The star of David in a cedar tree: Jewish students and Zionism at the American University of Beirut (1908–1948)

The American University of Beirut's emergence as a hub of Arab national and cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century has been well documented by historians. The simultaneous Zionist presence on campus has been largely overlooked. Zionist ideas were predominantly promoted by Palestinian Jewish students who formed a small but vocal minority at AUB prior to 1948. Faculty and non-Jewish students also regularly collaborated with and traveled to Zionist institutions in Palestine for academic, athletic, and leisure purposes. For Arab students on campus, therefore, Zionism was not an abstract concept, but rather a national identity embodied by fellow classmates and friends on campus. As the conflict in Palestine increased in the 1930s and 1940s, so too did political activism and tensions on campus between Zionist and Arab nationalist students. This article analyzes this unique period of exchange, collaboration, and friction at AUB, which came to a swift end with the outbreak of the 1948 War. By focusing on the interactions between Arab and Zionist Jewish students at AUB, I seek to extend the ‘relational’ approach towards Jewish-Arab contact beyond Palestine's borders.     

Regime type versus patronal politics: a comparison of “ardent democrats” in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Kazakhstan is home to the longest serving ruler in post-Soviet Eurasia while Kyrgyzstan is among the region’s most competitive polities. Do these regime differences correspond to divergence in political attitudes, as an extensive body of literature posits? Are Kyrgyzstanis more likely to strongly support democratic ideals? Are Kazakhstanis less likely? Contrary to expectations, data reveal the two populations to be attitudinally indistinguishable when it comes to strong support for practices associated with democracy. Whatever country differences we find are minor or statistically insignificant. We explain this convergence by shifting focus away from the political features that distinguish the two nascent democracy versus consolidated authoritarianism to those that they hold in common. Notwithstanding major constitutional reform in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, politics there, as in Kazakhstan, remains fundamentally patronal, or patronage- based. Mass attitudes, we argue, align in many ways with the countries’ shared patronal politics, rather than with their contrasting regime types.     

Revisiting Transnational European Consociationalism: The European Union a Decade After Lisbon

This article discusses the notion of consociationalism as applied to the EU and assesses whether the institutional and procedural changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) and by the management of the Euro and refugee crises still warrant considering the EU as a case of consociational democracy. Our contention is that the changes introduced by the ToL bore the promise to strengthen the consociational structural traits of the Union but that the further institutional and procedural changes engendered by the management of the Euro and refugee crises have made the behavioral dimension of consociationalism all the more necessary just as the accommodating orientation of the political elites had begun to evaporate. We support this argument by looking at empirical evidence which allows us to offer a set of propositions on the effects of the recent crises on the attitudes of the European elites towards the future of EU democracy.     

Gender Differences in Political Knowledge: Distinguishing Characteristics-Based and Returns-Based Differences

This study assesses whether gender-based differences in political knowledge primarily result from differences in observable attributes or from differences in returns for otherwise equivalent characteristics. It applies a statistical decomposition methodology to data obtained from the 1992–2004 American National Election Studies. There is a consistent 10-point gender gap in measured political knowledge, of which approximately one-third is due to gender-based differences in the characteristics that predict political knowledge, with the remaining two-thirds due to male–female differences in the returns to these characteristics. The methodology identifies the relative contribution of the predictors of political knowledge to each portion of the gap, and then uses this information to elucidate the underlying sources of the political knowledge gender gap and its prognosis. Education is the characteristic that most clearly enlarges the gap, with men receiving significantly larger returns to political knowledge from education than women. Group membership reduces the gap as women obtain gains in political knowledge from belonging to organizations that do not accrue to men. However, these gains are not sufficient to significantly reduce the gap.

运用卡特尔16PF对边疆少数民族大学生心理健康状况调查

本文采用问卷调查和田野调查相结合的方法。首先从边疆9省中随机抽取了1000名生源地在边疆的少数民族在校大学生,运用卡特尔16PF对他们进行心理测验,结果发现边疆少数民族大学生心理健康水平显著低于全国一般水平,男生与女生之间的健康水平也存在显著差异。在影响心理健康水平的4个因素中,忧虑性对男女生的心理健康都有显著影响,而紧张性因素只对女生的心理健康有显著影响。同时,通过田野调查探讨了影响少数民族大学生心理健康的原因。     

The Attitudes of the Chinese Middle Class Towards Democracy

Little has been done to quantitatively establish the connection between the middle class and a specific regime type. In an effort to fill in the gap, this study uses Asian Barometer survey dataset to examine the attitudes and orientation of China’s rising middle class. We find that the Chinese middle class does show higher democratic orientation than those we categorize as lower class, but only if class is defined by occupation or by self-identification, and not by income level. We interpret this result to mean that economic development offers new life experiences with the creation of new types of professions and enhances people’s agreement with modern democratic values by arousing people’s consciousness of their new social class status.

论公民文化视野下少数民族地区民主政治建设

民主政治建设是少数民族地区现代化建设的重要内容,不仅包括制度建设内容,而且也包括政治文化建设的内容。然而,少数民族地区民主建设面临着各少数民族成员民主制度、机制缺乏,民主意识淡薄以及注重宗教信仰、法治意识缺失。要培育少数民族地区民主型政治文化的基础和条件,就不得不建立和完善现代民主制度和机制,充分开发利用各种政治社会化手段。     

马克思劳动权利思想的内涵及其启示——基于《资本论》的文本分析

作为马克思主义政治哲学的核心范畴,权利在《资本论》中被核心表征为了劳动权利。马克思通过对劳动所有权的权能分离、劳动权利与资本权力的冲突展开对劳动权利的阐释,完成了对劳动权利的核心内涵的事实判断。也正是基于这一指认,马克思在《资本论》中以劳动权利的未来图景为启示,搭建了以保障劳动权利的劳工权益为手段,以劳动权利的价值评价为目的的框架,以期使劳动权利获得自由的价值从而实现人的自由全面发展。     

政治经济学批判视域中的恩格斯辩证法

围绕辩证法,一些西方学者常常得出恩格斯和马克思对立的观点。反驳这种错误观点有一条重要路径:恩格斯的辩证法并非局限于自然领域,而是以政治经济学批判的方式融入社会—历史当中。具体而言,它主要体现在三个方面:一是将辩证法奠基于现实经验的基础之上;二是准确阐释了马克思辩证法作为唯一正确的思想发展形式;三是进一步完善了政治经济学批判方法与对象的统一理论。这些贡献表明:一方面,在现实基础、基本形式、实践旨趣方面,恩格斯辩证法和马克思辩证法在根本上是一致的;另一方面,恩格斯对黑格尔辩证法有着深刻的理解,能够准确把握它与马克思辩证法的区别。这将有助于澄清对恩格斯辩证法的曲解和误解,也是对“矮化”恩格斯辩证法、制造恩格斯和马克思关于辩证法的思想对立的有力回应。     

国企党建思想政治工作方法研究

思想政治工作是国有企业的独特法宝,在促进改革发展、维护和谐稳定等方面发挥着重要作用。针对当前国企党建思想政治工作存在的思想政治工作重视程度不够,开展思想政治工作方式单一,部分企业员工分散、工作开展存在一定难度等问题,应从抓好意识形态工作、加强文化宣传、健全工作制度、创新工作方法、发挥群团组织合力等方面来加强和改进,以推动企业高质量发展。