Resistant to Change? The European Commission and Expert Group Reform

This article examines how the European Commission has responded to external criticism and demands for the democratisation and reform of the way it uses expert groups in EU policy making. The article analyses the nature and character of the Commission’s dialogue with its critics and the degree and extent to which it was prepared to adapt its existing internal processes and procedures to the reform agenda. Recent theories inform us that organisations respond in different ways to external criticism and demands for reform, including full adaptation, evasion, institutional decoupling and reinterpretation. The main findings suggest that the Commission was not completely resistant to changing its approach to the use of expertise. The Commission reinterpreted its critics’ demands by introducing reforms that defused this external pressure, while protecting the effectiveness of its existing internal ideology and processes. These findings serve to enhance the Commission’s image as an increasingly normalised bureaucracy and reinforce the importance of knowledge and expertise as a key source of Commission legitimacy.     

Journeys to the limits of first-hand knowledge: politicians’ on-site visits in zones of conflict and intervention

ABSTRACT

This article explores the practice and political significance of politicians’ journeys to conflict zones. It focuses on the German example, looking at field trips to theatres of international intervention as a way of first-hand knowledge in policymaking. Paying tribute to Lisa Smirl and her work on humanitarian spaces, objects and imaginaries and on liminality in aid worker biographies, two connected arguments are developed. First, through the exploration of the routinized practices of politicians’ field trips the article shows how these journeys not only remain confined to the ‘auxiliary space’ of aid/intervention, but that it is furthermore a staged reality of this auxiliary space that most politicians experience on their journeys. The question is then asked, second, what politicians actually experience on their journeys and how their experiences relate to their policy knowledge about conflict and intervention. It is shown that political field trips enable sensory/affectual, liminoid and liminal experiences, which have functions such as authority accumulation, agenda setting, community building, and civilizing domestic politics, while at the same time reinforcing, in most cases, pre-existing conflict and intervention imaginaries.     

Securitising Migration: The European Union in the Context of the Post-2011 Arab Upheavals

The migration-security nexus, already at the heart of EU policymaking before the 2011 Arab uprisings, became acute after the forced displacements from Syria and the deterrence measures introduced. The internalisation by broader publics of “security knowledge” regarding migration contributed to the securitisation move. However, the construction of migration into a security-laden notion goes beyond both the adoption of deterrence measures and the straightforward association of migration with state as well as societal (in)security. Through the lens of its cooperative tools with its southern neighbours, the EU has built complex interdependencies between migration, post-2011 regional stabilisation and security. In order to read the EU’s securitised migration politics properly, the migration-security nexus must be embedded in its social, geopolitical and temporal fields. Perceptions of geopolitical threats, concurrent strains and divergences over European integration and immigration constitute an enabling terrain for the politics of securitisation.     

ID‐Check: Online Concealed Information Test Reveals True Identity

The Internet has already changed people's lives considerably and is likely to drastically change forensic research. We developed a web‐based test to reveal concealed autobiographical information. Initial studies identified a number of conditions that affect diagnostic efficiency. By combining these moderators, this study investigated the full potential of the online ID‐check. Participants (n = 101) tried to hide their identity and claimed a false identity in a reaction time‐based Concealed Information Test. Half of the participants were presented with personal details (e.g., first name, last name, birthday), whereas the others only saw irrelevant details. Results showed that participants′ true identity could be detected with high accuracy (AUC = 0.98; overall accuracy: 86–94%). Online memory detection can reliably and validly detect whether someone is hiding their true identity. This suggests that online memory detection might become a valuable tool for forensic applications.     

The political knowledge of Libyan university students: Sirte and Omar Al-Mukhtar universities as two examples

This article reports on a study measuring the political knowledge of a sample of students at the Sirte and Omar Al-Mukhtar universities in Libya in 2015–2016. Variables such as the university attendees, gender, residence, type of faculty, family’s economic condition and parents’ educational level were factored into the analysis, and a sample of 400 students from the two universities was selected to provide survey data. Findings indicate that acquiring political knowledge, as a whole, requires great effort to accommodate Libya’s current circumstances. Variables of gender, residence and university type make a difference in the level of political knowledge. While income and the level of parents’ education do not determine the extent of political knowledge, the value placed on citizenship was found to have a strong effect on the variation in legal and political knowledge and on the students’ understanding of the political process.     

