A typology of communication functions in ballot issue campaigns

The increased importance of ballot issue campaigns creates a need for communication and political science scholars to study the rhetorical strategies employed in such campaigns. This essay presents a typology of four communication functions employed in successful ballot issue campaigns: education, trust development, development of a positive message, and neutralization of the opposition. The typology is applied to an analysis of the 1986 campaign for liquor‐by‐the‐drink in Kansas.     

指定居所监视居住的适用研究——以新刑诉法的修订实施为背景

从立法沿革来看,指定居所监视居住并不是一种新的强制措施,只是新刑诉法及刑诉规则对其适用做了细化和完善。在司法实践中,如何实现指定居所监视居住的法定功能,怎样防止将其异化为羁押措施?当务之急就是要以新刑诉法修订实施为背景,对指定居所监视居住的适用条件、执行场所和执行方法、人民检察院对指定居所监视居住的监督、保障被指定居所监视居住的犯罪嫌疑人、被告人的合法权益等问题进行深入研究。     

党的第四代领导集体处理民族问题的理论创新与实践

党的第四代领导集体,围绕“什么是社会主义民族问题、怎样正确处理社会主义民族问题”的主线,自觉地进行理论创新和实践落实。在理论创新方面,丰富发展了中国特色社会主义民族理论体系。在实践落实方面,围绕促进民族地区科学发展、谋求民族地区社会和谐两大任务,开创了民族工作新局面。     

Balanced or Biased? Interest Groups and Legislative Lobbying in the European News Media

This article examines the coverage of legislative lobbying in European news media. The starting point thereby is that lobbying in the crowded European Union (EU)-level interest community is not only a struggle for direct access to policymakers, but that in order to realize policy goals many interest groups rely on political attention generated by the media. Our main research question is how media attention is skewed toward particular interests and which factors explain these varying levels of prominence. Our empirical analysis is based on a set of 125 legislative proposals adopted by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010. For all these cases we identified 379 interest organizations that made public statements, we coded the amount of media attention these organized interests gained, the type of statements they made as well as some key organizational features. While the aggregate levels of attention look pretty balanced, our evidence shows that media prominence is skewed toward particular types of interests; in particular that organized interests which oppose a proposed policy gain significantly higher levels of media attention.     

Measuring the Media Agenda

Measuring media attention to politically relevant topics is of interest to a broad array of political science and communications scholars. We provide a practical guide for the construction, validation, and evaluation of time series measures of media attention. We review the extant literature on the coherence of the media agenda, which provides evidence in support of and evidence against the emergence of a single, national news agenda. Drawing expectations from this literature, we show the conditions under which a single national news agenda is likely to be present and where it is likely to be absent. We create 90 different keyword searches covering a wide range of topics and gather counts of stories per month from 12 national and regional media sources with data going back to 1980 where possible. We show using factor analysis wide variance in the strength of the first factor. We then estimate a regression model to predict this value. The results show the conditions under which any national source will produce time series results consistent with any other. Key independent variables are the average number of stories, the variance in stories per month, and the presence of any “spike” in the data series. Our large-scale empirical assessment should provide guidance to scholars assessing the quality of time series data on media coverage of issues.     

Going green: Explaining issue competition on the environment

This study addresses the dynamics of the issue space in multiparty systems by examining to what extent, and under what conditions, parties respond to the issue ownership of other parties on the green issue. To understand why some issues become part and parcel of the political agenda in multiparty systems, it is crucial not only to examine the strategies of issue entrepreneurs, but also the responses of other parties. It is argued that the extent to which other parties respond to, rather than ignore, the issue mobilisation of green parties depends on two factors: how much of an electoral threat the green party poses to a specific party; and the extent to which the political and economic context makes the green issue a potential vote winner. To analyse the evolution of the green issue, a time‐series cross‐section analysis is conducted using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project for 19 West European countries from 1980–2010. The findings have important implications for understanding issue evolution in multiparty systems and how and why the dynamics of party competition on the green issue vary across time and space.     

重大公共危机情境下治理效能：注意力分配转移的关键作用

地方干部是理解我国行政系统运转的基础,他们的行为深受行政系统注意力分配的影响。疫情早期受到系统性风险冲击,行政系统功能不彰,可从三个层面理解：面临制度间隙与危机情景,地方干部热衷承担过程性责任,规避结果性责任;传统激励机制惯性牵扯了突变情境新激励机制的效果;行政系统“死机”与疫情信息“黑洞”并存。面临这些挑战,最高决策层通过权力权威、激励与资源配置三种制度化方式引导干部群体注意力分配,有效推动行政系统由“多任务”转变为“危机处理”。结果显示,我国迅速取得疫情防控和复工复产双推进,彰显了“中国制度”的优势。     

过失犯的构成要件构造及其适用

如何适用刑法对过失犯予以处罚,虽然在刑法理论上有各种不同学说,然而均缺乏从过失犯整体构成要件的角度进行思考。本文认为,过失犯的注意义务之未规定属于立法者未能详尽地描述出的犯罪行为构成要素,这样,根据条文对犯罪构成要件的规定还无法推断行为的违法性,还必须由法官对注意义务作出必要的补充判断,因此其在构成要件构造上属于开放性的。分析过失犯的构成要件构造是对过失犯理论研究领域的拓展,有利于我们明确过失犯的类型性意义,以提倡法官对超出立法技术限度的注意义务进行补充。过失犯注意义务之未规定不属于法律漏洞,对之应该采用狭义的法律解释方法适用之。