老年人生活质量指标体系的构建设想

老年人的生活质量问题 ,不仅需要从理论上进行严格界定与阐释 ,而且需要从量化研究上加以具体描述与分析。依据老年人对生活需求的基本性质 ,老年人生活质量的量化指标可以分为三类 :物质生活类质量指标、精神生活类质量指标和社会生活类质量指标 ,并由此构成完整的质量指标体系。对量化后的老年人的生活质量指标 ,尚需要作进一步的评价与相关技术测定分析 ,方能对老年人生活质量的某一水平及其差异提出有科学依据的结论与说明。     

The Politics of the Lisbon Strategy: The Changing Role of the Commission

This article examines the politics of the Lisbon strategy before and after its major watershed reform in 2005, with particular attention to the role of the European Commission. Operating in an ambiguous partial delegation of power, the Commission changed from performing a strong administrative role in the 2000–04 period to performing a political role after 2005. The institutional analysis of this article combines contextual factors and internal factors for explaining this variation. The findings reveal that although internal factors play an important part in explaining change, they are highly related to contextual factors. More precisely, the ability of the Commission to unfold actively its ideological and normative leverage and unfold specific forms of procedural leverage after 2005 is highly related to the member states' decision to clarify the formal division of tasks between them and the Commission. In other words, situations of procedural ambiguity are not necessarily to the advantage of the Commission, since it does not invariably have the ability to use this ambiguity in its favour.     

The margins of the law

Realism may strill be the dominant theory in international relations. Nevertheless serious rethinking has been called for from various perspectives during the last decade. Gramsci, Habermas, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, etc., have been used by numerous scholars to challenge realism's main assumptions, namely: sovereignty, anarchy and the balance of power. Rosenberg makes a contribution to the debate by bringing Marx into the fray against both realism and indirectly ‘post-structuralism’.     

The silence of the tapes

He is author of The challenge of the Borderline Patient;and The Reality of Mental Illness(with Martin Roth). His research interests include diagnostic and therapeutic issues of personality disorders, adjustment problems of Southeast Asian refugees, and comparisons of self-injurious behaviors in medieval Europe and contemporary society.     

The future of the JCPOA

Following the United States' withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran is unlikely to stay in the agreement merely to maintain the moral high ground, without economic and geopolitical gains. But even if it withdraws from the deal, Tehran may judge actual advancement of its nuclear capability strategically imprudent.     

The Face of the State

From a liberal perspective, policies designed to permit the participation of minorities in national institutions while retaining their cultural particularities are justified either on the grounds that culture has a particular importance or on the basis of equal treatment of individuals. This paper argues that such policies, while not without benefits, have at least the potential to compromise the perceived neutrality of an important state institution. It focuses on the Canadian decision to permit the use of religious symbols as part of the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Advocates of such policies focus only on their benefits and ignore the potential difficulties; the paper argues that a more balanced assessment is required, one which weights advantages and disadvantages.     

The Rise of the Genotocracy

This article examines whether meritocracy is an effective device for legitimising socioeconomic inequality. It looks at two ways in which it could be said to do that—by allocating wealth and prestige according to merit, and by creating opportunities for those born in low income families—and concludes that the first only creates the appearance of fairness (an argument made persuasively by John Rawls) and the second is a largely unfulfilled promise. The author asks whether the low levels of social mobility in Britain and America are because they have not yet become fully-fledged meritocracies, or because they have, and considers Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s argument in The Bell Curve that meritocratic societies have a tendency to degenerate into genetically-based caste systems. It examines the research by Dalton Conley, Jason Fletcher and Benjamin Domingue on this point, which shows that genetic assortative mating declined over the course of the twentieth century, and tentatively concludes that Herrnstein and Murray were wrong—that flatlining social mobility is a bug, not a feature, of meritocratic societies.     

The myth of the narco-state

Despite being used repeatedly in different contexts, the term “narco-state” has never been satisfactorily defined or explained. In fact, the existence of the narco-state is almost always taken for granted. This article will argue, on the basis of a review of existing definitions and of selected case studies, that there is no such thing as a narco-state and that using the term tends to oversimplify if not mask the complex socio-political and economic realities of drug-producing countries. The narco-state notion will be debated and opposed in terms of politics, territory, and economics.