略谈知识经济

本文以我们所面临的知识经济时代为背景,对知识经济的含义、特点进行了的论述。并就中国在知识经济时代应关注的焦点——科技和教育阐述了自己的观点,认为应振兴中国科技和教育、提高全民素质,推动社会文明发展以顺应知识经济时代。     

产业升级的发展效应及其动因分析

产业升级是现代经济发展的主题之一,它体现为产业结构由低技术水平,低附加价值状态向高新技术,高附加价值状态的演变趋势。从产业结构的演进中索取经济发展速度和效益的思想,是产业政策的核心和精髓。对产业升级的动因的解释,传统经济理论主要是从需求收入弹性变化和生产率上升两个角度进行的。     

基层法官司法知识的开示

基于时中国基层司法的调查和研究,本文试图概括地总结中国基层司法中经常运用的一些在现有的法律知识体制中末于以足够重视的知识和技术,并予以初步的理论分析。本文认为,由于中国基层法院法官所处的特定制度空间（初审法院）和时空位置（中国基层社会）,他／她们所需要的知识和技巧不仅与理想型法官不同,而且与上诉审法官也不同。在这种余件下,中国基层法院法官实际上经常并非自党地创造和运用一些知识和技术。这种知识和技术有助于实用主义地解决一些实际问题,并且从现代的其他学科知识看来也具有一定的学理上的正当性,但是在有些情况下,也有可能被滥用。这种从司法实践来的知识,尽管来自基层,缺乏实践者的自我反思,但仍然具有实践意义和理论意义,需要当代中国关注现实的法学象的重视和研究。     

马克思主义哲学是正确解释世界与能动改造世界功能的统一——评《"知识经济"批判》

马克思主义哲学既要正确解释世界,也要能动改造世界,它是两种功能的辩证统一。《知识经济批判》把知识经济放在马克思世界历史理论中考察,积极研究并充分肯定了知识经济对当代社会发展和哲学理论方面的影响,正确评述了知识经济在当代社会发展中的地位及其丰富历史唯物主义的内涵。但知识经济批判的内容与任务远不是《知识经济批判》一书所能完成和担当的,仍需要在实践的基础上不断丰富与发展,并用它能动地指导人们改造世界的实践活动。     

The factors influencing knowledge entrepreneurship in Malaysian manufacturing companies

Established firms that continuously and systematically implement entrepreneurial initiatives exhibit behavior that corporate entrepreneurship researchers label as ＂sustained regeneration＂. A prime example of sustained regeneration is new product development activity in industries such as computers, electronics, and textiles where the introduction of new products is on-going and firm＇s creativities have important implications to its performance. On the other hand, knowledge entrepreneurship describes the organizational ability to respond to learn to capitalize on an opportunity, or to protect against a threat by adopting an innovation. Successful adoption of innovation requires an organizational ability to manage the process within the organization that deals with new or newly interpreted knowledge and under conditions of uncertainty and in the face of controversy, develop and initiate a plan of action to respond with goal-oriented organizational behavioral changes. Knowledge entrepreneurship connotes a ＂drive to implement change, to accomplish this goal, and to adopt an innovation＂. Knowledge entrepreneurship involves a motivated pursuit of competitive advantage, using knowledge as a means of developing sources of advantage similar to those described in the market orientation and absorptive capacity literatures. It describes a driven effort to utilize knowledge through innovation. This article is identifying knowledge entrepreneurship, and determining which factors may affect the nature of this concept. The selected criteria have been assessed according to their relative importance by utilizing analytical hierarchy process （AHP） approach and expert choice software program.