以基本问题为抓手 推动政府效能建设

加强政府行政效能建设是加强党的执政能力建设和先进性建设的必然要求，是全面贯彻落实科学发展观、构建社会主义和谐社会的现实需要，是加快推进政府职能转变，把执政为民理念落到实处的重要保证。     

走出平等与效率关系困境的出路——基于对西方学者观点的分析

平等与效率的关系一直是经济学等社会科学研究的焦点问题.但由于对平等范畴的不同理解,导致在如何认识和处理平等与效率关系的问题上众说纷纭,使其成为社会科学的难点问题之一.全面、准确解读西方主流学者的观点,科学地界定平等范畴的内涵,可能是走出平等与效率关系困境的出路.在市场经济中处理平等与效率的关系时,必须坚持社会第一平等——机会均等基础上的资源配置效率,效率基础上实现社会第二平等——收入差别平等.这是实践科学发展观,建设和谐社会的内在要求.     

论我国《能源法》的制定——兼评《中华人民共和国能源法》(征求意见稿)

作为全球第二大能源生产国和消费国,中国正面临着十分复杂的能源形势和安全问题,因而制定一部《能源法》是十分必要的。《能源法》应当将保障能源供应与安全、优化能源结构、提高能源效益、降低能源消耗、保护环境作为其立法宗旨。《能源法》应当定位于能源领域的综合性立法,主要对涉及能源安全、能源效率、能源管理、能源环境保护等全局性的问题和其他单行能源法不予调整的问题加以规范,发挥宏观管理和对各单行立法加以协调和拾遗补缺的作用。由国家能源领导小组办公室等组成的《能源法》起草小组起草的《能源法》(征求意见稿)已经取得令人瞩目的成就。如果能够进一步听取意见,去粗取精,相信能够成为一部科学和实用的《能源法》。     

试论加强党的执政能力建设

执政能力建设的提出具有深刻的背景,我们要准确把握执政能力建设的内涵和发展方向。只有取得高的执政效率的执政党才能具有高的执政能力。而执政方式问题决定着执政活动的成本与产出,是执政效率的决定性因素,是执政能力建设的关键。     

Is a problem shared a problem halved? Shared services and municipal efficiency

It has long been argued that shared services represent an efficacious means of securing efficiencies for municipalities. Indeed, pressures from fiscal austerity, taxation limitations, and the specter of forced amalgamations have resulted in an increasing uptake of shared service arrangements. However, the extant evidence is rather inconclusive and is largely restricted to analyzing the nett efficiency outcomes for the specific service shared. We broaden this evidential base by examining the association between shared service production and the efficiency of entire municipalities. Our analysis, employing a 5‐year panel of data, suggests that shared services are associated with a statistically significant reduction in overall municipal efficiency. We conclude by explicating on the public policy implications arising from our prima facie surprising results.     

Smokescreen Politics? Ratcheting Up EU Emissions Trading in 2017

The reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) adopted in November 2017 was surprisingly strong, given the previous opposition from central member‐states like Poland and key stakeholders like the energy‐intensive industries. The carbon price has also increased substantially since then. To explain why such major reform was possible, we present several findings with wider relevance. Importantly, all the actors pushing for a more ambitious reform benefitted from having a central, “second‐best” mechanism in place—the Market Stability Reserve (MSR)—which could be further tightened. By focusing cancelation on allowances in the MSR and taking place only after 2023, policy entrepreneurs managed to make the distribution of costs obscure and diffuse, whereas the benefits (a probable higher carbon price and related greater auctioning revenues for member‐states) were more specific and closer in time. That is what we call “smokescreen politics.”     

Multiple Streams in Hawaii: How the Aloha State Adopted a 100% Renewable Portfolio Standard

Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are an important policy tool for reducing carbon emissions and advancing the global shift toward renewable energy. As the U.S. federal government backs away from commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, subnational governments play an increasingly important role in mitigating climate change. In June 2015, Hawaii became the first state in the United States to adopt a 100% RPS. Through understanding the conditions that gave rise to Hawaii’s RPS, policy actors will be better informed as they navigate policy processes in other states and jurisdictions. This study uses Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to explore the policy process that led to Hawaii’s 100% RPS. Data were collected during the summer of 2016 via interviews with 25 key policy actors and informants in Hawaii. Expectations based on the MSF are confirmed, and the results suggest factors that might be included or explored in future studies of RPS adoption.     

Governing Unconventional Oil and Gas Extraction: The Case of Pennsylvania

Over the past decade, directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing enabled an unconventional oil and gas extraction (UOGE) boom in many regions of the United States, including parts of Pennsylvania. This revolution has created serious concerns about the capability of existing institutions to govern important societal outcomes associated with UOGE. We present a conceptual framework for assessing key societal outcomes influenced by UOGE governance. In applying this framework to Pennsylvania, we discern certain institutional strengths that have allowed the Commonwealth to reap appreciable short‐term economic growth from rich resource endowments. We also find, however, that several institutional weaknesses have allowed costs externalized to the environment, public health, and community integrity to offset some proportion of those economic benefits. Likewise, we find that governance of UOGE in Pennsylvania has contributed to a bifurcated sociopolitical landscape wherein adversarial coalitions dispute the legitimacy of the industry and its governance.     

The devil we know and the angel that did not fly: An examination of devil/angel shift in twitter fracking “debates” in NY 2008–2018

Recent work has applied the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine narrative strategies in policy debates on social media platforms. We contribute to the literature by applying the NPF to fracking policy debates in New York using well-established Natural Language Processing tools, including sentiment analysis. We combine this computational approach with a qualitative hand-coding of pro- and antifracking Twitter influentials. This approach allows us to consider a much larger corpus of tweets over a much longer time frame than has been done thus far. We adapt and test NPF propositions related to the use of the devil/angel shift strategies before and after a major state-wide policy change, that is, a state-wide moratorium on high volume hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Overall, we find evidence for the use of the devil shift narrative strategy by the pro-fracking coalition aimed at the Governor prior to the moratorium. After the moratorium, the relative percentage of Tweets containing devil shift sentiments decreases as the pro-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of angel shift language without a corresponding increase in devil shift language, whereas, conversely, the anti-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of devil shift language without a general increase in angel shift language. When we shifted our analysis to Tweets containing fracking and the Governor, we found a similar postban decrease in devil shift language among anti-fracking users. Our findings offer lessons for using computational tools in the NPF as an approach to expand analytic ability and for the operationalization of concepts such as narrative strategies and policy entrepreneurs.     

我国房地产税改革探析——基于公平、效率视角下的考量

房地产税作为一种财产税,在我国的社会经济发展中发挥着重要的调节功能,其完善与否直接关系着我国社会经济的转型发展和地方政府职能转变。本文从公平、效率的视角出发,对我国房地产税改革中存在的主要问题进行客观、理性和系统的分析,就其完善提出了相应的政策建议。