论山西农业学大寨运动中的几个问题

在"文革"前,山西的农业学大寨运动基本上是健康的;"文革"中的教训是极其深刻的.这一运动毕竟是一场在党的领导下以改变农业生产落后面貌为目的的农业生产运动,因而取得了一定的成就.     

党代会常任制:政治体制改革的重要突破口

党代会常任制就是关于党代会本身如何"常任"的一系列制度和程序。由于党代会常任制对党内民主发展来讲具有实质性、联动性、风险较小的特点,所以党代会常任制是发展党内民主的突破口。由于"党内民主是人民民主的推动和引导力量,人民民主的发展有助于权力过分集中的政治体制的改革;党内民主是消除权力过分集中的政治体制弊端的有力武器;以党内民主带动政治体制改革风险小、成本低",所以党内民主是我国政治体制改革的突破口。由此,从逻辑推演的视角看:党代会常任制是我国政治体制改革最为重要的突破口。     

The Contingency of Voter Learning: How Election Debates Influenced Voters’ Ability and Accuracy to Position Parties in the 2010 Dutch Election Campaign

Election campaigns are expected to inform voters about parties’ issue positions, thereby increasing voters’ ability to influence future policy and thus enhancing the practice of democratic government. We argue that campaign learning is not only contingent on voters’ characteristics and different sources of information, but also on how parties communicate their issue positions in election debates. We combine a two-wave panel survey with content analysis data of three televised election debates. In cross-classified multilevel auto-regression models we examine the influence of these debates in the 2010 Dutch parliamentary election campaign on voters’ knowledge of the positions of eight parties on three issues. The Dutch multiparty system allows us to separate voters’ ability to position parties from their accuracy in ordering these parties. We reach three main conclusions. First, this study shows that voters become more able and accurate during the campaign. However, these campaign learning effects erode after the elections. Second, whereas voters’ attention to campaigns consistently contributes to their ability to position parties, its effect on accuracy is somewhat less consistent. Third, televised election debates contribute to what voters learn. Parties that advocate their issue positions in the debates stimulate debate viewers’ ability to position these parties on these issues. In the face of the complexity of campaigns and debates in multiparty systems, campaigns are more likely to boost voters’ subjective ability to position parties than their accuracy.     

The 2015 National Elections in Switzerland: Renewed Polarization and Shift to the Right

The 2015 election to the Swiss Parliament marks a return to an already observed trend that was only interrupted in 2011: a shift to the right and an increase in polarization. The vote share of the nationalist-conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP) has now reached a historical height of 29.4% (+2.8). This note discusses why cantons matter in the Swiss national elections, and to what degree elections have become nationalized. Institutionally, the 26 cantons serve as electoral districts. This leads to a highly disproportional electoral system and has magnified the minor vote shifts to a slightly more pronounced shift in seats, with the right now holding a tiny majority of 101 of 200 seats in the first chamber. The two winners, the SVP and the Liberals, also had most campaign funds at their disposal. They were able to guide an extensive nationwide campaign in which they advocated their core issues instead of candidates. Other parties only advertised at the cantonal level.     

A test of the differential accuracy of the maxillary versus the mandibular dentition in age estimations of immature skeletal remains based on developing tooth length

Liversidge and colleagues developed a method for predicting the age of immature skeletal remains based on the length of developing teeth. This quantitative method combines dental data from both jaws, except for the permanent lateral incisor, and because there are reasons to suspect that these two types of data are not identical and should not be combined, it raises concerns regarding the accuracy of the technique when applied differently to each jaw. In this study, the differential accuracy of the method was test when applied to the maxillary and mandibular dentition. The test sample is comprised of 57 Portuguese subadult skeletons of known age at death. Results suggest an overall high consistency between estimates obtained from both jaws, but for the permanent dentition only. In the deciduous dentition the age estimates obtained from the maxillary teeth tend to be greater than the age estimates obtained from the mandibular pair, and the differences are significant for the incisors and canine. Additionally, ages obtained from the maxillary deciduous canine also differ significantly from true chronological age. In the permanent dentition there were no differences between the ages provided by both jaws but both the maxillary and mandibular second molars show a significant tendency to underestimate true chronological age. Although this study cannot validate completely the method presented by Liversidge and colleagues, it does provide an important test to its accuracy and calls for further research into its overall performance, particularly with respect to the results obtained from both jaws.