Rallying in fear? Estimating the effect of the UK COVID-19 lockdown with a natural experiment

We use a natural experiment to study how the announcement of the UK COVID-19 lockdown affected citizens' attitudes towards the pandemic and the government's response to it. On the day of the lockdown announcement, YouGov ran a survey that captured responses before and after the announcement. Comparison of these responses suggests that the lockdown announcement made people more supportive of the government's response to the crisis but also (perhaps surprisingly) more concerned about the pandemic. Analysis of heterogeneous treatment effects suggests that the announcement narrowed gaps in perceptions of the crisis, increasing support for the government's response especially among those who had been least supportive and increasing concern about the pandemic especially among those who had been least concerned. Overall, the findings highlight a tension inherent in governing during times of crisis: actions that increase people's confidence in government and induce compliance with government directives may also tend to increase anxiety among the population.     

论传统中国的“性情司法”及其实际效应

从文本形式看,传统中国法律的篇章结构、条文体系具有超强的稳定性,有的可以因袭数千年,但法律文本规制与司法实践效应之间存在极大反差,文本的预期价值往往难以实现。其中一个重要原因就是司法主体的性情取向对司法实际效应的影响明显。通过类型化分析,传统中国以皇帝及官员为主的司法主体的性情取向可以归纳为:躬亲狱讼型、宽大仁恕型、秉公行法型、才情饱满型、揆情酌理型、残忍冷酷型、慵懒昏朽型等几大类,它们直接影响到司法的公正性、效率性及社会性效应。研究传统中国法律的价值与功能,既要注意法律文本,更要注意其运作状况及实际效应,考察和分析司法主体的性情司法及其实际效应,不失为一个独特视角。     

全球化、身份政治与法律

美国弗吉尼亚理工大学校园枪击案引发了身份对当代人和当代社会深刻影响实施的思考。身份的连带责任效应表明,拥有某种身份的人所实施的违反道德或法律的行为必然会连累到其他拥有相同身份的人。身份的搭便车效应表明,拥有某种身份的人所做出的高尚或伟大的行为可能会惠及到其他拥有相同身份的人。身份的刻板印象效应表明,社会上形成的对某一身份的刻板印象会影响拥有该身份的个人的命运和社会地位。法律上的很多制度,包括连带责任制度、结社自由制度、反歧视制度等,与身份的这些效应和影响之间存在着密切的关系。     

NEIGHBORHOOD STRUCTURE AND RACE‐SPECIFIC RATES OF INTIMATE ASSAULT*

Addressing the methodological shortcomings of extant research on the racial invariance thesis, race‐specific rates of intimate assault are examined across census tracts in Hamilton County, Ohio. We extend Miles‐Doan's (1998) approach to examining neighborhood structural effects on intimate assault rates in order to test the racial invariance thesis. Findings reveal comparable effects of neighborhood disadvantage and population age structure on assault rates for African‐American males and white males, yet a stronger effect of “disinvestment” (in marriage and in neighborhoods) on rates for African‐Americans. These results conflict with previous city‐level analyses demonstrating stronger structural effects on other violent crime rates for whites.     

CRIMINOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE: PERIOD AND COHORT EFFECTS IN SCHOLARSHIP

Period and cohort effects are explored in regard to criminological knowledge. Hypotheses are inspired by biographies and by research in the sociology of knowledge, based on Karl Mannheim's essay on generations, Maurice Halbwachs' partly conflicting arguments about the presentist orientation of collective memory and newer ideas about the institutional context of knowledge production. The data set results from content analysis of 1, 390 articles in leading American sociology, criminology, and law and society journals from 1951 to 1993, supplemented by information on the authors' "academic age." Results show that cohort membership has some effect and periods have considerable impact on topic, type of theory examined and data used by criminologists. These effects are interpreted against the background of post-World War II history: dominant ideological currents of different eras, historic events, changing academic institutions, and the ebb and flow of influential schools. Multivariate analyses indicate that period effects are largely but not fully explained by shifts in research funding and by the emergence of specialized fields with their own institutions.     

