Blogs and the Attention Market for Public Intellectuals

Public intellectuals are successful suppliers of commentary in the attention market for serious thought. Blogs are a relatively new technology that substantially alters this market. More people can now nurse aspirations to be public intellectuals, but blogs also make plain the difficulties of actually reaching a public in ways that books do not. Blogs also vitiate other romantic ideas about the public intellectual as transcendent figure. Even so, blogs may well provide the services for which transcendent public intellectuals are often lauded better than these figures ever did.

idPAD: Paper Analytical Device for Presumptive Identification of Illicit Drugs

As drug overdose deaths across the United States continue to rise, there is increasing interest in field testing of illicit substances. This work discusses a paper-based analytical device (idPAD) that can run a library of 12 colorimetric tests at the same time, each detecting different chemical functional groups and materials found in illicit drugs, distractor substances, and cutting agents. The idPAD requires no electricity, costs less than $2 USD, and requires minimal training to operate. The results of the 12 tests form a color barcode which is “read” by comparison to standard images. The accuracy of the idPAD was assessed using samples of heroin, cocaine HCl, crack, and methamphetamine at concentrations of 25%–100% in a lactose matrix, as well as pure lactose. Based on 840 “reads” by three different users, the idPAD showed 95% sensitivity and 100% specificity for detecting these drugs; the most common error was mistaking cocaine HCl for crack or crack for cocaine HCl. In a second step, samples of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine (n = 30) and distractor substances (pharmaceuticals, cutting agents, and other illicit drugs, n = 64) were tested by two readers, yielding a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 97%. Targeted substances were detected reliably at 55–180 μg/lane, and the idPAD was found to be stable for at least 3 months when stored at room temperature. The library approach used in the idPAD may provide the accuracy and robustness necessary for a presumptive field drug test.     

技术与民生:在线政务服务影响公共服务满意度的经验研究

本文应用期望不一致理论分析了在线政务服务对公共服务满意度的影响。在理论分析的基础上,采用Tobit模型,从公共教育、医疗卫生、住房保障、劳动就业、社会保障五个方面进行实证检验。实证研究结果表明:在线政务服务显著提升了公共服务的公众满意度,增强了人民群众的获得感;显著的在线政务服务区域差异不利于公共服务满意度的提升。进一步,本文利用有序Probit模型探讨了在线政务服务影响公共服务满意度的路径。研究发现,在线政务服务主要通过提升公共服务资源分布均衡度与获取公共服务资源便捷度的满意度来提升公共服务满意度。     

数字中国背景下加强工会干部网络教育培训模式的探索与思考

工会干部教育培训中利用好政府数字化转型的成果,打造网络教育平台是大势所趋。网络教育培训具有传统教育培训形式所不具备的优势,本文从开展工会干部网络教育培训的理论依据入手,探索培训实施中建立功能完善的学习平台、建立健全的课程资源、建设有效运转的学习服务和管理机制等,尤其对工会干部网络教育培训主题设置科学化、培训制度规范化、培训课程精品化等方面进行了一定程度的研究。     

公安机关网络公关初探

公安机关网络公关是警察公共关系在网络时代下新的表现形式,是公安机关为了塑造组织形象,赢得社会公众的理解、支持和配合,借助互联网络、电脑通信和数字交互式媒体等传播、沟通手段来实现警务工作目标的管理活动,是对传统警察公共关系的拓展和延伸。公安机关通过网络媒体,加强与公众的互动沟通,赢得公众对公安工作的理解和支持;通过与相关网站的良性互动,加强舆论引导,培养良好的公关环境,从而增强公安机关的美誉度和塑造良好的警察形象。     

Going online. Does ICT enabled-participation engage the young in local governance?

Local governments increasingly use online strategies to strengthen political participation of citizens in policy and politics. Young people, however, are generally under-represented. This article studies age patterns of participation across offline and online forms of action to test whether online initiatives are able to overcome this age bias. We first report a case study of online and offline problem reporting to local authorities. We find that simply going from offline to online participation reinforces rather than mitigates age bias. We then report a case study of message posting on an online political forum. In this case, age bias disappears. In contrast to the traditional instrumental modes, a forum is an expressive form of online participation. The young seem to value the act of participating over the outcomes of participation. For practice, these findings suggest a need for participation policies that speak to these expressive needs of young. In recent years, social media have reinforced the potential for expressive participation.     

新时代网上思想文化阵地建构的多维分析

新时代建设网上思想文化阵地是巩固马克思主义指导地位、提升中国特色社会主义文化自信的重要途径.构建网上思想文化阵地,从结构维度出发,要把握技术、综合治理与人民群众在勾勒网上思想文化阵地总体面貌中的重要作用.从价值维度出发,弘扬网上思想文化阵地的时代精神,要注重弘扬网络空间主流思想文化、端正网络舆论风气、整合网络空间多元文...     

Localizing Peacebuilding: The Arizona Market and the Evolution of U.S. Military Peacebuilding Priorities in Bosnia

ABSTRACT

This article examines peacebuilding localization, in particular how encounters with local contexts and actors shape external peacebuilders' priorities and practices. My vehicle for exploring this dynamic is the rapid emergence of a massive black market in northeast Bosnia, the ‘Arizona’ market, which developed on territory controlled by U.S. peacekeeping forces. I argue that the military's relationship with the market contributed to a shift from an initially minimalist, peacekeeping-centric, conception of the peacebuilding process toward the embrace of broader post-war political and economic initiatives, and identify three factors that influenced its unfolding in the case of Arizona: adaptation, embeddedness and place.     

An asymmetric partisanship effect: House price fluctuations and party positions

Political economy arguments on party behaviour usually address parties of the left and the right. This article introduces a novel argument that portrays house price changes as an economic signal that right-wing parties disproportionately respond to in their programmatic positioning. This asymmetric partisanship effect is driven by homeowners’ importance for right-wing parties as a core voter group. Increasing house prices improve homeowners’ economic prospects. Right-wing parties thus have some flexibility to reach out to undecided voters by targeting the centre of the political spectrum. Falling house prices, however, signal worsening economic outlooks for homeowners. Right-wing parties thus have a strong incentive to send out signals of reassurance and prioritise their core voters. For a sample of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1970 to 2014, the findings support this argument. Right-wing parties move programmatically leftwards with booming house prices and rightwards when house prices fall, while parties of the left do not respond systematically.     

Putting Neoliberalism in its Place

Neoliberalism is not as popular as its opponents seem so much to fear; in democratic politics it nearly always hides behind other ideologies and policy types, as its essential message that we should pursue no goals that cannot be achieved through the market is intrinsically unattractive to the majority of people. Its power lies in the wealth of its key supporters, and in the difficulty of raising coordinated opposition to it among post‐industrial populations that have little sense of their political interests. The main base for hope of change in this comes from the as yet unrealised potential of women's movements.