促进西部地区女性参与决策管理

近十年来，西部地区积极完善女性参与决策管理的法规制度，营造女性参与决策管理的良好氛围，使女性参与决策管理的程度和水平均有大幅度提升，但是仍然存在有待改善的地方，突出表现为农村女性参与基层民主管理的整体水平较低、女性“权力尖端缺位”问题依然存在两个方面。因此，促进西部地区女性参与决策管理必须尊重女性价值，构建平等的性别文化；将社会性别意识纳入政治文明视野；构建女性参政的外部支持体系。     

Partisan Media and Engagement: A Field Experiment in a Newly Liberalized System

How does media exposure affect political engagement in newly liberalized systems? Some celebrate newly vibrant and diverse media, believing that they mobilize citizens. Others worry that these outlets, which are often partisan, dampen engagement. We theorize that exposure to political programming engenders interest in politics irrespective of program bias, but that interest does not necessarily beget action. Partisan media affect participation only when altering attitude strength, and thus motivations. To evaluate media effects on interest and participation, we conducted a field experiment in Ghana, in which subjects in tro-tros (commuter vans) were randomly exposed to different types of live talk radio. We find that partisan and nonpartisan media increased political interest, but not participation. Instead, exposure to alternate perspectives on cross-cutting media (i.e., those biased against subjects’ partisan preferences) heightened ambivalence and dampened participation, measured as signing a petition to parties. Partisan media simultaneously increased interest and decreased participation.     

深入实施西部大开发战略背景下重点产业的选择——以贵阳为例

在产业发展过程中，政府在经济发展的不同阶段都会制定与产业相关的各种政策鼓励重点产业的发展。政府选择重点产业动因是重点产业能支撑经济快速发展，能引导产业结构的调整，能发挥区域比较优势，能代表产业发展方向。结合国家深入实施西部大开发战略背景，选取7个指标基于SPSS对重点产业发展的比较优势进行实证分析。以贵阳市为例，指出重点产业选择的基本方向并提出相应的政策建议。     

The Management of Democratic Elections in Africa (MDEA) programme at the university of South Africa: Is this the right path towards African solutions?

There have been a number of initiatives in Africa to rid the Continent of political instability, conflict, poverty and disease. Many have argued that aid from the West has helped Africa in many ways—from stopping wars, to food relief and rescuing the African environment. Yet others have slated Western involvement which they contend, frequently leaves Africans dependant rather than capable of solving their own problems. In line with the pan-Africanist and the African Union (AU) ideals, there is now a realisation by Africans that there is a need to find African solutions to African challenges and problems. This review article explores the University of South Africa’s (Unisa’s) Management of Democratic Elections in Africa (MDEA) programme, by looking at its objectives and the reason why it must be labelled a Programme, its mandate, which is in line with the brief of the AU and pan-Africanist ideals. The article focuses on how Unisa’s programme responds to the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG); and how it has attempted to facilitate knowledge for peace in Africa, through empowering electoral officials from various African states. The article concludes by looking at the successes and limitations of the Programme over a five-year period, from its inception in 2011.     

Electoral participation in African democracies: the impact of individual and contextual factors

This paper addresses the question of how electoral participation at the individual level is affected by various political and sociological factors in new democracies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Relying on Afrobarometer (Round 5) data, the study examines the determinants of voting for over 12,000 voting aged individuals in eight countries. Findings confirm the importance of individual characteristics such as age, associational networks, discussing politics, party identification, religiosity, trust and satisfaction with democracy in predicting turnout at the individual level. But more importantly, the addition of contextual factors significantly improves the individual-level model predicting vote choice in these democracies.     

大力推进经济结构的战略性调整

经济结构调整是经济发展的重要基础.社会主义市场经济体系的不断完善和经济全球化的趋势,要求我们加快经济结构调整步伐.我们要调整农业的种植品种结构,推进农业产业化进程.加快工业的改组改造,发展高新技术产业.加快城市化建设步伐,努力实施西部大开发战略,继续调整和完善所有制结构.     

西方个人主义价值观研究

个人主义是近代西方社会的主流价值观,它包含两个层面的内容在个人层面上经历了人道主义、利己主义和功利主义、自由主义三个阶段,在国家层面上经历了资本主义、殖民主义、帝国主义和法西斯主义与霸权主义.个人主义具有平民性、自由性、民主性、侵略性等本质特征和非本质特征.     

论西部大开发战略和甘肃非公有制经济的发展

西部大开发战略为甘肃非公有制经济的发展提供了良好的机遇。甘肃非公有制经济的发展又会进一步促进西部大开发。通过对西部大开发与甘肃非公有制经济辨证关系的分析 ,认为非公有制经济在甘肃经济大开发中具有重要作用 ,藉此提出甘肃借西部大开发推动非公有制经济快速发展的对策建议     

Conflicts of customary land tenure in rural Africa: is large-scale land acquisition a driver of ‘institutional innovation’?

This study combines legal and anthropological approaches to investigate how the establishment of a large-scale biofuel agro-industry is reinterpreting and potentially transforming customary institutional arrangements in rural Sierra Leone. The contractual relationships established between land acquirers and local authorities can be seen as an ‘institutional innovation’ that aims at interpreting and overcoming the limits of the national land regime. However, by formalizing customary land tenure structures through land registration, such innovations are exacerbating pre-existing social inequalities. We identified four categories of resulting conflicts: interlineage, intervillage, interfamily and intergenerational conflicts. Taken together, these conflicts question the current land-based sociopolitical structures of rural Sierra Leone and could be drivers of societal change.     

The political economy of sugarcane flexing: initial insights from Brazil,Southern Africa and Cambodia

In the context of rising resource demand, agricultural crops such as sugarcane are being promoted for their multiple uses in different commodity markets and as alternatives to fossil fuel equivalents (i.e. as a source of biofuel, bioelectricity and bioplastic). These commodities are also produced on an increasingly flexible basis, as sugarcane mills respond to price signals and switch between different crop uses. This paper offers a preliminary exploration into the politics of this latest development in the capitalist industrialization of agriculture. It does so by focusing primarily on flexing in Brazil and highlighting the role of the state in both creating markets for non-food products that sugarcane mills can now switch between and managing the tensions that arise from this. These tensions have concerned consumer prices for fuel, control of distribution infrastructure and conditions of land conversion, each prompting political interventions by the state. The paper then suggests how this same process is taking place, albeit shaped by different contexts, in Southern Africa and Cambodia. It concludes with some key questions for further research: is flexing eroding the distinction between crop regimes? How do primary processors decide what their product mix will be? And on what basis do state actors support flexing between agricultural products and investments in so-called bio-refineries?