透视党领导改革开放三十年的一个视角——十一届三中全会以来的历届历次中央全会

研究十一届三中全会以来党的历届历次中央全会，并以中央全会为主线和脉络串并党走过的改革开放三十年，应该是客观地评判和把握党领导改革开放三十年发展的一个常规的但又往往容易被人忽视的视角。     

论依法执政的科学内涵

依法执政是一个由一系列相关理论、原则、理念、制度、实践等组成的有机整体。坚持依法执政是践行宪法和党章的应有之义,是改革和完善党的执政方式的重要途径,是实行依法治国的核心,是依法治国理念的进一步深化。在新时期提高党的依法执政能力,就必须对依法执政进行深入探讨和科学的界定。本文在对我国学者近年来关于依法执政的主要观点比较分析后,对依法执政的概念和含义做了一番梳理,认为中国共产党依法执政具有独特的科学内涵。     

From Merkel to Kramp‐Karrenbauer: Can German Christian Democracy Reinvent Itself?

Germany's Christian Democrats have started preparing for the time after Angela Merkel. After ten years as German chancellor facing a weak opposition, Merkel unexpectedly split the country in late 2015 and early 2016 because of her ‘open border’ policies that allowed more than 1 million refugees and migrants to rapidly enter Germany. Her management of the subsequent crisis was largely considered a failure and her party suffered a series of dramatic election defeats. Reacting to the negative electoral feedback, and in particular the breakthrough of the rightist and anti‐immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Christian Democratic Union organised an intra‐party contest to replace Merkel as party leader. Three candidates with different political profiles, Annegret Kramp‐Karrenbauer, Friedrich Merz and Jens Spahn, contested the election. By voting for Kramp‐Karrenbauer, the CDU membership voiced support for maintaining a large‐scale political coalition based on efforts to find compromises between different party wings and social and cultural interests.     

What voters want from their parties: Testing the promise-keeping assumption

How should party governments make representative democracy? Much of the democracy representation literature assumes that voters prefer parties to fulfill the promises of their election campaigns, with higher preference for promise-keeping placed on the party a voter supports. That voters agree with these assumptions, however, remains largely unclear and this is the main hypothesis of this article. Within the context of Australia, this article investigates voter preferences regarding three ideal party representative styles: promise-keeping, focus on public opinion, and seeking the common good. Furthermore, it tests whether voters prefer their party – over other parties – to keep their promises. Based on novel and innovative survey data, this study finds that, generally, voters care least about parties keeping their promises and their preferences are unaffected by their party support. These results, if confirmed in other contexts, not only challenge the primacy of promise-keeping, but also the assumed ubiquitous party effect.     

Two strategies for building a personal vote: Personalized representation in the UK and Denmark

Across parliamentary democracies, elected representatives constitute the link between citizens and government. MPs can connect with voters via the party label, or through personalized forms of representation, which is seen to be increasing in importance. However, scholars disagree on what explains variation in MPs' use of personalized representation strategies. In this article, we argue that politicians use different strategies to personalize the link between themselves and citizens: a constituency-oriented and a person-oriented strategy. To test our argument, we develop a new and novel dataset with behavioral measures of personalized representation. Using a content analyses of 698 British and Danish MPs’ personal websites, we demonstrate that the use of personalization strategies is conditional on the incentives MPs face in terms of electoral insecurity, candidate selection procedures, and the electoral context of the system. Our findings show that the level and type of personalized politics vary across political systems and may pose different types of challenges to party democracies.     

What consideration sets can teach us about electoral competition: A two-hurdle model

Consideration set models (CSMs) offer a novel way to study electoral behavior. Until now, they have been mostly studied at the micro-level of the voter's decision process. By contrast, we focus on the implications of CSMs for understanding the phenomenon of party competition. We propose a two hurdle model whereby parties compete for both consideration and selection, pursuant the consideration and choice stages of the CSM. We operationalize these hurdles in terms of a party's inclusivity—is it being considered?—and exclusivity—is it considered on its own?—and formally derive lower- and upper-bounds for the electoral fortunes of the party. We also show how consideration set data can be used to sketch the competition landscape in an election and to characterize the system-wide competitiveness of a political system. We illustrate our concepts and ideas using data from the 2010 Dutch and 2014 Swedish parliamentary elections.     

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.     

伦理学视域下的民生幸福与服务型政府建设

民生幸福是人类社会发展共同的价值追求,体现了我们党执政伦理的价值目标,体现了当代中国社会发展观念的转变。当今社会,贫困和收入差距成为影响民生幸福的经济因素;制度和决策的偏差与不公正成为影响民生幸福的政治因素;传统的发展观念带来的一系列社会问题成为影响民生幸福的社会因素。当今的社会背景之下,建设服务型政府,是实现民生幸福的有效途径。     

中国共产党90年来探索解决民族问题发展道路探析

理论创新是实践的必然要求,中国共产党90年来不断把马列主义民族理论创造性地运用于解决中国民族问题的实践,制定了符合中国国情的民族政策,开展了卓有成效的民族工作,促进了中国民族问题的解决,丰富和发展了马列主义民族理论。新世纪新阶段,民族工作面临机遇与挑战,我们要在以胡锦涛同志为总书记的党中央领导下,紧扣各民族共同团结奋斗、共同繁荣发展的民族工作主题,努力探索解决民族问题的新途径,促进各民族的团结和发展繁荣。     

执政生态与党内利益冲突的防范与治理

构建行之有效的党内利益冲突防范和治理机制,建设反腐败斗争的坚实堡垒,必须规范党员领导干部公共权力界限,健全党员领导干部权力监督制约机制。