Testing an International Measure of Public Service Motivation: Is There Really a Bright or Dark Side?

‘Public service motivation’ (PSM) is usually reported as a bright force although recent debate alludes to a dark side. Variables representing each side are, respectively, job satisfaction and burnout. This study tests for both the bright and potential dark direct effects of PSM and responds to calls to further validate the international PSM instrument developed by Kim et al. ( 2013 ). Using a sample of 455 local council workers in Australia, analysis confirmed that while the measure was robust and generalizable in its structure, none of the dimensions of PSM were found to influence either job satisfaction or burnout. Plausible explanations include contextual factors, nomological concerns with the measurement instrument, and the notion that PSM has a non‐significant influence on either. The implications of these findings are discussed and future research proposed.     

Democracy without choice: Citizens’ perceptions of government autonomy during the Eurozone crisis

In this article it is argued that citizens take into account the degree of a government's political autonomy to implement particular policies when expressing their views on satisfaction with democracy (SWD) but, in order to do so, they need to perceive it. When citizens directly observe the external constraints that reduce their government's autonomy, then variations in levels of regime satisfaction may no longer be exclusively about government performance – as widely argued by political economists – but also about democratic choice. The argument develops after comparing the existing scenarios in the Eurozone before and after the Great Recession. Citizens only began to perceive their own lack of choice to decide between policy alternatives when the sovereign debt crisis broke out in May 2010, the date of the first Greek bail‐out. It is then when citizens started to update their beliefs about the functioning of democracy as a system in which alternative policies can be adopted as bail‐out deals were signed between national governments from the Euro periphery and the Troika. This updating process towards the way democracy works explains the increasing gap in the levels of SWD between bailed‐out economies and the rest of the countries in the Eurozone. Empirical confirmation for this claim is found after analysing Eurobarometer surveys from 2002 to 2014 and using a two‐step difference‐in‐difference analysis that combines individual and aggregate data.     

Online clustering,fear and uncertainty in Egypt’s transition

Does the uncertainty associated with post-authoritarian transitions cause political and social polarization? Does ubiquitous social media exacerbate these problems and thus make successful democratic transitions less likely? This article examines these questions in the case of Egypt between the 11 February 2011 fall of President Hosni Mubarak and the 3 July 2013 military coup, which overthrew President Mohamed el-Morsi. The analysis is based on a Twitter dataset including 62 million tweets by 7 million unique users. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, we demonstrate how clusters of users form and evolve over time, the density of interactions between them, and the flow of particular types of information through the clustered network structure. We show that the Egyptian Twitter public developed into increasingly isolated clusters of the like-minded which shared information unevenly. We argue that the growing distance between these clusters encouraged political conflict and facilitated the spread of fear and hatred, which ultimately undermined the democratic transition and won popular support for the military coup.     

Electoral competition and democratic decline in Nicaragua: uncovering an electorally viable platform for the right

Between the 1980s and 2006 Nicaragua was a competitive democracy where parties of the left and right won national presidential elections and relinquished power when their terms ended. More recently the quality of Nicaragua’s democracy has deteriorated. This change is due partly to autocratic behaviour by the elected leftist president, Daniel Ortega. But democratic decline is also the result of factional divisions and vague, outmoded policy commitments on the right that have crippled its electoral competitiveness, enabling Ortega’s behaviour. Utilizing an experimental research design, this article identifies two modernized policy platforms that could significantly broaden rightist electoral support in presidential campaigns, aiding democratic resurgence in Nicaragua. At a point when opposition parties are struggling to retain strength and coherence in many other democracies, the study presents a research strategy that could help clarify the ways such parties might reinvigorate their electoral competitiveness.     

The ‘green militarisation’ of development aid: the European Commission and the Virunga National Park,DR Congo

To ‘save’ the Virunga National Park, located in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the European Commission (EC) allocates development aid to the paramilitary training of the park guards, their salaries, and mixed patrols of the guards together with the Congolese army. Moreover, the ‘development’ projects the EC supports around the park have militarising effects as they are based on a soft counter-insurgency approach to conservation and to address dynamics of violent conflict. This amounts to the ‘green militarisation’ of development aid. This article describes how a personalised network of policymakers within the EC renders militarised conservation-related violence and controversy around the Virunga park invisible, by framing contestations and violence in and around the park as solely caused by economic factors and motivations. Moreover, by ‘hiding’ the fact that the EC aid is used to fund armed conservation practices, policymakers circumvent political debate about the use of development funds for (para)military expenditures. While the existing literature focuses on the importance of securitised discourses to explain the militarisation of conservation, this article indicates that in addition, it is important to focus on these more mundane practices of securitisation within international organisations that ultimately fund the militarisation of conservation.     

