Stilwell in the stocks: the Chinese nationalists and the allied powers in the second world war

Dr Hans van de Ven is Reader in Modern Chinese History at Cambridge University. His most recent publication is War and Nationalism in China, 1925–45 (Routledge, London, 2003; this will be reviewed in the next issue of Asian Affairs). Other publications include Warfare in Chinese History (Leiden, Brill, 2000) and From Friend To Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991). This article is based on the talk which Dr Hans van de Ven gave to the Society on 11 March 2003.     

Misleading the German public: The new bundestag law on parliamentarians

This article outlines the history of several attempts to increase salaries and pensions of members of the German Bundestag in the early 1990s. It shows the unethical tactics used by parliamentarians and the way in which public information was in part consciously designed to mislead. It is argued that Bundestag members tend to form a political cartel when decisions concerning their salaries and pensions are made. Similiar tendencies can be observed in all parliamentary decisions involving party finance, providing support for Katz and Mair's thesis that ‘catch‐all’ parties are generally being replaced by ‘cartel parties’. Having analysed the issues involved, the article calls for greater accountability and responsibility on the part of German politicians when their own personal advantage is at issue.     

The Party's Primary Preferences: Race,Gender, and Party Support of Congressional Primary Candidates

Party support has a strong influence on candidate success in the primary. What remains unexplored is whether party actions during the primary are biased along racial and gender lines. Using candidate demographic data at the congressional level and measures of party support for primary candidates, we test whether parties discriminate against women and minority candidates in congressional primaries and also whether parties are strategic in their support of minority candidates in certain primaries. Our findings show parties are not biased against minority candidates and also that white women candidates receive more support from the Democratic Party than do other types of candidates. Our findings also suggest that parties do not appear to strategically support minority candidates in districts with larger populations of minorities. Lastly, we also find no significant differences in the effects of party support on the likelihood of success in the primary by candidate race or gender.     

Media,democracy and the public sphere: towards a reconceptualisation of the public sphere

ABSTRACT

This article brings a synthesis of the recent literature about the role the media have played for the transformation of the public sphere. Departing from this literature, a general research framework for a critical political economy of the public sphere is presented. The central thesis of this approach is that a political economy of the public sphere shouldn't be restricted to an analysis of its institutional configuration and the actual labour process, but must extend its radius of action from the production of media messages to a political economy of reception and its signification.     

Industrialization of hybrid electric vehicle technology: identifying critical resource dimensions

The purpose of this study is to identify critical resource dimensions for the industrialization of hybrid electric vehicle technology. This study focuses on small- and medium-sized technology-based firms in Sweden that employ between 1 and 500 employees and that could be potential suppliers of hybrid electric vehicle technology. The empirical data were collected using a survey (questionnaire) and it covers 40 technology-based firms in eight industrial branches in Sweden. We have included 18 variables in order to identify critical resources regarding Business and R&D networks in three dimensions: ideas and advice, production, and R&D. Two regression models developed for battery systems and battery cells have significant findings. Networks with universities and consultants are especially important. One operative way is building strategic alliances with other firms. The main contributions of this study are empirical support that network resources are necessary and important in battery systems and battery cells and, more broadly, networks are necessary systems for technology shifts in the hybrid electric vehicle industry.     

Analytical Fingerprint of Wolframite Ore Concentrates

Ongoing violent conflicts in Central Africa are fueled by illegal mining and trading of tantalum, tin, and tungsten ores. The credibility of document‐based traceability systems can be improved by an analytical fingerprint applied as an independent method to confirm or doubt the documented origin of ore minerals. Wolframite (Fe,Mn)WO₄ is the most important ore mineral for tungsten and is subject to artisanal mining in Central Africa. Element concentrations of wolframite grains analyzed by laser ablation‐inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry are used to establish the analytical fingerprint. The data from ore concentrate samples are multivariate, not normal or log‐normal distributed. The samples cannot be regarded as representative aliquots of a population. Based on the Kolmogorov–Smirnov distance, a measure of similarity between a sample in question and reference samples from a database is determined. A decision criterion is deduced to recognize samples which do not originate from the declared mine site.     

Limits to growth: The case of Dutch prison capacity

This article deals with the question of why the dentention capacity in the Netherlands has been increasing since 1975, and what the consequences are for the future. Analysis is based on literature. Dutch policy is reactive: capacity depends on the sum of detention sentences. The interaction between the judicial system and its political imbedding leads to a continuous growth in detention capacity. This spin-off process is also active when crime is not increasing. As a consequence, continuation of this growth is to be expected. It is not clear whether judges allow capacity to affect the length of the prison sentences they pass. If so, a spiral process is going on, where the increase in capacity fuels the need for a greater capacity in the future. In theory, this spiral could also go downwards. Therefore, when the spiral is stronger than the spin-off, a pro-active government policy could lead to a reduction in capacity. However, as it is not clear that this is the case, it is concluded that the detention capacity could best be reduced by ad hoc measures like legalising drugs.     

Books in review

Among his books are The Social Psychology of Social Movements; Violent Men; Reforming Human Services; Living in Prison;and, with Kenneth Adams and J. Douglas Grant, Coping.     

Thinking for Thousands: Emerson's Theory of Political Representation in the Public Sphere

This article develops Emerson's theory of representative democracy as it applies to a deliberative public sphere. By highlighting the democratic content of Emerson's thought, this article challenges tradition readings of Emerson that claim his thought to be elitist or antipolitical. According to Emerson, the public sphere is structured by representative individuals who are analogous to those representatives found in electoral institutions. These representatives make public the beliefs and values present in their "constituencies." They deliberate in the name of their constituencies, saying what their constituencies could and would say, were they to also directly engage in such deliberations. Representative individuals are tied to their constituencies through bonds of "sympathy and likeness." The moral consequences of a representative public sphere include the development of a sense of deliberative justice on the part of the citizenry and the reduction of the possibility of domination and oppression by ideologically oriented elites.