Redefining goals and images

He directs longitudinal studies designed to test general models of deviant adaptations to stress. A past editor of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior,his recent publications include “Self-Rejection and the Explanation of Deviance,” “Escalation of Marijuana Use,” and “The Sociological Study of AIDS”; as well as Social Psychology of Self-Referent Behavior, Patterns of Juvenile Delinquency,and Psychosocial Stress.     

On social position and political achievement

He is author and coauthor of more than 70 books and 150 articles including Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War; Three Centuries of Social Mobility in America;and “Social Structure and Politics in American History” in the 1982 American Historical Review.     

The Logic of Comparative Politics and the Development of Political Science in China

This article attempts to discuss the debate about “indigenizing political science in China” from the logic of comparative politics. The author believes that the phrase “indigenizing political science in China” is misleading at best and destructive to political science development in China at worst. The logic of comparative politics is the same as other comparative social sciences: namely, it is the process of replacing proper names and treating tempo and spatial factors as potential variables contributing to the explanation of political phenomena. As social scientists, we should not be content in using “local Chinese conditions” or “special Chinese cultural factors” to explain political behavior and phenomena in China. Instead, we should decompose the “special Chinese conditions” and “cultural factors” for the deeper meaning of these conditions and factors so that we can conceptualize and elevate these conditions and factors to a theoretical level. In short, the author favors making political science study in China more scientific and argues that the future of political science studies in China lies in replacing the proper name “China” or “Chinese”.     

Restructuring the system

His publications include “Instructional, Management, and Social Conditions in Effective Schools” in A. Odden and L.D. Webb’s School Finance and School Improvementas well as articles on designing state assessment systems and state boards in an era of reform.     

Ideology, Telos, and the “Communist Vanguard” from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao

This work discusses why Marxist vanguard parties require ideology in their struggle to gain and maintain political power. Despite being considered theoretically inconsistent with classical Marxism and western vernacular, I chart etymologically how “ideology” came to China and proliferated during the Mao era as a positively framed term via, in all likelihood, Japanese renderings of Leninism. After discussing ideological challenges under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, I explore whether Hu Jintao’s scientific development and harmony concepts might be understood as ideological campaigns which—by synthesizing Maoist and Dengist approaches to ideology—effectively address what otherwise be referred to as the Party’s telos problem, and thus resolve in part the threat to the Party’s vanguard claim.

Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom,Let One Hundred Thoughts Contend: Political Science with Chinese Characteristics

The development of Chinese political science was not a relatively neat and tidy event. It was profoundly impacted by two revolutions, war, civil war, and political turmoil throughout most of the 20th Century. In the first three decades of New China, political science suffered from both ideological rigidity and political suspicion. With the heralding of Reform and Opening-up, Chinese political science has experienced a renaissance, influenced as much by the concept of indigenization (ben tu hua) as Western ideas. Much like its American counterpart, Chinese political science is now experiencing a healthy debate about the primacy of the discipline’s contending intellectual influences and traditions, as well as its core functions and future direction. The on-going debate suggests that Chinese political science is developing, in the words of Deng Zhenglai, “its own plurality of methodological approaches to the study of politics”. This article examines the rise and growth of contemporary Chinese political science, with particular emphasis devoted to the influence that a burgeoning political science with “Chinese Characteristics” will have on the discipline both within and outside China.     

