The Weakness of Strong (and Weak) Ties: Obtaining a Government Job

ABSTRACT

Between merit principles and social contacts, how they facilitate individuals to obtain a government job in the United States remains unsettled. Based on a survey administered via Amazon Mturk, this study finds that merit-based selection constitutes the most significant means to obtain public jobs, particularly so in state and local governments despite of sizeable respondents claiming other venues. The use of social contacts, including both strong and weak ties, shows little advantage on obtaining public employment but proves significant in private organizations. Controlling individuals’ previous job obtaining experience, the study contends that variations on job obtaining methods can be reasonably attributable to institutional distinctiveness that features different rules, procedures and regulations. Merit principles are kept alive in governments, though challenges persist, particularly so in federal government. The study ends up with a discussion of research findings and their implications in HR practices.     

禁食野生动物的刑法规制与教义阐释——以《刑法修正案(十一)》第四十一条为中心

《中华人民共和国刑法修正案(十一)》增设了针对陆生野生动物以食用为目的的危害行为的法律规制,在原有罪名基础上进一步拓展了野生动物刑法保护的外延。这一立法条款修订与疫情防控的社会背景相关,体现了积极主义刑法观回应社会现实的功能。此次刑法修正案对野生动物的立法完善不仅是尊重动物伦理生命权的体现,而且深层次地涉及公共卫生安全的法益考量,是弱人类中心主义在刑事立法领域的生动展现。野生动物的刑事法律规制并未采用全面保护的立场,这一保护的有限性是刑法作为保障法的地位所决定的,这也决定了在野生动物保护的法律规则体系中,需要审慎辨析刑法与行政法律规范之间的关系。在具体适用时应当结合此次修正案的条文设置进行教义分析,合理把握具体要件的内涵与彼此之间的逻辑关系,防范以保护之名而随意逾越刑法边界。     

Adopt or Not and Innovation Variation: A Dynamic Comparison Study of Policy Innovation and Diffusion Mechanisms

Abstract

Policy innovation and diffusion literature mainly focuses on the decision to adopt a new policy, while ignoring the differences among new policies. This study divides the decision-making process of policy innovation diffusion into two phases: in the “innovate or not” phase, governments make the decision to adopt or reject the new policy, while “how to innovate” is the process by which governments formulate specific content for the new policy. A dynamic comparative analysis finds that effects of internal determinants and diffusion mechanisms vary during these two phases and that internal determinants moderate the effects of diffusion mechanisms.     

美好生活的社会保护水准:社会政策体系中基本生活需要标准的建构

基本生活需要保障是我国不断满足人民美好生活需要的基础。构建基本生活需要标准,关键在于瞄准相对贫困目标、构建福利认证标准和消除社会排斥状态。基于人类需要理论和国外基本需要战略等相关研究,应以民生保障、适度普惠、多维满足和防止伤害等为具体目标,建构起具有中国特色的基本生活需要标准。这一标准分为最低标准和适当标准两个层次,包括收入、医疗、教育、住房和照料五个维度的货币指标和非货币指标。以"美好生活"为核心的新时代社会政策体系要在全面性与协调性、主动性与精准性、适度性与发展性三个方向着力保障人民基本生活需要,从消除绝对贫困走向解决相对贫困。     

When are experiments corrupt?

ABSTRACT

Between 2010 and 2011, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) funded a large-scale experiment on Kenyan schools. The policy experiment tested the effects of cutting teachers’ salaries and hiring them on short-term contracts, but the intervention failed after sustained opposition from teacher unions and parent associations. This article critically revisits the narrative of how this experiment was designed, implemented and interpreted, finding evidence that the experiment violated empirical logic. It examines whether the theory of neopatrimonialism can explain the ways in which vested interests may have undermined the empirical logic of the experiment. By doing so, the analysis tests the explanatory utility of neopatrimonialism, and casts light on the conditions under which policy experiments in Africa may be anti-empirical.     

