Hague Case Law — Latest Developments

Netherlands International Law Review -     

孝道的重建——论儒家“孝”观念的生活情感本源

“孝”乃儒家思想的核心观念之一。在孔孟那里，孝道的建构本是立足于作为本源的生活情感的。但经过轴心期大转型以后，孝道逐渐僵化为一种道德教条，而遗忘了生活情感这个大本本源。当下我们要重建孝道，绝不能仅仅将孝道理解为道德教条，而应该进一步追溯其本源，立足于儒家“孝”观念的生活情感本源来重建孝道。     

当前派出所工作存在的主要问题及其解决

派出所工作是全部公安工作的根基所在。要实现"警力配置最优、警力资源消耗最低、警务效益最大"的警务改革目标,必须正视和解决长期以来派出所工作中存在的"领导作风粗而不实、警力调配粗而不优、警务方式粗而落后"等主要问题。解决这些问题既要贯彻层级管理原则、明确工作重点,也要知人善用,合理用警,更要正确看待和协调处理好四项主要警务工作之间的关系;同时,要紧跟信息化发展步伐,实施信息化警务发展战略。     

The bigger the better? Evidence of the effect of government size on life satisfaction around the world

This paper empirically analyzes whether government size is conducive or detrimental to life satisfaction in a cross-section of 74 countries. We thus provide a test of the longstanding dispute between standard neoclassical economic theory and public choice theory. According to the neoclassical view, governments play unambiguously positive roles for individuals' quality of life, while the theory of public choice has been developed to understand why governments often choose excessive involvement in – and regulation of – the economy, thereby harming their citizens' quality of life. Our results show that life satisfaction decreases with higher government consumption. For low, middle income, and male people, this result is stronger when the government is leftwing, while government consumption appears to be less harmful for women when the government is perceived to be effective. Government capital formation and social spending have no significant impact on life satisfaction.     

Affirmative Action and Its Alternatives in Public Universities: What Do We Know?

University administrators have made difficult choices in response to the changing policy context for the use of affirmative action in admissions. This paper synthesizes the empirical literature on affirmative action and evaluates the efficacy of alternative strategies, including top-percent programs, class-based affirmative action, and targeted recruiting. The analyses offer several findings of interest to officials who direct such programs: (1) Affirmative action preferences given by top-tier universities have been large; (2) affirmative action leads minorities to enroll in higher-quality institutions; and (3) affirmative action has mostly positive effects on minority students later in life. The evidence shows a decline in minorities' relative share of enrollment at flagship public universities after affirmative action was eliminated in several states, and the alternative strategies used by these universities have not offset these declines.     

Parent-adolescent congruence for adolescent substance use

Parental reports of adolescent substance use were compared to the adolescents' self-reports using identical scales. Congruence was defined as exact agreement on whether adolescents were current users, ex-users, or never-users. Both parents were found to be less accurate in predicting their adolescents' alcohol use compared to cigarette or marijuana use. Single mothers were significantly less likely to be congruent than were mothers from two-parent households. Mother and father congruence on all substances was unrelated to the adolescent's sex, race, or after school employment. For both parents, congruence for adolescent marijuana use was significantly related to the age and GPA of the adolescent. Congruence may also reflect important properties of family functioning, as significant relations were found between both adolescent and parent ratings of family cohesion and parent-adolescent congruence on perceptions of marijuana use.This research was supported by Grant DA03706 from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (Hyman Hops, Principal Investigator).Jennifer Langhinrichsen is a doctoral candidate in psychology interested in adolescent and family interactions. The other authors are psychologists or data analysts working on family influences on substance use and mental health.     

European parties' performance in electoral competition

Abstract: This article focuses on competition for votes between parties, as it existed in Western Europe in the period of the direct election to the European Parliament in 1989. Following earlier research by Van der Eijk and Niemöller, an instrument is introduced to measure the probability of party choice of EC citizens which establishes the likelihood of respondents to vote for any of the nationally relevant options/parties. A number of substantive conclusions about political parties'competitive performance result from this research. First, a single mechanism seems to structure electoral competition in all EC member-countries. Second, the competitive performance of political parties is not affected by their governmental status, their ideological position, and the degree of politicisation of the electoral environment. And third, parties'competitive performance is strongly affected by the degree of uniqueness of their electoral potential, their mobilising capacities, their ideological extremity and their sheer size.