Social funds and decentralisation: optimal institutional design

Most of the 60+ developing countries that have established social funds (SFs) are decentralising their governments as well. But the question of how to tailor SFs—originally a highly centralised model—for a decentralising context has received relatively little attention in the literature. We first examine evidence on the ability of SFs to adapt to a decentralised context. We then lay out the implications of decentralisation for SF institutional design step‐by‐step through the project cycle. The topic is doubly important because social funds can increase their effectiveness, and the sustainability of their investments, by reorganising internal processes to take advantage of the political and civic institutions that decentralisation creates. Local government has an informational advantage in local needs and characteristics (time and place), whereas SFs have access to better technology and knowledge of sectoral best practice. The key is to create institutional incentives that best combine these relative advantages. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

浅谈多媒体课件的优化与整合

多媒体教学课件的设计制作直接影响教学效果。制作课件时,一方面要根据教学内容、教学目标精选媒体素材,创设学习情景并确定对各种教学要素的最佳组合;另一方面,要选择合适的、交互性较强的课件制作工具整合媒体素材,体现教学设计。     

素描与设计艺术人才培养

素描在培养人的思维性、创造性、审美能力等方面,都起着极为重要的影响。设计艺术的发展与设计人才的培养紧密相连,因此,应高度重视素描在现代设计艺术中的地位和作用。     

The Politics of Policy Design and Implementation: A Comparative Study of Two Belgian Service Voucher Programs

Abstract

When two policy programs, identical in many important respects, are implemented in the same national context, similar program results would be expected. If this is not the case, an explanation is needed. In this article two Belgian voucher programs are compared: one for household services and one for childcare services. The first program was termed a success while the latter was abandoned after disappointing results. Ideological differences between policy makers at cabinet level are identified as the most crucial factor explaining the contrasting results of the two programs. The failure of the childcare voucher scheme was due to its deeply flawed policy program design, particularly with respect to the implementing structure as well as the needs and demands of the designated target group. This comparative study confirms the usefulness and validity of two well-known theoretical constructs: an integrated implementation model and related statutory coherence thesis. The necessity of more attention to the potential influence of higher-level political-institutional factors and the dynamic interaction between policy formulation/design and policy implementation is one important lesson for contemporary implementation research. Another is that policy instruments per se do not determine policy results. Their role can only be fruitfully analyzed and explained in the context where they are selected and applied.     

Squaring the Virtuous Circle: Exploring the Potential of the ‘Five Cs’

During his May 2014 visit to Australia Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the World Trade Organization, urged ‘public institutions, civil society, and global businesses’ to forge ‘creative coalitions’ for the purpose of engaging constructively and positively with the complex problems standing in the way of achieving social and economic sustainability. Lamy's visit was but the first of several occasions during 2014 in which intense public discussion erupted about the need for government, business, and civil society to pool their capacities in boundary‐spanning efforts to address complex policy problems. This article investigates whether the public discussion portends a heightened policy focus on the ‘five Cs’: co‐production, co‐design, corporate social responsibility, collective impact, and Lamy's creative coalitions.     

国内独生子女的社会交往能力研究综述

综合国内研究独生子女社会交往能力的相关文献,其大致的研究结论是,独生子女的社会交往能力和非独生子女没有根本差别,甚至独生子女的社会交往能力比非独生子女更好。现有研究的不足表现为,没有专门的研究设计,测量指标的维度不够、可比性差,缺乏对农村独生子女社会交往能力的研究。这也是后续研究需要改进的地方。     

高校社科学报特色栏目创新与学科优势浅谈

高校社科学报要适应期刊市场竞争的需要,提升学术质量,加强栏目创新,就要依托学科建设。另外,打造高校学报品牌栏目,还能促进学校的学科建设,二者可互促互动,共同发展。     

Assessing the Influence of Political Parties on Public Opinion: The Challenge from Pretreatment Effects

Despite generations of research, political scientists have trouble pinpointing the influence of political parties on public opinion. Recently, scholars have made headway in exploring whether parties in fact shape policy preferences by relying on experimental designs. Yet, the evidence from this work is mixed. I argue that the typical experiment faces a design problem that likely minimizes the extent to which parties apparently matter. Because parties have policy reputations, experimental participants may already know from real-world exposure to political debate where the parties stand before they are told in the experiment—they are “pretreated.” This study investigates how real-world political context interferes with party cue stimulus in experiments. In two experiments I show that two types of “pretreatment” from outside the experiment—exposure-based and reputation-based—dramatically moderate the effects of party cues in experiments. Moreover, the politically aware participants—who are most likely to have been pretreated before entering the experiment—are the most sensitive to this interference from real-world context. Paradoxically, experimenters are most likely to find no effect of parties at the very time that their influence is strongest outside the experiment. These findings emphasize the importance of keeping real-world context in mind when designing and analyzing experiments on political communication effects and might help reconcile disparate results of previous party cue experiments.     

Transparency in transnational governance: The determinants of information disclosure of voluntary sustainability programs

The rise of “new” transnational governance has intensified debates about a lack of accountability in global politics. Reviewing the mechanisms through which transparency can foster accountability beyond the state, this article explores the determinants of information disclosure in the field of transnational sustainability governance. Examining the institutional design of 113 voluntary sustainability programs, we find a positive correlation between the involvement of public actors and information disclosure. In contrast, the role of civil society is more ambiguous. There is no statistical support for arguments linking non‐governmental organization participation to increased transparency. At the same time, our analysis reveals a robust correlation between civil society‐led metagovernance and information disclosure. Moreover, we find that crowding has a negative effect on transparency, whereas normative peer pressures have no influence. At a broader level, the analysis reveals a lack of “deep transparency” among transnational sustainability governors. This limits the scope for transparency‐induced accountability in this policy domain.