Criminalizing human trafficking in Latvia: the evolution and implications of human trafficking policies

This article explores the development and evolution of human trafficking policies in Latvia and the measurable outcomes of these policies. An analysis of policy development revealed that Latvia has three different types of human trafficking policy: criminalization statutes, national action programs, and victim service provisions. These policies have produced outcomes such as criminal cases against traffickers, rehabilitation services for victims, and the formation of anti-trafficking institutions. The results revealed direct causal links between human trafficking policies and anti-trafficking institutions are evident with the National Coordinator and social services for victims. Indirect causation is also present with specialized police and prosecutor units and anti-trafficking institutional policy development by the anti-trafficking working group.     

Reappraising the French role in nineteenth-century Egyptian education

This article explores the origins of French influence in Egyptian education by examining the circumstances under which Muhammad Ali Pasha (r. 1805–1848) sent two organized student missions to study in Paris over other European destinations. In the history of modern Egyptian education, French influence on educational institutions is linked to persistent French imperial interest following their occupation of Egypt (1798–1801). French involvement in education was not initially a government project, but rather evolved to become a government project by the end of the Pasha's rule. Using historical evidence, I show that the first mission was a personal venture of ex-Bonapartists who desired to keep the spirit of the Napoleonic expedition alive through informal cultural imperialism despite the Restoration government's disinterest. The French government's official involvement in the second student mission of 1844 was motivated by their colonial interests in North Africa. Previous historians have projected those motivations backwards on the earlier period and that Egyptian choice to make use of French expertise and knowledge was a contingent one.     

Running to stand still: aggressive immobility and the limits of power in Russia

The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of ‘mundane’ policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have escaped at least some degree of reform in recent years. This article takes a closer look at four such reform attempts – involving higher education, welfare, housing and regional policy – in an effort to discern broad patterns governing how and when the state succeeds or fails. The evidence suggests that both masses and mid-level elites actively defend informality – usually interpreted in the literature as an agent-led response to deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of structure – creating a strong brake on state power. More than a quarter century into the post-Soviet period, this pattern of “aggressive immobility” – the purposeful and concerted defense by citizens of a weakly institutionalized state – has in fact become an entrenched, structural element in Russian politics.     

告知承诺政策:一种政府给予民众的制度化信任资源

在国务院全面推行告知承诺制的政策背景之下,如何准确解读告知承诺政策的理论内涵已经成为一项十分重要的学术任务。究其根本,告知承诺政策乃是一种政府给予民众的制度化信任资源。这种制度化信任资源具备实践方式的行政性、价值导向的利他性以及灵活避险的决断性等基本特征。其实践路径应当包含重视信息甄别、跟进信息追踪、倡导德法并举、关切风险补偿等方面内容。从政府给予民众的制度化信任资源层面界定告知承诺政策,建构相关理论分析框架,有助于更深刻理解和剖析告知承诺政策的内涵本质,更好地明确和把握其具体实践策略,也为扩展和深化政策科学领域信任问题的相关研究视角提供了必要且极具针对性的现实依托。     

中国反贫困进程中的福利制度建构——基于“社会中国”的视角

中国政府为何在大力推进社会保障制度建设的同时,实施大规模的反贫困战略与行动?立足于这一战略追问,从社会政策学的视角,回顾、比较早期中西福利制度建设中的基本理念、基本概念与内涵的差异,提炼中国反贫困政策实践中的福利元素,以此理解中国福利制度建设中存在的理念、政策与对象等几大困惑,并在此基础上论述"社会中国"视角下反贫困机制的福利制度建设框架。研究认为:(1)中国的反贫困政策中包含了大量的社会福利元素,体现了科学社会主义而非社会民主主义的战略安排、中国共产党的"初心"理念、全民参与的政策特征、每家每户的对象特征;(2)从"社会中国"的福利框架对反贫困政策的实践进行理论整合,可以建构以社会公民权为基础的福利理念、具有整合性的跨越地域与身份差别的社会福利体系、以无差别的社会公民身份为识别对象的社会福利建设模式。