On the Status and Function of Judicial Justice in Social Governance Innovation

Social governance innovation is a basic requirement of China's socialist construction, and an important guarantee that people can live and work in peace and enjoy long-term stability and order. Strengthening and innovating social governance has great significance for the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, and this is where judicial justice plays a unique role at the level of government, society, and the individual. That is, judicial justice is the key to transforming governmental functions; the guarantee of a new-type social construction; and the guide to upgrading autonomy at the grass-roots level. To achieve judicial justice, we must popularize the idea of the rule of law, improve judicial work style and innovate judicial institutions.     

State‐led industrial development,structural transformation and elite‐led plunder: Angola (2002–2013) as a developmental state

From 2002 to 2013, Angola engaged in large‐scale state‐led reconstruction and development alongside an elite‐led appropriation and seizure of national assets. Until the oil price shock, Angola had been succeeding in promoting rapid economic growth, and possibly even significant social development, alongside a massive grab of wealth and power by local elites. Today, though an economic crisis has taken hold, frequent predictions of the country's imminent collapse have yet to be fulfilled. This article reviews the state's development planning and expenditure with a focus on public investment and industrial development to determine to what extent Angola during this period might be considered a developmental or petro‐developmental state. It is argued that, while more significant than generally thought, petro‐developmental outcomes were and are limited by the autocratic and neopatrimonial tendencies of the Angolan elite. Nevertheless, limited success with structural transformation may have lasting effects. Following its long civil war, the conditions existed for Angola to follow a new path of state‐led development. Though it may now be more difficult, structural transformation and economic diversification remain the only path to economic and social development.     

万物互联时代的“算法”崇拜与资源配置变革

随着万物互联时代的来临，人类资源配置将被各种人工智能“算法”①所取代。万物互联产生的数据将成为社会资源的重要形态，也是支撑人工智能“算法”的重要基础。数据资源的安全、所有权归属、开发利用效率以及保密等重要议题，将成为民族学、经济学、社会学和心理学等相关学科关注和研究的新热点。我国是一个统一的多民族国家，如何将丰富的民族多样化资源转化为支持万物互联资源网络协同优化配置人工智能“算法”的数据，需要从民族历史、文化、生物、信息处理技术等相关学科做深入的理论和实证研究。在万物互联时代，因资源配置方式与配置机制发生变革，经济学一般不再直接求解资源最优配置的策略集，更多是从理论和实证方面研究资源配置中人工智能“算法”的构造原理、构造条件与影响因素。万物互联时代，社会和谐秩序的构建，需要政府建立和维护万物互联网络的安全防护体系，并对资源配置中人工智能技术演变路径作规范和指引。     

Generic Processes in Aligning the Multiple Bases of Identity: The Case of Becoming a Ministry Student

Identity theory distinguishes three bases of identity—role, group, and person—but studies have typically focused on one identity at a time. The interrelationship among the multiple bases of identity remains understudied. This study examines the multiple bases of identity individuals engage on their way to becoming ministry students. The results reveal the advantage of examining the multiple bases of identity as subcultural processes, the utility of qualitative research for expanding the empirical scope of identity theory, and the possibility of employing structural symbolic interactionist concepts within a processual symbolic interactionist agenda.     

Institutional evolution and abrupt change: Reforming the administration of social assistance in Finland

Historical institutionalist studies have explained institutional change as resulting from critical junctures that interrupt long periods of stability or from endogenous, incremental evolution. Building on these theories, discursive institutionalists have focused on the roles of agency, ideas and discourse as explainers of change. Combining these approaches, this article analyses Finland’s decision in 2014 to transfer the administration of basic social assistance from municipalities to the central government. This study demonstrates that institutional change can be both abrupt and evolutionary. Due to sudden, exceptional political circumstances, the decision in question was made quickly and under pressure, circumventing possible veto players. However, it was possible only because of the incremental, endogenous change that had occurred in the way in which social assistance was administered at the municipal level. It enabled a change in political discourse, which eroded the credibility of the ideational frames that policy actors had previously utilised to reject the centralised model.     

