Precarity,Cognitive (Non-)Resistance and the Conservative Working Class in China

ABSTRACT

Workers’ resistance is crucial to understanding how the working class respond to the growing labour precarity in post-socialist China. The labour studies literature posits that inequality and volatile capital movements increase workers’ precarity and lead to stronger labour resistance, such as strikes. However, workers’ cognition as an integral part of resistance has been rarely studied. This article examines cognitive resistance by Chinese workers from different tier cities by looking at their social trust, class identity, understanding of policies and class solidarity. Despite capital movements and precarity causing more labour unrest, it does not necessarily lead to a stronger cognitive resistance. While inequality and precarity are greater in the more developed megacities with a shifting capital favourability, workers in megacities display a more conservative cognitive resistance than those from the lower-tier cities. This study of workers’ cognitive resistance provides insight into the future of the Chinese labour movement. It argues that the working class’s current cognitive non-resistance suggests that even if a window of opportunity were to appear in the wall of state oppression, workers are not cognitively prepared to coalesce into a coherent social movement that would bring about transformative changes.     

Over the centuries: a history of Wollstonecraft reception

ABSTRACT

Both Wollstonecraft’s fame and infamy are attributable to her lived experience as the woman author of the only radical republican feminist text published in the pamphlet war of the 1790s. Yet, her radical republican politics were divorced from her gender politics in the early reception. This paper argues that this separation was subsequently sustained in part by interpretive practices that rest on the suppression of the original split. It shows that over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both outside and within academia, the dominant interpretive tendency of neglecting Wollstonecraft’s radical republican politics has deradicalized both her historical political thought and her iconic image. This conventional reception has both enabled and limited the resources made available through Wollstonecraft to feminists throughout history.     

Trade Measures and Climate Compliance: Institutional Interplay Between WTO and the Marrakesh Accords

This article examines the potential of trade measures to induce more climate-friendly policies, focusing on the relationship between global trade rules and the Kyoto climate regime. At the core of this interplay is the normative consistency of trade-related rules in the two regimes and any hierarchical relationship between them. The stronger clout of the WTO and its compulsory dispute settlement system suggest that issues involving competing claims would be referred to WTO bodies. Such bodies have so far been restrictive regarding the exceptions in WTO agreements to the general ban on embargoes and discrimination. The normative compatibility of the two regimes will also depend on their participatory interplay, specifically how they differentiate groups of actors as to rights and obligations. Non-members of WTO receive the least protection, and their vulnerability to climate-related trade measures is largely determined by their interdependence with states that consider employment of such measures. Among WTO members, the findings of a dispute settlement body would presumably differ depending on the status of the target under the Kyoto Protocol. A non-complier with Kyoto commitments would be more shielded than a non-party, because by joining the Kyoto regime a non-complier has exposed itself to regime-internal and less trade intrusive measures that should be exhausted first. A third dimension of interplay is linkage, or efforts to influence the regime interplay. To date there has only been moderate cross-agency coordination, but considerable attention is paid within each regime, including in the Millennium Round of trade negotiations, to the desirability of avoiding conflict between them.     

Race, Caste, or Class? The Bunche–Myrdal Dispute Over An American Dilemma

Few observers doubt that Gunnar Myrdal and Ralph J. Bunche had sharp methodological disagreements and differing approaches to tactics for ending the Negro problem. Myrdal has been criticized as a statist liberal and utopian moralist by recent cultural historians defending progressive nationalism (multiculturalism), while Bunche has been characterized as a vulgar Marxist, and, with Myrdal, a denigrator of black culture. Inspection of An American Dilemma in contrast with Bunche's research memoranda suggests that Myrdal represented himself as a Burkean conservative, while Bunche's analyses transmit the radical puritan libertarian tradition, but without rejecting social democratic remedies en route to working-class control of industry. Their shared emphasis on class-based remedies to end poverty and powerlessness, however, renders them similarly unassimilable in a period where the progressive left has generally embraced racial or ethnic identity, not class power, as the source of individual emancipation, mental health, and economic betterment.     

江泽民对当代中国民主政治建设的卓越贡献

发展社会主义民主政治,是我们党始终不渝的奋斗目标,党的第三代领导核心江泽民强调高扬社会主义民主旗帜,反对西方民主;提出了把代表制民主和直接民主结合起来的推进战略;提出了“依法治国”方略,充分体现了社会主义民主的实质;提出了一系列民主建设的理论现点,从而丰富和发展了邓小平的民主思想,把当代中国的民主理论与实践推进到了一个新的阶段,     

Proportional representation and attitudes about politics: results from New Zealand

PR systems often are credited with producing more equitable outcomes between political parties and encouraging wider social group representation than majoritarian systems. Theory suggests that this should instill greater trust, efficacy, and faith in the political system. We assume that citizens disadvantaged by majoritarian rules (political minorities) will have a relatively greater shift toward positive attitudes about democracy following a transition from a majoritarian system to proportional representation. We employ panel data from the 1993–1996 New Zealand Election Study (NZES) to test hypotheses about the effects of electoral system change on attitudes about governmental responsiveness, trust in government, and political efficacy. We find that there is a general shift in mass opinion toward more positive attitudes on some measures of efficacy and responsiveness. Political minorities display a greater shift toward feelings of efficacy than other voters.     

Malaysia 13th General Election: A short note on Malaysia's continuing battle with ethnic politics

Malaysia's Barisan Nasional (a coalition of mainly ethnic-based parties) secured a narrow win in the country's recent election. Reacting to the dismal result, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak blamed his party's losses on the “Chinese Tsunami”, which he described as the overwhelming support of Chinese voters for the opposition party – the Pakatan Rakyat (PR). This note believes that the debates on “Chinese Tsunami” highlight a larger imperative; Malaysians' constant struggle with race relations and what constitutes the character of Malaysia's political economy. Improving Malaysia's ethnic relations in the next five years remains daunting. The BN's weaker mandate and the PR's eagerness to assume leadership threatens to recycle more populist policies that can do more damage to Malaysia's ethnic relations.     

"政治与行政二分法"研究综述

"政治与行政二分法"从提出至今已有120多年的历史.随着社会的发展,虽然其遭到来自于凯恩斯主义、公共政策科学、新公共行政和新公共管理的批判和质疑,但其仍具有一定的理论价值和实践指导意义.本文从背景分析、内容陈述、批评回应和价值方面,对学界关于"政治与行政二分法"的研究进行了系统的梳理和研析.     

国家创新体系:穷国追赶富国的加速器

国家创新体系的涵义和作用 ;中国、欧洲、日美国家创新体系的回顾 ;我国的国家创新体系之建构 :一是思想意识形态体系 ,二是经济运行体系 ,三是政治法律制度体系     

变革时代政法人的司法使命——沃伦与王胜俊能动司法哲学观比较

从社会现实出发，寻找正确的司法哲学指导司法活动，积极回应时代的司法需求，是政法人的时代司法使命。作为中关司法能动的主要倡导者，沃伦和王胜俊都主张司法应积极回应政治和变革时代的民众权利需求，高度关注弱势群体的权利保障，关注社会实质正义，注重司法结果衡平。但由于生活的政治、意识形态、文化和社会历史背景等巨大差异，二人对于能动司法的理解当然也不完全相同。