Hu Jintao and the CCP’s ideology: A historical perspective

The role of ideology in Chinese politics has experienced dramatic changes in the past six decades. Mao Zedong had tremendous power over the political institutions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During the Cultural Revolution, he mobilized the masses against the Party’s institutions in the name of Mao Zedong Thought. Deng Xiaoping significantly downplayed the role of ideology in politics by trying to avoid theoretical debates. Jiang Zemin invented a new thought, “Three Represents,” yet the thought was detached from his name when it was enshrined in the CCP Constitution. Most recently, as a result of the political succession at the Sixteenth National Congress of the CCP, Jiang is no longer the most authoritative interpreter of the thought. Now it is Hu Jintao, new General Secretary of the CCP, who has become the official interpreter of the thought. He offered a new interpretation in his July 1^st speech on the “Three Represents” in 2003. It seems that ideology is no longer a personal trademark. It has become an asset of the Party and been institutionalized under Hu Jintao because Hu has become the legitimate interpreter of the Party’s ideology as the General Secretary of the Party. He will be the inaugural Joe and Teresa Long Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas in the Spring Semester of 2005. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He is the author ofChinese Provincial Leaders: Economic Performance and Political Mobility since 1949 (Sharpe, 2002). The author wishes to thank three anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the earlier drafts of this article, Stephine Corso, Nancy Hearst, and Fong Ruey-Jay for their research assistance, and Jessica Loon and Stephine Corso for their editorial assistance.     

Unilateral jurisdiction: Universal jurisdiction <Emphasis Type="Italic">à l’Américaine</Emphasis> in the age of post-realist power

Conclusion The United States is using the theme of rights to build its unilateralism. In order to transform this unilateralism into a convincing universalism, it needs to reinforce its “soft power,” appeal to its partners and convince them of the necessity of its initiatives. Aggressive or offensive rights and crude unilateral military interventions are dangerous per se; they might also endanger American power in the long run. Culturally, this challenge is rooted in America’s origins and in its enthusiastic desire to reform the world. In that respect, the shaping of a so-called “world community,” America is challenging continental Europe and its hierarchical universal power rooted in Catholic verticality. On the contrary, the U.S. conception of power is based on a horizontal dynamic, inspired by the structure of the reformation movement. American coercive rights are defying a universal powerless law; Luther is certainly taking its revenge against Rome. Indeed, as for now, America’s universal competence turns out to be more effective than the ICC. However, if the United States does not take into account its own aspirations to define universal norms, it will be more and more difficult for the United States to justify the necessity of its military decisions. any step back to crude realism could be a fatal regression. It will be a mistake for the pursuit of America’s own interests; it would also most probably endanger the stability of the international system, as it would foster rivalries and hostile reactions.     

Family planning and world health

She is coauthor of the 1987 and 1988 editions of State of the World;and author or coauthor of several Worldwatch papers, including: “Our Demographically Divided World” and “The Future of Urbanization.”     

To Build A “Harmonious World”: China’s Soft Power Wielding in the Global South

This study attempts to answer a new but important question in China’s foreign policy— how Beijing has wielded its soft power to construct its ideal of international order in the age of China’s rise. Before empirical analyses, this study tries to set up a conceptual framework on the relations between the idea of “harmonious world” and China’s soft power wielding in its rising process. Within this framework, this study examines a rising China’s foreign policies towards three targeted regions in the global south—Africa, East Asia, and Latin America. On the one hand, due to Beijing’s carefully-designed and soft power-based foreign policies, the global south has become an increasingly harmonious environment for Beijing to cultivate a favorable national image, exert its political influence on regional affairs, benefit its own domestic economic developments, etc. On the other hand, some problems such as the so-called “China’s New Colonialism” and the increased vigilance from the other powers have already began to challenge Beijing’s harmony in those regions. Sheng Ding is assistant professor of political science at Bloomsburg University. He received both his masters and doctoral degrees from Rutgers. His research interests include soft power in international relations; transnational identity in globalization; information technology and world politics; politics in Pacific Asia; Chinese politics and foreign policy; U.S.-China relations, etc. His research articles have been published by Pacific Affairs, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics and East Asia: An International Quarterly. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on the draft of the paper.     

When Education Research Matters

The tangled relationship between education research and policy has received little serious scrutiny, even as paeans to “scientifically based research” and “evidence-based practice” have become a staple of education policymaking in recent years. For all the attention devoted to the 5-year-old Institute of Education Sciences, to No Child Left Behind’s call for “scientifically based research,” to professional interest in data-driven decision-making, and to the refinement of sophisticated analytic tools, little effort has gone into understanding how, when, or why research affects education policy. Instead, most discussion has focused on how to identify “best practices” or “scientifically based” methods and how to encourage classroom educators to use research findings. In this article, based on the new volume, When Research Matters: How Scholarship Influences Education Policy, Frederick M. Hess examines these questions.

