Electoral Gender Quotas: Lessons from Argentina and Chile

This comparative case study examines the role of electoral quotas for increasing women's representation in Argentina and Chile. The Central hypothesis is that gender quotas in favourable electoral systems increase women's representation, and a corollary hypothesis is that more women in politics should also promote gender issues in public policy. Since the transitions to democratic regimes, many Argentine and Chilean women still promote gender issues, such as gender quotas, but the different transitions shaped the opportunity space for gender issues in politics. Thus, gender quotas can be effective, but the types of electoral and quota systems are important defining conditions and improvements in gender issues are not guaranteed.     

关于社会主义政治文明建设的理论探析

党的十六大第一次明确地对建设社会主义政治文明做出部署,并将它与物质文明、精神文明一起确定为社会主义现代化建设的三大目标,这是对马克思主义理论的创新与发展,也丰富和深化了我们对中国特色社会主义的认识。     

当代世界政治格局与中国文化

当今世界,政治多极化已成为发展的必然趋势。在政治对抗过程中,文化扮演着极为重要的角色。中国作为一个发展中的社会主义大国,要在对抗中保持中国文化个性,抵制强国文化霸权的侵略,必须大力弘扬和培育民族精神,积极参与全球化,大力发展文化产业,积极推进文化创新,以维护我国的文化安全。     

浅议我国社会主义政治文明的本质特征

社会主义政治文明本质上是人民民主的政治文明。党的领导、人民当家作主和依法治国的统一性 ,是我国社会主义民主政治最根本的特征 ,也是社会主义政治文明的本质特征     

冷战后的中国—东盟关系探析:身份政治的视角

冷战结束后,中国—东盟关系得到了极大的改善和发展。冷战后东亚地区认知结构的变化及中国对东盟规范的内化使中国有了新的身份定位,在这种身份定位指导下的国际实践加深了东盟对中国新身份的重构和认同。中国身份定位的温和与理性及中国自我利益的不断扩大是导致东盟认同中国新身份的重要因素。身份政治理论在给我们提供新视角的同时,其学理性还需要进一步完善,以便更好地解释和指导国际实践。     

Bridging the ideological space: A cross‐national analysis of the distance of party switching

Scholars have investigated the characteristics of volatile voters ever since the first voter surveys were carried out and they have paid specific attention to the role of political sophistication on vote switching. Nevertheless, the exact nature of this relationship is still unclear. With increasing volatility over the past decades this question has furthermore grown in relevance. Is the growing unpredictability of elections mostly driven by sophisticated voters making well‐considered choices or is the balance of power in the hands of unsophisticated ‘floating voters’? Several scholars have argued that even under conditions of increasing volatility switching is still mostly confined to changes to ideologically close parties. Most researchers, however, have used rather crude measures to investigate this ‘leap’ between parties. To advance research in this field, this article directly models the ideological distance bridged by volatile voters when investigating the link between political sophistication and volatility. This is done using Comparative Study of Electoral systems (CSES) data that encompass a broad sample of recent parliamentary elections worldwide. Results indicate that voters with an intermediate level of political knowledge are most likely to switch overall. When taking into account the ideological distance of party switching, however, the confining impact of political knowledge on the vote choices made is clearly dominant, resulting in a linear decrease of the distance bridged as voters become more knowledgeable.     

Truth and Politics: Thinking About Evidence‐Based Policy in the Age Of Spin

Evidence‐based policy and the contemporary politics of spin are said to characterise contemporary politics and policy. The paper asks firstly what sense is to be made of this coincidence, and then documents this coincidence. It then asks how credible is the conception of ‘evidence’ espoused by advocates of evidence‐based policy when it is conventionally represented as an ‘objective’ counter to ideology, spin or opinion? It points to major problems with the conventional understandings of ‘evidence’. It is suggested that while the evidence‐based policy literature relies on the associations ‘evidence’ is presumed to have with ‘sensory data’, this is neither the case nor all that defensible. The paper reprises arguments advanced by Henry Mayer and Hannah Arendt that the relationship of politics to the empirical was and is a far more complex relationship than is conventionally understood to be the case.     

China-Europe Relations Undergo Comprehensive Upgrade简

正CHINA-Europe interaction is gathering pace around the tenth anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the EU.Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited China in November 2013.A week later,Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang met with President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at the 16th meeting of Chinese and European Union leaders.Shortly after,Li Keqiang     

Fruitful Cooperation between China and Dominica——An Interview with David Xu,Special Envoy of the Commonwealth of Dominica

正THIS year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Commonwealth of Dominica.China’s1.3 billion-strong population dwarfs Dominica’s less than 100,000 inhabitants.However,the two countries share a common understanding of equality and mutual benefit and have developed bilateral relations noticeably over the past 10 years,witnessed by achieve-     

Between punishment and discipline: comparing strategies to control unauthorized immigration in the United States

Immigration scholars have noted the rise of a distinctive discourse concerning immigrants in the United States. The ‘immigrant threat’ discourse is said to portray immigrants as an existential threat to the country and contributes to highly restrictive enforcement policies. Through a close examination of national political debates concerning comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) (2005–2007), the paper shows that most politicians involved in this debate (from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans) agreed with the basic assumptions of this general discourse. But the paper also identifies important variants on the ‘threat’ discourse and associated strategies. Hardline conservatives stressed that the essential ‘illegalness’ of immigrants posed a threat to the country. Protecting the nation state from this threat required policies to totally banish all undocumented immigrants from the country, irrespective of their ‘good’ conduct or exceptional circumstances. Moderate and liberal reform advocates agreed with the idea that undocumented immigrants posed a threat to the country. However, they believed that banishment alone could not address the threat. Instead they advocated a strategy of risk management whereby the population would be differentiated according to levels of risk (high to low priority) and policies of inclusion and exclusion would be adjusted accordingly. This would allow the government to incorporate low risk/priority immigrants while freeing government resources to target the ‘truly threatening’ groups (i.e., criminals, delinquents, homeless, repeat unauthorized entries, etc.). Thus, while both sides conceded that undocumented immigrants were a threat to the country, they developed important variants on the discourse and contrasting policy solutions to exert control over the population.