Organizations far beyond traditional academic institutions have become prolific science producers, with many now providing evidence-based advice for national governments and policy-makers. Neo-institutional sociology explains organizations' growing investment in research activities and research-based policy advice by the all-embracing scientization and the expansion of the educated population, phenomena observable throughout the world. There is, however, considerably less knowledge about how the organizations' increased knowledge production and the supply of science-based policy advice are reflected in national policy-making, including the legislative work of parliaments, and to what extent distinct organizations are deemed authoritative in different countries. In this paper, we examine how different organizations are used as scientific authorities in parliamentary debates over new legislation. Drawing on analyses of 576 parliamentary debates from Australia, Finland, Kenya, and the United Kingdom, we study what organizations are acknowledged as scientific authorities and the relative weight of different organization types in the context of political debates over new legislation. The results reveal that while organizations in general are frequently evoked as scientific authorities in all four countries, there is remarkable variation in the types of organizations considered authoritative in different national contexts. We elaborate these findings by analysing ways in which politicians evaluate organizations as sources of scientific authority. While the same set of evaluative schemas are used in all four countries, each is typically applied to certain types of organization. The results suggest that both the supply of scientific policy advice and political culture shape legislators' rhetorical practices when drawing on organizations' scientific authority. 相似文献
ABSTRACT: Chronic unemployment and slow employment growth in some countries have led to calls for more labor-market “flexibility”. This paper defines the flexibility issue in terms of legally-mandated “severance”, a generalized employment cost linked to seniority. A mandated severance benefit can stand for a variety of programs including employer-provided employment guarantees, payments which must be made to laid-off workers, and compensation for wrongful discharge. Such a mandated cost can be seen as a payroll tax on the employer, raising the issue of tax incidence. Employers often take the view that labor costs are given and that mandated costs are simply add-ons to pre-existing cost levels. However, the literature on tax incidence suggests that a significant portion of “employer-paid” payroll taxes are shifted to labor in the form of lower wages. Such shifting should reduce the dis-employment effects attributed to severance. A model is provided of a firm upon which a severance mandate is imposed. Even at the micro level, the firm can shift some of the cost of severance to employees by lowering wages — although at the expense of higher turnover costs associated with increased quit rates. At the macro level, to the extent that firms reduce employment, there could be still further downward wage adjustments which would shift the severance burden to labor and mitigate the dis-employment effect. Ultimately, if the natural rate of unemployment is raised by severance mandates, the age-old question is raised of why wages do not fall in the face of labor surpluses. The true inflexibility to be explained, therefore, is in wage determination. 相似文献
For 14 days three times per day (6072 observations), adolescents (N = 207, Mage = 15.45 years) reported their digital (i.e., video chatting, texting, social media, and phone calling) communication with peers and their social connectedness. Controlling for in-person interactions, adolescents felt more connected in hours when they had communicated with peers by video chatting, texting, or social media, but not phone calling. Girls communicated with peers via text and social media more than boys, and boys talked on the phone more than girls. Boys who talked, texted, or video chatted more on average reported higher connectedness on average, whereas girls did not. As the links with connectedness were only found at the hourly- and not the daily level, results highlight that a sense of connectedness from digital media may be fleeting in nature. 相似文献
Urbanization usually reduces bat richness; however, the presence of green areas within cities and peripheral rural areas in arid ecosystems may provide microhabitats for some species. Light pollution is a major feature of urbanization, but its impact on bat behavior appears to be species-specific and previous studies have documented contrasting responses. Moreover, the effect of urbanization on bat species has been poorly studied in arid regions. We assessed the effect of artificial night light intensity (as a proxy of urbanization) on both bat occupancy and the acoustic space used (ASU) in an urbanization gradient in Peruvian central coast, based on passive acoustic recorders. We collected 26,169 recordings from 19 sites which resulted in 579 independent detections of 15 bat species. Variation in both ASU and species richness was best explained by artificial night light intensity. Species-specific effects of the artificial night light intensity based on a multi-species occupancy modeling showed that this covariate had a negative effect on occupancy for most of the bat species (12 species). ASU and both observed and posterior bat species richness were positively correlated, suggesting that ASU can be used as a proxy of bat richness. This study provides evidence that both bat richness and occupancy decrease with artificial light intensity; nevertheless, eight species used urban areas, similar to results found in other cities around the world.