哈萨克斯坦民族政策的变迁与思考

哈萨克斯坦是一个典型的多民族国家。作为原苏联的加盟共和国,其独立前的民族政策属于原苏联民族政策的一部分。而原苏联民族政策的焦点主要是民族自决、国家结构形式与俄罗斯化问题。哈萨克斯坦独立后,吸取原苏联民族政策的一些经验教训,同时为了维护国家统一与社会稳定,积极推行强化哈萨克族主体性的政策,倡导文化多元化、努力淡化民族意识。哈萨克斯坦的民族政策总体来说取得了一定的成效,较好地维护了哈萨克斯坦稳定、和谐与发展。其民族政策中的强化哈萨克语政策、强化主体民族历史传统的政策、国家统一前提下的民族文化自治政策、强化公民意识的政策、塑造统一哈萨克斯坦文化的政策等值得深思。     

台湾平埔族群文化变迁及其原因试析

平埔族群在清代被汉文化所融合,其文化变迁速度之快,传统文化消失之彻底为其它台湾少数民族所仅见。文章首先阐述平埔族群文化变迁的过程,然后对平埔族群文化变迁的原因作了分析,并认为平埔族群文化发生变迁原因是多方面的,既有客观原因也有主观原因。最后文章还对平埔族群文化变迁的实质作了探讨。     

Civil Service Reform in Latin America: External Referents Versus Own Capacities

In the context of state reform and democratisation in Latin America, reinforcing public institutions becomes critical to sustaining and consolidating realised gains. In this area, civil service reforms are critical. But civil service reform initiatives in Latin American countries were designed with different degrees of compatibility with countries’ administrative traditions and with the role played by the civil service within the political system. The results of different initiatives are described in a brief review of six key features of nine Latin American civil services. Discussion of these results allows us to draw conclusions about the capacity to generate learning dynamics. A new conception of the civil service and its role in the political system appears more evident, unless the required political consensus for implementing and consolidating the new reform strategy for most Latin American public administrations is not confirmed.     

集团诉讼存在的理由——关于普通法集团诉讼目的论的研究

普通法系国家集团诉讼目的包括:为社会成员提供权利救济,为被告提供程序保障并矫正其行为,尊重集团成员的个人自治等具体目标。我国现行代表人诉讼制度中蕴含的"两便"目的,难以描述和解释深层立法动机,集团诉讼上述目的对优化我国代表人诉讼制度有借鉴意义。     

Controlling immigration? How regulations affect migration flows

The aim of this article is to investigate whether or not and how immigration policies affect immigration flows. Such policy impacts have hardly been investigated so far as the necessary data is lacking. For the first time, two new datasets are combined to systematically measure immigration policies and bilateral migration flows for 33 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) destination countries from over 170 countries of origin over the period 1982–2010. The study finds that immigration policies have an important effect on immigration flows and thus that states are able to control their borders. To some extent the control capacities depend on other factors in attracting or deterring immigrants. The article shows that the deterrence effect of restrictive immigration policies increases when unemployment rates are high. It appears that, in these contexts, states start to care more about effectively protecting their national economy. Moreover, policies are more effective for migrant groups from former colonies or when the stock of this group is already high in a destination country. In these circumstances, information on border regulations are more easily disseminated, which in turn makes them more effective.     

United in diversity? The convergence of cultural values among EU member states and candidates

The European Union (EU) is considered to be a unique economic and political union that integrates most European countries. This article focuses on the cultural aspect of European integration, which has been increasingly debated over the course of deepening and widening integration and in the context of the legitimation crisis of the EU. Among the main goals of the EU is to promote certain values, which raises the question of whether it has been efficient in (or enabled) reducing cultural value gaps among the participating countries. World polity and institutional isomorphism theories suggest that cultural values may trickle down in a vertical manner from the institutions of the EU to its member states and candidates. Furthermore, hybridisation theory postulates that values diffuse horizontally through intensified interactions enabled by the EU. These two perspectives imply the possibility of cultural convergence among countries associated with the EU. By contrast, the culture clash thesis assumes that differences in cultural identity prevent value convergence across countries; growing awareness of such differences may even increase the pre-existing cultural value distances. To test these different scenarios, distances in emancipative and secular values are compared across pairs of countries using combined repeated cross-sectional data from the European Values Study and the World Values Survey gathered between 1992 and 2011. This study finds that the longer a country has been part of the EU, the more closely its values approximate those of the EU founding countries, which in turn are the most homogenous. Initial cultural distance to the founders’ average values appears irrelevant to acquiring membership or candidacy status. However, new member states experienced substantial cultural convergence with old member states after 1992, as did current candidates between 2001 and 2008. Since 1992, nations not participating in the integration process have diverged substantially from EU members, essentially leading to cultural polarisation in Europe. The findings are independent of (changes in) economic disparities and suggest the importance of cultural diffusion as one of the fundamental mechanisms of cultural change. This empirical study contributes to the literature on European integration, political and sociological theories of globalisation, and cross-cultural theories of societal value change.     

How interest groups influence public opinion: Arguments matter more than the sources

Through what mechanism do interest groups shape public opinion on concrete policies? In this article, three hypotheses are proposed that distinguish between the effect of the arguments conveyed by interest groups and the effect of interest groups as source cues. Two survey experiments on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TIPP) and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change allow the testing of these hypotheses. The resulting evidence from several countries shows that, with respect to interest groups’ attempts at shaping public opinion, arguments matter more than their sources. This is so even when accounting for people's trust in the interest groups that serve as source cues and for people's level of information about a policy. The finding that interest groups affect public opinion via arguments rather than as source cues has implications for the literature on elite influence on public opinion and the normative evaluation of interest group activities.     

Polycentric Systems and Multiscale Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in the Built Environment

Addressing climate change requires consideration of mitigation and adaptation opportunities at multiple spatial scales. This is particularly true in the built environment, defined here to include individual buildings, neighborhoods, and the spaces between. The current U.S. political environment portends fewer resources and coordinating services for mitigation and adaptation at the federal level, however, reinforcing the relevance and necessity of actions at subnational levels. In this study, we evaluate the applicability of a polycentric model of governance to the implementation of mitigation and adaptation practices, as well as the presence of polycentric systems in the built environment. We assemble a database of practices with the potential to achieve both mitigation and adaptation objectives, as well as those that may be cross‐purposed or that may achieve one but not the other. We review practices to gauge the applicability of a polycentric model of governance to mitigation and adaptation practices in the built environment, and examine the attributes of three existing adaptation and/or mitigation programs to assess the extent to which they exhibit polycentric attributes. We conclude with recommendations for a broader research agenda, including efforts to develop more in‐depth examinations into individual programs and comparative analysis of performances of different governance attributes.     

Smokescreen Politics? Ratcheting Up EU Emissions Trading in 2017

The reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) adopted in November 2017 was surprisingly strong, given the previous opposition from central member‐states like Poland and key stakeholders like the energy‐intensive industries. The carbon price has also increased substantially since then. To explain why such major reform was possible, we present several findings with wider relevance. Importantly, all the actors pushing for a more ambitious reform benefitted from having a central, “second‐best” mechanism in place—the Market Stability Reserve (MSR)—which could be further tightened. By focusing cancelation on allowances in the MSR and taking place only after 2023, policy entrepreneurs managed to make the distribution of costs obscure and diffuse, whereas the benefits (a probable higher carbon price and related greater auctioning revenues for member‐states) were more specific and closer in time. That is what we call “smokescreen politics.”