英法大部门政府体制的实践与启示

本文对英法大部门政府体制的理论起源、部门构成与演变、部门内外协调机制进行了分析,总结了其成功的经验和实施的制度基础,指出完善的市场经济、成熟的社会自治、政府职能的及时更新、配套改革措施到位是英法大部制成功运作的基础。与此相应,在我国推动相应的改革必须着力强化部门首长的协调与控制能力、围绕职能行使效率设计部门结构、推进相应的综合配套改革。     

我国农村社会保障问题分析与对策构想

社会保障制度是建立社会主义市场经济的基本环节之一,对社会的发展和稳定意义重大。完善的社会保障制度应该包括城市和农村两个层次。但目前我国农村社保制度相当落后,极大地影响了农民生活水平的提高和农村的社会稳定,因此亟需健全和完善,如加强农村社保制度法制建设,完善农村社保资金筹集和管理机制等。     

From evaluation to auditing and from programs to institutions: Causes and consequences of the decline of the program approach

In the wake of the “audit revolution” during the 1980s and 1990s, administrative systems across the western world have tended to gradually downplay evaluation as a component of the policy process. At the same time, auditing has dramatically increased in scope and depth, and has also, to some extent, come to fill the role in policymaking previously played by evaluation studies. This article reviews this development from the perspective of policymaking and institutional change or “drift.” Specifically, we look at the types of information and knowledge that are lost and gained as a result of these developments. We apply a cross‐national approach, drawing on the examples from the European and North American contexts.     

Tianjin Binhai New Area: A Case Study of Multi-Level Streams Model of Chinese Decision-Making

The authors develop a new multi-level streams model in order to explain the Chinese decision-making process with regards to the top-down allocation of resources and administrative reforms. Using this policy model, the 2005 decision to upgrade the Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) to the national level can be regarded as a relatively rational choice with a series of interaction of political processes among the elites at the central and local levels such as the local officials and social elites, and central leaders. However, in the administrative system of economic development, there are disagreements and conflicts among different parts within and outside the TBNA. The central and the Tianjin governments are now trying to coordinate the relationship among local governments within the Circum-Bohai Region and within the TBNA through structural reform and personnel reshuffling.

Youth Pathways to Placement: The Influence of Gender, Mental Health Need and Trauma on Confinement in the Juvenile Justice System

Although the juvenile crime rate has generally declined, the involvement of girls in the juvenile justice system has been increasing. Possible explanations for this gender difference include the impact of exposure to trauma and mental health needs on developmental pathways and the resulting influence of youth’s involvement in the justice system. This study examined the influence of gender, mental health needs and trauma on the risk of out-of-home placement for juvenile offenders. The sample included youth referred to three urban juvenile probation departments in Texas between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2008 and who received state-mandated mental health screening (N = 34,222; 30.1 % female). The analysis revealed that, for both genders, elevated scores on the seven factor-analytically derived subscales of a mental health screening instrument (Alcohol and Drug Use, Depressed-Anxious, Somatic Complaints, Suicidal Ideation, Thought Disturbance, and Traumatic Experiences), especially related to past traumatic experiences, influenced how deeply juveniles penetrated the system. The findings suggest that additional research is needed to determine the effectiveness of trauma interventions and the implementation of trauma informed systems for youth involved with the juvenile justice system.     

Mainstreaming of Racist Anti-Roma Discourses in the Media in Hungary

The article focuses on the rise and spread of racist language in public debate in Hungary. It investigates how radical right discourses—that is, the relegitimating of the racist idea of “Gypsy crime”—have been transmitted by the mainstream media thus contributing to the decline of a short-lived political correctness in Hungary. The analysis explores how racism has become more and more accepted and how the mainstream has embraced the radical right's propositions, turning them into a “digestible” rhetoric while “breaking the taboos” of antiracism.     

Book reviews

Conversations with lillian hellman edited by Jackson R. Bryer‐Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1986, 298 pp. $19.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper).

PROVINCE OF REASON: AMERICAN LIVES IN A NEW AGE OF SCIENCE by Sam Bass Warner, Jr. Harvard University Press, 1984. (cloth, $20.00)     

The Rise,Fall and Future of the Jamaican Peasantry

This article examines the crisis of the Jamaican peasantry. Jamaica's peasants are struggling against pressures old and new, with the burden of their spatial inheritance magnified by a withering state, rising food imports following trade liberalisation, and oft-conflictive social relations. It begins by examining the historical formation of the peasantry after Emancipation, emphasising the unevenness of the landscape and the tensions between individualism and cooperation, before describing the protracted process of de-peasantisation, which has sped under structural adjustment reforms. Current conditions and future prospects are assessed through the insights and experiences of peasant farmers situated on the periphery of a plantation landscape. Ultimately, the future of peasant farming in Jamaica is seen to be bound up foremost in the struggle for land reform, and it is hoped that the current de-stabilisation of the plantation system will provide a new window for historic change.