党的政治纪律建设:生成动因、历史演进与实践路径

注重政治纪律建设是马克思主义政党一以贯之的要求,也是中国共产党的历史传统和政治优势.中国共产党的发展历史,就是一部不断严明政治纪律的历史.总结党的政治纪律建设发展历史,对于新时代进一步加强党的政治纪律建设有着重要的历史借鉴作用.     

China and Africa: economic growth and a non-transformative political elite

Prevailing narratives in the discourse on China-Africa engagement are that China is developing Africa. This paper departs from those narratives because they disregard the agency of Africa's political elite. Basing its argument on the nature of the African political elite, the paper analyses their role in determining the impact of China's economic and trade engagement on economic development in their respective countries. To do that, it first discusses the nature and identity of African political elites, and examines how they control their states and scarce resources. Having done that, the paper then analyses their role in determining the nature and extent of development emanating from their countries’ economic engagement with China. It then concludes that it is not how much foreign states invest in African countries that determines Africa's rise, but rather political elites who influence the direction of their states’ development.     

The Disappearance of Political Cultures in Italy

Abstract

Following the collapse of the Italian party system in 1994, post-war Italian political cultures have all but exhausted themselves, if not disappeared completely. First, the Ulivo (Olive Tree) in 1996–1998, then, the Partito Democratico in 2007–2008, attempted without much conviction to formulate a new political culture combining several traditions and heritages. This article will explore how and why the PD failed in its attempts. It will also look at the status of other political cultures, especially the federalist and the liberal, supposedly relaunched by Berlusconi in 1994. It will conclude with some reflections on the appearance of personalist parties and leaders’ narratives and provide an assessment of the present situation with specific reference to the attempt by the PD leader, Matteo Renzi, to give birth to a so-called ‘Partito della Nazione’. Is there any future for new political cultures in the Italian political system? Will the Italian party system ever be revived?     

Decomposing Audience Costs: Bringing the Audience Back into Audience Cost Theory

According to a growing tradition in International Relations, one way governments can credibly signal their intentions in foreign policy crises is by creating domestic audience costs: leaders can tie their hands by publicly threatening to use force since domestic publics punish leaders who say one thing and do another. We argue here that there are actually two logics of audience costs: audiences can punish leaders both for being inconsistent (the traditional audience cost), and for threatening to use force in the first place (a belligerence cost). We employ an experiment that disentangles these two rationales, and turn to a series of dispositional characteristics from political psychology to bring the audience into audience cost theory. Our results suggest that traditional audience cost experiments may overestimate how much people care about inconsistency, and that the logic of audience costs (and the implications for crisis bargaining) varies considerably with the leader's constituency.     

Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Local Gender‐Based Earnings Inequality and Women's Belief in the American Dream

This article ties together research on gender, income inequality, and political ideology, by exploring the effect of gender‐based earnings inequality on women's belief in a fundamental tenet of the “American Dream”—meritocracy. Focusing on gender‐based earnings inequality in women's local residential context, and drawing upon relative deprivation theory, this article argues that variation across local areas in the relative economic status of women should influence the ideological outlook of resident women. In contrast to relative deprivation theory, but consistent with rising expectations theory, I argue that ideological disillusionment should peak in contexts in which women's earnings fall closely behind men, and that ideological optimism should rebound in contexts in which women's earnings have achieved parity with that of men. Utilizing pooled survey data, I find strong evidence that individual women's belief in the American Dream varies according to whether local women's relative earnings indicate confrontation with or breaking of the “glass ceiling.”     

Party competition and citizens' political attitudes in the American states

Democratic theorists argue that vigorous competition between candidates/parties is essential for democracy to flourish because it engages citizens' political interest and ultimately makes elected officials more accountable to their constituents. Using data on citizens' perceptions of government responsiveness to their political opinions from the American National Election Studies and the Ranney measure of party competition for control of state government, we examine the effects of competition on citizens' political attitudes from 1952 to 2008. Our analysis reveals that citizens feel government is more responsive to them when there is greater competition between the two parties for control of government in their state. However, this relationship is confined only to citizens who identify with the party that controls government in their state. We also find that the relationship between competition and efficacy is strongest among citizens with lower levels of education and income. These results suggest that vigorous competition for control of state government can have important implications for citizens' political attitudes.     