我国《专利法》第四次修正之评析

法律的修正是经济社会发展的必然产物。《专利法》的第四次修正发生在我国从"专利大国"向"专利强国"迈进的关键历史当口。在第六次科技革命方兴未艾、国家科技强国战略布局不断推进、国际竞争格局加速调整这三重因素的客观背景下,此次修法从微观、中观和宏观三个层面以新技术的专利制度保障、创新成果的产业化依托和竞争体系下的国际话语权提升为价值导向对《专利法》予以增补和完善,进而从专利法授权制度的完善、专利法利用机制的优化以及专利法救济规则的深化三个角度阐释和丰富了《专利法》的权利内核。《专利法》规范下专利权利义务的优化配置将成为我国构建知识产权新发展格局中重要的一笔。     

CLOSE‐UPS AND THE SCALE OF ECOLOGY: LAND USES AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL CONTEXT AND CRIME

Whereas one line of recent neighborhood research has placed an emphasis on zooming into smaller units of analysis such as street blocks, another line of research has suggested that even the meso‐area of neighborhoods is too narrow and that the area surrounding the neighborhood is also important. Thus, there is a need to examine the scale at which the social ecology impacts crime. We use data from seven cities from around the year 2000 to test our research questions using multilevel negative binomial regression models (N = 73,010 blocks and 8,231 block groups). Our results suggest that although many neighborhood factors seem to operate on the microscale of blocks, others seem to have a much broader impact. In addition, we find that racially and ethnically homogenous blocks within heterogeneous block groups have the most crime. Our findings also show the strongest results for a multitude of land‐use measures and that these measures sharpen some of the associations from social characteristics. Thus, we find that accounting for multiple scales simultaneously is important in ecological studies of crime.     

DELINQUENCY AND GENDER MODERATION IN THE MOVING TO OPPORTUNITY INTERVENTION: THE ROLE OF EXTENDED NEIGHBORHOODS

A long history of research has indicated that neighborhood poverty increases youth's risk taking and delinquency. This literature predominantly has treated neighborhoods as independent of their surroundings despite rapidly growing ecological evidence on the geographic clustering of crime that suggests otherwise. This study proposes that to understand neighborhood effects, investigating youth's wider surroundings holds theoretical and empirical value. By revisiting longitudinal data on more than 1500 low‐income youth who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized intervention, this article explores the importance of extended neighborhoods (neighborhoods and surroundings) and different concentrated disadvantage configurations in shaping gender differences in risk taking and delinquency. The results from two‐stage, least‐squares analyses suggest that the extended neighborhoods matter and they matter differently by gender. Among girls, extended neighborhoods without concentrated disadvantage were associated with lower risk‐taking prevalence than extended neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage. In contrast, among boys, localized concentration of disadvantage was associated with the highest prevalence of risk taking and delinquency. Interactions between the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods were similarly associated with differential opportunity and social disorganization mediators. Among the more critical potential mediators of the link between localized disadvantage and boys’ risk taking were delinquent network ties, strain, and perceived absence of legitimate opportunities for success.     

Timing as a source of regulatory influence: A technical elite network analysis of global finance

Rules governing the international financial system are the subject of some of the most intense distributional battles waged in any area of global governance. Who wins and who loses such battles – and why? I develop a novel analytical framework – technical elite network (TEN) theory – which explains the widely varying levels of influence that stakeholders enjoy over global financial standards. TEN theory draws attention to how issue‐specific characteristics of international finance – in particular, its highly technical and complex nature – shape the distributional consequences of global regulatory processes. It posits that such characteristics influence distributional outcomes by (i) affecting who claims first‐mover position and, thus, sets the agenda in global financial rulemaking, and (ii) ensuring that proposals made by first movers are increasingly difficult to alter at later stages of rulemaking. I provide empirical evidence for the theory by examining two regulatory regimes that are central to the efficiency and stability of the global financial system: the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Accounting Standards Board.     

我国政府信息公开立法的价值取向和现实路径

完善我国政府信息公开立法,需要首先明确我国政府信息公开立法在宪政、行政、经济、法律、社会、国际等六个方面的价值取向。在此基础上树立现代立法观念,遵循立法决策程序,充分利用地方先行立法权,寻求适合我国国情的现实路径。