Street Trees,the Private Finance Initiative and Participatory Regeneration: Policy Innovation or Incompatible Perspectives

In common with other northern cities, Sheffield has experienced a dramatic reduction in funding from central government. Its response has been twofold. Firstly, to reduce the cost of service delivery, in part through augmenting or replacing public sector service provision through transfer to voluntary bodies and/or the private sector; the latter through private finance initiative (PFI) contracts. Secondly, the local authority has sought to promote economic regeneration through increased citizen involvement and participation. The problem for this combined strategy is that the two approaches have clashed over a previously underrated and overlooked area of public provision, namely the maintenance of street trees. Issues relating to the design of the contract, the economic imperative inherent within PFI contracts, initial reaction to popular protests, and reluctance to acknowledge the authority of alternative perspectives, have combined to undermine the salience of the participatory regeneration model for key sections of the local community.     

“互联网+”环境下的智慧监管模式

“互联网+监管”是我国“放管服”改革的重要途径,在新一代信息技术快速发展的背景下,基于信息平台和多元监管主体灵活运用多种政策工具的监管机制亟待建立。本文引入智慧监管理论构建一种新型市场监管模式,从多元监管主体、政策工具组合应用、基于“互联网+”信息平台的监管信息共享等维度对智慧监管模式进行系统分析,为我国探索“互联网+监管”方式提供理论依据和实践参考。     

Classical Marxism and Maoism: A comparative study

The issue of the Marxist character of “Mao Zedong Thought” has never really been resolved. The present work is a comparative analysis of the classical Marxism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the ideology of Mao Zedong. The argument is made that whatever Marxism there was in Maoism was the “creatively developed Marxism” of V. I. Lenin—which allowed for socialist revolution in retrograde economic circumstances—something that had been specifically rejected by Marx and Engels. That led to the theoretical idiosyncrasies that characterized Maoism throughout its history, and ultimately resulted in the form rejected by Deng Xiaoping and post-Maoist China.     

互联网普及程度对非正规就业的影响分析

研究基于 2002-2016 年的全国省级面板数据,使用固定效应模型检验了互联网普及程度对非正 规就业的影响,发现互联网普及程度对非正规就业比例有显著的负向影响,互联网的普及提高了社会整体的就 业质量。进一步使用滞后一期互联网普及程度作为工具变量,两阶归结果表明上述结论仍然成立。此外,为了 排除《劳动合同法》对研究结论的影响,本研究使用《劳动合同法》实施以前的样本进行检验,发现互联网普 及程度对非正规就业比例的负向影响仍然显著。     

中国城乡经济失衡的成因及调整——基于县域经济分析

我国经济失衡表现为内外资结构不平衡、内外需求结构不平衡和城乡经济不平衡。我国经济失衡根源于由外资推动的以城市为中心经济发展模式。以城市为中心的发展模式推动经济的过快发展,并积累大量的社会经济问题。县域经济是我国城乡经济联系的纽带,在国际产业转移的背景下,发展县域经济既能调整我国内外资结构,也能启动内需,进而缩小城乡差距。发展县域经济必须要通过金融创新来动员和配置资源,并且要走新型工业化道路。     

围绕勾画结构框架 扎实推进新经济组织党建

构筑新经济组织党建的结构框架体系,必须关注新经济组织党建的价值意义、困境问题和路径设计等基础性问题.开展新经济组织党建有利于引导和促进非公有制经济健康发展、壮大党的力量和影响力、激发人力资源优势、营造和谐发展环境.但新经济组织党建并不尽完美,还面临着一系列的困境问题.我们必须从分析解决这些困境问题入手,科学设计和选择新经济组织党建的发展路径.     

Voices of discontent: Student protest participation in Romania

In January 2012, in several cities of Romania, people turned out to streets to protest. The protests were linked to the wave of movements such as the Indignados or Occupy Wall Street. The students were especially visible among protesters. In this paper, we show that the profile of protests in Romania witnessed a significant shift from workers strikes for higher wages and better jobs, during communism and in the 1990ies, to social movements in which young urban educated citizens mobilize with the help of social networks for issues that are linked to the quality of democracy and life.Furthermore, the shift in protesting is associated, at the individual level, with distrust of the political system, which stimulates engaging in demonstrations. Interestingly, online activism accelerates the feeling of shared distrust of institutions, motivating youth to engage in protest participation, although the effects might be moderate and the causal arrow somewhat uncertain. The hypotheses are tested with data from a general survey on participation in 2012 and a student survey from October 2012. We find that gender, distrust in institutions and family income influence protest behavior. Time spent online has a negative effect on protest engagement and online activism is related to protest behavior.     

‘Dear Mr President’. The blogosphere as arena for communication between people and power

Internet use in Russia is increasing rapidly. The former president of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, has actively utilized the Internet for political purposes, and promoted its use among state officials and politicians in Russia. This article examines the online communication between Medvedev and the Russian people, as seen through his official kremlin.ru weblog. The article combines two research fields – the Internet and demography – mapping the publicly generated discourse of demography as articulated on Medvedev's blog. Furthermore, the author assesses the communication between the authorities and the people, showing how it can be mismatched as individuals ‘talk past each other’.     

Rubber plantations in the Northwest: rethinking the concept of land grabs in Vietnam

At first glance, rubber plantations in the Northwest of Vietnam do not appear so different from ‘large-scale land acquisition’, which is quite common in the Global South. However, when we closely examine how many processes in plantations work, we can see that there are many different processes at work besides those that take place in other countries where transnational or domestic corporations purchase or lease land for growing food, fibre or fuel crops. Rubber plantations have been strongly supported by the government and promoted as a way to industrialize and modernize the uplands, while claiming to narrow the economic gap between the uplands and lowlands. Drawing on fieldwork in two villages in Son La, and on a review of policy papers and documents, this paper identifies the political mechanisms and policies that have emerged as critical factors enabling the dispossession of land for the development of a market economy with a socialist orientation in Vietnam. The paper seeks to understand how institutional control over land and over the discussion of political subjects produces control. It argues that land grabs for rubber plantations in Northwest Vietnam are moves to strengthen state sovereignty. This land seizure has indeed created a new way of land governance that hitherto did not exist in Vietnam.