Towards a professional civil service in post‐transition Romania

To what degree and under what conditions can a young democracy build a competent, politically neutral public bureaucracy? A crucial component of the transition from communist party rule to democracy is the creation of a professional civil service. Success along this dimension of state‐building generates administrative capacity: non‐elected public officials ensure the implementation of reforms initiated by political leaders. In the communist party‐led regimes of Eastern Europe, forging this new administrative class from its highly politicised predecessor took place as new democracies sought to overcome historical legacies and integrate with the European Union. A case study of administrative reform in Romania during the post‐1989 period suggests the importance of external influences in forming a civil service more closely adhering to the Weberian ideal of an expert, rules‐based bureaucracy. Through analysis of survey data from a nationally representative sample of the Romanian civil servants, the public bureaucracy has professionalised insofar as educational and training credentials rather than political affiliation are significant predictors of salary levels. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

新形势下高校爱国主义教育的主要问题及应对措施

在新形势下加强大学生的爱国主义教育是高校思想政治教育的重要任务。当前高校爱国主义教育受到了来自西方发达国家思想文化、市场经济、经济全球化及信息化的冲击和挑战。针对当前高校爱国主义教育所存在的主要问题,应与时俱进地采取应对措施,强化当代大学生爱国主义教育。     

马克思农村生态思想对社会主义新农村建设的启示

马克思从生态问题的社会制度基础着手分析,说明资本主义制度导致了生态问题的恶化,并指出资本主义制度不可能从根本上解决农村生态问题,只有社会主义制度才能为生态良好的社会提供制度保障。发挥我国社会主义社会制度优势,努力在我国社会主义新农村建设乃至生态文明建设中做出更多有益的探索。     

论“民主”反腐的机制与机率探析

推进党的反腐败工作和反腐倡廉建设,必须将民主理念和民主手段引入其中,将民主提升为惩防腐败的新治本之策,着力建立健全＂教育、制度、监督、民主＂并重的惩治预防腐败体系。这就必须切实关注＂民主＂惩治预防腐败的机制与＂民主＂惩治预防腐败的机率。     

“民主”反腐：惩治预防腐败的新治本之策

推进党的反腐败工作和反腐倡廉建设,必须将民主理念和民主手段引入其中,将民主提升为惩防腐败的新治本之策,着力建立健全“教育、制度、监督、民主”并重的惩治预防腐败体系。这就必须切实关注“民主”惩治预防腐败的四大基本要素,即“民主”惩治预防腐败的机理、“民主”惩治预防腐败的机制、“民主”惩治预防腐败的机遇、“民主”惩治预防腐败的机会。     

围绕勾画结构框架 扎实推进新经济组织党建

构筑新经济组织党建的结构框架体系,必须关注新经济组织党建的价值意义、困境问题和路径设计等基础性问题.开展新经济组织党建有利于引导和促进非公有制经济健康发展、壮大党的力量和影响力、激发人力资源优势、营造和谐发展环境.但新经济组织党建并不尽完美,还面临着一系列的困境问题.我们必须从分析解决这些困境问题入手,科学设计和选择新经济组织党建的发展路径.     

Featured reviews

The article examines the political origins and impact of recent managerial reform (the shift from the professional bureaucracy model of public administration to the new public management [NPM]) in UK local government. Two key drivers of managerial reform are identified: central–local relations and labour management. The former are historically complex due, partly, to the Victorian expediential justification of local government, and the tenuous constitutional status of local government in the British polity. These factors necessitate and permit central control with models of public administration a key mechanism for achieving this. In addition, as 70% of overall sector costs are made up of centrally funded labour costs, the centre's attempts to control labour management (pay and performance) is a second key driver of managerial reform. And models of public administration, again, are a major mechanism for achieving central control. The analysis is rooted in a brief historical examination of developments from the 1880s, and a longitudinal case study examining more recent developments to illustrate the general case made. Empirical findings show councillor, union and worker resistance to managerial reform. They also show job loss, work intensification, job insecurity and demoralisation of staff. Another key finding is that NPM is not new, but a regression to the Victorian era.     

Navigating class power and inequalities: new deal liberals and the Los Angeles regional labor board, 1933-1934

ABSTRACT

This article examines how local state officials operated the Los Angeles Regional Labor Board, 1933-1934, a regional branch of the National Labor Board. Amid a surge in workers mobilizing strikes and organizing unions, which faced fierce business opposition in LA, one of the period’s most anti-union cities, local state officials discarded initial solutions to industrial conflict – solutions based on state paternalism and involved parties’ voluntary compliance – and proposed more robust state interventionist tools. Such efforts were to enhance state authority and power and forge greater class equality by accepting worker rights and limiting business prerogatives, while the officials also obsessively encouraged the economic ‘wheels be kept turning and the pulse quickened.’ Drawing on regional-based archives, we trace local officials navigating and shaping social relations, and investigate the unpredictable, everyday workings of local responses to national-level policy-making. Earlier scholarship on the period highlights the role of leaders, like FDR or Senator Wagner, or business elites crafting seemingly pro-working-class policy, alongside the accounts of structural political economy. We emphasize local state agencies tasked with policy implementation becoming sites of contention for class actors and state officials, reflecting more general patterns but also initiating institutional procedures with enduring implications for US capital-labor relations.

Abbreviations: LA: Los Angeles; NLB: National Labor Board; RLB: Regional Labor Board; NLRB: National Labor Relations Board; AFL: American Federation of Labor; LACC: Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce; M&M: Merchant and Manufacturers Association; NRA: National Recovery Administration     

Desublimating monstrous desire: the horror of gender in new extremist cinema

Known for graphic gore and formal experimentation, films of European new extremism stand out for the way in which they combine sex with violence, stressing the body in extreme modes of being and rendering its materiality emphatic, uncanny and profoundly disturbing. While this emphasis on sex and violence has been widely recognized in scholarly literature on new extremism, its connections to gendered conventions of genre cinema have not. In this article, we contend that films such as Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre (1998), Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009) and Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day (2001) directly reference gendered tropes and conventions of horror cinema in their explorations of desire, sexual difference and violence. Far from being inconsequential or secondary concerns, we argue that emphatically gendered characteristics of cinematic horror are crucial to the disturbing impact of these films. By appropriating tropes from the horror film, but refusing them the closure and recuperation customary to narrative conventions of the genre, new extremist films critique these gendered implications, calling attention to the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the gender politics of horror.     

浅析职业素质教育对新生代农民工就业的影响

随着中国经济发展和人口结构变迁,新生代农民工这一就业群体已逐渐登上就业舞台并发挥越来越重要的作用。由于新生代农民工大多接受过一定的职业素质教育,他们较之于老一辈农民工有更加现代的观念和人生定位,对于自身就业和未就业预期有更多的权衡和判断。新生代农民工已经成为国家工业化、城市化、现代化的重要动力,探讨如何深化新生代农民工的职业素质教育以促进这一群体就业显得尤为重要。