Regulation and its discontents: the Indian judiciary and higher education

The role of the judiciary in strengthening regulatory regimes is well regarded. In developing countries where regulatory bodies are captive to powerful interest groups, the judiciary is regarded for its activist role in providing participatory access to groups excluded from the policy process. In contrast, this paper draws attention to the limits of the judiciary as a gatekeeper of regulatory governance. Using the case of regulation in India’s tertiary education sector, it shows how the judiciary’s track record of enabling elite actors to influence policy, often at the cost of legislative mandates, can undermine regulation.     

Testing hot-spots police patrols against no-treatment controls: Temporal and spatial deterrence effects in the London Underground experiment

Our understanding of causality and effect size in randomized field experiments is challenged by variations in levels of baseline treatment dosage in control groups across experiments testing similar treatments. The clearest design is to compare treated cases with no-treatment controls in a sample that lacks any prior treatment at baseline. We applied that strategy in a randomized test of hot-spots police patrols on the previously never-patrolled, track-level platforms of the London Underground (LU). In a pretest–posttest, control-group design, we randomly assigned 57 of the LU's 115 highest crime platforms to receive foot patrol by officers in 15-minute doses, 4 times per day, during 8-hour shifts on 4 days a week for 6 months. The effect of 23,272 police arrivals at the treatment hot spots over 26 weeks was to reduce public calls for service by 21 percent on treated platforms relative to controls, primarily when police were absent (97 percent of the measured effect). This effect was six times larger than the mean standardized effect size found in the leading systematic review. This finding provides a benchmark against the baseline counterfactual of no patrol in hot spots, with strong evidence of residual deterrence and no evidence of local displacement.     

关于国家精英教育发展战略的若干思考——基于国际金融危机中“政府失灵”现象的反思与批判

世界金融危机的深层次原因是政府失灵,政府失灵的实质是"精英泡沫"和"次级精英危机"。因此,教育培养卓越的国家精英是世界各国未来发展的关键,是未来国际竞争的重要战略要点。而培养卓越的国家精英需要卓越的精英教育,卓越的国家精英教育需要领导型学者。但精英教育教学改革要警惕杜威的实用教育哲学与新老"愚官教育"。培养世界精英是人类21世纪发展的战略制高点。     

Elite Dependency——An Operational Logic of Nonprofit Organization for Social Service

There’s been relatively rare research on the internal governance of nonprofit organization, and for this, we should take the elite as an individual focus. Based on theories of multiply disciplines, three analytical paths are constructed: Elite dependency on value, elite dependency on resource, elite dependency on capability. The actual operational logic of nonprofit organization for social service is as follows: elite dependency on value determines elite dependency on resource; elite dependency on resource disturbs elite dependency on value; elite dependency on value determines elite dependency on capability; elite dependency means dependency on elite as well as informal relationship.     

Sharing the burden in a free riders’ land: The EU migration and asylum policy in the views of public opinion and politicians

New divisions have emerged within the European Union over the handling of the recent migration crisis. While both frontline and favoured destination countries are called upon to deal with the number of migrants looking for international protection and better living conditions, no consensus has been reached yet on the quota-based mechanisms for the relocation of refugees and financial help to exposed countries proposed by the EU. Such mechanisms pose a trade-off for member states: the EU's response to the crisis offers help to countries under pressure, but it inevitably requires burden-sharing among all EU members and a limitation of their national sovereignty. Within this scenario, the article compares how public opinion and political elites in ten different EU countries view a common EU migration policy grounded on solidarity and burden-sharing. By tracing both within- and cross-national patterns of convergence (and divergence), the article shows that contextual factors influence policy preferences, with support for solidarity measures being stronger in countries with higher shares of illegal migrants and asylum seekers. While individuals’ predispositions, identity and ideological orientations account for both masses’ and elites’ attitudes towards burden-sharing measures, subjective evaluations and beliefs concerning the severity of the crisis provide additional and alternative explanations when looking at the public's preferences. In particular, it is found that concern about the flow of migrants to Europe consolidates the impact of contextual factors, whereas the overestimation of the immigrant population fosters hostility against solidarity measures, with both effects more pronounced as the country's exposure to the crisis increases. In the light of these results, the main implication of this study is that EU institutions have to primarily address entrenched beliefs and misperceptions about immigrants to enhance public support for a joint approach to migration.     