Does the economy really matter for satisfaction with democracy? Longitudinal and cross-country evidence from the European Union

Research focusing on the relationship between the economy and satisfaction with democracy often presents mixed results. This article argues that this uncertainty is mainly due to model specification, number of surveys and measurement. After discussing why the role of the economy should not be overlooked, by using an empirical strategy that applies Bayesian cross-classified mixed models to 572 national surveys in 28 European countries from 1973 to 2013 drawn from the Eurobarometer, it is shown that objective macro-economic indicators and a subjective indicator seem to substantially affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy in Europe. The findings are robust when controlling for various institutional and political variables and using alternative model specifications.     

Elections as a democratic linkage mechanism: How elections boost political trust in a proportional system

Elections offer a privileged moment in representative democracy, when citizens have the opportunity to express their views, both on the track record of the incumbent government, as on the way the country should be governed in the future. Procedural fairness theory assumes that taking part in a decision making procedure that is perceived to be fair, strengthens the legitimacy of the entire process. Most of the empirical research assumes that the attitudinal effects of elections are mainly due to the fact that one's preferred party wins the elections. In multi-party systems, however, such a clear distinction is not always possible and therefore it is hypothesized that the winner-loser-logic is weaker in this kind of party system. In this study we rely on a unique Belgian panel study to ascertain how electoral participation has an effect on political trust. The results show that in a proportional system all voters rise in political trust following their participation in elections. The winner-loser effect is not significant. Furthermore, the analyses suggest that especially the respondents with the initially lowest trust levels gain most by participating in elections. The theoretical implication of this finding is that apparently elections are still considered to be an important and legitimate linkage mechanism between citizens and the political system.     

Russian–Japanese relations after the Russo-Japanese war in the context of world politics

Abstract

The Treaty of Portsmouth could not solve all the diplomatic problems between Russia and Japan, and dissenting voices were heard in both countries. Nevertheless, Russo-Japanese relations went in the direction of not only normalization, but also building an alliance. That radical change from hostility has not often happened in history and needs careful research, in particular the early stages of this process after the conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth. The construction of an alliance was not the primary goal at the beginning of Russo-Japanese negotiations after the war between the two nations. This goal appeared during the process of solving different problems, and so the international situation is extremely important to understand changes in Russo-Japanese relations. This process had several facets. First, there was the deterioration in Anglo-German relations with a corresponding realignment of British policy towards Russia. Second was the resolution of problems in Central Asia between Russia and Great Britain. Third, there was the mutual interests Japan and Russia had in China, in particular rail interests, which were related to the organic unity of the northern part of the Russian railroad in China. Finally, Russia had the desire to keep relations with France as a corner-stone of foreign policy.     

大数据应用于国际问题研究的意义及其局限——以《国际安全态势感知指数2016》为例

作为社会学科研究的国际问题研究需要回答四个方面的问题:描述性的问题、解释性的问题、预测性研究和对策性研究。严格遵循社会科学研究的程序,这四个方面的国际问题研究就会表现出一些共同特点:客观性或者说可重复性、规律性或者说普遍意义、简约性或者说主次分明。大数据研究能够让决策者获得更加全面、充分的信息,从而采取更加具有针对性的政策;在进行描述性的国际问题研究时,大数据可以起到十分突出、甚至是革命性的作用;在解释性的问题方面,大数据的长处是用来发现相关性,而不是做出因果解释;大数据还可以发现有价值的解释性问题;大数据在预测和对策研究方面的优势十分明显,它所发现的规律性现象不仅可以用来预测,也可以帮助人们做出选择。大数据应用到国际问题研究领域也有其局限性,有些局限性是这一方法本身所具有的,例如不能进行因果机制的分析和解释;有一些是国际问题研究领域所具有的,例如"成本-收益问题"、数据主权问题等。在国际问题研究领域,大数据并不适合用于做战略研究,而更多适宜于对国际发展态势的宏观描述以及为具体的外交行为提供精准的指导方案。总之,大数据有助于发现更全面和客观的事实、提出更多规律性的问题以及帮助研究进行预测和做出选择,但大数据自身不能完成整个解释的过程,需要研究者进行专业的因果机制的分析和解释。