Rural and Regional Policy: A Case of Punctuated Incrementalism?

The rural policy environment has many of the conditions that might suggest a tendency towards punctuated equilibrium. The Commonwealth has little direct power over rural space and industries, there has been a long tradition of state support for agriculture and decision‐making has generally been kept within a tight policy community, dominated by rural interests. In our review of the PAP data and policy history, we find instead an underlying movement across time and governments towards an expectation of self‐reliance for rural businesses and communities. On top of the long‐term incremental movement towards this expectation, issue attention has shifted according to political, climatological and market conditions, rather than necessarily in line with changes in policy content.     

Political crises,strategic choices,and terrorism: The rise and fall of the Uruguayan Tupamaros

In this article we offer a first attempt at providing a set of universal grading criteria for determining on what basis, and how far, an item of discursive content can be considered “terroristic.” In doing so, we draw loosely on the existing COPINE scale for child abuse images. The scale described in the article is not intended to reflect actual risk of engagement in terrorist violence, nor is it intended to have evidential validity in relation to offenses in certain jurisdictions relating to “terrorist publications.” Rather, by formalising assumptions which seem already to be latent in the literature on terrorist use of the Internet, it aspires to serve as a starting point for a more methodologically coherent approach to relationships between content—particularly online content—and terrorism.     

The Strategic Timing behind Position-taking in the US Congress: A Study of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act

Roll call voting by members of the US Congress has been frequently studied. In contrast, the various decisions leading up to roll call voting are relatively unexplored. This article analyses one of those decisions: when senators announce their final passage vote intention. The authors use the same set of variables to analyse both the timing of the announcement and the final passage vote. They find that different independent variables predict these two different decisions, though the constituency and the senator's institutional setting matter in both. Furthermore, this study corroborates an assumption in the rational choice literature that those members with the most information are the first movers.     

An Assessment of Recent Authors and Authorship Patterns in Taiwan's Public Administration Research

The public administration (PA) field in Taiwan has undergone a period of rapid transformation over the past two decades. The purpose of this study is to provide a more recent assessment of Taiwanese PA research. To that end, this study examines the characteristics of contemporary PA authors who published articles in five core PA journals in Taiwan between 1996 and 2007, assesses the journals' co-authorship/collaboration trends over the period, and identifies the publication and funding patterns of the 20 most-frequently published scholars. Implications of the study and suggestions for future research are discussed in the paper.     

Excavating Concealed Tradeoffs: How Russians Watch the News

Citizens in democracies are expected to make better decisions if they understand policy tradeoffs. However, politicians rarely have incentives to communicate them; citizens are uncomfortable choosing among valued outcomes; and devising a common metric is difficult. It is not surprising that in the United States the environment provides relatively little cuing or priming of tradeoffs in television news. Russian citizens, on the other hand, face a media environment in which tradeoff cuing is intentionally suppressed by owners' agendas, yet viewers detect concealed tradeoffs even in the absence of tradeoff priming and viewpoint diversity. Analysis of discourse among ordinary Russians in 16 focus groups convened in four cities, differentiated by political reform and media market environments, showed that when watching news in which tradeoffs are thoroughly concealed, viewers challenge stories by offering a broad spectrum of uncued tradeoffs. Tradeoffs come from diverse policy domains and represent a range of cognitive strategies, some of which are considerably more abstract than others and link elements of their observations and assumptions (together with what they can extract from the stories) into complex reasoning outcomes.     

加快中心镇、重点镇建设要做好“六篇文章”——以临安市中心镇、重点镇建设为例

临安市加快中心镇、重点镇建设要实施集群化发展、梯次发展、特色发展战略,做好＂六篇文章＂：一是注重联动推进,在建立考核机制上做文章;二是注重整体布局,在强化规划引导上做文章;三是注重功能提升,在强化项目带动上做文章;四是注重集群集聚,在发展特色产业上做文章;五是注重要素保障,在增强发展动力上做文章;六是注重改革创新,在激发发展活力上做文章。     

商业贿赂的多层次内涵及其认定

治理商业贿赂是2006年我国政府廉政建设和反腐工作的重点之一。正确界定商业贿赂的内涵对于商业贿赂的惩治成效和司法资源的合理配置具有重要的意义。商业贿赂的多层次内涵的界定必须顺应和谐社会建设要求,采取在满足维护秩序最低要求的前提下,最大可能地保障经济自由的基本立场。     

浅谈新时期大学生思想政治工作的创新

随着社会经济的快速发展,大学生思想政治工作面临着许多新的问题和挑战,党的十六大提出的全面建设小康社会和四中、五中全会提出的建设社会主义和谐社会,对高校思想政治工作提出了更高的要求。高校思想政治工作要适应新形势、新任务,就必须坚持与时俱进,在教育观念、内容、方法和机制上实现创新,提高针对性和实效性。     

居住权的理论问题

居住权,是指特定的自然人对他人所有的房屋及其附属设施享有的占有、使用的权利。居住权可以通过遗嘱、遗赠、合同等方式设立。居住权的内容主要表现为居住权人对房屋的使用权、对房屋有限的收益权、物权请求权以及房屋灭失后请求适当安置的权利,合理使用房屋的义务、保管房屋的义务、承担房屋的日常负担的义务以及居住权消灭后返还房屋的义务,等等。居住权因居住权设定的期限届满、居住权人死亡、混同、抛弃、滥用、房屋灭失等原因而消灭。     

法学研究中的价值处理

价值法学本身经历了重内容、重形式、重程序、程序与内容并重的进化路径。重内容的法学是价值法学的中坚 ,但是以启蒙理性为特色的片面的重内容的法学却极易走向自己的反面———价值独断与极权。法学研究中的形式转向是法的一般理论从法哲学中分化出来的前提 ,但极端形式主义最终导致价值相对主义甚至道德相对主义 ,是法律灾变的理论诱因。重程序的法理学是结合形式与内容的枢纽 ,但片面的重程序也会导致价值无涉。考夫曼的程序与内容并重的法理学代表了 2 1世纪法理学发展的方向