Determinants of Firm‐Level Lobbying and Government Responsiveness in Agricultural Biotechnology in China

Understanding what stimulates agribusiness firms to lobby the government and what makes the government responsive to lobbying are the two issues that have been discussed extensively in the debates concerning determinants of biotechnology policy. This paper examines the factors influencing agribusiness firms' lobbying and government response using econometric modeling on a new data set of 160 leading agribusiness firms in the food, feed, chemical, and seed industries in China. The results show that approximately 10% of agribusiness firms lobbied the government about biotechnology policy and regulations and over half of those that lobbied received a verbal or written acknowledgment from government agencies. Seed and feed companies are more likely to engage in lobbying than chemical companies. Owning GM patents not only has a positive impact on firms' lobbying activities, but firms with these patents are more likely to receive a government response to their lobbying efforts. The experience of selling GM products does not significantly influence lobbying activities or response from the government.     

Hurdles and Pathways to Regulatory Innovation in Digital Political Campaigning

Targeted online ads, algorithmic analytics tools, clickbait-y social media campaigns, big data voter databases—digital technologies have become a cornerstone of contemporary political campaigns in the United Kingdom. Candidates, party campaigners, and a multitude of other registered campaigners embrace digital campaigning for democratic engagement, mobilising voters and electioneering. Yet, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it has become clear that these technologies are vulnerable to abuse and deception. Pressing issues surrounding privacy, transparency, and human rights persist, and systems of electoral law have become ill-equipped to enforce good behaviour and compliance with the law. Drawing from empirical evidence ahead of the 2019 UK general election, this article examines systemic obstacles to regulatory innovation. The inquiry provides an analysis of key policy challenges affecting elections and democracy, and develops an analytical framework pathways to regulatory innovation in the digital domain across three dimensions: (1) Institutional structures; (2) organisational processes; and (3) regulatory functions. The article puts forward practical policy recommendations to promote regulatory innovation that is tech-savvy, evidence-based and future-proof.     

Beyond Political Binaries: The 2019 General Election and the Dagenham and Rainham Constituency

This article considers the results of the 2019 general election with reference to the Dagenham and Rainham constituency in outer East London. It was a key target for the Conservatives with a 70 per cent leave voting electorate. It did not change hands and might therefore provide insights into the wider debate regarding future coalitions and strategy within the modern left. This article considers these results with reference to arguments about a ‘Brexit realignment’ on the left and whether Labour should rethink the nature of its political ‘base’. It argues for a more nuanced debate than that which currently exists, built around simple binaries organised around Brexit, class, age, education and geography.     

Back to the Future: The Pulling Apart of our Towns and Cities

Growing divisions between Britain’s towns and cities have created a dilemma for the Labour Party in seeking to represent very different parts of the country. There are some who argue that Labour must choose the global networked youth—who largely reside in cities—in order to maximise its electoral chances. This is an argument that defies electoral gravity and fails to address the root causes of the gulf between towns and cities. As jobs and investment have gone into cities, many towns have seen the local population age and local economies become unsustainable. In both towns and cities there is a clamour for power to move closer to home and for the renewal of democratic institutions, offering Labour the chance to win power and end the divisions that have come to characterise British politics.     

Resource Extraction,Economic Growth,and the Climate Dilemma in Canada and Australia

Canada and Australia are two of the economic success stories of the last thirty years, enjoying rapid growth during the 1990s and 2000s and (unlike the UK and US) escaping the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. In both countries, however, economic growth has become highly dependent on commodities extraction, leaving them vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices, and imposing political constraints on tackling climate change. This article explores the economic and political challenges which the role of the natural resource sector has posed in Australia and Canada in recent years, and examines the contrasting ways in which Scott Morrison and Justin Trudeau’s governments deployed the climate issue in the two countries’ 2019 federal elections.     

