Constitutionalism as a solution to despotism and imperialism: the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in the Ottoman-Turkish press

This article contributes to the growing scholarship on the connections between the Ottoman and Iranian revolutions by exploring Ottomans’ reactions to and portrayal of the constitutional struggle in Iran. Based on an examination of primary sources that have not been utilized before, it reveals how an ideologically diverse group of intellectuals tried to link the two revolutions together in the Ottoman-Turkish press, focusing on shared problems and ideals. It demonstrates that undergoing a revolutionary process themselves, these intellectuals interpreted the events in Iran through the prism of their own experiences and used them to garner support for the constitutional regime at home. Through their depictions of the Iranian revolution, they not only portrayed the 1908 Revolution as part of a broader struggle against despotism and imperialism with significant implications for the Islamic world, but also conveyed the message that the Ottoman constitution needed to be supported and protected so that it did not fail like the one in Iran.     

Regime type versus patronal politics: a comparison of “ardent democrats” in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Kazakhstan is home to the longest serving ruler in post-Soviet Eurasia while Kyrgyzstan is among the region’s most competitive polities. Do these regime differences correspond to divergence in political attitudes, as an extensive body of literature posits? Are Kyrgyzstanis more likely to strongly support democratic ideals? Are Kazakhstanis less likely? Contrary to expectations, data reveal the two populations to be attitudinally indistinguishable when it comes to strong support for practices associated with democracy. Whatever country differences we find are minor or statistically insignificant. We explain this convergence by shifting focus away from the political features that distinguish the two nascent democracy versus consolidated authoritarianism to those that they hold in common. Notwithstanding major constitutional reform in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, politics there, as in Kazakhstan, remains fundamentally patronal, or patronage- based. Mass attitudes, we argue, align in many ways with the countries’ shared patronal politics, rather than with their contrasting regime types.     

Revisiting Transnational European Consociationalism: The European Union a Decade After Lisbon

This article discusses the notion of consociationalism as applied to the EU and assesses whether the institutional and procedural changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) and by the management of the Euro and refugee crises still warrant considering the EU as a case of consociational democracy. Our contention is that the changes introduced by the ToL bore the promise to strengthen the consociational structural traits of the Union but that the further institutional and procedural changes engendered by the management of the Euro and refugee crises have made the behavioral dimension of consociationalism all the more necessary just as the accommodating orientation of the political elites had begun to evaporate. We support this argument by looking at empirical evidence which allows us to offer a set of propositions on the effects of the recent crises on the attitudes of the European elites towards the future of EU democracy.     

Gender Differences in Political Knowledge: Distinguishing Characteristics-Based and Returns-Based Differences

This study assesses whether gender-based differences in political knowledge primarily result from differences in observable attributes or from differences in returns for otherwise equivalent characteristics. It applies a statistical decomposition methodology to data obtained from the 1992–2004 American National Election Studies. There is a consistent 10-point gender gap in measured political knowledge, of which approximately one-third is due to gender-based differences in the characteristics that predict political knowledge, with the remaining two-thirds due to male–female differences in the returns to these characteristics. The methodology identifies the relative contribution of the predictors of political knowledge to each portion of the gap, and then uses this information to elucidate the underlying sources of the political knowledge gender gap and its prognosis. Education is the characteristic that most clearly enlarges the gap, with men receiving significantly larger returns to political knowledge from education than women. Group membership reduces the gap as women obtain gains in political knowledge from belonging to organizations that do not accrue to men. However, these gains are not sufficient to significantly reduce the gap.

