Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationally directed or locally produced?

Along with a number of other researchers, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley have consistently argued that constituency campaigning in Britain influences constituency election outcomes. In recent work, however, they have denied that the major efforts made by the Labour Party’s national headquarters to target resources and expertise into key seats in the 1997 general election was effective and that, as a consequence, the party had better results in these seats than elsewhere. Using various measures of campaign intensity, however, it is clear that target constituencies did have significantly stronger Labour campaigns than comparable constituencies that were not nationally targeted. Multivariate analysis also suggests that Labour’s performance in targeted seats was better than in comparable seats.     

A Public Choice Analysis of Endangered Species Listings

Sizable economic consequences may resultfrom listing under the Endangered SpeciesAct (ESA). Potentially adversely affectedparties will attempt to use the politicalprocess to protect their interests. Thequestion is, “are listing determinationssubject to political manipulation?” Inthis paper, we explore empirically thepossibility that implementation of the ESAis determined, in part, by politicalconsiderations. Specifically, weinvestigate whether states with strongcongressional representation are able touse their political muscle to reduce thenumber of listings in their states, ascompared to states with weak congressionalrepresentation. Controlling for otherfactors, we find that states with greaterrepresentation on the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service’s budgetary oversightsubcommittee in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives have significantly fewerESA listings than states with weakerrepresentation on that subcommittee.     

中国、美国与正在演变中的亚洲秩序

中国崛起是一个复合概念,既包括经济、军事等硬实力方面,也包括国际规范、高等教育等软实力方面。这对亚洲地区的国际秩序来说无疑是一个新的变量,但不能就此认为亚洲地区已形成了中国主导的国际秩序。实际上,正在演变中的亚洲秩序是一个包含有轮毂模式、有限共治模式、规范共同体模式和复合相互依赖模式四种秩序特征的复合体。同时,中国崛起对中美关系来说无疑也注入了新的元素,但并非就如现实主义者所预测的那么悲观,中美之间的合作远大于分歧,我们尤其应该注意在中美之间还存在许多不确定因素。     

关于“法理分析”和“法律分析”的断思

经过二十余年的法学复兴,中国学者开始重视法学方法论的研究,其中以法律分析、法理分析、法理透视、法哲学思考命名的论文日益增多.这表明学者已认识到法学乃至于法理学是一门相对独立的学科,其学科知识的体系性、思维方式的独特性已受到程度不同的关注.但是,那种简单贴标签式的命题值得推敲.本刊编辑陈立风与山东大学法理学专业的部分师生举办对法律分析和法理分析进行反思的小型学术沙龙,展开了对话式的探讨.现刊载部分,意在引起学界对此问题的共鸣.     

National identity and Taiwan's Mainland China policy

Taiwan is a mildly divided society—divided essentially along the lines of national identity. Indeed, there is no doubt that national identity is the dominant factor affecting Taiwan's mainland China policy. Other factors such as business interests and security concerns may enter the picture from time to time, but they often get bogged down in the national identity controversies. As a matter of fact, there is high correlation between people's attitudes toward business and security concerns and their positions on the national identity issue. The key to understanding Taiwan's mainland China policy is thus the distribution of voters on the national identity issue and how it is translated into the political fortunes of various political parties in the electoral game.     

Acts of Faith: Churches and Political Engagement

Many observers suggest that white evangelical Protestant churches serve to mobilize their members into politics, while others argue that they encourage withdrawal from political life. This paper reconciles these two claims. I hypothesize that the time members of evangelical Protestant denominations spend in service to their church comes at the expense of participation in the wider community, contrary to the way mainline Protestant and Catholic churches foster civic activity among their members. However, I further hypothesize that the tight social networks formed through this intensive church activity can at times facilitate rapid and intense political mobilization. Data from the Citizen Participation Study supports the first hypothesis, while applying King's method of ecological inference to two elections in Alabama supports the second.