Revisiting Lasswell

This article continues the line of argument and historical interpretation we offered in “The Policy Scientist of Democracy: The Discipline of Harold D. Lasswell” by way of a response to Ronald Brunner’s “The Policy Scientist of Democracy Revisited.” Problems regarding Lasswell’s capacious vision of the policy scientist and vagaries surrounding “democracy,” do not diminish the importance of the questions Lasswell asked and left as his legacy to the discipline of political science. We here supply further evidence for our historical interpretation of Lasswell and sketch what sort of “policy scientist of democracy” fits our times and the current state of the discipline of political science.     

Human Rights Enjoyment in Theory and Activism

Despite being a seemingly straightforward moral concept (that all humans have certain rights by virtue of their humanity), human rights is a contested concept in theory and practice. Theorists debate (among other things) the meaning of “rights,” the priority of rights, whether collective rights are universal, the foundations of rights, and whether there are universal human rights at all. These debates are of relatively greater interest to theorists; however, a given meaning of “human rights” implies a corresponding theory of change and through that can be an important guide to the practice of human rights activists and their funders. In practice, any organization can describe their work as “rights based.” This article clarifies the practices of human rights activists and their funders that are consistent with a theory of human rights as (1) universal, (2) interdependent across groups and categories of people, (3) indivisible across issue areas and claims, and (4) measured by the enjoyment of rights.     

Are There Universal Collective Rights?

The first part of the paper focuses on the current debate over the universality of human rights. After conceptually distinguishing between different types of universality, it employs Sen’s definition that the claim of a universal value is the one that people anywhere may have reason to see as valuable. When applied to human rights, this standard implies “thin” (relative, contingent) universality, which might be operationally worked-out as in Donnelly’s three-tiered scheme of concepts–conceptions–implementations. The second part is devoted to collective rights, which have recently become a new topic of the human rights debate. This part provides the basis of political–philosophical justification and legal–theoretical conceptualization of collective rights, as rights directly vested in collective entities. The third part dwells on the problem of universality of collective rights. It differentiates between the three main collective entities in international law—peoples, minorities, and indigenous peoples—and investigates whether certain rights vested in these collectives might, according to Sen’s standard, acquire the status of the universal ones. After determining that some rights are, in principle, plausible candidates for such a status in international law, this paper concludes by taking notice of a number of the open issues that still need to be settled, primarily by the cooperative endeavor of international legal scholars and legal theorists.     

Public Opinion and Collective Obligations

This article attempts to identify the general principles that underlie public reasoning about collective obligations and that help explain when political parties can create new obligations or defend existing ones. I use these principles to President Clinton’s unsuccessful attempt to create government health-care plan and attempts by President Bush to privatize Social Security. The success of a party in selling – or defeating – an obligation depends upon what people believe about the competence and capacity of government and the value of autonomy – choices made by each citizen; whether people perceive the obligation as providing floors or establishing ceilings by limiting choice or otherwise restricting opportunities for the better-off; and whether the program is more like insurance or more like welfare. A party’s ability to maintain credibility with voters also depends upon whether party leaders can suppress issues that threaten intra-party elite pacts. When attempts to suppress “taboo” issues like “stem cells” or “black crime” fail, the party loses credibility with its voters and attempts to defend or sell obligations fail.

The global promotion of gender equality—A propaganda approach

This paper proposes a new way of measuring progress in international politics, an approach that focuses on the symbolic and ideological work of international organizations. Although such a strategy is not entirely new to the study of International Relations, it has not been a common, accessible way of assessing how well international organizations work to effect change. The more famous methods have been legalistic—investigations of how international organizations have created new international law in the issue-areas under investigation¹—and bureaucratic—studies of how international organizations create machinery to deal with the problems². But in a world where domestic and international discourse is more mediated than ever before by television, radio, the Internet, newspapers, and other means of mass communication, the argument here is that propaganda is a third arena that must be taken into account when exploring the work of international organizations. The international organization in question here is the United Nations, and the issue-area examined is gender equality, a topic that is also variously described as “women's rights,” “women's issues”, or the “women's movement”. The paper explains first why the topic of the UN and women's rights is important, I then examine the propaganda role of the UN in the struggle for gender equality, and the paper concludes with a critical analysis of the UN's propaganda work in relation to this issue.     

