后西方世界秩序下的核武器与核威慑

全球国际社会正处于一个关键的变化时期。长期以来占主导地位的西方秩序在如下几个方面面临包围:霸权分散、全球资本主义危机日益加重、全球共同面临恐怖主义、大规模移民以及环境变化等带来的各种威胁。英国脱欧、特朗普当选美国总统这些事件表明,作为世界秩序核心的英语世界,已失去其主导力量。目前的发展格局将朝着多元化的后西方世界秩序发展。在此秩序下,没有超级大国,只有大国,并且这些大国大多比较自我封闭,因此,并不存在真正意义上的争夺全球霸权的现象。文化差异将比意识形态差异更为重要。文章首先将这一秩序的轮廓做一大致勾勒,然后探讨这一秩序对未来几十年核武器与核威慑所要扮演的角色来说将意味着什么。最为关注的着眼点是,全球格局从全球层面向区域层面的转变以及复杂的核扩散与核威慑态势。     

Election Laws,Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform

State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout. The impacts of these reforms vary in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual‐level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The results show that Election Day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout, whereas the most popular reform—early voting—is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself. We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.     

The political use of military power in the Mediterranean by the United States and the Soviet Union

Since 2003, state control in the Russian economy has increased significantly. This has affected mainly, but not only, the oil industry. This policy development gives some grounds for concern about Russia's long-run growth. Its origins lie in power struggles within the political elite, in efforts by members of that elite to enrich themselves and in a profound distrust on the part of that elite of any sources of power that they do not themselves control. One result is that business confidence has been dented, the growth of oil output has slowed, and future GDP growth depends more heavily than before on further growth in oil prices.     

Regulation is evil: An application of narrative policy analysis to regulatory debate in New Zealand

Using findings from research on the implementation of telephone number portability in New Zealand, we demonstrate how narrative analysis can account for how particular influence stories, or policy narratives, come to dominate the policy process. In this paper, we extend the concept of metanarrative, which to date has been interpreted as a story that policy makers use to recast policy problems. Policy metanarratives are shown to have strong pre-figurative effects and to be more pervasive than previously recognised.