Critical Misunderstandings: Ineffective International Governance and the UK Nuclear Industry

In 2017, significant media and political interest was sparked by the UK decision to leave Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Community. While such interest in nuclear matters has to be welcomed, the apparent lack of knowledge displayed in the regulatory governance of the UK nuclear industry is disquieting. This article therefore offers an overview of the publicly funded UK nuclear industry and its regulatory governance including its links with European and global nuclear agencies to inform the debate and to identify critical issues in need of resolution.     

Opposition to immigration in contemporary Russia

The study examines sources of opposition to immigration in contemporary Russia. It distinguishes between two types of opposition to immigration: exclusionary attitudes based on national membership and exclusionary attitudes based on race or ethnicity, directed exclusively at foreigners with non-Slavic or non-European origins. Findings indicate that a quarter of ethnic Russians can be classified as “racial exclusionists”; they are willing to admit immigrants who share a race/ethnic group with most of Russia’s people but object to the admission of racially/ethnically different immigrants. Another 42% of ethnic Russians are classified as “total exclusionists”; they object to immigration of all foreigners, regardless of their race/ethnicity. Multivariate analysis focuses on the impact of perceived collective vulnerability, human values, and socio-demographic attributes. Opposition to immigration in Russia is further situated within temporal and cross-national comparative perspectives. Apparently, exclusionary attitudes toward immigrants who share a race/ethnicity with most Russians increased between 2006 and 2016.     

The effects of executive constraints on political trust

This article explores political trust, delving into its subcomponents and the relationship between them. It is interested in explaining why governmental trust and trust in regulative state institutions are similar in some countries and different in others. It argues that the variation can best be explained by checks on the executive. This is the case because the more restricted the executive, the less regulative state institutions are affected by the fluctuations in governmental trust. When the government cannot encroach upon state institutions, the impartiality and efficacy of regulative institutions are maintained. The less governmental interference to regulative state institutions, the more such institutions will be devoted to the public rather than partisan interests, resulting in a wider gap between state and government trust. The argument is tested through an empirical analysis of a cross-national panel data based on all existing waves of the World Values Survey.     

The Impact of Advertising and Media on the Arab Culture: The Case of the Arab Spring,Public Spheres,and Social Media

The Arab world has experienced some unprecedented social movements, labeled by the media as the Arab Spring. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of public policy, advertising, media, and public spheres on the Arab Spring. The media and economic policies enacted in the Arab world in the 1990s played a significant role in changing consumer culture in the Arab region, resulting in significant changes in public policy. Two studies were conducted to test how the change in consumer culture along with new public polices in the region contributed to the uprisings.     

Germany’s Renewable Energy Shift: Addressing Climate Change

This essay considers how the state can be used successfully to initiate and support an energy shift from nuclear energy to renewable energy, as demonstrated by Germany’s Renewable Energy Act from 2000 and its previous Electricity Feed-in-Law (1991). As a result of these nationwide policies, Germany has reduced levels of greenhouse gas emissions, has a higher level of both energy security and employment in the renewable energy industry than the US. Germany is a global leader in this industry and provides a model for other nations in this regard.     

Arguing deep ideational change

ABSTRACT

How do actors come to contest previously uncontested background ideas? This is a difficult question to ask. On the one hand, deep backgrounds seem to be too foundational for actors to transform. Their political efficacy appears to end where ideas constitute their efficacy in the first place. On the other hand, ideas must not be reified. Even deeply taken-for-granted ideas do not always stay the same, and agents have a lot to do with these changes. In order to answer this question, we draw from social theory and rhetorical studies. We conceptualize the deep background as nomos, and the more easily accessible background as endoxa. We then proceed to identify three sets of conditions that make nomic change possible. These relate to opportunity, message, and messenger. Nomic change becomes possible when the need for something new has become widely established and a supply of new nomic ideas is easily available (opportunity); new nomic ideas are ‘smuggled’ into more orthodox and widely resonating arguments (message) as well as rhetorical encounters in which these arguments are made; and advocates are widely recognized as interlocutors (messenger). A plausibility probe of nomic contestation about nuclear governance provides evidence for this framework.     

Emancipative values in Georgia: An individual level analysis

The main interest of the study is to determine whether and how an individual's perceived economic situation is related to emancipative values in Georgia. The analysis employs individual-level survey data from nationwide public opinion surveys conducted by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC) in 2010 and 2011 in Georgia. Several dimensions of emancipative values are examined: gender equality, tolerance, participation, autonomy, interpersonal trust, satisfaction with life and religion. Level of education and age are brought in as alternative factors accounting for value change. The results are ambiguous and only partially confirm validity of the emancipative theory of democracy on an individual level in Georgia.     

Adolescent Co-occurring Disorders Treatment: Clinicians' Attitudes,Values, and Knowledge

This study examined community-based clinicians’ (N = 294) attitudes, background/experiences, values, and knowledge relating to issues of co-occurring disorders, which occur at a high rate among adolescents involved in the juvenile justice system. Study results reveal that clinicians self-rate their clinical values and attitudes at or above the expected level of competency, but they concede that their skill and knowledge levels are not adequate. Comparison measures reveal that employment setting conditions, geographic region, hours worked per week, and strongly held convictions about the importance of integrated mental health and substance use disorders service delivery distinguish clinicians’ co-occurring disorders knowledge levels. Implications are offered.     

论知情权

知情权是当代法治社会中的一项基础性人权,但现存法律制度对知情权却存在着规范供给严重缺乏、理论支撑相当乏力的重大缺陷。本文试图从法理学的视角对知情权的概念与范围、知情权的理论基础和法律价值、知情权的特征和行使原则、方式、知情权的法律缺失与对策等系列问题进行系统探索,以期对知情权有一个全面和理性的认识。     

论行政执法中的的法律价值观冲突

行政执法人员的法律价值观是行政执法行为的思想基础和行为依据,直接影响着法律执行的价值状态。行政执法中的法律价值观冲突严重影响着价值观功能的发挥,制约着行政执法的效果。必须强化行政执法人员的法律信仰,确立解决行政执法中法律价值观冲突的基本准则。