Employees' provident fund organization: Empowering members by digital transformation

Employees' Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) was established by the Government of India with the purpose of ensuring financial and social security for industrial workers and their dependents. With more than 150 million accounts of its members, EPFO is the world's largest social security organization. Operational processes of EPFO were riddled with over emphasis on rules and regulations but were weak on transparency, accountability, effectiveness, and efficiency. Consequently, the primary purpose of social security of industrial employees was compromised. Business process reengineering combined with adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and social media brought a sea change to the functioning of EPFO. This paper documents the transformation of EPFO from a bureaucratic, opaque organization to a customer-centric, stakeholder-friendly, transparent, and accountable organization.     

Public Information and Regulatory Processes: What the Public Knows and Regulators Decide

Because bureaucratic agencies may be less transparent in their decision processes than legislatures, most states have developed processes to incorporate input from regulated communities and other parties potentially affected by regulations. Administrative agencies may encourage democratic practices to increase legitimacy and accountability of the bureaucracy and improve decision‐making processes. However, rules governing the regulatory process vary by state, with some incorporating more open practices than others. Understanding these dynamics is increasingly important, as the rulemaking process has become central to policymaking over the past several decades, with a large portion of policymaking authority delegated to administrative agencies. Drawing from regulatory documents, rulemaking comments, media coverage, and interviews with regulators in 14 regulatory decision processes across five states, this study finds that while states vary in their approach to providing access to information, there are overriding patterns that reduce the role of citizens and the overall transparency of regulatory processes.     

增能居民:社区参与的主体性逻辑与行动路径

参与不足是当前社区治理面临的重要现实问题,其实质是作为现代社会共同体的居民主体性的缺失。主体性的塑造与强化,是当前拓展居民参与深度和广度的基础,其关键在于增强居民的行动能力。在理论和实践的双重视角下,意识培育、民主协商、互动协作、技术创新等要素通过有效整合,可以构建较为完善的增能机制。在政府、社区、社团及居民等多元主体的复合性互动过程中,优化资源配置、开发专业技术、完善组织网络及实化自治权利,是促成居民主体性"复位"和彰显从而推进社区参与的可行路径。     

No-Fly Zones: A New Model for Male Sexuality

The predominant paradigm nowadays for understanding male sexuality is derived from Kinsey's assumption that men can be classified as individuals with specific scores on a scale, scores that predict whether future partners will be male or female. Each man is defined by an essence, homo- or heterosexual or somewhere in between. However this is an incorrect view of male sexuality, because it makes us unable to say why a man is attracted to or has sex with a specific person: the same person can be attractive or unattrative depending on circumstances, and he can act or not act on his inclination depending on circumstances. The more correct view of male sexuality is thus of “fly” and “no-fly” zones, which understands male sexuality as defined by variable situations, not a score of the individual in all situations. This conception allows us to avoid the theoretical mistakes of the current assault on “sexual assault.”     

爆炸现场电雷管脚线的发现和认定

在爆炸案件现场中,有不少用工业电雷管作为起爆器材的,而现今常用的工业电雷管的脚线是铁质的,其硬度、熔点、延展性在起爆器材各部件中可以说是最大的。另外,由于起爆的需要,总有一部分雷管脚线离爆炸中心较远,因此爆炸后脚线的变形在爆炸装置中往往是最小的,在现场中很容易遗留下来。如何在现场遗留物中发现并认定雷管脚线,对认定爆炸的起爆方式非常重要,进而直接影响着对案件的定性,也影响着案件侦查方向和范围的划定。     

Values Count but Institutions Decide: The Stein Rokkan Approach in Comparative Political Sociology

This article presents the major characteristics of the tradition of comparative political sociology which Stein Rokkan incarnated. Special emphasis is put on Rokkan's scientific reasoning based on the organic relationship between the creation of infrastructures for research and research efforts. Rokkan's oeuvre is marked by an acute awareness of the historical sources of institutional variation and by a concern for constructing region-specific models reflecting culturally meaningful contexts. Rokkan's use of comparisons is treated at length before the conclusion states what the authors claim is worth preserving from the Rokkan tradition: the historical, institutional and comparative aspects of Rokkan's approach.     

The Queer Jew: Gender,Sexuality and Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Antisemitism

In an attempt to understand the mechanisms that enable the perpetuation of racism, Judaken examines how antisemitic stereotypes can be reiterated in the discourse of those individuals most committed to the eradication of antisemitism. He argues that typologies - mythic images of collective identity - depend upon an associative logic. These associations are engendered in the construction of the Self (both individual and collective), by demarcating it-self from the Other(s), generally through tropes of gender, pathology and race. Judaken focuses on Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew,a text which Sartre called 'a declaration of war against antisemitic motifs', and argues that this unintended effect is the result of how Sartre conceptualizes both consciousness and the relation between the Self and Other in Being and Nothingness. This work of existential phenomenology, that sought radically to critique the western metaphysical tradition, nevertheless reinscribes dominant assumptions within western culture about gender and sexuality. Judaken shows how Sartre's re-citation of these assumptions fundamentally determines how he conceives of the relation between the antisemite and 'the Jew'. He concludes, however, by suggesting that imminent to Sartre's own position, there is an-other way of conceiving of the relation between Self and Other that might offer hope beyond the impasses of the western tradition's failures in embracing difference, singularity and particularity.     