How voter mobilization from short text messages travels within households and families: Evidence from two nationwide field experiments

Through two large GOTV field experiments in two different elections, we investigate the spillover effect to other household members and family members outside the household. We mobilized young voters with cell phone text messages, a campaign tactic unlikely to be observed by other persons than the treated. The direct effect varied but approximately 30 percent spilled over to other persons in the household, even parents. The effects are subtle and we cannot with certainty establish that a spillover effect exists. However, we demonstrate, using Bayesian updating, that even an initial skeptic becomes close to convinced that the effect spills over. Our study provides evidence by suggesting that young individuals’ decision to vote affect other household members, including their parents, to do the same. When young voters live without their parents, we find no evidence of spillovers to parents, suggesting that households are more important than families ties for turnout contagion.     

略论现代科技对当代中国审美文化的影响

现代科技的发展对当代审美化的影响是深远的，科学理性对传统审美表现理性的入侵，极大变革了传统的审美理念，经典的审美观走向沦落；科技带来诗播媒介的改变，导致审美从精英走向大众，同时，先进的科技对中国传统审美化的破坏作用亦不容忽视。认清这种双重作用，有助于我们建立一个富有中国特色的当代审美化。     

Let’s Intervene! But Only If They’re Like Us: The Effects of Group Dynamics and Emotion on the Willingness to Support Humanitarian Intervention

International relations (IR) studies on humanitarian intervention have debated both the nature and strength of intervention norms. This article contributes to this debate by exploring under what conditions individuals are willing to support military humanitarian intervention (MHI) and the psychological factors that influence whether, and the degree to which individuals support MHI. Taking a psychological approach, we hypothesized that individuals’ decision to support MHI is influenced by in-group favoritism and emotional responses to in-group suffering. We tested our theory with two experiments, each of which recruited roughly 200 American participants. Both experiments centered on the ongoing Syrian civil war and assessed Americans’ willingness to support intervention to protect different civilian groups. The results suggested that support for intervention was widespread, but not a majority view in most cases. The findings also suggested that participants exhibited slightly higher rates of support for intervention when those suffering were Christian, as opposed to Muslim. Furthermore, we found that the dynamics of support for intervention changed when chemical weapons were introduced into the scenario, which reframed the the crisis as a national security issue. Overall, our results suggest that individuals’ decisions to act upon norms can be influenced by the context of a crisis and individual level psychological factors, which have been under explored in IR scholarship on norms.     

后苏联空间国家的政治-法律设计--从后苏联空间政权合法化到国家规划探索

苏联解体后,在后苏联空间国家突然拥有国家主权的条件下,新政治精英需要建立一个新的政治-法律空间。对这些国家而言,设计与现实相适应的政治-法律制度、建立稳定的国家体制、制定和实施有效的国家政策的过程过于拖延,前景令人质疑,而且即将面临政治代际更替的全新挑战。后苏联空间非常复杂,但也因此是研究和政治设计的重要地区。20多年的实践表明,不应期待后苏联空间的快速转型。大多数后苏联空间国家未完成国家建设和制度建设,这使形势复杂化,可能导致巨大的变数,包括冲突和诉诸武力。但是,外部环境仍逼迫变革。对于后苏联空间国家而言,变革具有政治理性化和政治制度形式化的目的,包括以法律形式固定政治制度和强制政治设计者更多地在正式法律范围内行事,而达到上述目的的选择包括革命性变革或"自上而下的革命"。     

农民工对新农村建设影响的实证研究

作为连接城乡的纽带,农民工群体在社会主义新农村建设中发挥着不可替代的作用。随着改革开放的深入,农民工的地位与作用越来越凸显。但从社会地位来看,农民工群体处于一种"底层精英"的尴尬境地。一方面,他们在城市社会中处于社会的底层;另一方面,在农村社会中,他们却属于精英群体。农民工对新农村建设包括新农村经济建设、新农村政治建设和新农村文化建设三个方面所产生的影响是显而易见的。