论十六大的主旨与宪政的发展

十六大所确立的主题和基本内容 ,为建设以民主政治为核心的宪政国家指引了方向。十六大报告的主旨将在六个方面对宪政的发展产生影响 :小康社会初步奠定宪政的社会基础 ;扩大基层民主是宪政建设的立足点 ;完善财产制是对宪政经济基础的巩固 ;对权力的制约和监督以及推进司法体制改革是宪政必备的两个要素 ;解决“三农”问题和深化分配制度改革是宪政实施的社会环境保障。     

大学英语评估系统的现状及改革建议

当前的大学英语教学评估系统包括三个子系统:基础阶段结束时的四、六级英语考试;各学期期末的学业考试;社会对大学生英语综合能力的需求和评价。但是,由于许多学校和用人单位都把四、六级考试作为考核的终极标准,导致现在的大学英语教学整个只是围绕四、六级考试进行,而四、六级考试本身又存在许多问题,造成了一种恶性循环;各学期期末的学业考试失去了其本身的意义,只是一种四、六级考试的模拟;学生也缺乏适当的途径去了解社会对英语运用能力的实际需求。这三个子系统对大学英语的教学产生了严重的负面反拨效应,要想对大学英语进行改革,首先就要从评估系统着手。     

Applying behavioural science to the annual electoral canvass in England: Evidence from a large-scale randomised controlled trial

Local authorities in Great Britain are required to ensure that their electoral registers are as accurate and complete as possible. To this end, Household Enquiry Forms (HEFs) are mailed to all properties annually to collect updated details from residents, and any eligible unregistered residents will subsequently be invited to register to vote. Unfortunately, HEF nonresponse is pervasive and costly. Using insights from behavioural science, we modified letters and envelopes posted to households as part of the annual canvass, and evaluated their effects using a randomised controlled trial across two local authorities in England (N=226,528 properties). We find that modified materials – particularly redesigned envelopes – significantly increase initial response rates and savings. However, we find no effects on voter registration. While certain behavioural interventions can improve the efficiency of the annual canvass, other approaches or interventions may be needed to increase voter registration rates and update voter information.     

美国法典1404(a)与非方便法院原则辨析

由于美国法典28卷1404（a）条款的立法规定在功能与措辞上均非常类似普通法上的非方便法院原则,因此很多学者误以为该立法规定与非方便法院原则之间并不存在实质性的差异。然而,这一看法并不正确。事实上,1404（a）条款立法在法律效果、证明标准以及具体适用方面均与非方便法院原则存在显著的区别。     

Reproduktion als Praxis

The interdependency of ?production“ and ?reproduction“ has increasingly attracted the attention of the scientific community and the media. Biological and social reproductions are topics of family and gender studies: In family research reproduction is analysed as a basic function of the family; in gender research reproduction is mainly studied as a factor that effects social inequality. While sociological research was for a long-time concentrated on the ?conciliation“ of ?work“ and ?(family) life“, nowadays a change of perspective is necessary: How can employees maintain their psychological and physical strength when the work sphere becomes more and more flexible? How can they safeguard their social relationships? The article connects the categories ?work-strength –life-strength “ as a perspective that considers the structural and contradictory relationship of ?work“ and ?life“. With the concept of ?doing reproduction“, individual efforts are brought in the centre of research. Hereby is shown that the functionality of reproduction as a social sphere is fundamentally based on reproduction as an individual practice.     

Explaining the Reversed Gender Gap in Political Consumerism: Personality Traits as Significant Mediators

Research on political consumerism documents a persistent reversed gender gap, as women boycott and buycott products more often than men. Previous efforts to explain the reversed gender gap rely on classical theoretical models developed to illuminate gender differences in political participation in general. Accounting for socio‐economic and situational factors as well as socialization leaves a significant amount of the reversed gender gap unexplained, though. Adhering to recent empirical evidence of personality as an important factor influencing political behavior, we argue that gender differences in personality traits could provide an alternative explanation to account for gender disparities in political consumerism. We use original survey data specially designed to measure political consumerism in Switzerland, which also include the Big Five model of personality. We find empirical evidence that gender differences in personality traits, in particular agreeableness, explain a significant portion of the reversed gender gap in political consumerism.     

