产品涉入、感知风险与金融商品再购意愿

以具有金融商品购买经验的顾客为研究对象,探讨后危机时期顾客产品涉入、感知风险对金融商品再购意愿的影响。通过引入金融风险属性和顾客风险偏好,剖析顾客产品涉入、感知风险对金融商品再购意愿的影响,并在此基础上构建顾客产品涉入、感知风险对金融商品再购意愿影响的整合研究架构。通过对494位具有购买金融商品经验的顾客调查数据研究发现:首先,产品涉入不仅能够降低感知风险,而且还能提升顾客对金融商品的再购意愿,而感知风险却抑制了顾客对金融商品的再购意愿;其次产品涉入不仅能够直接作用于再购意愿而且还能通过感知风险间接作用于再购意愿;最后产品涉入和感知风险对再购意愿的影响会受到顾客风险偏好和金融商品风险属性的干扰。     

The Effectiveness of Citizen Participation in Public Hearing of Current China

Public hearing system is regarded as the soul and core of modem administrative procedure; it plays a more and more important part in modem administrative affairs. Public hearing is an important way to listen to the voice of the public, and the main method to gauge public opinion before making public policies, laws, and regulations. In recent years, with the growing awareness of civic participation, public hearing system has played a big role in public policy-making process in contemporary China, but there is also a phenomenon that citizen participation is largely symbolic in most of the hearing, citizen participation cannot play its due role, and the effectiveness of citizen participation in public hearing is limited. Based on this background, the analyses about how to strengthen public hearing system construction, improve the representativeness of the representative and information disclosure system, are all very important to improve the validity of citizen participation in public hearings now to China.     

Citizens' Learning,Involvement, and Participation in Decision-Making Under the Democratic Ethos: A Theoretical Framework and the Israeli Experience

Public administration literature usually assumes that citizens' participation in administrative decision-making (PDM) processes can improve public sector performance and trust. In this article, we question the universality of this assumption, arguing that PDM processes will have positive results in terms of performance and trust only when there are available channels to influence policy outcomes and democratic participatory behavior. We construct theoretical arguments based on a mechanism of social learning and illustrate them by reference to the case of Israel. The framework highlights the centrality and importance of culture and social characters for the study and planning of public administration reforms.     

Citizen Participation in German and Spanish Local Governments: A Comparative Study

In recent decades, citizens have become more and more disenchanted with the traditional institutions of representative government, detached from political parties, and disillusioned with old forms of civic engagement and participation. This has favored a renewed interest in citizen engagement and citizen participation and a growing re-emergence in academic and political discourse of ideas and values of community, localism, and citizen participation. This article analyzes the main objectives and the actual implementation of citizen participation initiatives in the local governments of two European Continental countries, Germany and Spain. The aim is to find out the factors that affect the possible decoupling between the objectives and the “real” uses of citizen participation. Our results show that most local governments in these two countries are using citizen participation only to increase the level of perceived legitimacy or to comply minimally with legal requirements, without really taking advantage of citizen participation to enhance decision-making processes. These findings confirm that institutional theory becomes the rationale to explain the implementation of citizen participation in these two European Continental countries.     

Using Appreciative Inquiry to Engage the Citizenry: Four Potential Challenges for Public Administrators

In the United States, calls for new citizen engagement strategies have continued to grow at the local government level. One answer is Appreciative Inquiry. As part of a larger study conducted in 2007, the question was posed to public administrators, “What challenges do you see regarding using an Appreciative Inquiry approach to increase citizen participation in local government?” Findings based on a content analysis of the data identified four challenges in particular. Discussion suggests public managers need to be aware of these challenges but depending on local conditions they can be mitigated or overcome.     

Making Citizen Participation Work: The Challenging Search for New Forms of Local Democracy in The Netherlands

Governance theory shows that governments no longer operate as actors that take unilateral decisions but instead have to share power and influence with various other actors. There is also a large body of literature that shows a growing discontent with (local) democracy. These two trends lead various local governments to either reaffirm representative democracy, or to introduce elements of direct participatory democracy. In practice the combination of the two – representative and direct participatory democracy – can be problematic. This paper describes the experiences of Hoogeveen, a medium-sized municipality in the Netherlands with a far-reaching programme of direct participatory democracy. In Hoogeveen, local residents can decide on yearly budgets for their neighbourhood and become involved in the long-term planning of its development. The Hoogeveen case shows that direct participatory and representative democracy can be balanced with the help of (1) connecting arrangements, (2) professional connectors and (3) steady political support.     

Gang affiliation,aggression, and violent offending in a sample of youth offenders

Abstract

Gang affiliation, aggression, and violent offending were examined in case files of 390 youth offenders aged between 16 and 18 years. Results indicated that youth offenders who were gang members and those who were not gang members but exposed to friends in gangs had a significantly higher likelihood of violent offending compared with a reference group of youth offenders who had neither gang affiliation nor friends in gangs. Additionally, youth offenders who had friends in gangs but were themselves not gang members had a lower likelihood of violent offending than youth offenders who were gang members. Finally, results showed that a history of aggressive behavior was significantly associated with violent offending. Implications such as the need to address the influence of delinquent peers and need to address the management of anger and aggression in youths will be discussed. Also, findings point towards the need for prevention and early intervention work.     

马萨诸塞州诉美国联邦环保局案的述评

马萨诸塞州诉美国联邦环保局案是美国第一件具有里程碑意义的气候变化公益诉讼案件,该案体现了美国各州和民间力量通过公民诉讼方式促进政府采取温室气体减排行动的艰巨努力。该案从联邦上诉法院一审到联邦最高法院再审,始终存在较大争议,其中关于原告诉讼资格的争议更是人声鼎沸。在联邦最高法院判决中,原告仅以微弱优势胜诉。尽管关于原告胜诉的理由仍有颇多争议,但该案在明确温室气体属于《清洁空气法》的调整范围、拓展气候变化公民诉讼原告的诉讼资格以及确立公民诉讼可以促进政府采取减排行动等方面,都具有非常积极的意义。