The role of the European Parliament in Turkey-EU relations: A troublemaker or a useful normative actor?

This article analyzes the role of the European Parliament (EP) in Turkey–EU relations. More specifically, it explores the reasons why in practice EP’s role in promoting fundamental values of the European Union (EU) in Turkey remained largely limited. Drawing on the broader socialization literature, it concludes that a combination of factors related to the socializer (EP) and to the socializee (Turkey) limits the EP’s effectiveness to emerge as a normative actor in its relations with Turkey. In particular, the study points to the mismatch of values promoted by the EP and those embraced by the Turkish political elite as the real obstacle that prevents any socialization mechanism from being triggered.     

The dog that did not bark: the army and the emergency in India

In June 1975, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency rule, capping off a decade long process of the ‘deinstitutionalisation’ of the founding Congress party, increased social mobilisation, and political instability – factors generally considered conducive to military intervention in politics. Organisational factors encouraging military praetorianism, such as military involvement in internal security missions and the growth of ‘rival’ paramilitary institutions, accompanied this process of political decay. But the Indian military did not exploit this window of opportunity. This article offers an institutionalist explanation of the military’s political restraint based on two factors. First, institutionalised mechanisms of civilian control, forged during the critical juncture following independence, insulated the military from politics and the politicians from the military despite the weakening of the political system under which these were created. Second, military internalisation of the norm civilian supremacy, continually reinforced via professional socialisation processes, acted as an internal barrier to military role expansion.     

Examining the immanent dilemma of small states in the Asia-Pacific: the strategic triangle between New Zealand,the US and China

ABSTRACT

Small states throughout the Asia-Pacific are confronted by a growing dilemma over how to balance their traditional security ties with the US and rapidly growing trade with China. This gives Washington and Beijing potential leverage over small states to use within their competition with one another. This article explores the implications of this for New Zealand – a small South Pacific state that prides itself on maintaining an independent foreign policy. Situated within the small state literature, it utilises a material-based strategic triangle to illustrate the fundamental facets of New Zealand's position. Relatedly, the article examines how Wellington has managed its burgeoning relations with China and the US over the past decade and critically considers New Zealand's independent foreign policy. It finds that New Zealand has adopted a mixed set of strategies to manage its position between the US and China, closely aligning itself with Washington while remaining nonaligned on some key security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. New Zealand has certainly not opted for neutrality. The article concludes that New Zealand and other small states must remain vigilant, may want to consider alternative strategies of alignment, and outlines a number of areas where additional research could prove fruitful.     

Reassembling Gender: On the Immanent Politics of Gendering Apparatuses of Bodily Production in Science

Abstract

Arguing that new feminist materialist work has insufficiently attended to how gender is differently materialized and embodied in practices with non-human others, this article examines ethnographically what genderings come to matter in the knowledge-making practices of mass spectrometry and peer review in a Czech research laboratory. The article returns to Donna Haraway's analytics of the ‘apparatus of bodily production’ and its extension by Karen Barad as a productive device for tracing the situational making and unmaking of gender in specific human–technology assemblages and the sedimenting histories of such intra-actions. Through a triple movement of disassembling, contextualizing and reassembling particular embodiments, the author brings unstable, implicit and absent genderings, and their affective textures, affordances and valuations to the fore, including the corporeal orientations associated with enterprising adrenalin-driven masculinity and denigrated forms of embodiment such as shame and defeat. The article shows how these (de)genderings render present tensions and exclusions in prevailing apparatuses of knowledge production and pose questions of responsibility.     

检视与重塑:从工商注册登记情况看环评工作执行力不足

环境影响评价工作是国家赋予环保部门的一项重要职责。国务院1998年颁布的《建设项目环境保护管理条例》和山东省2006年3月1日起实施的《山东省实施〈中华人民共和国环境影响评价法〉办法》确定了环评与工商注册登记联动制度,规定了办理营业执照前应报批环评审批手续。但通过对历下区工商登记注册环评情况的调研分析,目前该项制度的执行还存在很多困难和不足之处,故亟待认清现状、正视困难,提出环评工作改进的方向和对策。     

连锁加盟式合同诈骗的犯罪形式及侦查策略

连锁加盟式合同诈骗虽不是犯罪分子非法敛财的新手段,但是随着近一段时间"炒房热"的逐步退温,民间资本逐渐转向投资连锁加盟店等更为理性的项目。犯罪分子打着连锁加盟的旗号,对手中有闲余资金的群众大肆进行诈骗,犯罪手法更加隐蔽,社会危害性更大。本文拟从连锁加盟式合同诈骗的犯罪手法展开分析,对此类案件的侦查、打击进行研究。     

Reevaluating the Chávez Regime: Participatory Democracy or Rentier Populism?

This analysis evaluates the Chávez regime by its own standard for democracy and citizenship, what it referred to as protagonistic, participatory democracy. Rather than committing itself to the realisation of this project, and the expanded notion of citizenship that it entailed, the Chávez regime employed the rhetoric of participatory democracy in the service of populist rule. As a result, it failed to promote the participatory form of democracy and citizenship promised in Twenty-first Century Socialism. Accordingly, this analysis demonstrates how the concentration of top-down, executive power characteristic of rentier populism impedes the egalitarian and solidaristic mission of participatory democracy.     

Building organisation–public relationships: Towards an understanding of the challenges facing public relations

Abstract

The main aim of this article is to investigate the challenges facing public relations professionals in building organisation–public relationships (OPRs), by means of an overview of related modernistic literature, mainly within a modernistic paradigm. Dominant business developments have historically impacted the broader role of public relations in organisations and society, and it is maintained that the change in the domain of public relations to a relational perspective is yet again a consequence of the efforts by business to survive in the new millennium. There can be no doubt about the strategic importance of relationships to the survival of organisations and to public relations. A relational approach to public relations has major strategic value, and embracing its challenges is vital for the profession. The relational approach offers a two-fold opportunity to public relations professionals, namely to confirm their contribution to achieving organisational goals through the measurement of their relationship-building efforts, and the prospect of realigning themselves with other business functions in the organisation. The main objective of this article is to review the change in the domain of public relations to a relational perspective, and to investigate the current challenges facing public relations professionals in building mutually beneficial OPRs on the basis of the relational perspective of public relations.     

浅析高校网络德育的概念内涵与实施路径

网络时代对高校德育工作提出了严峻挑战,厘清网络德育的概念内涵,对高校网络德育进行概念界定,分析其特殊性,并探讨高校网络德育实施路径,是高校德育工作亟待解决的问题。从"价值理性"出发,阐述了高校网络德育的概念内涵,分析了高校网络德育所具有的"主体性"和"生活性",最后,提出了网络上与网络下联动机制,对高校网络德育实施路径进行了探讨。