Autocratic adaptation: The strategic use of transparency and the persistence of election fraud

Why would an autocrat want, or at least make it appear to want, to reduce election fraud? In recent years, non-democratic rulers have surprisingly begun to embrace fraud-reducing technologies, like web cameras or transparent ballot boxes. The reason for this is found in the relative ease by which one type of fraud can be replaced with another. With the help of new fraud identification techniques, I argue that the installation of web cameras in polling stations changes how fraud is conducted. Web cameras do not reduce fraud, but rather make certain blatant forms of fraud, like ballot box stuffing, more costly. Autocrats then substitute for other types of fraud, such as fabricating the vote count out of view of the cameras.     

新型政治空间生成过程中的团青关系研究

团青关系的本质是在党群关系决定下的党的青年组织与青年群体的关系,具有客观性与主观性、独立性与工具性、政治性和社会性统一的特征。在我国基于政党一国家一社会三个主要主体形成的新型政治空间结构中,团青关系面临着共青团的政治性目标与青年的社会性目标之间的失调、青年发展场域的分化分隔与团青关系作用场域的单一之间的矛盾、以青年为竞争对象的社会主体增多与团组织竞争力减弱之间的矛盾、以及团组织所受环境约束增大与组织控制力降低的双重压力等新现象和新问题。为此,密切团青关系的行动框架,一是要以建立和巩固共青团和青年群体之间的认识关系、实践关系和价值关系为行动基础,二是构建与党的历史方位相符、与市场经济规律相融、与青年主体特征相适、与社会环境要求相配的共青团改革路径。     

Do female politicians empower women to vote or run for office? A regression discontinuity approach

Persistent gender gaps in political officeholding and mass political participation jeopardize women's equal representation in government. This paper brings new evidence to the longstanding hypotheses that the presence of additional female candidates and officeholders helps address these gaps by empowering other women to vote or run for office themselves. With a regression discontinuity approach and data on 3813 US state legislative elections where a woman opposed a man, I find that the election of additional women in competitive US state legislative elections has no discernible causal effects on other women's political participation at the mass or elite levels. These estimates are precise enough to rule out even substantively small effects. These results stand in stark contrast to a number of findings from India, suggesting that although electing the first women in a society can have these empowering effects, remaining barriers to women's inclusion in American democracy go beyond what further increases in female officeholding can themselves erode.     

公安院校思想政治工作研析

思想政治工作是公安院校的优良传统,是落实政治建警的必然选择。为提高公安院校思想政治工作的成效,必须深入地总结既有经验,辩证看待所面临的外部新情况、新问题,通过工作理念的创新,逐层推进思想政治教育,构建有效的运行机制和考评机制,让受教育者成为教育他自己的人。     

Political entrepreneurship and the Ko-P phenomenon in Taiwan’s democratization*

Taiwan’s economic modernization and political democratization after World War II have been praised as good examples for emerging countries. As of 2014, Taiwan has successfully gone through four direct presidential elections and two rounds of peaceful transfer of power. However, continuing sectarian quarrels between the ruling Kuomintang and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party cast doubt on the suitability of democracy for a Confucian society. This pessimism is challenged by the emergence of a new political star. A political novice, Ko Wen-je (aka Ko-P), won a landslide victory in the 2014 Taipei mayoral election, which is seen as a phenomenon. It has significant political implications and has so far inspired changes in the political landscape. The adoption of entrepreneurial strategies, such as identifying problems, leading by example, and team creation, are unprecedented in Taiwan’s political campaign. The Ko-P phenomenon demonstrates a self-correcting mechanism in Taiwan’s political system and bodes well for the future of new democracies, particularly for the Greater China Region.     

Spatial models in voting advice applications

We examine the use of spatial models in Voting Advice Applications. A successful branch of VAAs uses multidimensional models of the political space to inform users of their policy match with political parties. Creators of these VAAs offer only a very generalized justification for the choice of their underlying spatial model. We examine whether these spatial representations offer a valid depiction of policy differences between parties. We compare the spatial models from the available national ‘electoral compasses’, which include established democracies as well as semi-authoritarian and transitional systems. We find that the two-dimensional ‘one-size fits all’ model that is used in all of these countries fails to accommodate significant variation between party systems.     

传媒审判与司法裁决——传媒式司法的法律、社会与政治后果

传媒在判决结果确定之前的倾向性报道和评论,受到法律形式主义的广泛批评,泸州"二奶继承案"的判决,不同于法律推理结论以致被认为是媒体审判的结果。法律效果、社会影响和政治后果是中国司法需要考量的三个要素,判决的社会影响和政治后果具有比法律效果更高的权重,因此在三者存在冲突的情况下,传媒式司法应当舍弃法律推理的结论,作出偏重于社会影响和政治后果的判决。媒体审判的功能在于提供判决的参考意见,而法院则需要在考量此种意见的法律、社会和政治后果的基础上作出裁决。     

新时代思想政治工作面临的新课题及对策措施

新时代思想政治工作面临的新情况和新课题,主要表现在西方文化两面性的不断渗透、市场经济两重性的巨大影响、现代网络双重效应的不断显现、＂四个多样化＂给人们思想行为带来了新变化这四个方面。为此,必须明确新时代思想政治工作的三大战略性新任务：大力推动经济社会＂又好又快＂地科学发展、把党的政治优势转化为科学发展优势、把社会主义核心价值体系融入思想教育与文化建设的全过程。加强和改进新时代的思想政治工作,必须坚持思想政治工作的正确原则,严格遵循做好思想政治工作的行为准则;必须努力掌握思想政治工作的科学方法,不断提高思想政治工作的有效性;必须改进党对思想政治工作的领导和管理,建设一支坚强的政工队伍。