Paths towards Consensus: Explaining Decision Making within the Swiss Global Justice Movement

We examine the conditions leading social movement organizations to adopt consensus in their internal decision making. To do so, we look at organizations of the Swiss global justice movement, which puts the search for consensus at center stage. Our findings show that the ways in which social movement organizations take decisions and their vision of democracy more generally are not simply a matter of free choice by their leaders and members, but depend on certain organizational characteristics. The most important one is a small organizational size, which is a crucial condition for the adoption of consensus in internal decision making. This condition combines with another one pertaining to the cultural tradition of contention represented by the social movement family to explain consensus. In addition, our findings show that small, transnational organizations following inclusive participatory practices are also more likely to adopt consensus when they make decisions.     

The personality of populists: provocateurs,charismatic leaders,or drunken dinner guests?

Abstract

The ‘populist phenomenon’ has received a lot of attention in recent years. Yet little is known about the populists themselves: who are they? They are often described as bad-mannered provocateurs disrupting the political game, but also as charismatic leaders able to persuade and motivate. Can a populist ‘style’ or ‘personality’ be identified? This article assesses to what extent populists score differently from ‘mainstream’ politicians on established personality inventories. Using a new dataset based on expert ratings for 152 candidates (including 33 populists) having competed in 73 elections worldwide, it is found that populists score lower on agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness. At the same time, populists score higher on extraversion, narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. These results have important implications for the study of the success of populists in contemporary democracies and beyond.     

Vote as you Think: Determinants of Consistent Decision Making in Direct Democracy

This study investigates the conditions under which Swiss citizens take consistent decisions, that is, decisions that reflect their argument‐based opinions, during direct‐democratic ballots. In line with recent work on cognitive political behavior, we expect the drivers of consistent voting to be found at the individual and contextual level. At the individual level, we argue that political knowledge positively affects consistent decisions. At the contextual level, we anticipate a positive effect for campaign intensity, complexity and negativism. We estimate hierarchical logistic models based on VOX survey data (1999‐2005) and original data that captures the nature of political campaigns. Our results support our expectations for the situational level and (partially) for the individual factors.     

丝绸之路视角下的宁夏与中亚五国进出口贸易发展研究

习近平总书记提出的建设丝绸之路经济带的重大战略构想,是国家的重大战略,也是西部大开发战略的延伸和拓展。宁夏作为全国唯一的内陆开放型经济试验区,地处向西开放的前沿,应以与中亚进出口贸易发展为切入点,发挥能源领域、农业领域、文化旅游领域等方面的独特优势,加快与沿路国家的经贸往来。     

试论配偶权

于2001年4月28日公布实施的《中华人民共和国婚姻法》对配偶权给予了法律上的认定 ,这是我国婚姻家庭法制建设的又一个里程碑 ,它对于维护平等、和睦、文明的婚姻家庭关系将发挥巨大的作用。但新《婚姻法》对配偶权的规定过于原则 ,仍有待完善。而完善配偶权制度 ,是关键的就是应进一步充实、健全配偶权的具体内容     

论医疗纠纷ADR机制之构建

文章参照美、德、日三个发达国家的非诉讼解决纠纷制度,采用比较的方法,在借鉴其他国家经验的基础上,剖析了我国医疗纠纷非诉讼解决机制存在的问题。对完善医疗纠纷协商机制、引入第三方介入医疗纠纷的调解机制及加快我国医事立法方面提出了建议,以此构建和谐医患关系。     

Regulatory mobilization and service delivery at the edge of the regulatory state

Where there is weak state capacity to carry out regulatory, redistributional, and developmental functions characterizing much of the developing world, the role of governance and service delivery is also performed by a myriad of private actors. Institutional reform in the utility sector in developing countries has often failed to distinguish between social and economic regulation. I show how private actors like NGOs and local community groups undertake what I term “regulatory mobilization” to influence the new rules of the service delivery game, as well as to deliver much‐needed basic services to urban poor communities. Based on extensive fieldwork carried out in the Philippines, this article reveals and explains the politics of the informal sector at the edge of the regulatory state. More than a decade since the privatization of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System in Metro Manila in 1997, water access for the urban poor remained limited as privatized water utilities faced difficulties in extending service provision. In the context of an unpredictable regulatory landscape and an oligarchic patrimonial state, unexpected collective action by organized urban poor communities and NGOs has taken place around water as a subsistence right. Combining hybrid mobilizations to obtain water as well as influencing the rules governing their provision, these forms of regulatory mobilization appear to be peripheral and episodic. However, depending on how local and sectoral politics are conflated, such regulatory mobilization may sometimes not only result in obtaining subsistence goods, but may also occasionally project countervailing power in the policy sector, and influence formal regulatory frameworks in surprising ways.     

地方政府机构改革理性分析

地方政府职能准确定位是地方政府机构改革的关键。转轨时期的地方政府机构设置具有明显的不确定性和过渡性 ,面临诸多矛盾和困难。为此 ,必须要树立有限政府和市场政府的新理念 ,整体转变政府职能 ,利用经济杠杆和政策导向来合理分流、转移人员。     

做好高校统战工作必须坚持创新思维

做好高校统战工作必须坚持创新思维。面对国内外复杂多变的新形势 ,高校统战工作必须有所创新 ,提高工作的预见性 ;面对新机遇新挑战 ,高校知识分子工作必须有所创新 ,提高落实“三个代表”重要思想的自觉性 ;面对深化改革开放带来的新情况 ,高校思想政治工作要有所创新 ,提高工作的实效性 ;面对新世纪培养人才的艰巨任务 ,高校在培养机制上必须有所创新 ,提高工作的针对性。     

农民工教育的现状及对策

农民工已经成为推动我国城市化进程和经济增长的重要动力。加强农民工教育,提高其劳动技能和综合素质,对促进社会和谐有着积极的作用。