Last Thoughts on <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Last Intellectuals</Emphasis>

Over twenty years ago my book The Last Intellectuals put into circulation the phrase “public intellectual.” The term unexpectedly enjoyed great success. It encapsulated a new division between a professional or academic intellectual focused on his or her specialty and an intellectual orientated to a larger public. The former tend to disappear into the university, while they latter write for the educated public. In the twenty years since its publication, my book has been sharply challenged. Moreover the emergence of African-American and women intellectuals, and well as new developments such as Internet, have possibly undermined my thesis. Yet these phenomena amount to revisions, not refutations, of my thesis. Moreover the role of intellectuals in France and Germany suggest that the same process of academization is taking place in other advanced industrial nations. What is called for is not nostalgia or its opposite, a celebration of everything that happens, but a consideration of the real shifts that affect the lives and work of intellectuals.

The Attitudes of the Chinese Middle Class Towards Democracy

Little has been done to quantitatively establish the connection between the middle class and a specific regime type. In an effort to fill in the gap, this study uses Asian Barometer survey dataset to examine the attitudes and orientation of China’s rising middle class. We find that the Chinese middle class does show higher democratic orientation than those we categorize as lower class, but only if class is defined by occupation or by self-identification, and not by income level. We interpret this result to mean that economic development offers new life experiences with the creation of new types of professions and enhances people’s agreement with modern democratic values by arousing people’s consciousness of their new social class status.

政府绩效管理研究的知识图谱与热点主题

20世纪70年代以来,政府绩效管理日益成为公共管理学科的研究热点.以SSCI收录期刊的620篇政府绩效管理文献为分析样本,采用文献计量分析方法,得出国际上政府绩效管理研究的一般状况,包括文献量增长、核心作者、主要研究机构等.通过知识图谱分析,得出国际上政府绩效管理研究形成了四个核心知识区域或研究范畴,即完善电子政府提高政府绩效、政府绩效的测量、公共组织绩效以及社会文化和政府绩效.国际政府绩效管理研究具体有10个热点主题:绩效测量、政府公共服务质量、绩效管理的价值取向、绩效预算、绩效评估体系与机制、公共组织的绩效评估、政府绩效管理的多元参与、电子政府与绩效改进、政府人力资源管理与绩效改进、绩效管理的立法研究.国际政府绩效管理研究呈现出跨学科研究视角、核心知识范畴基本形成、高校是核心研究力量等特点.     

论公民文化视野下少数民族地区民主政治建设

民主政治建设是少数民族地区现代化建设的重要内容,不仅包括制度建设内容,而且也包括政治文化建设的内容。然而,少数民族地区民主建设面临着各少数民族成员民主制度、机制缺乏,民主意识淡薄以及注重宗教信仰、法治意识缺失。要培育少数民族地区民主型政治文化的基础和条件,就不得不建立和完善现代民主制度和机制,充分开发利用各种政治社会化手段。     

The Electoral Cycle and Multi-Level Voting in Germany

The aim of this contribution is to analyse whether Land elections may (have) become uncoupled from the federal electoral process, and, if they have, to explore the implications for party competition in Germany. Initially, an overview is presented of the relevant theoretical models that can help unpack the relationship between different electoral arenas. Secondly, how these ideas have been applied to national and sub-national electoral competition in Germany is outlined, before an examination of the 'fit' of the data in both the pre- and post-unification periods. We conclude with reflections on two key features that have regularly surfaced in Gordon Smith's writings: party system change and political stability.     

试析互联网治理的概念、机制与困境

目前最具影响力的互联网治理机制是互联网名称与数字地址分配机构和它的挑战者——联合国系统下的三个机构：国际电信联盟、信息社会世界峰会和互联网治理论坛。这两套互相竞争的机制各有不足之处，前者合法性不足，后者有效性不够。但这只是互联网治理困境的表象，其深层原因不仅在于网络安全问题本身的复杂性，还和国际体系转型过程中全球治理的困境密切相关，集中反映在三大矛盾上，即霸权国和国际社会的矛盾、中关之间的矛盾以及国家行为体和非国家行为体之间的矛盾。任何国际治理机制的有效性和合法性在很大程度上依赖于新兴大国的参与，互联网治理机制也是如此。基于此，中国如果能在其中扮演更加重要的角色，将对互联网治理起到积极的作用。