An Analysis of the Joint Board or County Model as the Structural Basis for Effective Australian Local Governance

Australian policy‐makers continue to rely on municipal amalgamation as the main engine of structural reform in local government, despite strong evidence that it diminishes participation and representation without improving service efficiency. Several promising, but neglected alternative models of structural reform have been developed, including ad hoc resource sharing models, Regional Organisations of Councils, virtual local government, and agency models. In an encouraging response to the recent policy of enforced council amalgamations in NSW, the Shires Association of NSW (2004) has recently proposed a ‘Joint Board model’ of local governance and invited comment on this model. This article takes up this challenge and seeks to place the Joint Board model in conceptual context and evaluate its characteristics and simulated cost savings.     

基层工会选举的民主政治意义

基层工会民主选举工作具有重要的民主政治意义,它直接为基层政治民主建设奠定深厚的群众基础。基层工会民主选举,既能在职工群众中普及民主知识,提高民主素质,又能锻炼提高职工群众的民主能力,并对经济发展、社会稳定起到直接的作用,有利于我国民主政治建设健康有序地发展。     

Facing the future: young people's awareness of the 2001 British general election advertising campaigns

This paper presents findings from a national survey of ‘potential’ first time voters at the 2001 British general election. It investigates these young people's awareness of the advertising used by the main political parties during this election. Overall what emerges is a young electorate aware of the advertising, who were interested in the election itself and nearly half of whom say they voted in it. Consequently the findings reject the notion that young people are generically unaware of and disinterested in party political messages. In addition the findings indicate that the political parties' print advertisements—to some degree—are penetrating the first layer of young people's message processing, suggesting they are a useful aid in capturing the youth vote. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

A Party of a Different Color? Race,Campaign Communication,and Party Politics

Although studies have examined the contents of party images and the impact of those images on candidate evaluations, we do not have an understanding of the conditions that lead to party image change. In this article, I examine the impact of racialized campaigns on perceptions of individuals' party images. Moreover, I explore the factors that mediate the campaigns' effects. I argue that the success of a strategy's ability to alter party images depends on the strength of the individuals' extant party images. Using the 2000 Republican National Convention as a case study, I find that party images are indeed malleable. Further, I find that race, party identification, and education mediate party image change.     

Candidates' Ideological Locations,Abstention, and Turnout in U.S. Midterm Senate Elections

Many spatial models of voting suggest that citizens are more likely to abstain when they feel indifferent toward the candidates or alienated from them. In presidential elections, previous research offers evidence that alienation and indifference affect individuals' probabilities of voting. We find evidence that indifference and alienation also affect the decision to vote in midterm Senate elections, a context not previously explored. These individual-level effects imply that candidates' ideological locations should influence aggregate turnout by affecting the proportions of citizens who feel indifferent toward or alienated from the candidates. Our aggregate-level analysis supports this (at least in contests featuring two previous and/or future members of Congress). Our findings underscore the importance of the electoral context for understanding citizen behavior and suggest that elections featuring at least one centrist candidate may be normatively appealing since they stimulate participation.     

Dog Whistles and Democratic Mandates

Manipulative mixed messages from candidates to voters affect what governments are entitled to do in office. A party that wins an election gains a 'mandate to rule'. But there is a second type of mandate: a 'policy mandate' to enact specific policy proposals central to the winning party's campaign. Mixed-message politics in general can undermine policy mandates, and the use of 'dog whistle politics' - telling one group of voters one thing, while allowing or encouraging another group to believe another - makes the inferring of policy mandates especially problematic. Referendums provide only a partial remedy to dog whistle politics. Winning a clear policy mandate means forgoing dog whistle politics, despite the short term electoral advantage they may deliver.     

城市生活垃圾堆肥处理技术发展方向探讨

结合多年来在生活垃圾管理特别是堆肥厂的日常运行管理方面的经验,总结了目前我国生活垃圾堆肥处理技术应用现状和堆肥厂实际运行过程中存在的问题,并对今后堆肥技术的发展提出几点看法.综合评价垃圾堆肥技术、给予垃圾堆肥技术正确定位、选择合理堆肥工艺、充分发挥垃圾堆肥的优势、提高堆肥质量和开拓堆肥产品市场是今后垃圾堆肥技术发展的关键因素.     

浅谈新世纪地市党校图书馆建设

面向新世纪的地市党校图书馆建设,要把自己的角色定位在为教学科研服务上,逐步实现由传统型向现代型图书馆的转变,要办出党校自己的特色.     

Grounds for self-government? Changes in land ownership and democratic participation in Chinese communities

Do variations in land ownership affect people’s democratic participation? Quantitative, cross-country research on this topic suffers from the non-comparability of regulatory systems and cultures, and the use of crude indicators to identify participation. This study attempts to overcome these methodological problems, by employing indicators of procedural and substantive participation in a structured, diachronic comparison of qualitative data from five sites in China – an authoritarian state, which, however, requires residents of urban communities and villages to participate in ‘self-government’. It examines whether and why changing land from collective ownership to state ownership, and residents’ compensated acquisition of cash and secure, fungible assets, strengthens or weakens participation in self-government. In the research sites, collective land ownership is found to stimulate participation in self-government. Transformation of the land to state ownership and people’s acquisition of private property weakens participation. The robust results of the study support the direction of a causal argument that collective land ownership is conducive to democratic participation. These findings imply that scholars and policymakers should consider the potentially adverse political consequences of changing land ownership. A further implication is that, absent substantial political reform, an urbanized China might be less rather than more democratic at the community level.     

建构城市管理市场机械模式的探讨—深圳市宝安区城市管理机构改革若干问题思

借鉴西方国家政府行政管理改革的成功经验,提出调整政府的城管职能,实行政事分开,引入竞争机制,加快社会化改革是推进城市管理体制改革的关键.