Inventing America,again

ABSTRACT

In US intellectual and academic life, the 1940s and 1950s stand out as a period abounding with attempts to assay the characteristic and distinctive forms of ‘American culture’ and ‘American society,’ from Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma and the oft-noted ‘Tocqueville revival’ to works by Harold Laski, Max Lerner, David Riesman, C. L. R. James, the ‘consensus historians,’ and the early writers in the field of American Studies. Viewed as the culmination of a half-century span (roughly 1900–1950) of cultural nation-building, this rush of ‘American’ definitions at mid-century was shot through with politics – but in complex ways that are not adequately captured by the familiar recourse to Cold War anticommunism as the presumed ideological bedrock of the time. By treating this cultural nationalism as the outcome of an uneven and combined intellectual-historical process, we see how elusive (and illusory) the enterprise of designating ‘American’ traits actually was.     

Tocqueville's return again from America

Tocqueville et les Françis. By F. MÉLONIO, Aubier, 1993. Pp. 408. FF160. ISBN 2–7007–2244–2.     

Running for office again: evidence from Portuguese municipal elections

Using a data set that covers all Portuguese mainland municipalities for the period 1979–2005, this study performs an empirical analysis of the economic determinants of mayors’ decisions to run for another term in office. The literature on the subject is mainly centered on the United States and, as far as we know, there are no papers addressing the economic factors influencing those choices. Probit panel estimations show that local economic conditions matter more than the national or regional economic environment. The results also confirm that political variables are important and that they influence the likelihood of seeking reelection in much the same way as they affect vote and popularity functions.     

Voting on Europe,again and again: Stability and change in the Irish experience with EU referendums

This article is about comparative voting behaviour in referendums on the EU and explores variation within one country rather than variations across countries. This enables us to control for broad national context while allowing variations in the immediate referendum context, in terms of campaign intensity and incumbency. It analyses voting behaviour in the many referendums that have taken place in Ireland. The major part of the analysis deals with the five referendums since 2001, as this allows the use of the same measurement of EU support and the use of post referendum surveys. Most attention is paid to attitude to the EU, party support and satisfaction with the incumbent government, reflecting the main debates in the literature on the issues and party cues. The relative importance of each is said to depend on contextual factors such as campaign intensity and economic strength. We find both party cues and issues matter consistently, and suggestive evidence that incumbency matters to the effectiveness of cues given by the two main pro-EU parties but the major finding is that variations in the factors driving voting behaviour in different Irish polls on Europe are slight and barely significant.     

对“两个基础”问题的再认识

中国共产党增强阶级基础和扩大群众基础的观点,是江泽民同志“七一”讲话中具有重大创新意义的理论突破,也是一年来理论界讨论的热点。目前,深化对这一问题的理论认识,仍然是党在执政思想上是否能真正实现理论创新的关键。     

State and standards

In this paper a new economic approach to standardization has been presented. Standardization has been regarded as a problem ofgradual choice. An individual chooses to apply more or less standards within a hierarchy of standards. With this decomposition of standards, the problem of strategic market power becomes less important than in the traditional models of standardization. It becomes possible to analyze the problems of network externalities within a framework of non-strategic behavior and to apply the tools of the traditional theory of externalities and public goods. While decentralized action may lead to too little standardization, committees may overcome this deficiency to some extent, but bureaucracies are likely to lead to overstandardization. In the empirical section of the paper it has been shown that our approach can be applied to the standard-setting process in languages, railroads, and telecommunications. In all three cases the tendency of bureaucracies to generate more standardization than committees has been corroborated.The authors are indebted for helpful comments to the participants of the Berlin Seminar on Political Economy and of the colloquium Algemene Economie, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and to A. Roemer, Saarbrücken.     

Raising standards: A prototyping strategy for undergraduate education

Public concerns about the quality of undergraduate education merit the attention of research universities. This policy analysis documents standards of learning and teaching that fall far short of a liberal education in one department. It attributes the problem primarily to factors that obscure differences in standards, especially quantitative performance measures. And it recommends liberating small working groups of faculty volunteers to develop and distinguish courses that do raise standards. This prototyping strategy is an alternative tot the status quo, which is unsustainable, and a comprehensive, centrally-directed plan, which is impractical. It may be adapted to similar situations elsewhere.     

对强制性技术标准进行司法审查的必要性

强制性技术标准在现代技术社会中具有重要的作用，是行政机关对技术领域进行监管的重要依据和手段，也是行政相对人在从事技术相关活动时的指导和准则。因强制性技术标准具有强制执行效力，如其制定和适用不当会给相对人的合法权益带来不利影响，应当对其进行有效监督和制约，司法机关的审查便是一项重要的手段。     

From practitioner wisdom to scholarly knowledge and back again

The relationship between scholarly knowledge in public management and the conventional wisdom of capable practitioners needs to be clarified. If we accept that improving practical wisdom is the ultimate objective of scholarly studies in public management, practitioner experience can usefully serve as the starting point of such studies as well. This article uses the maxims about coping with “overhead agencies” supplied by one respected practitioner, Gordon Chase, as a source of ideas concerning the direction of scholarly work. It also conceptualizes three types of practitioner wisdom—rules, principles, and checklists—and advises academic researchers to concentrate on clarifying the conceptualization of the principles and checklists and empirically refining the rules. A focus on those rules that protect the practitioner against large downside risks is especially important.     

Déjà vu all over again?

He has recently conducted research for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment’s project, Communication Systems for an Information Age, and for the Canadian Ministry of Communication. His latest books are The Pay-Per Societyand, with Janet Wasko, The Political Economy of Information.     

To Russia and back again: Intellectuals in postwar France

Political Traditions in Modern France. By SUDHIR HAZAREESINGH. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp.viii+355, £35 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback) ISBN 0–19–878074–5 and 0–19–878075–2.

Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956. By TONY JUDT. Berkeley/ Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1992. Pp.348. £24. ISBN 0–520–0792.

Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France. By SUNIL KHILNANI. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993. Pp.viii+262. £19.95 (hardback), ISBN 0–300–05745–8.

Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization. By RICHARD KUISEL. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1993. Pp.xiii+296. £20. ISBN 0–520–07962–0.

Extrême‐Occident: French Intellectuals and America. By JEAN‐PHILIPPE MATHY. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Pp.307, £13.50. ISBN 0–226–51064–6.

Face au scepticisme: Les Mutations du paysage intellectuel ou l'invention de I'intellectuel democratique. By OLIVIER MONGIN. Paris: Editions La Décou‐verte, 1994. Pp.400. FF180 (paperback). ISBN 9–782707–12308–4.

La Tribu des clercs: Les intellectuels sous la Ve République. By RÉMY RIEFFEL. Paris: Calmann‐Lévy, 1993. Pp.691. FF250 (paperback), ISBN 2–7021–2276–0.     

Not again! Public perception,regulation, and nanotechnology

It is often argued that immediate government action regarding nanotechnology is needed to ensure that public opinion does not mistakenly view nanotechnology as dangerous, to restore public trust in government, and to increase the legitimacy of government action through increased public participation. This article questions whether governments can achieve these goals. As the world lurches toward regulation of nanotechnology, we should ask Why the rush? Can anticipatory action, perceived as the government doing something, fulfill the competing hopes to “restore trust,”“pave the way” for nanotechnology, “increase awareness,” and “satisfy democratic notions of accountability”? Or is government action more likely to increase existing divisions over nanotechnology's future?