Social networks and non‐market strategy

To date, the field of non‐market strategy has little to offer in the way of an integrated perspective on the simultaneous management of strategic issues and corporate stakeholders. This paper employs social network analysis to make a number of theoretically grounded conjectures about the delicate relationships between stakeholder behaviour and issue evolution. It is found that social network analysis has the potential to enrich and integrate theoretical perspectives in the field of non‐market strategy, offering solutions to a set of previously unresolved puzzles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Of change,training and public affairs in Europe

European public affairs practitioners need to be increasingly professional in their reactions to an EU undergoing transformational change. The paper offers a comprehensive summary of the subtleties of institutional change in Commission, Parliament and Council in 2004. In particular, the author argues that expansion from 15 member states to 25 has fundamentally changed the nature of the Union's politics and the skills required to influence it. This new EU requires more of practitioners than experience and amateur instinct: to achieve results and avoid restrictive regulation, the public affairs community must adopt effective training strategies, challenging competence targets and regular self‐assessment of its performance and ethics. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Chinese warfare and politics in the ancient East Asian international system,CA. 2700 B.C. to 722 B.C.

Ancient East Asia is the second oldest “protobellic area” and pristine state system of international relations within the global international system, after West Asia (ancient Near East). In a previous study Cioffi‐Revilla and Lai (1995) reported the first findings on the origins and evolution of war and politics in ancient China (Legendary, Xia [Hsia], Shang, and Western Zhou [Chou] periods), ca. 2700 B.C to 722 B.C In this paper we make public an expanded data set (N = 104 cases, 12 variables; version 2.0), explaining our sources, measurements, and data quality control procedures. The new data set will permit investigators to test hypotheses about warfare distributions, ethnic and protracted conflicts, time series, periodicity, system dynamics, and structural relationships (e.g., war‐polarity theories). This new long‐range data set should also promote a new stage in comparative analyses of the universal and particular properties of warfare and international systems, both cross‐polity and longitudinally.     

B. F. Skinner's utopian vision: behind and beyond walden two

This paper addresses B. F. Skinner's utopian vision for enhancing social justice and human well‐being as it was introduced in his 1948 novel, Walden Two. In the first part, we address the historical, intellectual, and social context that situates the book in the utopian genre, the critiques of its premises and practices, and the fate of intentional communities patterned on the book. In the second part, we review practices in Skinner's book that advance social justice and human well‐being under the themes of health, wealth, and wisdom, and then focus on contemporary practices that are the legacy of his vision. His vision was neither the a priori truth of a particular premise about human behavior or a necessary practice (blueprint) for an intentional community but rather the use of empirical methods to discover premises and practices that work to advance the health, wealth, and wisdom of individuals and survival of the culture.     

Estimating Individual Contributions to Complex DNA SNP Mixtures.,

High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) of large panels of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) provides an alternative or complimentary approach to short tandem repeats (STRs) panels for the analysis of complex DNA mixture forensic samples. For STRs, methods to estimate individual contribution concentrations compare capillary electrophoresis peak heights, peak areas, or HTS allele read counts within a mixture. This article introduces three approaches (mean, median, and slope methods) for estimating individual DNA contributions to forensic mixtures for HTS/massively parallel sequencing (MPS) SNP panels. For SNPs, the major:minor allele ratios or counts, unique to each contributor, were compared to estimate contributor proportion within the mixture using the mean, median, and slope intercept for these alleles. The estimates for these three methods were typically within 5% of planned experimental contributions for defined mixtures.     

Lecture Versus Simulation: Testing the Long-Term Effects

Abstract

Active learning techniques are being use with increasing frequency in the classroom and more time is being dedicated to designing and implementing them. However, the literature still suffers from a lack of rigorous empirical methods to test the effects of simulations. Most of the claimed benefits of utilizing simulations, and other active learning techniques, are improved soft skills and higher order thinking like empathy, confidence, public-speaking abilities, and interpersonal skills—all of which don’t lend themselves well to scientific measurement. This gap in the literature is especially troubling considering that time spent using simulations is time not spent using other methods. This article seeks to test the differing impacts of simulations versus traditional lectures over the long-term using a simple 30-minute simulation and rigorous experimental methods. The most important results show that students learn more initially from a lecture, but that students who were exposed to the simulation were better able to retain that information over the long-term.     

Partisan Media and Engagement: A Field Experiment in a Newly Liberalized System

How does media exposure affect political engagement in newly liberalized systems? Some celebrate newly vibrant and diverse media, believing that they mobilize citizens. Others worry that these outlets, which are often partisan, dampen engagement. We theorize that exposure to political programming engenders interest in politics irrespective of program bias, but that interest does not necessarily beget action. Partisan media affect participation only when altering attitude strength, and thus motivations. To evaluate media effects on interest and participation, we conducted a field experiment in Ghana, in which subjects in tro-tros (commuter vans) were randomly exposed to different types of live talk radio. We find that partisan and nonpartisan media increased political interest, but not participation. Instead, exposure to alternate perspectives on cross-cutting media (i.e., those biased against subjects’ partisan preferences) heightened ambivalence and dampened participation, measured as signing a petition to parties. Partisan media simultaneously increased interest and decreased participation.     

在经验与规范之间:试验立法及其类型化——一种立法进路的提倡

立法理想与法律运行实践间背离的中国境遇,以文本法律不完全是"能用之法",且立法承诺在执法中不能全部兑现之困局为现实表征。以进化论理性主义的哲学立场和无知论的知识假设为理论支撑,采取反复试错、吸纳建议、对话商谈等自发性工具,将实践证明可行的执法经验提炼与抽象,进而升华为普遍性规则的试验立法进路,是修正建构论唯理主义立法进路并撬动当前格局的一个支点。试验立法进路以"采纳—辐射"这个简式架构为运作逻辑。目前的试验立法主要有尝试探索型试验立法、落实测试型试验立法与示范效仿型试验立法三种模式。试验立法的实践性意味着多数立法活动将建立在证据或实证研究的基础上,也将具有方法论的意义,有望成为我国立法方法法定化的发展方向。     

Nationalism and the Rise of Peru's General Velasco

Velasco's brand of military nationalism marked a real break from the orientation of the majority of Peruvian military regimes, which were pro‐United States and espoused limited government. Many attempts have been made to explain this outcome, but the release of documents from British and United States archives clarify certain issues. Above all, Velasco's use of the nationalist card enabled him to win over decisive support from both the military and political society. This support gave him sufficient leverage to consolidate his personal position, which he did before launching a major programme of domestic property expropriation.     

The Effects of Local Government Consolidation on Turnout: Evidence from a Quasi‐Experiment in Switzerland

In the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi‐experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non‐merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.