公共服务供给机制转型中的公益性岗位研究

我国自2002年起开始施行公益性岗位的政策,这一政策对拓宽就业渠道、缓解失业压力起到了一定的作用。但目前依靠政府进一步开发和购买公益性岗位的难度很大。本文对国内外公共服务供给机制转型进行了比较分析,在此基础上提出以下建议:我国应进一步完善公共服务的供给机制,以社区为平台,通过推动购买服务的方式,调动社会组织服务社区和吸收就业的功能,以推动公益性岗位的增加。     

新一轮服务贸易谈判若干问题

服务贸易的市场准入及进一步的规则完善是世界贸易组织多哈回合谈判中的重要议题。GATS 规则谈判中的焦点问题包括国内监管纪律、紧急保障措施、服务的政府采购及补贴等。根据香港“部长会议宣言”及附件 C,新一轮服务谈判的发展将表现在谈判目标、方法、时限及关注发展中国家利益等各个方面。我国应积极参与这些谈判,在具体承诺和规则制定方面维护自己的利益。     

基本公共服务均等化治理:从“缩小地区间财力差距”到“提升人民群众获得感”

我国基本公共服务均等化已经开始从"缩小地区间财力差距"迈向"提升人民群众获得感"的治理新时代。本文围绕充分性和均衡性重新审视了我国基本公共服务均等化面临的新问题,并围绕"政府调节→基本公共服务均等化→人民群众获得感提升"主线,从理论上探讨了基本公共服务均等化治理框架及需要突破的难点。研究指出:(1)我国基本公共服务均等化治理,指向人民群众获得感最大化的目标嬗变是前提,追求获得感提升带来行政效能的制度保障是关键,理清"投入-产出-感知"链条并形成内外联动的3E绩效体系是重点;(2)技术上需要突破两点:一是以"基本"范畴和"均等"程度为起点,分别构建满足充分性和均衡性的绩效指标体系,二是获得反映人民群众获得感的基本公共服务大数据信息。     

国际服务贸易紧急保障措施制度的建构及中国的应对析论

服务贸易领域保障措施立法是近年来引起国内外普遍关注的一个新领域.在国际上,围绕着服务贸易总协定ESM的建构引发了发达国家与发展中国家的激烈争论,反映了发达国家与发展中国家不同的利益和立场.提出我国在国际服务贸易紧急保障措施建构中所应采取的立场,分析我国服务贸易保障措施立法的成就与不足,并在此基础上提出完善我国服务贸易保障措施立法的一些建议.     

Just sick of it? Health and political trust in Western Europe

This article explores two theoretical possibilities for why personal health may affect political trust: the psychological‐democratic contract theory, and the role of personal experience in opinion formation. It argues that citizens with health impairments are more likely to experience the direct effects of political decisions as they are more dependent on public health services. Negative subjective evaluations of public services can lower trust levels, especially if people's expectations are high. Using European Social Survey data, the association between health and trust in 19 Western European states is analysed. The results indicate that people in poor health exhibit lower levels of trust towards the political system than people in good health. The differences in trust between those in good and poor health are accentuated among citizens with left‐leaning ideological values. The results suggest that welfare issues may constitute a rare context in which personal, rather than collective, experiences affect opinion formation.     

Public Services after Austerity: Zombies,Suez or Collaboration?

Public services—in the UK and elsewhere—are under considerable pressure, not just from austerity, but also from a variety of social, demographic and technological changes (in effect ‘austerity plus’). In this context, three broad options are open to policy‐makers: continue with tried‐and‐tested approaches while spending less money, which in the UK means a reliance on ‘New Public Management’ (NPM); withdraw completely from certain public services; or develop new approaches to public administration. We argue that all of these approaches have been attempted in recent years, but it is the final option that is most interesting and potentially the most beneficial. In this article, we examine experiments with these new approaches in responding to ‘austerity plus’. In particular, we examine various attempts at ‘collaboration’ in public services and discuss the risks associated with them. We conclude by setting out the extent to which policy‐makers have moved beyond NPM and suggesting some of the benefits that this could bring.     

Competition and switching in public service markets: Can they reduce inequalities?

Regulatory reforms to public infrastructure services across European Union (EU) countries were aimed at increasing consumer welfare by introducing competition and choice into service markets. However, empirical evaluations have questioned whether these reforms have benefitted all consumers, suggesting that vulnerable groups of service users (especially those with lower levels of formal education), might be locked into poorly performing services. We assess the relationship between the level of competition in electricity and fixed telephony markets in EU countries and evaluate the affordability of these services for different socio‐educational layers. Our findings show that – although in countries where there is a relatively high frequency of switching, inequalities between socio‐educational groups are smaller and eventually disappear – competition as such does not play a part. These results suggest that demand‐side regulation that successfully enables consumer switching has the potential to equalize social welfare, thereby reflecting a possible convergence of regulatory instruments and the central aims of the welfare state in this context.     

Social semiotics and platform studies: an integrated perspective for the study of social media platforms

ABSTRACT

The development of web 2.0 was powered by web services that are software systems designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It was the choice of standards enabling such interactions that favored communication among different systems and their mash ups. Facebook was the first social networking site to launch a service for developers that exposed its web services and the correlated APIs (application programming interfaces). This choice allowed programmers to create tools that could live within Facebook and turned the social networking site into a platform by enacting its programmability. In order to investigate the possibilities and the constraints offered by social media platforms, there seems to arise the necessity to integrate the analysis of frontend texts (such as posts or comments) and of social media communicative properties with the exploration of an underlying layer constituted by the network of relationships created within an application ecosystem and developed by using web services. The aim of the paper is to present a multi-layered approach to the study of social media platforms that combines the emerging subfield of Semiotic Technology with Platform Studies. The model is here applied to the analysis of Facebook Login Service.     

Cooperation,not cost savings: explaining duration of shared service agreements

Among local governments, inter-municipal cooperation is the growing reform; but the literature is silent regarding the determinants of longer-term shared service agreements. We conducted a survey of all local governments in New York State in 2013 to assess the level of sharing across 29 public services. The duration of shared service agreements varies from 1 to 80 years. What explains this difference? Our hierarchical linear model shows that service sharing agreements fall along a cooperation continuum, where cost savings are a determinant of shorter agreements, while the public values of service quality and cross-jurisdictional coordination explain longer-term agreements. We also find that positive past experience with sharing partners increases the duration of sharing agreements. Our analysis lays the foundation for new theories of shared services that build directly from the benefits of improved regional coordination, inter-municipal reciprocity and service quality, not from theories based solely on competition and costs.