Permanent precarity: capital and labour in the Central African copperbelt

Abstract

This article provides a new history of mine capital and labour in the ‘Central African Copperbelt’ – the cross-border mining region of the Zambian copperbelt and Haut Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It doing so, it seeks to overcome the limitations of earlier structurally minded analysis rooted in modernist notions regarding the transformative capacity of mining capital and a ‘new’ African working class. Building on post-structuralist challenges to such assumptions, the article demonstrates the precarity, unevenness and uncertainty of the actually existing copperbelt economy and society. The comparison of the two copperbelt regions enables consideration of differential outcomes as a way of rethinking apparent inevitabilities. Analysis of how ideas about these mining societies were generated and circulated helps explain how dominant ways of understanding copperbelt capital and labour relations became established and continue to inform nostalgia for a ‘golden age’ of mining-fuelled prosperity at odds with historical reality.     

工作时间质量对员工的影响 ：理论路径与实证检验

工作时间质量对于个人、企业和社会都具有重要意义。在明确了工作时间质量的3个评价维度(工作时长、工作时点和工作时间自主性)的基础上,本研究提出了"工作时间质量对员工影响的基础路径模型",揭示了工作时长、工作时点和工作时间自主性对员工产生影响时,三者的基础路径关系。该模型指出,工作时长、工作时点和工作时间自主性均能对员工个体层面的结果变量产生直接影响,同时,工作时间自主性能够显著调节工作时长、工作时点的影响程度。研究还利用"2018年中国工作环境研究"的数据,以"工作时间满意度"作为结果变量对理论模型进行实证检验,检验结果支持了理论模型的假设:(1)员工超时工作程度和工作时点非标准化程度越高,对工作时间感到满意的可能性越低;(2)工作时间自主性和工作时间满意度具有显著的正相关关系;(3)工作时间自主性负向调节超时工作和非标准化工作时点对员工工作时间满意度的影响。     

The prevalence of compassion fatigue,compassion satisfaction and perceived stress,and their relationships with mental toughness,individual differences and number of self-care actions in a UK police force

ABSTRACT

Police personnel are likely to be affected by stress and compassion fatigue, which may have important consequences for health, well-being and job performance. There are certain individual differences which may protect against compassion fatigue, for example mental toughness, personality and self-care behaviours. However, there is little research examining all of these constructs in combination with policing. The current study aimed to gather information regarding the prevalence of compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction and perceived stress within a large UK police force, and their relationships with personality, mental toughness and self-care activities. A questionnaire was completed by 605 police employees within a UK police force. The results demonstrated that 20% of personnel suffered from negative psychological outcomes and that these outcomes were predicted by individual differences and self-care activities. The requirement for shift work, and mental toughness scores, significantly predicted compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue and perceived stress. The analyses also revealed a role for gender, tenure, personality and self-care in several aspects of well-being. The implications of these findings are discussed, considering the current contexts in which policing operates, with the aim of improving the psychological well-being of police officers and staff.     

Is There an Emerging Age Gap in US Politics?

There is evidence of a realignment among voters entering the electorate in recent years, with younger voters deviating from older voters in their ideological and partisan preferences. Younger voters today tend to be more liberal and more supportive of Democratic candidates than other age groups. Younger Americans are generally favor a more activist government, as demonstrated by their views on equality, the role of government, health care, and spending for public schools and child care. The leftward movement of younger Americans ideologically is also the result of the increasing political emphasis on cultural issues. Younger Americans as a group are less religious and less conservative on social issues than other age cohorts. They put less emphasis on traditional values and are more tolerant than other age groups on social issues such as gay rights. Older voters, on the other hand, tend to be more conservative on policy issues and less supportive of Democrats than they used to be. At the state level, the partisan polarization in the United States is even greater among younger Americans than it is for the nation as a whole. This suggests that if younger Americans follow other generations in keeping the same partisan voting patterns throughout their life, the blue states will become bluer and the red states redder.

加拿大高等教育的突出特色

加拿大各级政府在高等教育方面颇具战略眼光,对教育质量特别重视。加拿大高等院校具有鲜明的民主思想和强烈的人文关怀意识,其灵活的办学体制提高了教育效益,高度的学生自治培养了学生的创新能力。