Evaluating the Effectiveness of Adopting Open Educational Resources in an Introductory American Government Course

In this article, we present findings from a grant-funded initiative to replace traditional, proprietary textbooks with an open content textbook under a Creative Commons license in the introductory American government course (POLS 1101) at Middle Georgia State University. We find that the use of an open content textbook led to somewhat negative effects on student learning outcomes and student course satisfaction, although the associated lower textbook cost increased textbook accessibility to students. We conclude with some suggestions to those adopting textbooks in this course and to the wider discipline regarding measures that may lead to more unequivocally positive outcomes than those experienced in this study.     

WTO与我国政府信息公开

随着经济和社会的发展,要求我国政府信息公开不仅体现了宪法赋予公民的知情权的要求,而且更是适应入世后世贸规则对政府行为透明度的要求。分析我国政府信息公开的状况及WTO规则对我国政府透明度提出的新要求,并提出我国建立政府信息公开制度要解决的几个问题,极具现实意义。     

Why Steve Bannon Is Not a Fascist

Steve Bannon has often been accused of fascism by his opponents. His real intellectual affiliation, however, is with the first generation of American neo-conservatives of the 1960s, people like Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol. Like them he criticizes immoral elites and an amoral version of capitalism in the name of traditional values. His criticism is a symptom of the long-running battle between Mind and Money, the war between intellectuals and capitalism.     

现代化≠西方化--对《文明的冲突与世界秩序的重建》的另一种解读

在《文明的冲突和世界秩序的重建》一书中,亨廷顿的主旨是要给冷战后的国际关系创立一个“文明”的范式,然而在阐述“文明的冲突”范式的同时,他通过对“一个世界”范式的批判,又智虑地提出了“现代化并不等于西方化”的命题。这一命题对非西方国家走向现代化具有重要的指引意义。     

信息公开、公众参与和开放型政府建设

传统行政管理组织的不透明性、严格的等级制度等,造成了一系列的政府问题。要解决这些问题就必须建立一种新型的政府,即"开放型政府"。开放型政府是一个信息输入与输出的循环体,公众参与即输入的过程,信息公开则是输出的过程,而"开放"就是由一个输入和输出构成的不断互动的环路。建设开放型政府是全球化和知识产业化的必然要求,是民主的必然要求,是世界各国政府建设的必然趋势,它对中国意义更加重要。目前开放型政府建设还存在诸如信息公开不足、公众参与不够等问题,因此,要加强开放型政府建设应该从这两方面入手:通过转变观念、加强立法等促进信息公开;从扩大基层民主、拓宽公民参与渠道等推动公众参与。     

中国特色社会主义不是民主社会主义

中国特色社会主义不是民主社会主义,而是科学社会主义的基本原则与中国实际相结合的产物,是科学社会主义的中国形态.民主社会主义本质上仍是资本主义.对于民主社会主义,我们可以借鉴,但不可迷信.     

Divided Government: America is Not "Exceptional"

America is thought to be an exceptional political system, and, in many of its particulars, it certainly differs from the institutional arrangements found in most of the world's democracies. Its separation-of-powers regime is thought to have spawned, in recent decades, the phenomenon of divided government in which partisan control of political institutions is divided between the major parties. By implication, it is suggested that this robust regularity in which Democrats control the legislature and Republicans the executive is a consequence of its institutional arrangements and, therefore, distinguishes America from its parliamentary counterparts elsewhere. In this article, the authors suggest that parliamentary regimes, too, experience divided government. Specifically, minority governments, in which the executive is controlled by parties that, between them, control less than a legislative majority, is the closest analogue to divided government in America. In each case, the executive needs to seek support in the legislature beyond its own partisan base. Thus, divided government per se does not distinguish parliamentary and separation-of-powers regimes. What does, however, are the constitutional roots of this phenomenon: divided governments are negotiated in parliamentary regimes whereas they are mandated electorally in separation-of-powers regimes.     

What Is Quality of Government? A Theory of Impartial Government Institutions

The recent growth in research on “good governance” and the quality of government institutions has been propelled by empirical findings that show that such institutions may hold the key to understanding economic growth and social welfare in developing and transition countries. We argue, however, that a key issue has not been addressed, namely, what quality of government (QoG) actually means at the conceptual level. Based on analyses of political theory, we propose a more coherent and specific definition of QoG: the impartiality of institutions that exercise government authority. We relate the idea of impartiality to a series of criticisms stemming from the fields of public administration, public choice, multiculturalism, and feminism. To place the theory of impartiality in a larger context, we then contrast its scope and meaning with that of a threefold set of competing concepts of quality of government: democracy, the rule of law, and efficiency/effectiveness.