区域协同对我国企业创新和经济发展影响及完善路径探讨--以沪港通为例的研究

区域协同是新时代具有标志性意义的重大国家战略,加快推进区域协同创新发展,不但关系到我国经济能否平稳发展,而且对于实现区域充分平衡发展以及构建新常态语境下具有可持续发展动能的区域"增长极"大有裨益,并影响着我国创新型国家建设进程以及经济增长方式转变的有效探索。基于区域协同创新和"增长极"的理论视角,在阐释区域协同发展对企业创新和国家经济发展的影响基础上,以沪港通为例进行回顾和总结,分析了大力发展沪港通对于推动我国企业创新和经济发展产生了哪些积极影响,未来又面临哪些挑战,并提出有针对性的对策建议。     

The effects of national cultures on two technologically advanced countries: The case of e-leadership in South Korea and the United States

The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has triggered enormous innovation in the public sector and created positive public value at the managerial, delivery of services, and policy levels. However, these positive outcomes do not automatically accrue simply by adoption of ICTs as public leaders can fail to adopt relevant new ICTs, use them poorly, or use them in ways that actually diminish public value, which raises the question of the importance of e-leadership. This article examines e-leadership and innovation capacity at the individual public manager level and fills in some gaps about the practice and implementation of ICTs in the public sector. We explore eight research questions useful in theorizing about e-leadership, develop constructs of e-leadership, and describe the current development of e-leadership. By comparing e-leadership in two country settings (South Korea and the United States), we also overcome the limitations of the existing Western-oriented studies about innovations in the public sector. In addition to the growth of e-leadership use and requirements for a variety of competencies equivalent to, but separate from, traditional communication competences, we find that national cultures exert significant influence on the major constructs of e-leadership, which implies that an effective e-leadership strategy should consider cultural contexts seriously.     

Is Everything Compatible? A Feminist Critique of Hearn’s Composite Approach to Men and Masculinity

ABSTRACT

Since its emergence in the late 1980s, research on men and masculinity has expanded considerably into an established area at the intersection of sociology, gender studies and related disciplines. There is now a wealth of empirical research but the theoretical debates have largely centred on Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity. This article focuses instead on the theoretical contribution of Jeff Hearn, arguably one of the central figures within critical studies on men and masculinities over the last few decades. The article identifies the main tenets of Hearn’s theoretical writing and tracks its development over time, and offers a critical discussion of Hearn’s theoretical position. The critique focuses on ambiguous treatments of central concepts and argues that tensions between perspectives such as materialist analysis, queer theory and intersectionality are not fully acknowledged in Hearn’s work.     

Young people,friendships and gender learning: insight from student-produced microfilms and curricular implications

Friendship microfilms produced by students can be used to understand how students make their relationships meaningful. Hence, in this study, friendship microfilms made by Taiwanese students from 2000 to 2013 and uploaded on YouTube were collected and evaluated through a textual analysis aimed at deriving suggestions for relationship education curricula. Four types of narrative were identified in these films. A common theme was addressing romantic concerns among close friends and the effects that follow. The films present scenarios such as ‘I want to be more than merely your friend’ and ‘A conflict arises from a love triangle’, and the predicaments related to trust, honesty, loyalty and supportiveness that consequently arise. The films also reveal the anxiety of gay adolescents trapped in dilemmas involving being neither a love interest nor a best friend and wondering whether to come out of the closet. Moreover, the practices of homosociality in the film manifest gender differences. On the basis of the research findings, this paper provides suggestions for gender and relationship education.     

‘I Want to Wear It’: Fashioning Black Feminism in Mahogany (1975)

ABSTRACT

In this article I focus on the portrayal of fashionable clothing in the 1975 film Mahogany and connect it to the history of African American women engaging with sartorial self-representation as a means to assert their visibility in American culture. My aim is to analyse Mahogany’s emphasis on brightly-coloured highly-ornamented clothing, which has a long history of signifying bad taste and became part of accusations of racial and sexual inferiority. I want to show how Mahogany’s representation of fashion undermines the historically entrenched bias against colourful, highly adorned clothing while also revealing how this bias has played a subtle but significant role in the racism and sexism black women have encountered, further (but not finally) impeding them from the forms of recognition the category of femininity offers. Mahogany represents those impediments and repeats the sexual and racial commodification underlying them, but also resists them (albeit quite subtly) through the film’s loving display of fashion and its attention to the work of designing and making clothes. Mahogany tells a story of bright sartorial resistance that can be understood as an articulation of black feminist desires for women of colour to be able to compose the images through which their bodies are perceived.