The Insider＇s Guide to Beijing 2005-2006

SO, you're new to Beijing. Will you be living here for a while, or are you just passing through? Perhaps you haven't decided yet. In any case, you must determine which visa best suits your purpose, whether it be to travel, work, visit with a view to working, or study; also how to apply, extend and change your visa. If you have a job here, either at a Chinese work unit or foreign company, you should know about the available medical services, how to go about opening a bank account and the rami…     

Particularism versus Universalism in the Brazilian Public Administration Literature

The author draws on the Brazilian public administration literature to discuss the conflict between the need to remain open to lessons from elsewhere, while at the same time remaining grounded in a particular local context. The article begins by presenting calls by a number of Brazilian public administration scholars for what might be termed an "administrative particularism," or an assertion that universal lessons do not apply in the discipline. This is followed by a discussion of the challenges that these and other Brazilian public administration scholars identify. Further discussion will suggest these challenges, and many of the solutions most commonly offered for them, imply that, far from a uniquely Brazilian public administration, the country seeks to move closer to the model of public administration practiced elsewhere, especially in the developed world.     

Nomenklatura,state monopoly,and private enterprise

Using a behavioral model of political decisionmaking, it is argued that an increasing population size and/or an increasing efficiency of production in a private enterprise economy relative to a centrally planned economy may create the conditions for a self-interested nomenklatura in a Soviet-type economy to consider a transition to a market economy. This transition may be thwarted, however, by the threat for prospective private enterpreneurs of exploitation after the change of regime. Some form of political pluralism guaranteeing sufficient political influence to private entrepreneurs appears to be required for a successful transition. The analysis shows that such a combined political and economic reform can be in the interest of the nomenklatura, thereby providing an endogenous behavioral explanation for a change of regime.     

The dynamics of coalition politics in Japan

Over the past seven years, Japan's party system has undergone a transition from single-party rule to multi-party coalitions, albeit under continuing LDP dominance. The LDP's propensity for coalition politics has been influenced not only by the loss of its Diet majorities but by a number of other factors including the end of the polarized party politics of the Cold War period. In this article, Aurelia George Mulgan, Associate Professor of Politics at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, explains the LDP's complex Diet management strategy underlying its choice of coalition partners. At the same time, Dr. George Mulgan argues that these strategies represent just a more developed form of the deal-making politics the LDP pursued during periods of evenly balanced Diet forces in the 1970s and 1980s. The key difference is the greater level of transparency and Diet-centered nature of inter-party negotiations.     

Selenium determination in mother and child's hair by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

A method for the selenium determination in a mother and her child's hair using palladium as a chemical modifier was optimized. The sample was digested with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide and diluted to 5 ml. To achieve complete mineralization the samples were ashed at 1200 degrees C in the presence of palladium as a chemical modifier. The optimum atomization temperature was 1900 degrees C. The precision and accuracy of the method were studied using the reference material CRM 397. Results of calibration using aqueous standards and the standard addition method were compared. The method was applied to the selenium determination in 30 samples of the mother's and child's hair. The levels found were 0.54 +/- 0.34 microgram/g for mother's hair and 0.77 +/- 0.25 microgram/g for child's hair.     

The Dynamics of Change: Class, Politics and Civil Society—From Marx to post-Marxism

This paper discusses how Marxist understandings of politics and civil society, particularly Marx's own work, can contribute to understanding the dynamics of political change in contemporary capitalist democracies. While briefly exploring the conceptual problems contained in the political-philosophical agenda set out in Marx's earliest works, the paper argues that his subsequent examinations of civil society and class relations are grounded in a political economy of capitalist development which retains considerable salience. The possibilities of a post-Marxist politics of civil society are assessed in this light, using the example of recent neo-liberal and neo-conservative assaults on the welfare state to indicate the ways in which membership of civil society is itself a critical focus of political contestation. A politics of civil society (for example, contemporary 'third way' strategies) lacks any substantive democratic potential, without the type of radical political economy developed by Marx.