Transformer in navigation: Diverse government roles for open innovation in China's high-speed rail

Based on a longitudinal case study of China's high-speed rail embedded in the emerging economy context, we focus on what role the government plays and how that matters to open innovation (OI) for competitive advantage. By linking the OI literature with the national political institutions literature to motivate our research question, we propose a statist-based OI view to differentiate diverse government roles, investigating how government adopts roles in a combined way to push OI in stages. Our findings suggest that government is an important strategic decision-maker for OI. Specifically, the government plays various roles as commander, protector, cultivator, and intermediator, reflecting state activism derived from national political institutions, to construct institutional-level OI for domestic OI activities, and inbound and outbound OI across national borders. We find government can deliberately and strategically use its diverse roles in a combined way to push OI for competitive advantage through the industrial evolutionary process over time. Our study contributes to the OI literature and integrates the strategic management literature with the study of OI to provide new insights to explain the origins of competitive advantage from the state perspective.     

从主权国家的兴衰看权力博弈形态的转型

传统的国际关系理论,无论是现实主义、自由主义、建构主义还是科学行为主义理论,都是把主权国家抽象成一个统一的国际关系行为体。这一行为主体有一致的利益,也自然要有一致的对外政策目标和手段。在20世纪,尤其是在两次世界大战和冷战期间,这一概念抽象是非常准确的。但冷战结束以后,尤其是进入21世纪以后,这一概念抽象逐渐与国际关系的现实相违背。一方面,国家综合实力并不能直接转化为具体领域的竞争优势;另一方面,很多国家,包括超级大国在内,其对外政策的主要阻力可能不是所谓的竞争对手,而是其国内不同的利益集团。这导致传统的国际关系理论,从假设到概念和推理层面,都已经无法解释和预测今天的世界,而权力小博弈理论可以为认识多元复杂互动博弈时代的国际关系提供一个新的解释框架。     

People with disability and new disaster communications: access and the social media mash-up

This article explores how a lack of access to increasingly complex and overlapping digital communications platforms in times of disaster for people with disabilities has the potential to make already life-threatening situations considerably more dangerous. As we are increasingly coming to rely on a social media mash-up of digital platforms to assist in communications during disaster situations, the issue of accessibility for people with disabilities is as dire as if it was high ground during a tsunami or transport during a typhoon. The contemporary social media environment is characterised by a complex and overlapping network of complementary platforms, populated by user-generated content, where people communicate and exchange ideas. In this environment, YouTube videos are posted to Facebook and embedded in blogs, and Twitter is used to link to these other sites and is itself embedded in other platforms. These networks are increasingly supplementing and supplanting more traditional communication platforms, such as the television and radio, particularly in times of disaster. The concern of this paper is that the elements from which this mash-up of communications channels is made are not always accessible to people with disabilities. This evolving network of social media-based communication exposes the limits of existing Internet-based universal design.     

"指标困局":农村贫困治理的实践与反思

在国家的扶贫实践中，地方政府的行为策略是影响扶贫绩效的关键变量。通过对精准扶贫政策实践的调研发现，中央政府不断升级的治理手段为重构央地关系创造了条件，地方政府对国家扶贫理念转型认知的偏差以及在形成路径依赖之后的策略行为不仅容易产生对总体局势的误判，还为后期的政策困局埋下了伏笔。在此背景下，地方扶贫工作遭遇“指标困局”，即地方政府很难实事求是去识别贫困户，只能在既有的指标约束下进行精准识别，扶贫工作陷入了反复识别，却仍难实现精准的怪圈。     

Toward a gender politics of aging

The article proposes a Gender Politics of Aging approach to the study of aging societies. The approach recognizes the feminization of old age, ageism’s roots in sexist discourse, and the need to recognize the role of politics in driving demographic debates. Drawing together arguments from feminist gerontology and political demography, the article argues that the intersection of politics and gender must be considered if appropriate responses to an older, feminized demography are to be produced. I conclude that the work of aging feminists provides a rich vein of research and praxis from which a gender politics of aging approach can draw.     

康区"三魔女",还是"康区三度母"——近代康区妇女精英研究

二十世纪上半叶康区三位著名妇女精英甘孜的孔萨?央金堪珠、德格的夏克? 泽旺志玛和瞻对的甲日?其美志玛在康区政治生活中扮演了重要的角色。她们之所以获得权力，是因为康区的传统习惯法以及清末和民国时期的法律都允许妇女在一个家族没有男性继承人的情况下继承名号和土司或头人的地位。为了获得和巩固政治地位，她们往往陷入多方势力的权力争斗中，这些势力包括其家族中的男性、来自其它家族的男性、地方军阀、中央政府，有时还有西藏地方政府。研究揭示了正是康区在夹缝中生存的各土司统治区域割裂、分权的性质为地方首领，特别是妇女领袖提供了较多的施展其政治才能的空间。     

先秦的“法治”思想和实践考量

先秦法家在与儒家“礼治”的争论中提出“法治”思想,并与战国时期富国强兵的国家策略结合,变法图存的“法治”实践此起彼伏。其中最为成功的是秦国的商鞅变法,秦国由此迅速崛起并最终吞并六国,建立起统一的封建国家。秦帝国的建立是“法治”思想和实践的里程碑,大秦将集权专制和“法治”相互糅合,将法家重刑思想发展到极端,走向了崇尚暴力和滥刑滥杀的野蛮恐怖境地,导致天下怨叛,秦王朝二世而亡,君权至上最终将法治引向了集权专制的死胡同。     

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.     

政治关联如何影响社会组织有效性？——组织自主性的中介作用和制度支持的调节作用

社会组织领域的政治关联现象日益显著，但政治关联究竟如何影响社会组织有效性，其隐藏的作用机制又是什么？这是学术界尚未明晰的重要课题。针对254家社会组织的问卷调查发现，社会组织政治关联会正向影响组织有效性，这一关系受到组织自主性的中介作用影响。更进一步的研究显示，制度支持能调节上述中介关系。具体而言，当制度支持水平较高时，这一效应将会增强；当制度支持水平较低时，政治关联通过组织自主性间接影响组织有效性的效应就会减弱。这一发现，一方面增进了我们对社会组织政治关联的理解，另一方面也为提升社会组织有效性的理论和实践提供了重要启示。     

“Who generates this city”? Socialist strategy in contemporary London

This essay, based on a “militant ethnography” of the attempts of the small radical grassroots activist group, Our London (a pseudonym), to mobilize a collective oppositional politics through activities around an election campaign, engages critically with E. Laclau and C. Mouffe's arguments on discourse and collectivity in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985). I argue, on the basis of my findings, that while their model does provide insights that help describe the process of building collectivity from among disparate perspectives and identities, we need to go beyond a focus on discourse alone and consider the ways politics is shaped by material contexts. This is necessary if we are to understand the continued appeal of class politics as well as the difficulties in mobilizing collectivity in highly unequal and fragmented cities. From an activist perspective, the essay also highlights how developing a conception of collective interests and a critique of overarching systems of exploitation can be important in building political unity.