Eyes wide shut? Reforming and defusing checks and balances in Argentina

How effective are autonomous audit agencies (AAAs) in curbing corruption and improving fiscal governance in emerging economies? AAAs are autonomous oversight agencies tasked with scrutinising government finances. However, they are not as effective as they could or should be, partly because of the political constraints they face and the political economy context in which they are embedded. This article assesses the performance and trajectory of the Argentine AAA. It suggests that AAAs can have only a limited impact when formal fiscal institutions are undermined by informal practices and undercut by adverse political incentives. It further highlights the limits of radical reform strategies based on the import of exogenous institutional models. This research has important research and policy implications for the reform and strengthening of AAAs in developing countries. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Political accountability,fiscal conditions and local government performance—cross‐sectional evidence from Indonesia

Why are some local governments more successful than others in managing resources and delivering services? And even more vitally, how can malfunctioning governments be reformed so that they perform their responsibilities more effectively? This article contributes to our understanding of theses overarching questions by exploring the interactions between political institutions and public sector performance in the context of decentralisation and local governance. It shows–both theoretically and empirically–that performance outcomes are determined by the extent to which people can hold their governments accountable through political institutions. The basic hypothesis underlying this research is that political accountability, either by encouraging sanctions upon non‐compliant public agents or simply by reducing the informational gap regarding government activities, will create forceful incentives for elected officials and civil servants to reduce opportunistic behaviour and improve performance. Using a cross‐sectional regression the hypothesis is empirically tested against evidence from newly empowered local governments in Indonesia. The empirical findings broadly support our hypotheses. Improved public services on the ground, both in terms of quantity and quality, require informed and well functioning decision‐making processes that allocate resources to priority areas that meet the demand of the broader community. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

公安思想政治工作需要加强和改进的几个问题

加强和改进公安思想政治工作是新时期的必然要求,是建设强大的公安队伍和强有力的公安工作的客观需要。因此,要正确认识和处理好思想政治工作的长期性和紧迫性的关系;要反对形式主义,转变工作作风,在狠抓落实上下功夫;要增强时代感和针对性,使思想政治工作在加强的过程中改进,在继承的基础上创新;要坚持以人为本,以情感召,力戒以训代教,增强思想政治工作的感召力和凝聚力;要重视领导机关和领导干部的形象和导向作用,不要把群众当成“第一对象”;要重视行政强调和规章制约,不应轻视理论灌输,增强思想政治工作的理论思维;要把思想政治工作与解决实际问题结合起来,既要讲道理又要办实事;要围绕中心选准切入点,把思想政治工作结合、渗透到具体工作之中。     

政治稳定视野中的利益关系分析

体制转轨时期 ,利益关系的重新调整与组合 ,特别是各种利益之间的分化 ,对当代中国的政治稳定和政治发展具有双重效应。在改革发展进程中应积极构建系统的利益协调机制 ,以机制的有效运作协调各种利益关系 ,实现和保持利益分化与政治稳定之间的和谐共进 ,促进国家的长治久安和社会的有序发展。     

思想政治工作实效性刍议

如何提高新形势下思想政治工作的实效性 ,是当前一个紧迫的现实问题。思想政治工作实效性的内涵 ,影响实效性的因素 ,对当前思想政治工作存在的问题进行分析 ,从七个方面提出了有针对性的对策建议。     

Experiencing Globalization: Active Teaching and Learning in International Political Economy

This article explores the teaching and learning challenges for the discipline of international studies (IS) that arise from the contemporary social, economic, and political changes usually labeled "globalization." The focus is upon the challenge posed to IS by a transformation in the nature of the relationship of teachers and students to the subject matter that they study: that is, teachers and students increasingly experience and contribute to globalization in the course of their daily lives as they simultaneously teach and learn about it. Significantly for the study of globalization in IS, pedagogical debates surrounding active teaching and learning highlight the potential for strategies that actively engage students' interests and everyday experiences with the subject itself. On this basis, the article outlines some potential routes into the active teaching and learning of globalization in the field of international political economy, illustrating these with examples from classroom activities and exercises.     

改进新时期思想政治工作必须处理好几个关系

要改进新时期的思想政治工作,实现思想政治工作的创新,就必须突出理性教育,重视非理性教育,使二者紧密结合;用大道理统揽小道理,用小道理阐发大道理,使二者相互补充;坚持指导思想一元化,正确对待多元化观念,用一元化统领多元化.     

海峡两岸青年政治价值观异同比较

青年的政治价值观反映青年对所处社会的政治现实与理想的基本评价.源于海峡两岸社会政治背景的差异,两岸青年在政治效能感、政治理想追求、政治现实的评价和两岸关系发展等问题上相异也十分明显,但两岸青年对社会政治昌明的追求和共同传承的爱国主义精神纽带,又构成了两岸青年的政治价值观的相通之处.为了促进台湾青年对祖国大陆的了解与信任,必须加大对台政策宣传,积极推进两岸青年的沟通与交流.     

Is there a global environmental justice movement?

One of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. There are conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste disposal. Therefore, there are many local complaints, as shown in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJatlas) and other inventories. And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice. Moreover, since the 1980s and 1990s, this movement has developed a set of concepts and campaign slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include environmental racism, popular epidemiology, the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, biopiracy, tree plantations are not forests, the ecological debt, climate justice, food sovereignty, land grabbing and water justice, among other concepts. These terms were born from socio-environmental activism, but sometimes they have also been taken up by academic political ecologists and ecological economists who, for their part, have contributed other concepts to the global environmental justice movement, such as ‘ecologically unequal exchange’ or the ‘ecological footprint’.     

Swampwalls: dark matter and the lumpen army of art

Dominant notions of contemporary art are being overturned not by some radical avant-garde theory or movement, but instead by an “uprising” from within the confines of the “art factory,” as well as by newly embodied instances of informal everyday creativity that high culture has long overlooked. Theorists Negt and Kluge might have described this insurrection as the partial unblocking of a counter-public or proletarian sphere: a realm of fragmented identities and working class fantasy generated in response to the alienating conditions of capitalism. A more specific cultural interpretation suggests this mutiny from within and assault from below is the irrepressible brightening of “creative dark matter:” that marginalized and systematically underdeveloped aggregate of creative productivity, which nonetheless reproduces the material and symbolic economy of high culture. The results are explosive, or at least potentially so as this long, pent-up shadow archive spills out into the once forbidden dwelling place of mainstream law and order and high cultural privilege. Meanwhile, a new wave of socially engaged art is thriving on the margins of the art world. Like an enormous production warehouse this “post-public” creativity is developing sustainable farming, reenacting historical labor demonstrations, providing public services lost to decades of deregulatory economic policy, and initiating local bartering systems and environmental cleanups. Its vitality is something Joseph Beuys could have only dream about. And not surprisingly even this “autonomous” and “Interventionist” art is selectively becoming part of the mainstream culture industry through what Gilles Deleuze describes as an “apparatus of capture.” Nevertheless, one result of this new confrontation reveals this vibrant imaginary “from below” is pushing artistic production, pushing also discourse, pedagogy and cultural institutions into radically re-thinking definitions and possibilities not only involving the possibilities of contemporary avant-garde art practices, but also about the very nature of creativity, democracy, and political agency more broadly.