The regulation of political financing in Portugal

The regulation of political financing in Portugal has taken place through successive waves of reform since the adoption of the first decree which gave legal recognition to parties in 1974. The incremental nature of adjustments and the overall inefficacy of instruments adopted, often introduced without a clear understanding of the problems and opportunities for impropriety and corruption, can be interpreted as an attempt by the political class to anticipate the worst, that is, scandal and the threat this would represent to the normal performance of democracy. In spite of the legislators' increased knowledge about successes and failures of foreign regulatory experiences and the importation of instruments tested abroad, Portuguese regulatory efforts are shaped by specific lines of legal-historical development and the dominant attitudes of Portuguese society towards that sort of illegality.     

De Gaulle,Colonel Passy and British Intelligence, 1940–42

De Gaulle's relationship with his secret intelligence and subversive services, the Bureau central de renseignements et d'action (BCRA) headed by Colonel Passy, as well as with British intelligence is examined in the light of the now declassified archives of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the BCRA. These archives reveal that de Gaulle failed to interest himself seriously in secret intelligence or subversion before the arrival of Jean Moulin in London in October 1941. De Gaulle's subsequent relationship with the BCRA and British intelligence was defined by an obsessive need for political control, which only served to compromise the BCRA's otherwise successful collaboration with British intelligence.     

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.     

Chinese Geopolitics: Space Program Cooperation among China,Brazil, and Russia

With the Obama Administration’s foreign policy pivot to Asia, the Chinese government is concerned about the possibility of new challenges in their foreign policy sphere of influence. Since the 1990s, many political and military analysts have explored the eventual rivalry between these two states. However, events in the Middle East preoccupy U.S. attention, leaving China moderately free in Southeast Asia, though it is uncertain for how long this will persist and if the United States will reallocate its attention to contain China. In this case, the Chinese government will need to develop countermeasures to sustain its geopolitical interests. There are two focuses in this analysis: (1) the Chinese geopolitical naval situation, exploring the problems in the geosphere surrounding China and the eventual competition with other regional powers and the United States in East Asia; and (2) the potential for space program cooperation with Russia and Brazil, which, in turn, dramatically changes the balance of power in outer space through positive aspects of Russian technical capabilities and strategic Brazilian geographic (Alcântara launch site).     

Taking cues from the government: heuristic versus systematic processing in a constitutional referendum

Abstract

One of the main criticisms of direct democracy is that it places excessive demands on voters. Are citizens competent enough to vote directly on policy issues? When stakes are high, do citizens mainly follow elites’ signals or do they decide in line with their issue preferences? This article addresses these questions in a multi-method setting by combining observational and experimental data from an original three-wave panel survey conducted during the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum. In particular, Finite Mixture Models are employed to model voters’ heterogeneous strategies of information processing. Findings show that heuristic voting based on government evaluation prevails over policy-related voting. More specifically, less politically sophisticated and partisan voters relied on government assessment as a heuristic, while sophisticated and independent voters based their decisions mostly on their assessment of the reform. Implications for the question of citizens’ competence in direct democracy are discussed.     

Global technological collaboration network: network analysis of international co-inventions

Global innovation networks are emerging as a result of the international division of innovation processes through, among others, international technological collaborations. At the aggregate level, the creation of technological collaboration between countries can be considered as mutually beneficial (or detrimental) and their random distribution is unlikely. Consequently, the dynamics and evolution of the technological collaborations can be expected to fulfil the criteria of a complex network. To study the structure and evolution of the global technological collaboration network, we use patent-based data of international co-inventions and apply the network analysis. In addition, extending the gravity model of international technological collaboration by network measures, we show that a country’s position in the network has very strong impact on the intensity of collaboration with other countries.