Erzählungen des Kindes‐ und Erwachsenenschutzes: Eine Anwendung und Erweiterung des Narrative Policy Frameworks

The Child and Adult Protection Authorities (KESB) have been the subject of controversial discussion since their establishment in 2013. The reform of the Guardianship Law provided for an institutional shift away from local guardianship authorities to regional specialist authorities. This article uses the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine the history of today’s controversy, simultaneously proposing an analytic strengthening of said framework. Previous NPF studies summarize policy actors into opponents and proponents. As a result, we do not know whether different actors use different narratives. We therefore separate the expert from the MP discourse. The analysis shows that the experts' arguments for a new institutional arrangement and a person‐oriented narrative dominated, which put the fundamental rights of the persons affected by guardianship measures up front. The study contributes to the understanding of the current controversy, in which a person‐oriented narrative seems to be dominant again, directed against the new authorities.     

Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States

The United States is experiencing growing impacts of climate change but currently receives a limited policy response from its national leadership. Within this policy void, many state governments are stepping up and taking action on adaptation planning. Yet we know little about why some states adopt State Adaptation Plans (SAPs), while others do not. This article investigates factors that predict the emergence of SAPs, both in terms of policy adoption and policy intensity (goal ambitiousness). Applying the diffusion of innovation theory, I consider the relative influence of internal state characteristics, regional pressures, and test for conditional effects between government ideologies and severity of the problem. The results show interesting differences between predictors that influence policy adoption and ambitiousness. States are more motivated to adopt a policy when faced with greater climate vulnerability, have more liberal citizenry, and where governments have crossed policy hurdles by previously passing mitigation plans. The intensity of policies and goal setting, moreover, is more likely to be driven by interest group politics and diffuse through policy learning or sharing information among neighboring states in Environmental Protection Agency regions. These findings support an emerging scholarship that uses more complex dependent variables in policy analysis. These variables have the potential to differentiate symbolic from substantive policies and capture finer information about predictors of importance.     

Making a Place for Alternative Technologies: The Case of Agricultural Bio‐Inputs in Argentina

This article characterizes the ways in which the actors in charge of designing and implementing public policies intervene to promote the emergence of alternatives to problematic technologies. It is based on a case study conducted in Argentina that focuses on initiatives to promote the development of biological agricultural inputs in the context of increasingly controversial chemical inputs. The study spotlights the political, institutional, and semantic efforts made by policy makers and public administrations to ensure these new inputs find their way into organizations and onto their agendas. Their work consists in attenuating the boundaries between chemical and biological inputs, and reducing opposition by creating categories and organizations that downplay potential dissension and highlight the possible coexistence of technological paradigms. Contrary to what the injunctions of technological substitution suggest, we show that putting alternative technologies on the public agenda depends largely on their inclusion in institutional and regulatory infrastructures originally designed for technologies that are likely to decline. More broadly, it relies on the construction of continuity between the two types of technologies.     

Exploring the Effects of North–South and South–South Research Collaboration in Emerging Economies,the Colombian Case

International research collaboration (IRC) is associated with both positive and negative effects on the performance of research in emerging economies. While some authors claim that North–South collaborations improve scientific quality and visibility for Southern countries, others claim that it may entail the reorientation of research to comply with Northern agendas. South–South collaborations are thought to increase the focus on local affairs, therefore leading to a relatively small number of scientific international publications appearing in “high quality” journals. Research on the impact of IRC beyond publications in international journals has been neglected despite the importance of other products in knowledge creation. This research uses a broad range of scientific outputs to empirically assess such assumptions and explore the outcomes of IRC in Colombia. Results from multivariate regressions and nonparametric analyses show that, contrary to common assumptions, Colombian research teams collaborating with partners from the global South report higher scientific production, while those collaborating with Northern countries seem to contribute to local knowledge the most.