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.     

Pretty faces,marginal races: Predicting election outcomes using trait assessments of British parliamentary candidates

The conventional wisdom on Western European politics leads us to believe that all the “action” lies with parties, because the unified parliamentary delegations in Western Europe draw voters' attention to parties' policies and images. Though British elections take place under a single member district plurality system, British parties, like their continental counterparts, are highly centralised and feature disciplined parliamentary delegations. Despite the strong ties between British candidates and their parties, we demonstrate that perceptions of candidates' personal attributes can be used to predict general election outcomes. Using a computer-based survey where subjects are asked to evaluate real British candidates using only rapidly determined first impressions of facial images, we successfully predict outcomes from the 2010 general election. Moreover, we find that perceptions of candidates' relative attractiveness are particularly useful for predicting outcomes in marginal constituencies.     

Parliamentary and presidential elections in Mongolia, 2012 and 2013

The 2012 Mongolian parliamentary election was historical as a new mixed-member majoritarian system was implemented. Compared with 2008, or even 2004, the 2012 election outcome indicates an at least tentative disruption of the bipolarisation of electoral politics in Mongolia. However, unlike in the past when the fragmentation of the party system was caused by the parties of the so-called “democratic camp”, the latest split occurred within the so-called “post-communist camp”. The presidential election took place on 26 June 2013. Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj of the Democratic Party was elected president and for the first time since the democratic transition of 1990, most executive and legislative powers shifted to the Democratic Party.     

生态城市规划及其立法理念

传统的以环境媒介为保护对象的环境保护法律制度已经不能解决现有的复杂的环境问题,必须进行研究范式与制度内容的彻底变革。生态城市规划是这种改变的一个新思路,其基本的出发点就是将城市作为一个特殊的生态系统来进行规划,同时将城市生态视为一个更大范围的生态系统的组成部分;其所包含的立法理念有:城市是生态系统的重要组成部分,对生态城市规划的研究必须坚持系统的观点;建设可持续性的、健康的生态城市是解决全球环境问题的关键;人类作为一个关键物种在城市生态系统中起主导作用,生态系统必须有利于促进所有人的健康和精神愉悦;将土地利用规划和环境保护统一起来;将环境魅力作为生态城市规划立法的核心理念。     

A Belated Debate

The three televised leaders’ debates dominated the 2010 general election campaign. The House of Lords Communications Committee report on Broadcast General Election Debates is the product of a welcome but belated public inquiry into their organisation and conduct. The report is supportive of the view that ‘broadcast general election debates should take place during future campaigns’ and makes a number of cautious recommendations to the broadcasters. At the time of writing it was unclear whether the format proposed by the broadcasters for 2015 would be an improvement on that for 2010—or even if there would be any debates at all.     

Territorial Polarization in Brazil's 2014 Presidential Elections

The 2014 presidential elections showed a growing political polarization based on regional differences in Brazil. Against this backdrop, President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected by the slimmest margin ever obtained by a Brazilian president. Rousseff's Workers’ Party (PT) has held the presidency for the past 12 years, gaining widespread support for reducing social inequality and maintaining macroeconomic stability in the country. However, as the latest presidential elections show, this support for the PT and its presidential candidate has eroded. This article argues that as a result of fiercer competition for votes, a more politically polarized discourse was used in the presidential campaign to mobilize voters around Brazil's regional divide between the richer south and the poorer north. In the analysis, the article attempts to elucidate possible causes of territorial patterns of voting in Brazil's 2014 presidential elections.     

Political Corruption and the End of two-party system after the May 2015 Spanish Regional Elections

The autonomous elections held on 25 May 2015 took place simultaneously in 13 of the 17 Spanish autonomous communities (CCAA), leading to the most profound change in the autonomous party system seen in Spain in the last 20 years. A significant number of Spanish citizens hold the two main parties—the PP and the PSOE—responsible for being unable to solve their economic problems and for having pursued their austerity policies and containment of social expenditure to the extent of giving rise to the greatest inequality experienced in Spanish society in history. Furthermore, and as important as the economic crisis, support for the new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, has been linked to the emergence in Spanish public debate of party regeneration and the corruption scandals that tainted the main parties and most institutions in the years prior to the elections on 25 May 2015.     

A Political Economy Model of Workers Representation: The Case of Union Elections in Spain

In this article we present a political economy model to analyse the effects of union elections. Union elections are the prerequisite for participating in collective bargaining and they are a unique Spanish institution for union recognition. We apply standard political economy assumptions to model the union elections in order to understand their influence on the dynamics of the unemployment rate. Although union elections give the right to vote to virtually all workers, we show that insider power exists and that it introduces a hysteresis effect on the unemployment rate. In addition, the model shows how the date of the union elections can amplify the business cycle. An empirical analysis confirms the main predictions of the model.JEL Classification: K31, J51, E24     

The electoral victory of the NPD in Saxony and the prospects for future extreme-right success in German elections

ABSTRACT

Largely because of Germany's traumatic experience of National Socialism, German extreme right-wing parties have remained a marginal post-war political phenomenon. The spectacular electoral victory of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in the Saxon parliamentary elections of September 2004 (9.2 per cent of the vote) nurtured the fear that a far-right party could establish itself at the national level. Backes explains the election victory by relating it to a set of Saxon and Eastern German circumstances. He demonstrates that unfavourable conditions, which have so far prevented the establishment of extreme right-wing parties at the national level, still prevail. Against this background, he shows that the NPD's capacity for taking advantage of advantageous conditions (like economic problems and xenophobia, rampant in some places) reaches its limits very quickly.     

An Assessment of the Impact that Participation in Local Climate Networks Has on Cities’ Implementation of Climate,Energy, and Transportation Policies

Much of the attention surrounding local climate protection in the United States is associated with two networks: ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability's Cities for Climate Protection and the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement (MCPA). However, the impact of these networks on member‐city actions has not been clearly established. This paper examines whether, and to what extent, participation in climate networks leads to the implementation of greenhouse gas (GHG)‐reducing policies, above and beyond what would have been done in their absence. To account for the possibility that cities which join climate networks are systematically different from those that do not and control for self‐selection induced bias, three statistical techniques—propensity score matching, Heckman full information maximum likelihood, and instrumental variables—are employed to estimate the “treatment effect” of participation. Results suggest that impact is network specific: ICLEI membership causes small to moderate increases in cities’ GHG‐relevant activity, whereas the MCPA has no such effect. The characteristics of each network are evaluated in light of these findings.