The Politics of Technology Decline: Discursive Struggles over Coal Phase‐Out in the UK

The decline of carbon intensive technologies is a key element in the ongoing energy transition and our attempts to tackle climate change. At the same time, our understanding of technology decline and of the associated policies and politics is still limited. This paper builds on the sustainability transitions perspective, a novel approach to analyze socio‐technical transformation, including the complex interplay of policy and technology change. We study the decline of coal‐fired power generation in the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2017 by analyzing the discourse in The Guardian. We find scientists and environmental NGOs criticizing coal for climate and health reasons. Government and incumbent businesses tried to re‐legitimate coal but eventually, their resistance collapsed and coal was almost completely abandoned in just a few years. Particularly devastating for coal were failed promises around carbon capture and storage, rapid diffusion of wind energy, and pressure from various policies. This study contributes to better understanding the contested nature of decline, and the interplay of discursive struggles, technology change, and public policy in sustainability transitions.     

Household Costs and Resistance to Germany's Energy Transition

Germany is an exemplary case of an energy transition from nuclear energy and fossil fuels toward renewables in the electricity sector, but it also demonstrates repeated, increasingly successful countermobilization by energy incumbents and their allies. The course for Germany's energy transition was largely set with the adoption of a feed‐in tariff law in 1990, but since then the energy transition has been altered by a series of policy‐making episodes, each of which was shaped by the outcomes of the previous episodes; there has been a combination of reinforcing and reactive sequences. This article uses policy windows and advocacy coalition theory, supplemented by work on resistance to carbon pricing, to analyze the four periods in which opponents of the energy transition had the greatest opportunities to limit or reverse it. It makes three main arguments intended to influence future research on energy transitions: (1) episodes of opposition to the feed‐in tariff policy occurred when problem awareness and political commitment converged, (2) the outcomes of those conflicts depended on the balance of mobilization by advocacy and opposing coalitions, and (3) rising household costs due to the renewable energy surcharge drove both problem awareness and the composition of the opposing coalition, which helped lead to a more far‐reaching retrenchment of renewable energy policy in 2014 than in earlier periods.     

Electric Shock: The 2012 India Blackout and Public Confidence in Politicians

How do disruptions in basic public service delivery shape people’s perceptions of politicians? We offer evidence from the July 2012 blackout in India, the largest in human history. Using data from the India Human Development Survey, we compare confidence in politicians between households that were surveyed during the outage and affected by it (treatment) and only days before it (control). Balance statistics show that the treatment and control groups are statistically indistinguishable, and further tests indicate that there was no disturbance to the pattern of surveying. Far from undermining public confidence in politicians, the outage increased it, as citizens reacted to the anxiety created by the crisis. The implications are normatively troubling, as politicians seem to have reaped benefits from disruptions in public service delivery.     

Factors Driving the Promotion of Hydroelectricity: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis

In the wake of the COP21 conference in Paris, the transition to a low‐carbon energy supply remains a central issue on the political agenda. The deployment of renewable energies is often challenged by multiple issues (e.g., public acceptance, landscape protection, and so forth). Political actors try to overcome such challenges with various measures; however, the policy instruments used vary greatly in their strength. This article questions what factors lead to the adoption of strong policy instruments promoting hydroelectricity. Explanatory factors are derived from Kingdon's multiple streams framework and are analyzed with fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis within the Swiss cantons. The findings show that the strength of policy promoting hydroelectricity depends on the conjunction of mainly two factors: ambitious climate targets and an already well‐established hydroelectricity sector that generates large tax revenues for the cantons. Depending on the context, the strength of left‐wing and green parties as well as the current level of exploitation play an important role with the aforementioned factors.     

Competing Policy Windows in Biotechnology: The FDA,the 21st Century Cures Act,and Laboratory‐Developed Tests

In 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed taking a more active role in the regulation of laboratory‐developed tests (LDTs). Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives embarked upon the 21st Century Cures initiative to develop legislation to expedite the development of new biotechnology innovations. During that initiative and in the public comments responding to the draft guidance, there was significant disagreement as to whether the increased FDA regulation of LDTs was beneficial or detrimental to biotechnology. Both the FDA guidance document and the 21st Century Cures Act came about due to the opening of a window of opportunity created by the convergence of circumstances. The question is whether the windows of opportunity are competing and how to resolve this competition. This study will investigate these questions through a qualitative case study. It will also provide recommendations for resolving policy disputes involving wicked problems like biotechnology policy.     

禽流感病毒N8亚型神经氨酸酶基因的克隆和全序列分析

用SPF鸡胚增殖禽流感病毒A/Duck/Australia/341/83(H15N8),通过RT-PCR获得了NA基因全长,连接并转化,增菌培养后,提取阳性质粒进行序列测定,获得了禽流感病毒N8亚型的NA基因序列,分析了NA8基因与其他流感病毒神经氨酸酶基因的相互关系。结果显示,所获得的NA基因片段全长1459bp,最大开放阅读框编码457个氨基酸残基,经Blast分析,该基因与GenBank中其他13株N8亚型毒株的NA基因核苷酸序列同源性为91.6%～73.3%。与其他8个N1～N9亚型NA基因进行遗传演化分析,N8亚型与N5亚型NA基因的亲缘关系最近,与N3亚型NA基因的亲缘关系最远。结果表明,禽流感病毒N8亚型NA基因序列的测定对N8亚型流感病毒的诊断和预防具有重要意义。     

非法出售、私赠文物藏品罪研究

非法出售和私赠文物藏品罪侵犯了国家对文物藏品的管理活动和对国有单位所收藏文物的所有权 ,非国有单位或单纯个人不构成本罪。为正确认定本罪 ,应划清本罪与近似犯罪的区别。