Debt,democratization, and development in Latin America: How policy can affect global warming

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis conjectures a nonlinear relationship between pollution and economic growth, such that pollution per capita initially increases as countries economically develop, but then reaches a maximum point before ultimately declining. Much of the EKC literature has focused on testing this basic hypothesis and, in studies that find evidence of an EKC, estimating the “turning point” level of development at which the per capita pollution‐growth relationship changes sign. This approach has not emphasized the policy relevance of specification issues or the potential role of policy variables. This research explores a modified EKC specification which conditions the pollution‐growth relationship on a country's level of debt and degree of democratization. These variables turn out to be significant, implying that different political and economic contexts can shift EKCs and their turning points. These findings suggest that policies to relieve debt burdens and institute political reform, in addition to their usual justifications, also could be used as a strategy to reduce carbon emissions from developing countries. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

论公共政策执行主体的优化问题

现阶段我国公共政策执行暴露出诸多弊端 ,已难以适应市场经济体制发展的需要 ,作为公共政策执行主体的人 ,其政治态度、职业技能、利益需要和行为习惯等都对政策的有效执行产生影响。为此 ,必须重视建立公共政策执行主体的优化机制 ,通过提升人的政治社会化水平来提高政策执行者的综合素质 ,建立公共政策执行主体责任制 ,扩大公共政策执行主体 ,促使公共政策的有效执行。     

How to organize secondary capital city regions: Institutional drivers of locational policy coordination

We analyze locational policy coordination in the metropolitan regions of secondary capital cities. Secondary capital cities—defined as capitals that are not the primary economic city of their nation states—serve as the political center of their nation states; however, they must simultaneously explore new ways to develop their own regional economies. Locational policies, and their regional coordination, aim to strengthen the economic competitiveness of metropolitan regions. Our comparison of the metropolitan regions of Bern, Ottawa–Gatineau, The Hague, and Washington, D.C., reveals that vertical institutional fragmentation, together with high local tax autonomy, create an unlevel playing field, which prompts jurisdictions to behave fiercely in regional tax competition. These findings are troubling for secondary capital cities given their propensity to be located in fragmented metropolitan regions and the capital city‐specific local tax autonomy constraints imposed on them.     

Not a Curse at All: Why Middle Eastern Oil States Fail and How it can be Prevented

Western scholarship has often noted that oil states in the Middle East are affected by the ‘resource curse’. Thus, such states are to eventually fail due to their plundering of resources and their neglect of the social contract with their citizens. However, this is not the case, as oil states are neither failed states, nor fully democratic. They hover in a middle ground in which they assure security through coercion, but lack representation and legitimacy. Due to the events of the Arab Spring, a pragmatic, insightful and comprehensive review of oil states in the region is necessary. Although oil states in the region thus far have remained stable, change can be expected in the future. How will oil states deal with the pressures of a more demanding society and an ever-challenging economic atmosphere? Furthermore, what can history teach us so that state failure can be averted?     

Toward a stakeholder-based policy process: An application of the social marketing perspective to environmental policy development

This article suggests that the application of social marketing principles to the public policy process can facilitate the efforts of governmental policy-makers and non-governmental stakeholders to articulate their policy desires and to encourage the adoption and acceptance of particular environmental policies. A conceptual framework is presented, emphasizing both the influence of stakeholders on environmental policy development and the education of stakeholders as to the potential effects of the policy. The purpose of such a conceptualization is to show how social marketing principles can be applied to the public policy process in order to enhance the likelihood of successful policy development and implementation.     

Assigning priority to environmental policy interventions in a heterogeneous world

Failure to consider costs as well as benefits is common in many policy initiatives and analyses, particularly in the environmental arena. Economists and other policy scientists have demonstrated that integrating both cost and benefit information explicitly into the policy process can be vital to ensuring that scarce funds go as far as they can toward achieving policy objectives. The costs of acquiring and analyzing such information, however, can be substantial. The objective of this paper is to help policy analysts and practitioners identify the conditions under which integrating cost and benefit information is likely to be vital to effective decisionmaking, and the conditions under which failing to use both cost and benefit data would result in little, if any, loss in efficiency. These points are illustrated through a conceptual discussion and an empirical analysis of a conservation initiative in the United States. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

How to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters: Disaggregating data from voting advice applications versus modeling survey responses

Valid and reliable estimates of the policy preferences of political parties' supporters are essential for the study of political representation. However, such estimates are not directly available from standard surveys of public opinion, which are typically representative by design only at the national level and rarely ask questions about public support for specific policies. In this article, we explore the possibility to use data from voting advice applications (VAA) to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters. To do that, first, we identify 10 questions on preferences towards issues of public policy that were asked around the same time and with similar wording in traditional surveys of public opinion and in VAAs fielded in Germany and in the Netherlands. Then we compare the VAA data disaggregated by political affiliation of the respondents to the survey data adjusted via multilevel regression modeling with poststratification (MRP). We find strong positive correlations between the estimates derived from both methods, especially after weighting the VAA data. Yet, point estimates are not always very close, and the match is sensitive to the treatment of neutral and ‘don't know’ answers. Overall, our results bode well for the validity of using VAA data in empirical research on political representation.     

关于树立正确执政理念的思考

执政理念是执政主体对其执政活动的理性认识和价值取向。执政理念决定一个政党能否对自身执政权力形成正确的认识和执政行为的价值取向。执政理念的内容包括对权力来源和本质的认识及其观念,对权力如何行使和行使权力的价值指向的认识及其观念,对执政权力监督的认识及其观念三个基本要素。在坚持正确的执政理念的实践过程中需要克服认识上的各种偏差和缺陷,切实践行执政为民的执政理念。     

How to build a time machine for public affairs executives

Temporal factors such as time and timing are so self‐evident in public affairs that they are rarely mentioned and even less frequently researched. Time is seen as the independent variable—a scaffold that underpins a calendar of communication events, legislative and regulatory processes, or issue lifecycles. However, time is a more complex and essential variable to contemplate than public affairs (and most other) executives give it credit for. This paper explores 16 unique ways to think about time, applying those dimensions to the Amazon HQ2 (second headquarters) selection process to illustrate how public affairs executives could use them to illuminate aspects of strategy and behavior they might otherwise not consider. Strategically, understanding interconnected dimensions of time improves clarity in the choice‐making process, allowing public affairs executives to exploit ideal timing as they execute their strategies.     

建构警方传媒监督的良性运作机制探析

警方传媒监督良性运作机制就是警方与传媒的良性互动机制,使各自积极的社会功效在合作过程中得以顺利实现并充分补强,将两者之间因分歧和冲突而产生的负面影响降至最低限度,包括以下两个方面:(一)规范传媒机构和传媒监督,包括培养行业自律,坚持“政治家办报方针”;明确传媒监督的重点;把握传媒监督工作的策略;(二)建立健全公安新闻保护机制,包括严格队伍管理和坚持正面主动的舆论导向;建立快速、有效的应对舆论监督的反应机制;建立被传媒机构侵害的救济机制;普遍建立健全新闻发言人制度。