当代中国社会阶层矛盾及其化解路径

改革开放以来，随着我国经济的快速发展，社会结构发生了重大变化，涌现出许多新的社会阶层。由于经济成分、分配方式、利益关系和价值心态的不同，社会各阶层之间的矛盾呈现许多新的特点，正确协调社会各阶层之间的矛盾已成为我国新时期政治生活的一大主题。在坚持社会阶层矛盾属于人民内部矛盾的前提下，要积极维护好两个基本阶层的利益，营造以人为本的阶层合作环境，完善社会保障制度，健全现代社会阶层分化机制，努力构建各阶层和谐共处与诚信合作的良好局面。     

论中国结构转型中的困惑：价值实现与效率实现

中国经济社会发展的过程就是一个不断转型的过程，转型的终极目标就在于价值实现和效率实现。价值实现与效率实现相背离正成为当前中国转型发展的困惑。价值实现是劳动回报，是社会公平性的关键。价值实现受主观价值判断与价值认同影响，还受客观的技术实现程度和资源获取能力制约，经济主体通过技术（包括组织方式）实现经济效率，改变单位物品的价值量，从而创造出社会效益。在耗散的系统结构中，价值实现与效率实现背离，影响到结构优化。该文揭示中国社会转型中，系统结构受控，效率脱离民生；两部类生产体系的价格无关效率；失衡结构中价格无视价值等困惑及其实质。     

撬压痕迹的力学分析与计算

本文应用力学的理论、观点和方法，对撬压痕迹的本质、受破坏的客体对外力作用的抵抗表现进行分析，并归纳各种常见客体的结构形式、功能特点和痕迹形成的规律，为办案实践中的具体对象制定了分析问题和解决问题的方法。     

Youth violence in South Africa: the case for a restorative justice response

Crime presents a fundamental challenge in South Africa. Particularly disturbing is the prevalence of violence committed by and against young people. The main purpose of this article is to look at how South Africa should deal with the issue of youth violence. It argues that while structural violence constitutes a significant contextual cause of the phenomenon, a more proximate and specific cause lies in young people’s exposure to direct violence in their schools, homes and communities. In many cases, therefore, simply sending young people to prison – where they may experience even greater levels of violence – is not the answer. This article thus examines the potential merits of restorative justice as a response to the problem of youth violence, focusing particularly on the 2009 Child Justice Act. This research is based on fieldwork in South Africa and draws upon both the author’s qualitative interview data and a range of surveys with young people conducted by the Center for Justice and Crime Prevention in Cape Town.     

The state human trafficking and human rights issues in Africa

Internal factors in Africa which include limited autonomy of African states, the states’ various degrees of lack of capacity, as well as inept and parasitic leadership make human trafficking and human rights abuses in Africa inevitable. Regardless of the connections suggested to exist between globalization and human trafficking, internal factors in Africa are more fundamental than globalization in explaining human trafficking and the associated human rights violations. Corruption and misrule brought about wars and crises, unemployment, poverty, and diseases, all of which acted as push factors in disposing victims to be trafficked. Internal factors were exacerbated by the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and were only deepened by the impacts of globalization. Any meaningful resolve to combat human trafficking and fight human rights abuses in Africa necessarily has to address the nature of state and the character of the leadership in the region.     

Wage Differentials in Brazil: Theory and Evidence

The investigation of wage determination and wage differentials in developing countries has concentrated on the effects of human capital and different sources of segmentation associated with institutional arrangements and structural characteristics on earnings. In this article, we use micro-data for Brazil for the 1980s and 1990s to test several competitive theories, and models with segmentation explained by efficiency wages. We find that unmeasured abilities and efficiency wage models seem to play a role in wage determination, while compensating differentials and transitory difference theories were found to be irrelevant to wages formation.     

Imperial governance,sovereignty and the management of chronic instability in Africa

An important political consequence of the crisis of capital in the 1970s has been an increasing intensification of informal imperialism within Africa. This paper argues that the advanced capitalist countries again confronted the endemic problem of overcapacity alongside a decline in the rate of profit and that the major neoliberal reforms foisted upon the African continent were part of the spatio-temporal fix that followed. The quotidian management of many African states was not an intended consequence of structural adjustment, but the subsequent perturbations that beset many developing countries after following such policies has led to such a degree of institutional instability that a new form of imperial governance has come into being. Juridical sovereignty has been maintained, but political sovereignty has been severely compromised through the emergence of this neo-imperial governance. Today an array of external actors is embedded in the sinews of these states, setting the general parameters of state policy to such an extent that one can no longer speak of these countries as possessing de facto independence. The rise of these so-called ‘governance states’ and the new emphasis on ‘governance with government’ constitute a new non-territorial, political form of imperialism.     

The Implications of the Lyons Report into Local Government in England for Structural Reform in Australian Local Government

The Lyons Inquiry into English local government presented its Final Report in 2007. It has significant implications for local government jurisdictions beyond England. This article considers the import of the Lyons Inquiry for reform to Australian local government. It is argued that the Lyons Inquiry adds weight to other work that questions the traditional reliance on amalgamation as the chief instrument of Australian local government reform. In particular, the “place-shaping” thesis developed in the Lyons Inquiry shows that the Australian emphasis on structural reform has been misdirected. Further, the Lyons Report offers a range of policy options besides municipal amalgamation.     

If at first you don't succeed

Political and social stability in advanced capitalist societies is threatened both by the impossibility of achieving full employment owing to automation and the transformation of family life and gender relationships. This article explores explanations of these shifts in Jeremy Rifkin's and Ray Pahl's work. It explores alternative models of employment in which formal work is shared and third-sector work is expanded, underwritten by a cultural shift in which work, success and consumption are traded for free time, balance and self-development.     

Structural Models of Voter Behavior in the 2000 Polish Presidential Election

Abstract

The data of the 2000 Polish presidential election have been analyzed according to Newman and Sheth's model of voter's choice behavior (1985). Although this model was originally interpreted within the statistical perspective of discriminant analysis, it could be also extended within the framework of structural equation methodology. Namely, if the seven cognitive domains (Issues and Policies, Emotional Feelings, Candidate Image, Current Events, Epistemic Issues, Social Imagery and Epistemic Issues) are assumed to be distinct and separate, they can be treated as independent (predictive) variables with the voter's intention as a dependent or predicted variable. The three models were tested and the resuits of path analysis show the complex pattern of mutual interdependence between the cognitive domains and voter behavior. The specificity of the cause-effect relationship obtained by the structural equation methodology presented in the paper allows us to put forward some practical suggestions regarding the way electoral campaigns should be conducted.