Identifying the Causes of Issue Attention and Policy Change: Evidence from U.S. Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Drilling Policy, 2008

The flow of attention in the policy process is dynamic and disruptive. While we know changes in issue attention often result in policy change, the causal mechanisms underlying the different stages of the attention allocation process remain unclear. This article uses Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to examine an underdeveloped aspect of issue attention within policy‐making institutions: how specific policy indicators influence the entry and exit of issues on policy‐making agendas. Partisan issue attention in the House of Representatives is used to analyze a significant change to U.S. offshore oil and natural gas drilling policy in 2008. The results highlight how historically high gasoline prices precipitated a shift in attention to offshore drilling and subsequent policy change. Moreover, gasoline prices Granger‐cause attention to energy policy in partisan speeches over time. The analysis further reveals how competing policy frames and a salient focusing event shaped congressional and public discourse, leading to subsequent changes in attention. Taken together, the findings broaden our understanding of the policy process by identifying the specific forces behind the entry and exit of issues on the policy‐making agenda.     

The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

Prior research on policy conflicts indicates a tendency among policy actors to misperceive the influence of actors engaged in policy debates based on the degree of distance between their relative policy positions. This research develops a measure for assessing the degree and direction of the misperception effect. This measure is then utilized as a dependent variable to assess the relationship between theoretically relevant factors and the degree to which actors will exaggerate the influence of their opponents and allies. The research uses original survey data of policy actors engaged in the debate over hydraulic fracturing in New York. The results indicate misperceptions of relative influence are prevalent and most associated with the experience of a policy loss and holding relatively extreme policy beliefs. The findings provide new insight into factors that influence the demonization of political opponents. These insights are timely in the context of polarized debates over environmental and energy policy in the United States.     

Why economics needs to be distinguished from physics,and why economists need to talk to physicists: a response to Foster and Holleman

Foster and Holleman argue that the systems ecologist H.T. Odum offered a valid theoretical framework for conceptualizing ecologically unequal exchange, and demonstrate its affinity with the Marxian theory of unequal exchange of embodied labour. However, both approaches suffer from the same fundamental confusion of the biophysical and the economic. The affinity between labour and energy theories of the unequal exchange of value was demonstrated by S.C. Lonergan already in 1988, but to thus define asymmetric transfers of biophysical resources in terms of underpaid ‘use values’ is misleading. Foster's recent endorsement of Odum is inconsistent with his earlier rejection of Odum's intellectual ancestor S. Podolinsky. While the ambition to ecologize Marx is laudable, it is in the interests of correct historiography and contemporary environmental justice activism to untangle some of the analytical problems in Foster and Holleman's article. A major problem is their failure to acknowledge the implications of N. Georgescu-Roegen's conceptualization of the relation between economics and thermodynamics.     

Creating Settings for Youth Empowerment and Leadership: An Ecological Perspective

Youth development programs are increasingly focusing on youth empowerment and leadership, a shift which often requires adult staff to adopt new roles and practices. This article explores staff practice in the context of a multisite initiative designed to engage marginalized youth in social change through youth-led grants. Interviews with youth workers and managers revealed practices at multiple ecological levels. Individual-level practices supported youths’ capacities to participate. Group-level practices fostered social interactions and activities that actualized the youth-led approach. Setting-level practices created structures that supported and protected group activities while organization-level practices promoted a favorable environment for youth leadership. Analyzed from an ecological and activity settings perspective, these results contribute to understanding the multifaceted and complex nature of youth work in power-sharing practice models. Practice implications include identifying training needs to help practitioners navigate across multiple ecological levels and suggesting reflection questions for practitioners.     

Is there a global environmental justice movement?

One of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. There are conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste disposal. Therefore, there are many local complaints, as shown in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJatlas) and other inventories. And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice. Moreover, since the 1980s and 1990s, this movement has developed a set of concepts and campaign slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include environmental racism, popular epidemiology, the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, biopiracy, tree plantations are not forests, the ecological debt, climate justice, food sovereignty, land grabbing and water justice, among other concepts. These terms were born from socio-environmental activism, but sometimes they have also been taken up by academic political ecologists and ecological economists who, for their part, have contributed other concepts to the global environmental justice movement, such as ‘ecologically unequal exchange’ or the ‘ecological footprint’.     

教师成长与发展的和谐环境研究

通过对乐山市三所高校的教师成长环境进行调查研究,结果发现：在自身环境上,教师充分肯定自己的教学能力并有迫切的学习需求;教师的人际关系基本和谐;部分教师学习时间相对匮乏。在外部环境上,组织制度建设有待干完善。主要表现为：奖惩制度科学程度不够,不能充分发挥其重要作用;教学评价的科学性不强,需要加以完善;教师课程教学存在不稳定现象;后勤保障体系服务有待于提高;教师培训体系依然不够完善。因而,促进教师成长,教师环境建设需要加以改善,尤其是外部环境。     

兽药对生态环境影响的研究进展

综述了兽药对陆生和水生生态环境影响方面的研究进展,探讨了兽药对陆生植物、土壤动物、土壤微生物与原生生物等陆生生态环境的影响及对浮游类生物与微生物、鱼虾与水体甲壳动物等水生生态环境的影响及其生态毒理效应。     

中俄海洋安全合作论析

中俄两国在太平洋、北冰洋等海域存在诸多共同的海洋安全目标和利益,双方的海洋安全合作不仅可以在理论层面丰富发展国家间海洋安全合作的内涵,也可在现实层面改善两国的海洋安全环境,维护两国海洋安全权益,同时为全球海洋安全治理做出贡献。21世纪以来,国际形势的变化和中俄关系的相向而行给中俄海洋安全合作营造了良好的外交环境。中俄两国多层级、多领域的合作机制,为两国海洋安全合作的开展提供了丰富的交流沟通平台。北极地区作为新疆域为中俄海洋安全合作带来了新的机遇。中国“一带一路”倡议和俄罗斯“向东看”发展政策也在不断拓展双方共同的海洋安全利益。与此同时,中俄两国的海洋安全合作也面临着“互信程度有待进一步提高、海上防卫方向不完全重合、世界海洋安全环境的复杂与敏感”等问题。在此情况下,通过加强中俄海洋经济的合作、积极构建海洋安全利益共同体以及合理规划中俄海洋安全合作的重点方向和拓展空间,可有效应对双方海洋安全合作面临的挑战。同时,推动多边海洋安全合作机制的建立不仅可为新时代中俄海洋安全合作的深化保驾护航,也有利于促进全球海洋安全的制度化建设。     

资源环境监管视角下的行政检察监督

2013年6月，最高人民法院和最高人民检察院颁布实施的《关于办理环境污染刑事案件适用法律若干问题的解释》，再次将人们的视线引向政府对资源环境监管职责的落实：环境监管失职将受到严惩。在资源环境监管领域，目前我国立法只规定了行政监管责任，对有关行政监管权力行使的行政检察监督却缺乏相应的立法。加强行政检察监督，有助于促进政府依法严格履行保护资源环境、防止有关权力滥用的监管职责。