此,中国应客观看待德国安全政策转型的影响。     

Foreign Policy and the Ideology of Post-ideology: The Case of Matteo Renzi’s Partito Democratico

The post-communist Italian Left has experienced a long phase of ideational misalignment between ideas placed at different levels, as a qualified discursive institutionalist approach demonstrates. Background public philosophies have often clashed with post-communist political ideology, while foreign policy programmes have often contradicted specific policies. Under the leadership of Matteo Renzi, however, the PD is now experiencing a moment of remarkable ideational consistency. Rather than being founded on entirely new premises, this new consensus folds old elements into new ones and shows all the defining traits of post-ideology. Yet, by espousing post-ideology, Renzi is making an ultimately ideological move whose limitations may soon start to show.     

The Social Construction of Policy Reform: Economists and Trade Liberalization Around the World

We argue that the global spread of ideas contributes to trade liberalization. Building on insights from a rich case-based literature, we suggest an explicit mechanism of trade policy diffusion: US-trained Ph.D. economists, who share a common belief in the benefits of free trade, and who operate with varying degrees of political influence around the world. We offer the first cross-national test of the impact of economists on trade liberalization using a unique dataset recording the country of residence of all 6,493 foreign-based, US-trained American Economic Association (AEA) members over the period 1981–1997. Specifically, we measure the influence of economists on the timing and extent of trade liberalization. First, we endogenize the date of trade liberalization using hazard and probit models. Controlling for alternative diffusion mechanisms and other confounding variables, our results suggest that economists significantly speed up the reform process. Second, we find that countries with greater numbers of economists are more open to trade at the end of the period. All of our results are robust to an instrumental variables strategy that employs the number of Fulbright grants allocated by the United States as an instrument for the number of US-trained economists.