Popular discourse and the ethical deficiency of ‘Third Way’ conceptions of citizenship

The article is in three parts. The first explores the connections and commonalities between different empirical investigations relating to popular discourses of citizenship and argues that these are constituted through the complex combination of overlapping discursive moral repertoires. The second part considers the discursive moral repertoires that constitute discourses of citizenship within the politics of the ‘Third Way’ project—as it is espoused in the British context—and argues that while such discourses accommodate notions of civic duty, moral obligation and enforced obedience, they seldom embrace a solidaristic ethic of responsibility. The third part discusses key findings from a more recent study of popular discourses of dependency, responsibility and rights. The findings suggest that what inhibits the translation of popular understandings of human interdependency into wider support for a form of citizenship based on collective responsibility and universal social rights is the hegemonic prevalence of a peculiarly individualistic conception of responsibility that seems to be consistent with Third Way thinking.     

城市政府业务重组的原理与方法

本文从职能边界、职能内容、权能配置等三个层面界定了城市政府业务重组的基本内涵。在理论分析和业务环境调查研究的基础上,分析了其主要特征,并分析了公民社会、市场环境、部门利益、法律环境和信息技术等影响因素。在此基础上,本文提出了城市政府业务重组的实施方法和步骤。本文认为,不能将业务重组和流程再造混为一谈,流程再造只是业务重组过程中的一个环节。     

高校加强行政管理改革面临的问题及对策思考

加强高校行政管理改革,是我国高等教育进入大众化阶段的必然要求。本文分析了高校行政管理中泛行政化、官僚化以及在制度创新和人员素质方面存在的一些问题,提出了落实科学发展观,更新高校行政管理理念;汲取院校研究成果,创新高校行政管理制度;运用新公共管理理论,改善泛行政化、官僚化现象等几项对策。     

Sanitation and Religion in South Asia: What Accounts for Differences across Countries?

Exposure to open defecation has serious consequences for child mortality, health, and human capital development. South Asia has the highest rates of open defecation worldwide, and although the incidence declines as household income rises, differences across South Asian countries are not explained by differences in per capita income. The rate of open defecation in sub-national regions of Bangladesh, India and Nepal is highly correlated with the fraction of the population that identifies as Hindu, in part because certain rituals of purity and pollution discourage having latrines in close proximity to one’s home. Almost all open defecation occurs in rural areas, and this paper estimates how much the rate could be reduced if rural households in regions that have a higher fraction of Hindus, where open defecation is still common, altered their behaviour to reflect that of non-Hindu households in regions that are predominantly non-Hindu, where the rate of open defecation is much lower. Using nonparametric reweighting methods, this paper projects that rural open defecation in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal could be reduced to rates of between 6 and 8 per cent, compared to the prevailing level of 65 per cent.     

Give them toys? Military allocations and regime stability in transitional democracies

In contrast to the conventional wisdom that democratization reduces coups, 46% of coups targeted democracies from 2000–2009, twice the rate seen in the prior half-century. Efforts to explain coups have arrived at wildly varied conclusions regarding the vulnerability of democracies. We argue that this is attributable to regime type acting as a conditional influence. We theorize that democratization incentivizes old elites to veto the process, and these vetoes are more likely to occur when the new regime cannot credibly commit to the military’s corporate interests. Using cross-national data for 172 states for the years 1952–2009, we find that though young democracies are more vulnerable to coups than either civilian authoritarian regimes or older democracies, this vulnerability is mitigated when military expenditures are near or above the sample mean. We also find that commonly argued determinants of coups appear to be driven by their influence in democracies, suggesting the need for scholars to revisit commonly held assumptions regarding autocratic survival.     

从人民代表到代表人民-由《选举法》的修改说起

一、楔子 在中华人民共和国建国六十周年之际，当改革开放行进三十年之际，全国人大常务委员会公布了《选举法》修改草案。就草案的内容看，其是我们政治体制改革的进一步深化与具体化，是人民民主之法治化的延伸，是人民当家作主的进一步扩大。     

社会保障成本转嫁及其自我强化机制

在我国经济体制转轨过程中,社会保障一直承担着国有企业改革的成本转嫁。近年来,某些重大公共工程和公共政策,诸如三峡工程、南水北调工程等,也向社会保障进行成本转嫁,加重了社会保障的负担。本文认为,为了防止把社会保障变成转嫁成本的公地,应建立社会保障评估制度,对重大工程和公共政策实行事先的社会保障评估。