French engagement versus British commitment. Was it interlingual miscommunication or political manipulation?

ABSTRACT

The efforts undertaken to establish the contemporary European Union started many years earlier. The history of establishing a pan-European organization is interesting not only for historians and economists but also translators and linguists as it is the history of interlingual communication (negotiations and agreements). One such negotiation was allegedly ineffective due to the difference in understanding the French term engagement and its English equivalent employed by translators and interpreters, that is to say the English term commitment. The authors aim at presenting the political background of negotiations and the social semiotic analysis of the terms in question in order to provoke the reader to find the answer to the question whether the negotiation was broken due to interlingual miscommunication resulting from erroneously chosen equivalent or it was destined to failure from the very beginning due to socio-political and economic interests of negotiating parties. In order to achieve that goal, the authors have analysed notes exchanged between the governments of France and Great Britain in course of negotiation. The history of negotiation and the linguistic analysis are combined to illustrate the complexity of meaning construction and the semiotic implications of the contextual dependence of meanings of terms and their dynamic evolution in time and space.     

Lecture Versus Simulation: Testing the Long-Term Effects

Abstract

Active learning techniques are being use with increasing frequency in the classroom and more time is being dedicated to designing and implementing them. However, the literature still suffers from a lack of rigorous empirical methods to test the effects of simulations. Most of the claimed benefits of utilizing simulations, and other active learning techniques, are improved soft skills and higher order thinking like empathy, confidence, public-speaking abilities, and interpersonal skills—all of which don’t lend themselves well to scientific measurement. This gap in the literature is especially troubling considering that time spent using simulations is time not spent using other methods. This article seeks to test the differing impacts of simulations versus traditional lectures over the long-term using a simple 30-minute simulation and rigorous experimental methods. The most important results show that students learn more initially from a lecture, but that students who were exposed to the simulation were better able to retain that information over the long-term.     

Bricks in the wall: the politics of housing in Europe

Abstract

Housing has important economic, political, and social ramifications for Western Europe and beyond. Despite its importance in shaping economic and political outcomes, however, housing remains in the peripheral vision of major comparative political economy debates. This introduction to the special issue accomplishes four objectives. First it demonstrates how housing defies current political economy typologies by failing to conform to their theoretical and empirical predictions. Second it summarises the current state of housing research within political science, which still remains in its infancy. Third it highlights how the contributions in this special issue expand our understanding of how housing causes and is shaped by political and economic outcomes in Europe. Finally, this introduction concludes by outlining how the special issue contributions demonstrate housing’s importance for the welfare state, political preferences and electoral shifts, regulatory and redistributive policies, and financialisation and household indebtedness in Europe.     

浅论清末民初章士钊的政党思想

章士钊是中国近代史上著名的思想家和理论家,他注意观察和研究近代民主政治,尤其是政党政治,他强调党纲的重要性,推崇英国式的政党内阁制,并由此提出了毁党造党说,即政党和国内政治资源的重新优化组合,一方面,所谓党者尽毁之,既毁其名又毁其实,另一方面,造有党纲之党,在国内形成两大政党对抗的局面。毁党造党说轰动一时,但因不符合中国的国情而遭到失败。     

试论儒家德治思想基础、特征及其局限

儒家政治思想是中国传统意识形态的基石,儒家的德治思想又是这个基石的内核,由此形成了独特的德治思维.儒家思想家们把从事政治活动的每个人都想象成为在道德方面完善的主体,这也是中国传统政治中的主流意识形态.本文在分析儒家德治思想的基础和特征的同时,从政治思维、政治理性、方法论等方面又进一步分析了儒家德治思想的局限.     

规范网络政治参与：现代民主政治发展的新思路

网络在中国的迅猛发展,深刻地影响着公民的政治参与程度和热情,推进了现代民主政治的发展进程。本文从网络政治参与的内涵和特点入手,客观地分析了网络政治参与给我国民主政治建设、政治稳定等方面带来的双重影响,并提出规范网络政治参与的对策。     

政治道德建设中领导干部政绩观问题探讨

当代中国正处于现代化建设的伟大历史时期,中国的社会主义现代化事业必须在中国共产党的领导下才能取得成功;党必须加强自身建设,提高和完善领导水平和执政能力,才能应对危机,迎接挑战。而加强政治道德建设是坚持和改善党的领导的重要条件之一,也是迫切需要予以重视的问题。因此,当务之急是通过政治道德建设,引导领导干部树立正确的政绩观。     

Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies in Urban Turkey: One Neighbourhood at a Time

Both principal Turkish political parties make extensive use of patron–client networks, but in very different ways. The CHP relies on competing local brokers and synchronous vote buying. The AKP is at the centre of a network of public and private funding turning social policy to clientelist ends. Socially anchored AKP activists link the party to voters, allowing it to target social assistance for political advantage and take credit for improvement in local conditions. The case presented in this paper provides a natural experiment suggesting that this distinction is an important explanation for the AKP’s electoral success in low-income urban areas.     

Development as recolonization: the political ecology of the Endosulphan disaster in Kasargod,India

This paper examines the Endosulphan pesticide disaster in Kasargod, Kerala, India. The paper argues that the pesticide disaster was the culmination of an agrarian modernization project implemented in the region by the state-owned Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK). An exploration of the political ecology of the disaster shows the recolonization of residents and nature by PCK through neocolonial forms of centralized and exclusionary spatial and resource control mechanisms. In this context, the paper questions the glorification of the “Kerala model” of development from the standpoints of environmental justice and resource rights, relying on the lived experiences of the people of Kasargod.     

From rural rebellions to urban riots: political competition and changing patterns of violent political revolt in Uganda

Violent political revolt has been common in independent Uganda. For a long time, such revolts were exclusively expressed as rural-based rebel groups fighting the government. Since the mid-2000s, however, this seems to have come to an end. Instead, urban riots, very rare in the past, have become much more common. This article analyses these changing patterns of types and location of violent political revolt in Uganda under the National Resistance Movement government. It argues that the earlier prevalence of rural rebellions can be explained by the combination of a coercive and militarised state, and weak and ethnically factionalised political forces who took their violent resistance to rural regional bases. Over time, however, government counter-insurgency became more effective and the conditions for insurgency were undermined by withdrawal of external support. Furthermore, the reintroduction of multi-party politics in 2005 opened up new avenues for political expression. The changes to the political system were, however, more nominal than real in many respects. While the rebel option had become less attractive and feasible, a series of social, economic and political grievances remained which were only partly channelled through party politics. They also found expression through sporadic urban violent revolt.