Iris Robinson's Excitable Speech: Sexuality and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland

In the summer of 2008, the Westminster MP and Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Iris Robinson, made homophobic statements during interviews with the media. Robinson's anti-gay remarks highlight the continuing challenges for sexual politics in Northern Ireland. However, conflict transformation literature in the region has elided issues of sexuality. This article, drawing on elements of Judith Butler's analysis of injurious speech, assesses the issues that Robinson's homophobic speech highlights in relation to sexual equality in Northern Ireland. It concludes by assessing the role of conflict transformation literature in charting sexual politics in the region.     

Empowering Members of Ethnic Organisations: Tracing the Political Integration Potential of Immigrant Associations in Stockholm

The voluminous participation literature notwithstanding, knowledge is still scarce on how voluntary associations more precisely provide their members with politically significant human and social capital. This article focuses on the capacities of immigrant organisations to promote the political integration of ethnic minority members. Analysing a unique dataset, based on face-to-face interviews with representatives of 106 organisations of four different immigrant groups in Greater Stockholm, the study empirically investigates what the authors refer to as an association's ' political integration potential ' (PIP) – the possibility of a given ethnic association to promote the inclusion of its members in the political community of the host society. As elements of PIP, the article examines associational-level political activity as well as support and mobilisation of individual members, and analyses how the former may be induced by the latter. Furthermore, the article tries to explain why some types of organisations do better than others in these respects. It finds that size and diversification of associations have an important impact on PIP, thus explaining observed differences between associations of the ethnic categories included in this study.     

The European lavender vote: Sexuality,ideology and vote choice in Western Europe

In many European democracies, political punditry has highlighted the attempts of political parties on the left to court the ‘lavender vote’ of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. This article examines the presence of a gay vote in Western Europe with a focus on assessing the role of sexuality in shaping individuals’ political preferences and voting behaviour. Empirically, the effect of sexuality on both ideological identification as well as party vote choice is analysed. Using a cumulative dataset of eight rounds of the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2017, this article demonstrates that partnered lesbians and gay men are more likely than comparable heterosexuals to identify with the left, support leftist policy objectives and vote for left-of-centre political parties. The analysis represents the first empirical cross-national European study of the voting behaviour of homosexual individuals and sheds new light on the importance of sexuality as a predictor of political ideology and voting behaviour within the Western European context.     

Empowering the Party-Crasher: Donald J. Trump,the First 2016 GOP Presidential Debate,and the Twitter Marketplace for Political Campaigns

This article argues that an important political marketplace of keywords expands in social media around campaign events such as a debate; that rhetorical efforts to define the situation in which a campaign event occurs are met in this marketplace by user responses that more or less echo the keywords, thereby enhancing or diminishing the political power of their “caller” or speaker; and that social media monitoring platforms can enhance our understanding of public opinion influence competitions among candidates through the careful selection, tabulation, and inspection of words and phrases being voiced. In the case at hand, an analysis of Twitter volume data and a reading of a sample of 1200 tweets between July 30 and August 15, 2015, a period enveloping the first 2016 Republican presidential candidate debate on August 6, 2015, helps us understand how Donald J. Trump escaped political punishment from party and media elites for subverting Republican and U.S. norms of candidate behavior. Elite voices greatly disapproved of Trump’s debate performance and conduct, a traditional augury of declining public support. But the presence of social media voices enhanced Trump’s capacity to succeed with an insurgent marketing strategy, one he would continue into his election as president fifteen months later. Specifically, comparatively high user volume on a debate-oriented section of Twitter (i.e., posts with the hashtag #GOPDebate) for Trump’s name, slogan, and Twitter address, and for such advantageous keywords as “political correctness,” “Megyn Kelly,” and “illegal immigration” relative to terms and phrases favoring other candidates and Republicans as a whole indicates the presence of heavy and active popular support for Trump. The contents of the corresponding tweet sample exhibit Twitter-savvy techniques and populist stances by which the Trump campaign solicited that support: celebrity feuding, callouts to legacy media allies, featured fan comments, a blunt vernacular, and confrontational branding. The contents also illustrate ways in which users manifested their support: from the aforementioned high keyword volume to imitative behavior and the supplying of evidence to verify Trump’s contested claims during the debate.     

Empowering Consumers Through Data and Smart Technology: Experimental Evidence on the Consequences of Time‐of‐Use Electricity Pricing Policies

This paper investigates the extent to which technology used to automate household responses to time‐of‐use pricing for electricity leads to higher energy savings than simply providing households with information on current prices and quantities. Using a large randomized field trial, we find that informed households with “smart” thermostats achieve impressive reductions in consumption during on‐peak periods of up to 48 percent, but also engage in substantial load shifting to off‐peak hours. We also document the extent to which household responses to time‐of‐use pricing are heterogeneous and vary significantly by demographics, weather, and across the usage distribution.