中国养老金:制度变革、问题清单与高质量发展

中国养老金制度经过近30多年来的深刻变革,从自我封闭的单位保障制走向开放式的社会保险制、从少数人的专利发展成为全体老年人的共同福祉、从单一责任主体走向多方分担责任、从单一层次走向多层次化,成为惠及所有老年人的社会保障制度,符合全球养老金制度发展的潮流与客观规律。但目前存在的理论认识误区、制度不统一、政策参数僵化、补充层次缺失及其导致的筹资失衡、待遇不公、预期紊乱、可持续性弱化和社会风险累积等问题正在日益显性化。这表明其仍是质量不高的制度安排。因此,中国养老金制度亟待走出逻辑混乱的思维定势与传统的路径依赖,通过明确公平建制理念、加快制度统一步伐、调适筹资责任分担机制、赋予相关参数弹性空间、理性推动多层次化等举措来为参与主体各方提供清晰稳定的预期,实现制度定型和高质量发展。     

Risk-Informed Requirements for Design and Assessment of Structures Under Temporary Use

The relatively high failure rates, with important consequences in many cases, suggest that the implicitly acceptable risk levels corresponding to temporary civil engineering structures and activities might exceed the bounds of normally acceptable levels associated with different societal activities. Among other reasons, this may be attributed to the lack of a rational approach for the assessment of risks associated with the different technologies supporting these activities in general, and for structures in particular. There is a need for establishing appropriate target reliability levels for structures under temporary use taking into account specific circumstances such as reduced risk exposure times. This issue is being addressed in this article. Acceptance criteria for building-structure-related risks to persons obtained in prior studies are adapted to the special circumstances of nonpermanent risk exposure. Thereby, the general principle followed is to maintain the same risk levels per time unit as for permanently occupied buildings. The adaptation is based on the statistical annual fatality rate, a life safety risk metric that allows for a consistent comparison of risks across different societal activities and technologies. It is shown that the target reliability indices taking account of the temporary use of buildings might be significantly higher than the values suggested for permanently used structures.     

Evaluating New Zealand’s restorative promise: the impact of legislative design on the practice of restorative justice

ABSTRACT

Restorative justice is regarded in modern criminal justice systems as one approach to address inadequacies in the conventional justice model. New Zealand has become a leader in implementing legislatively mandated restorative procedures. This reputation is due in part to a handful of supportive statutes: the Sentencing Act 2002, the Victims’ Rights Act 2002, the Parole Act 2002, the Corrections Act 2004 and subsequent amendments to those acts. In this article, I evaluate the practices bolstered by these acts and how effectively they operate, accounting for how legislative design may contribute to achievements and shortcomings in New Zealand's restorative justice programmes. I supplement the results by comparing New Zealand's efforts to those in Vermont, a U.S. state similarly well-regarded for its restorative policies. The evaluation of each jurisdiction's restorative justice programme is based on metrics for restorative success from Bazemore and Schiff (2005. Juvenile justice reform and restorative justice: building theory and policy from practice. Cullompton: Willan Publishing). I employ qualitative and quantitative data, surveying existing evaluations of restorative justice in New Zealand and Vermont, collecting longitudinal statistics, and conducting interviews with restorative justice practitioners. Overall, this analysis reveals that the design of restorative justice programmes requires negotiation; it is difficult to balance the dimensions of effective restorative justice with the needs of modern justice systems.     

大学英语课程设置改革途径之一——增设特殊用途英语

本文旨在通过对我国大学英语教学现状和当今社会对高校人才培养需求现状的分析，提出大学英语课程设置改革的途径之一是增设特殊用途英语课程。特殊英语课程建设在于提高教师个人教学能力和某一特定专业基础理论和专业知识的素养，建立四有教学团队，制定四维的教学目标和展开突出四性的教材建设。     

Bargaining for Success: Examining the Relationship Between Teacher Unions and Student Achievement

While many previous studies have identified a positive relationship between teachers unions and student achievement on standardized tests, little research to date has explored the channels through which unions might actually affect achievement. Utilizing multilevel random intercept models, we examine the effects of two categories of items commonly negotiated in teacher contracts—“industrial union” items and “professional union” items—on individual student math scores. Further, we assess the ability of these two clusters of variables to explain the positive union effect found in previous research. The results confirm that teachers unions are positively associated with student achievement and suggest that the industrial model explains moderately more of the union effect than the professional model; however, only the combination of both models is capable of reducing the union effect to nonsignificance. These findings are also confirmed in a supplemental analysis utilizing instrumental variables to account for the possibility of endogeneity. Finally, a decomposition of the union effect suggests that teachers unions are most beneficial to middle‐ and high‐achieving students. We conclude that through industrial and professional bargaining, teachers are able to secure higher salaries, credentialing, and greater autonomy which lead to improved student achievement.