Pioneer of moral education: Independent comission against corruption (ICAC)

Conclusion The ICAC has produced a wide spectrum of moral education packages, each serving different objectives and targeted at specific life tasks of young people. An activity-oriented and life-exposure model is emphasized, and the participation of pupils, teachers and parents is encouraged. Training workshops are organized for teachers, and teaching aids and manuals are also supplied. It is a whole-school approach, trying to reach pupils through various appropriate channels. It is also a wholeperson developmental approach, helping young people to progress from self integrity, family commitment, constructive inter-personal relationships, positive work ethics, to social responsibilities. Overall, it is a satisfactory model.     

Party penetration of society in Hong Kong: The role of mutual aid committees and political parties

Party penetration of society can be illuminated by the study of how political parties in Hong Kong have been infiltrating Mutual Aid Committees (MACs), which are housing organisations in private and public buildings. While “administrative absorption of politics” was viewed as a hallmark of Hong Kong under British rule during the 1970s, political penetration of local administration has emerged as the feature of the body politic since the 1990s. The colonial government's neglect of the MACs in the 1990s has been inherited by the post‐colonial administration since the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997. On the other hand, some MACs have penetrated political parties because they find that the government has swept them under the carpet and that parties can deliver various constituent services. This interpenetration of parties and MACs is an enduring feature of grassroots politics in Hong Kong today.     

The Role of a Political Interest Group in Democratization of China and Hong Kong: the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China

The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (HKASPDM) is a cross-border political interest group advocating for democratization in both mainland China and Hong Kong. It was involved in the bold rescue of mainland democrats out of the PRC shortly after the June 1989 Tiananmen crackdown; it constantly exerts pressure on the PRC government to release its political prisoners; it has been influencing the Hong Kong government on the scope and pace of democratization; it communicates with and subsidizes overseas Chinese groups supportive of democratic reforms in China; it is persistently educating the younger generations of Hong Kong and most importantly mainland visitors to Hong Kong on the 1989 Tiananmen tragedy; and its supporters have attempted to cross the border of Hong Kong to Macao to influence the policy of the Chinese government toward political prisoners. As a political interest group based in Hong Kong with cross-border influences on both the mainland and Macao, the Alliance has been making full use of the available political space and freedom of assembly in Hong Kong to achieve their ultimate objective of having a ‘democratic China’. Its existence in the HKSAR is an indication of a certain degree of political tolerance by both the Hong Kong government and Beijing, which have to be very careful of the need to maintain an image of the feasible formula of ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong.     

Diversion from youth courts in five Asia Pacific jurisdictions: welfare or restorative solutions

Since the 1970s, there has been a trend to move away from punitive and retributive approaches to reintegrative practices. This article provides an account of how young offenders in five Asia Pacific jurisdictions are diverted from being prosecuted in the youth courts and of to where they are diverted. The five cases demonstrate that diversionary measures in the Australasian jurisdictions tend to be more restorative in their practices than are those in Chinese-dominated jurisdictions, which adopt welfare responses. It is concluded that although there is some progress in the areas of decarceration and delegalization, the diversion goals of decategorization and deprofessionalization in Chinese-dominated jurisdictions have yet to be achieved. Such diversionary strategies carry the risk that many more young people committing minor offences may be subject to more intrusive measures and disguised social control in the name of diversion, welfare, or the prevention of future offending.     

Application of false discovery rate procedure to pairwise comparisons of refractive index of glass fragments

This study was undertaken to apply a new method of controlling type I error when performing pairwise comparisons. The Benjamini and Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) controlling procedures have proved to be very powerful tools in solving many practical problems but have not yet been applied to pairwise comparisons of refractive index of glass samples. Students t-test and Welch test (unequal variance Student's t-test) were applied to all possible pairwise comparisons. The comparisons were made on the basis of refractive index values of 72 glass fragments from different car windows and 69 different fragments from one windscreen. The type I error was controlled by the use of Benjamini and Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) controlling procedure. To illustrate the importance of controlling type I error when using pairwise comparisons, results of pairwise comparisons with the FDR controlling procedure were compared to those comparisons made without any controlling procedure. Significantly fewer false negative results (false rejection of H0) were found during the use of FDR procedure in the comparison of refractive indices from the same windscreen than when comparing without controlling type I error. The results of application of FDR method were also compared to the results of other post-hoc tests, such as Tukey HSD test and Bonfferoni test. The FDR method has higher power than Bonferroni method and Tukey HSD method and control errors better than comparing without controlling type I error. The method of choice, for pairwise comparison of glass fragments on the basis of refractive index is Welch test with FDR adjustment. The method gave type I errors at level about 5.3% and type II error at about 3.7%.     

Institutional contexts of environmental management: Water pollution control in Guangzhou,China

In the past decade, Guangzhou (Canton), China, has produced mixed results in water pollution control: it has been successful in limiting pollution from industrial sources than from domestic ones. This article examines the case by reference to a growing body of literature in institutional analysis. The central arguments are that institutions affect the governance and management of natural resources by allocating decision-making authorities among different individuals, agencies and levels of governments, by affecting whether rules and regulations can be effectively enforced and by creating different incentive structures. These arguments help to explain the divergent governmental efforts and outcomes in the two types of water pollution control in Guangzhou. The article concludes by discussing the case's theoretical and practical implications.     

Squeezing the balloon?

Drug policy scholars generally agree that coercive attempts by the United States to reduce drug supplies from abroad have negative side effects. This article confirms that US coercion has made a bad situation worse. However, it also argues against oversimplified statements about the creation of side effects. The empirical focus is on the Air Bridge Denial Program, a US-sponsored attempt from the late 1980s to 2001 to reduce aerial drug trafficking in South America. A causal mechanism is developed that helps to understand and explain how air interdiction contributed to the displacement of coca cultivation from Peru to Colombia, an increase in Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine production, and a diversification of trafficking routes and methods. The analysis also examines contingent conditions, empirical black boxes, and alternative explanations. A complex empirical picture means that the popular metaphor of a balloon whose air, when squeezed, simply moves elsewhere is misleading. Although US-sponsored air interdiction has contributed to displacement, other factors have played a role as well.     

Theories of Political Literacy

This paper tests cognitive mobilization, structural role, and traditional socialization agent theories of political literacy, conceptualized as the potential for informed political participation. Political literacy cannot be measured directly, but we presume that if people are politically literate, they understand party differences and know basic political concepts and facts. Other names for this concept include political expertise, political awareness, and civic competence. Using Jennings and Niemi's youth-parent panel socialization data, we conclude that cognitive mobilization has the largest effect on political literacy, followed fairly closely by structural roles. Socialization agents have a very minor effect. This conclusion partly supports prevailing cognitive mobilization explanations of this concept. However, self-selection causes much of the relationship between political literacy and education, making education's cognitive mobilization potential far smaller than most political scientists assumed. Political involvement and ability are the main sources of cognitive mobilization instead, and education's spurious cross-sectional effect primarily reflects structural roles.     

University technology commercialization through new venture projects: an assessment of the French regional incubator program

This article assesses the performance of a technology business incubator program, established by the French government to support innovative new science and technology-based firms (NSTBF) that seek to commercialize laboratory research results. With a resource-based view and an institutional approach, this study predicts why some incubators may be more successful than others in supporting the development of NSTBF. An original longitudinal data set represents the results of a public incubator program, funded following the passage of a 1999 French law on innovation and research. The findings refer to a sample of 25 operationally active incubators and their 1200 graduated new ventures. This study contributes to the literature on business incubation by showing the importance of various incubator resource inputs for aiding NSTBF projects. It thus provides useful and timely feedback for researchers and policy makers.