Opposing Energy Transitions: Modeling the Contested Nature of Energy Transitions in the Electricity Sector

Energy transitions are fiercely contested. The incumbents of the fossil‐ and nuclear‐based energy systems have much to lose from a transition to a sustainable and decentralized energy system. They therefore employ their material and political resources to reverse, halt, or slow down this transition. They also attempt to stop and reverse the decentralization of energy production. This article provides a framework that can be used to analyze the contestation that surrounds energy transitions. The analytical framework breaks apart the macro paths of energy transitions, and differentiates between three meso‐paths (political, economic‐technological, and legitimation), emphasizes the feedback processes between these paths, and acknowledges the crucial role that actors play in engendering these feedback processes. It uses Germany as a case study to illustrate the analytical model. It also provides hypotheses that will be tested in the subsequent contributions to this special issue.     

Senior Executives' Political Connections and Corporate Environmental Behavior—Empirical Research From the Chinese A‐Share Market

This thesis analyzed the cross‐section data of 630 non‐financial listed enterprises and adopts a logit model to estimate the relationships between political relations and corporate environmental behavior. The paper also adopts an ordered logit method to estimate the marginal impact of political connections to enterprises’ disclosure of information on environment and sustainable development. Through analysis, this thesis found that political connections lower the probability for enterprises to disclose information on environment and sustainable development. With the Level III scoring method, this article classified the performances of disclosing corporate environmental information into three levels. It is found that corporate political connections increase the probability for enterprises not to disclose any environmental information and lower the probability for enterprises to refer to GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.     

A Song of Policy Incongruence: The Missing Choir of Consumer Preferences in GMO‐Labeling Policy Outcomes

This article focuses on the degree of policy congruence, and by extension policy responsiveness, of U.S. federal‐ and state‐level GMO labeling laws from 2011–2016. Utilizing consumer survey data, evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates consumers prefer clear text‐based indication if food products contain genetically modified ingredients. However, the federal law adopted in 2016 mandates GMO labeling but with exceptions permitted to clear on‐package text labeling. The results of this study demonstrate that consumer preferences were not adequately represented at the federal level and were misaligned with state policy activities as captured in the aggregate outcome. State legislatures were actively proposing mandatory legislation with only a few cases of success, which did not adequately represent the wishes of the people. Given the misalignment and overall policy incongruence, the consequences of pending federal law are discussed in light of why the voices of the consumer choir were not heard by lawmakers.     

Mythical enjambment in The Hungry Woman: nation,desire, and Cherríe Moraga’s utopic turn

In her play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (2001), Cherríe Moraga makes use of a technique I call “mythical enjambment”: the insertion of a myth, story, or cultural context into another where it “doesn’t belong,” a willful act of making the unexpected out of the expected. Moraga utilizes mythical enjambment to illuminate how mythologies become entrenched and perpetuate harmful ideologies. Interrupting the traditional aesthetics of Western theater by drawing attention to the ways queer women of color are erased from the narrative, Moraga also challenges the absence of queer women of color from the Chicano movement by embedding her play within some of the most dearly held myths of Chicana/o culture. Ultimately, the use of mythical enjambment gestures toward the utopic and revolutionary potential of theater. The Hungry Woman shatters myths on multiple, intersectional levels: from the critical gaze of interpretive authority to the myths that cohere Chicana/o identity along masculinist and heterosexist lines.     

Institutions and Morality Policy in Western Democracies

This article investigates whether different political institutions such as executives, legislatures, parties, party systems, judiciaries, decentralization, constitutionalism, and referendums across 24 Western democracies are venues for debate across five individual morality policies. Using data since 1945, the article compares three theories of morality policy—(1) Policy Type leading to different institutional venues; (2) Two Worlds of religious/secular party systems; and (3) U.S./European exceptionalism. In order, the most frequently debated issues are abortion, same sex marriage, euthanasia, stem cells/assisted reproductive technology (ART), and capital punishment. There is considerable variation in the institutions and country groups that debate them although fewer differences in the Two Worlds model. Abortion, euthanasia, and same sex marriage are the most convergent issues across institutions, party systems, and country groupings while capital punishment and stem cells/ART show the most diverse patterns of deliberation. The general Policy Type model of morality policy is upheld, but varies institutionally by specific issues. The Two Worlds model is of some importance, but only on three issues. There also are regional differences between the United States, Europe, and non‐European democracies.     

