The autocratic mandate: elections,legitimacy and regime stability in Singapore

This paper explains how authoritarian regimes employ flawed elections to obtain both short-term legitimacy and long-term stability. In conjunction with the use of co-optation and repression, it argues that ruling parties hold de jure competitive elections to claim what is termed autonomous legitimation. This denotes the feigning of conformity to the established rules of the constitution and the shared beliefs of citizens. Regardless of overall turnout and support, ruling parties exploit the normative and symbolic value of elections in order to establish moral grounds for compliance within a dominant-subordinate relationship. In support of this argument, the case of Singapore's People's Action Party (PAP) is analysed in historical and contemporary terms. Since 1959, the PAP has used precisely timed elections to extract one or more mandate types from citizens and, by extension, claim legitimacy. In particular, it has sort a mandate based on its response to an event, execution of a policy and/or collection of a reward. In the long run, autocratic stability has been achieved through a process of reciprocal reinforcement, which has combined autonomous legitimation with targeted co-optation and low intensity coercion. The paper concludes by addressing the generalisability of this finding for other authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia.     

The changing dynamics of policy experiment in Singapore: does the 2011 general election make a difference?

The city-state of Singapore is proactive in harnessing policy experimentation to incubate innovations, transfer knowledge and facilitate collaborations across different public sectors. Given the country’s strong knack for pragmatism, international practices and lessons are usually first tested and adapted in policy experiments before scaling up to nationwide policies. Singapore’s practice of policy experimentation, however, has also demonstrated evolution over time. This article reviews the evolving role of experimentation in Singapore’s policy decision-making and implementation, and analyses pilot programmes in public housing to elicit the key attributes and commonalities of its policy experiments. It finds that policy experiments have been increasingly used after the 2011 general election, which witnessed a radical political rebalancing in Singapore’s governance history. Pilot projects have thus transformed from a utilitarian to citizen-centric, design-thinking approach after 2011. Pilot programmes are used for multiple purposes in policy innovations, among which civil service mentoring, knowledge transfer and cross-boundary collaboration are the values primarily pursued. The article discusses the contributions of the findings to the literature and policy implications for practitioners.     

Survival Strategies of Widows in Dijon during the French Revolution

When people talk about their lives, people lie sometimes, forget a little, exaggerate, become confused, and get things wrong. Yet they are revealing truths … the guiding principle for [life histories] could be that all autobiographical memory is true: it is up to the interpreter to discover in which sense, where, and for what purpose. (Passerini Passerini and Luisa. 1989. “Women's Personal Narratives: Myths, Experiences, and Emotions”. In Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Eds. Personal Narrative Group and Joy Webster Barbre 197Bloomington: Indiana, UP Print [Google Scholar] 197)     

机械手RBF神经网络滑模迭代学习控制

在机械手的轨迹控制的迭代学习控制中,迭代学习的学习律难以选择.本文结合RBF神经网络滑模变结构控制和遮代学习控制的基本思想,提出采用RBF神经网络滑模变结构控制确定学习律的方法.并运用Matlab软件Simulink对该方法应用于机械手轨迹跟踪控制的情况进行了仿真研究,结果表明该方法具有学习速度快、跟踪精度高、鲁棒性强等优点.     

脾虚证大鼠甘草甜素药物动力学特征与胃肠动力的关系研究

目的：探讨脾虚证大鼠甘草甜素（ＧＬ）的药物动力学（ＰＫ）特征,并从胃排空、脑－肠肽两方面探讨其机制。方法：利用血平作用于大鼠１４ｄ,复制实验性脾虚模型（Ｃ组）;用四君子汤（Ａ组）和六味地黄汤（Ｂ组）治疗以反证;用高效液相色谱（ＨＰＬＣ）法测定大鼠体内ＧＬ的血药浓度;用同位素检测其胃液体排空功能;用放射免疫分析法（ＲＩＡ）分析下丘脑和血浆中胃动素（ＭＯＴ）、胆囊收缩素（ＣＣＫ）及生长抑素（ＳＳ）的浓     

科学发展观:创新品质、科学品质和系统性特征

我们党根据中国特色社会主义建设最新实践的启示,总结探索发展问题的经验教训,创造性地将发展思想概括为科学发展观,并把科学发展观作为我国21世纪发展的指导思想。从马克思主义哲学的角度来认识,科学发展观具有创新品质、科学品质和系统性特征。     

论建立和完善我国有关船舶油污损害赔偿责任限制程序的必要性

《海事诉讼特别程序法》第 9章仅对于海事赔偿责任限制基金设立程序做出规定 ,并没有明确规定油污损害赔偿责任限制程序问题 ,基于此 ,本文通过比较油污损害赔偿责任限制与海事赔偿责任限制的异同 ,初步提出建立和完善我国油污损害赔偿责任限制程序的立法建议。     

Hair as a specimen to document tetramethylene disulfotetramine exposure

Tetramethylene disulfotetramine (tetramine) is a rodenticide that has been banned for many years in China. Since 2005, inhabitants of a village in the Henan Province have been suffering from grand mal seizures. To investigate the possibility of tetramine as the cause, we developed a method to determine tetramine in human hair. Sample preparation involved external decontamination, frozen pulverization, and ultrasonication in 2 mL ethyl acetate in the presence of cocaine-d3 as an internal standard. The method exhibited good linearity; calibration curve was linear over a range of 0.1-20 ng/mg hair. The limit of detection for the assay was 0.05 ng/mg hair. Except for one subject (No. 4), all head and pubic hair samples were positive for tetramine. The concentrations of tetramine in pubic hair were significantly higher than those in the same subjects' head hair samples. Because of a long retention in body, segmental head hair analysis cannot provide an accurate exposure history of tetramine in the body.