The Rising Tide Economy: Lessons from the Squeezed Middle for Progressive Economic Policy

For all its rhetorical potency, the policy implications of the ‘squeezed middle’ are yet to be fully explored. This article looks at what the phenomenon means for the design and prosecution of progressive economic policy. It argues that any progressive government today needs to adopt a new first order goal of economic policy: ensuring that the material wellbeing of ordinary working people rises when the economy grows, a project referred to as ‘building a rising tide economy’. This objective would sit in addition to the traditional goals of sustained GDP growth, high employment, low inflation and poverty reduction. It would have real implications across a range of important policy areas.     

和谐社会语境中进取性社会利益及司法保护——“彭宇案”引发的思考

建设和谐社会,既是我国社会建设的重要目标,也是人类孜孜以求的社会理想。法律是建立和谐社会的前提,但并不是社会生活的全部。人们需要秩序,也希望人与人之间在遵守秩序的前提下充满爱心和信任。所以,在司法实践中,后者作为一种进取性社会利益也应该成为法官自由心证、自由裁量与利益衡量的重要依据。     

Resisting ‘progressive’ carceral expansion: lessons for abolitionists from anti-colonial resistance

This article documents a government-led strategy to more closely integrate policing with community-based ‘crime prevention’ programming in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. These initiatives have targeted neighborhoods with large Indigenous populations. In this article I illustrate how community-level conflicts over responses to ‘crime’ are also sites of settler colonial conflict, and how settler colonial governance is reproduced and resisted through the governance of crime. Interviews with politicians, policy-makers, bureaucrats in the crime prevention branch of the provincial government, and directors and employees at community-based organizations suggest that the pursuit of the government strategy of integrated crime prevention and suppression has been more a project of attempting to ‘manage’ urban Indigenous people than serve their interests. As a contribution to abolitionist thought and theory, this article profiles sites of conflict between community police and community-based organizations over definitions of the ‘crime’ problem in city-center Winnipeg. These examples highlight a kinship between carceral abolitionist and decolonial politics.     

马克思主义中国化的社会主体及其结构内涵

马克思主义中国化的社会主体是有效推动并实现马克思主义中国化持续、快速而健康发展的社会力量或关系力量的总称;在＂应然＂逻辑层面上,马克思主义中国化的社会主体表现为一种＂以社会为本位＂的逻辑结构;历史地看,马克思主义中国化的社会主体表现为一个由原初态、次生态和新生态构成的历史结构。     

The hidden electoral connection: analysing parliamentary questions in the Chilean Congress

Legislators in presidential countries use a variety of mechanisms to advance their electoral careers and connect with relevant constituents. The most frequently studied activities are bill initiation, co-sponsoring, and legislative speeches. In this paper, the authors examine legislators’ information requests (i.e. parliamentary questions) to the government, which have been studied in some parliamentary countries but remain largely unscrutinised in presidential countries. The authors focus on the case of Chile – where strong and cohesive national parties coexist with electoral incentives that emphasise the personal vote – to examine the links between party responsiveness and legislators’ efforts to connect with their electoral constituencies. Making use of a new database of parliamentary questions and a comprehensive sample of geographical references, the authors examine how legislators use this mechanism to forge connections with voters, and find that targeted activities tend to increase as a function of electoral insecurity and progressive ambition.     

The Impact of School Policing on Student Behaviors in Ohio Public Schools

The present study examined variations in incidents of student insubordination and violence using an individual change model, which allowed for repeated observations of student behaviors in 148 Ohio schools at the initial status (2010) and over time (2010 and 2014). Findings were significant only at the initial status. As school size and total number of school policing measures increased, so did student incidents of insubordination in 2010. School policing and the percentage of economic disadvantage did not predict violence. Findings considered the number of behavior incidents with respect to policing in all school locales, revealing the impact of school policing on student behaviors may transcend race and geographic location.     

我国民事审判"终审不终"的法社会学视角

入世后的中国民事审判试图根治"终审不终"的沉疴,其病因不能只从字面的法律规定方面探寻,影响法律运行的诉讼观念和法治生态等法社会学因素同样不可忽视.对"有错必纠"和"以事实为根据"等原则的"消化不良"是程序安定和诉讼风险意识缺失的病根,现行民事审判监督程序的结构缺陷及其在社会生活中的运行失范则是"终审不终"的表征和并发.     

Die Schweizer Gemeinden im Wandel: Konvergenz oder Divergenz?

Switzerland is currently going through a phase of political restructuring. The numerous reform activities at the beginning of the twenty‐first century leave almost no area of political life untouched. The reforms are particularly abundant in the 2′867 municipalities, spanning from amalgamations, intermunicipal co‐operation, New Public Management, to reforms of the political systems. Accounting for the fact that there are big socio‐economic differences between the municipalities as well as their political systems, we investigate whether the municipalities are headed for divergence or convergence as a result of these reforms. The empirical results are derived from three surveys of the local authorities conducted in 1988, 1994, and 1998. The results indicate that the communes do convergence in regard to their administrative and political structure. However, the convergence appears to be limited to the single cantons and observable only among certain types of municipalities.     

Abschied vom Interventionsstaat? Der Wandel staatlicher Subventionsausgaben in den OECD‐Ländern seit 1980

Der Aufsatz untersucht den Wandel der Subventionsausgaben der OECD‐Länder in den vergangenen 25 Jahren. Diese Ausgaben sind einerseits in fast allen Staaten der OECD‐Welt erheblich zurückgegangen, andererseits kam es zu einer starken Angleichung der Ausgabenniveaus. Die Analyse der Determinanten der nationalen Ausgabenniveaus und ihrer Veränderung zeigt einen Status quo‐Bias eines hohen institutionellen Pluralismus, während Parteien‐ und Interessengruppeneffekte seit den 1990er Jahren an Bedeutung verlieren. Sozioökonomische Problemlagen tragen ebenfalls nur in begrenztem Umfang zur Erklärung der internationalen Differenzen der Subventionsausgaben bei. Ebenso können die Europäische Integration und die Globalisierung für den Niedergang staatlicher Subventionsausgaben nicht unmittelbar verantwortlich gemacht werden.     

It's the Culture, Stupid! New Labour's Progressive Consensus

For New Labour to achieve the 'progressive consensus' to which it aspires, it needs to develop a transformative, cultural politics. This would engage in a battle of hearts and minds with the electorate, seeking to shape its preferences rather than accommodating them. Much of the accumulated criticism of New Labour focuses on its failure to develop an overarching political narrative to fulfil this task. However, critics have also shown that New Labour does have a definite vision of the type of society and individual it is constructing in the face of social change. Unfortunately for progressives, this is based on an image of the acquisitive individual, culturally conservative community and a fatalistic understanding of modernisation. Entrenching a progressive consensus requires a political strategy that resonates with contemporary experiences of social change, while showing how it can be steered in more progressive directions.