Mutual and Self Perceptions of Opposing Advocacy Coalitions: Devil Shift and Angel Shift in a German Policy Subsystem

In political conflicts, actors tend to assume that opponents behave maliciously. This phenomena is part of the “devil shift,” which was introduced in advocacy coalition framework research. We present a multivariate analysis of the perceptions of motives and actions of opposing coalitions in a political conflict and thereby analyze a major dimension of the “devil shift” and of its antonym “angel shift.” The conflict concerning the German infrastructure project Stuttgart 21 serves as a case study. We show that the radicalness of policy‐specific beliefs is the most important predictor for the intensity of mutual misperception in the researched conflict. The results further point to a more systematic inclusion of an actor's deep normative core beliefs in future analyses of distorted perception. Another central finding relates to the importance of the personal environment: actors in the subsystem share the same policy core beliefs with the majority of people in their personal environment.     

Power Sector Reforms and Technical Performance: Good News from an Instrumental Variable Analysis

Over the past three decades, various power sector reforms have overhauled the governance of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution in almost a hundred countries. Have these reforms produced benefits? Using instrumental variables, we improve upon earlier studies and demonstrate that power sector reforms enacted between 1982 and 2008 have both had large positive effects on the availability of generation capacity and reduced transmission and distribution losses. We also show that the positive effects on generation capacity are pronounced in developing countries and that hybrid reforms falling short of privatization and free competition are effective in improving generation capacity in particular. Overall, the results show that these reforms are an effective tool to remove an important constraint on economic growth.     

Managing elopement on the mobile phone: continuity and change in Woɗaaɓe te’egal marriage

Based on extended fieldwork among Ful?e Wo?aa?e in Niger and by analysing an ethnographic case, this paper discusses aspects of continuity and change in the practice of a culture-specific form of elopement marriage, called te’egal, in which a married woman leaves her husband to marry a man from another clan. The discussion focuses on two major aspects: (1) the extensive use of mobile phone communication in arranging and logistically managing elopement, and (2) the increasing police involvement in the settlement of te’egal cases. Mobile phone use in the context of elopement is interpreted as a modern means of achieving cultural ends. It acts as a catalyst, making elopement more dynamic. In the wider context of globalization and urbanity, however, this leads not simply to continuity but also to contradictions, as the moral and legal institutions of the state increasingly interfere with the normative framework of customary law.     

A型禽流感病毒M2蛋白胞外功能区(M2e)基因的原核表达和免疫原性分析

为研究A型禽流感病毒M2蛋白胞外功能区(M2e)蛋白亚单位疫苗在鸡体的免疫保护力,利用笔者所在实验室已构建的含M2e基因的质粒pGEM-T-1459,获得顺次串联的基因片段3M2e,将其克隆到原核表达载体pMAL-C2x中,经酶切和DNA测序鉴定正确后转化大肠杆菌BL21(DE3)感受态细胞,经IPTG诱导表达,SDS-PAGE和Western-blot分析,结果显示,表达出一分子质量为60 ku的可溶性融合蛋白(MBP-3M2e),与预期值相符,该蛋白表达量约占菌体表达量的59.8%。间接免疫荧光和间接ELISA检测结果显示,用纯化后的融合蛋白免疫的SPF鸡血清可与流感病毒的M2蛋白发生反应,且其抗体效价较高,表明纯化后的重组融合蛋白具有良好的免疫原性。