China’s Harmonious World: Beyond Cultural Interpretations

A culture “specter” is haunting the ongoing discourse regarding China’s declared policy of “peaceful rise” for a “harmonious world.” While some Western scholars “cherry-pick” “evidence” of China’s aggressiveness from Confucius legacies, the same cultural heritage is heavily tapped by many Chinese scholars to interpret the current policy of striving for internal and external harmony. Both seem to ignore, though to different degrees, the historically specific political environment, within which the cultural elements function and interact with other socio-political variables. China’s current pursuit of harmony is possible and desirable only at a time when China is able to achieve sustained sociopolitical stability (30 years) in the past 160 years and after its protracted encounter and experiment with Western liberalism, Marxism and capitalism. Although it has not explicitly rejected any of these Western ideologies, China has tested the limits of all of them—hence China’s search for its own identity and policy alternatives at the onset of the new millennium. It is toward a more historical and holistic explanation that this paper constructs the political space and historical trajectory of China’s search for modernity and for itself in the past two centuries and into the future. Yu Bin is Professor of Political Science and Director of East Asian Studies at Wittenberg University, Ohio, USA; Senior Fellow at Shanghai Institute of American Studies; analyst on Russian-China relations for Pacific Forum (CSIS) in Honolulu, Hawaii; and former president of Association of Chinese Political Studies (1992-94). Yu is the author and co-author of several books including the most recent ones: The Government of China (Stockton, NJ.: OTTN Publishing, 2006); Power of the moment: America and the world after 9-11 [Shunjian de Liliang: 9-11 Hou de Meiguo Yu Shijie] (Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 2002); and Mao’s Generals Remember Korean (The University Press of Kansas, 2001). He has published more than 60 articles in journals including World Politics, Strategic Review, Asian Survey, International Politics Quarterly (Beijing), The China and Eurasian Forum Quarterly, International Journal of Korean Studies, Harvard International Review, Comparative Connections, etc.     

Levi’s Auschwitz and Dante’s Hell

On reading Primo Levi’s Holocaust memoir If This is a Man, one is immediately struck by its literary quality, and especially its generous use of Dante’s Inferno, both of which point to the more general problem of Holocaust witnessing. This paper focuses on Levi’s reasons for using Dante’s poem in particular to communicate his experience. Levi’s choice of Inferno is pointed, not only because of the obvious trope of existence in Hell, but also because Levi conceived of Auschwitz as an experiment designed to destroy the “human,” created in part, at least in the West, by Dante’s poem. What I will be suggesting is that Levi emphasizes the distinctions between his and Dante’s experiences by including in his conversation with Dante’s Inferno (paradoxically) his rejection of that conversation. There may or may not be something “human” which persists after Auschwitz, and the only way to ask this question, without preconceiving an answer, is to dramatize silence. The resultant ambiguity urges readers to, as Levi puts it, “participate in” the events described and/or dramatized.

Beyond “Nonsense on stilts”: Towards conceptual clarity and resolution of conflicting economic rights

Many of the debates concerning the existence of economic rights obfuscate the meaning of the possession of a right to an economic good. In order to provide clarification, several theoretical questions must be probed. This essay explores each of these issues in order to demonstrate that greater conceptual clarity repudiates the arguments against the existence of economic rights. It also seeks to attenuate the vexing problem of necessary and painful tradeoffs between competing rights claims. The final portion of this essay heuristically demonstrates how greater conceptual clarity can aid us in dealing with complex policy issues involving competing rights claims. The phase “Nonsense on stilts” is borrowed from Jeremy Bentham’s refutation pf “Natural” rights. Jeremy Bentham, “Anarchical Fallacies” in Human Rights, ed. A.I.Melden (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1970), 30–31.