Probabilistic population projections for countries with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) issued probabilistic population projections for all countries up to 2100, by simulating future levels of total fertility and life expectancy and combining the results using a standard cohort component projection method. For the 40 countries with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics, the mortality projections used the Spectrum/Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) model, a complex, multistate model designed for short-term projections of policy-relevant quantities for the epidemic. We propose a simpler approach that is more compatible with existing UN projection methods for other countries. Changes in life expectancy are projected probabilistically using a simple time series regression and then converted to age- and sex-specific mortality rates using model life tables designed for countries with HIV/AIDS epidemics. These are then input to the cohort component method, as for other countries. The method performed well in an out-of-sample cross-validation experiment. It gives similar short-run projections to Spectrum/EPP, while being simpler and avoiding multistate modelling.     

治理能力与社会机会——基于世界治理指标的实证研究

社会机会能够提高人类的发展水平,促进社会成员个人发展质量的提高.社会成员对社会机会的广泛共享是经济社会协调发展的基本取向,也是政府治理行为追求的重要目标之一.通过对各国政府治理能力和社会机会水平之间关系的实证研究发现,治理能力的提升有助于社会机会的扩大,能够促进全社会成员共享经济和社会发展的成果.     

Origins of the epithet ‘government by public relations’: Revisiting Bruce Catton's War Lords of Washington, 1948

While it might make public relations professionals and faculty cringe, the term ‘government by public relations’ is a negative one, implying that governmental decision-making is guided by appearances rather than on the merits. This tag line is a relatively common American put-down of politicians and senior civil servants. This article examines the origins of the term, locating its usage in the WWII memoirs of Bruce Catton, then a government public information officer and later a renowned popular historian of the American Civil War. Catton's use of the term, his 1948 book War Lords of Washington, and his philosophy of government public information are examined in more detail to give context to the phrase ‘government by public relations.’     

Religion,Religiosity, and the Attitudes Toward Homosexuality—A Multilevel Analysis of 79 Countries

Although attitudes toward homosexuality have become more liberal, particularly in industrialized Western countries, there is still a great deal of variance in terms of worldwide levels of homonegativity. Using data from the two most recent waves of the World Values Survey (1999–2004, 2005–2009), this article seeks to explain this variance by means of a multilevel analysis of 79 countries. We include characteristics on the individual level, as age or gender, as well as aggregate variables linked to specificities of the nation-states. In particular, we focus on the religious denomination of a person and her religiosity to explain her attitude toward homosexuality. We find clear differences in levels of homonegativity among the followers of the individual religions.     

Review essay: on Mamdani’s mode of thought

This essay tracks the formation of a global intellectual, perhaps the only one, whose work moves across Africa, America and Asia. Mahmood Mamdani has been a central figure engaging in explaining the most controversial issues such as refugees, popular versus state nationalism, mass killings (Rowanda), settler versus native, colonial citizenship and its governed subject, September 11, the Dafur movement (and its self-indulgence), Imperial Human Rights, decolonizing university and knowledge production (the US as the first and never decololinzed), settler colonialism, etc. Fearless and thoroughly grounded, Mamdani’s mode of thought is to historicize the conditions of the existence of the problematics in question with a theorization emerging out of the analyses. As a whole, Mamdani’s political practices as educator and public intellectual and the body of brilliant work have been inspirational. The essay is written as an introduction to Decolonizing the World: A Mahmood Mamdani Reader, a collection of his selected work, to open the channel of interaction between Asia and Africa.     

“I bled like you,brother, although I was a thousand miles away”: postwar Yiddish sources on the experiences of Polish Jews in Soviet exile during World War II

ABSTRACT

An estimated 230,000 Polish Jews escaped Nazi persecution during World War II by flight or deportation to the interior of the Soviet Union. This article examines early postwar Yiddish and Polish sources on their survival in Soviet exile such as poems, newspaper articles, and witness testimonies. Two sets of sources are analyzed in-depth, testimonies written by young people in Jewish Displaced Persons (DP) camps in occupied Germany and Yiddish poetry from Poland and the DP camps. The author argues that many former exiles were eager to write down their experiences. In doing so, they were aware of the complex nature of deportation and flight that characterized the experiences of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union. In their testimonies many young witnesses express their understanding that they too were “marked by the khurbn.” Whereas Yiddish poetry from the same period helps us understand how writers dealt with their own story of wartime survival outside the realm of German persecution. In their poetry they seek meaning in their own suffering and express their desire to establish a dialogue with other survivors.     

“Empowerment” as efficiency and participation: gender in responsible agricultural investment principles

Amidst global concern over the state of transnational large-scale agricultural investments, several efforts have been made to set global standards for “responsible agricultural investment.” While these efforts have received mixed reviews from the international community, very little attention has been paid to the gendered language of these principles. Through examining two separate sets of agricultural investment principles – one created by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Bank, and the other by the United Nations Committee on World Food Security – this article finds that, despite different processes and participants in the creation of these principles, they nonetheless share a language of “empowerment” targeted at women and marginalized groups. However, in contrast to early feminist discourses of empowerment, these principles instead perpetuate the notion that empowerment is to be found through efficiency, productivity and participation in land and labor markets. This article takes a critical look at this language of economic empowerment in each set of principles, and points to the dangers of equating efficiency, productivity and participation with feminist empowerment. By not acknowledging the broader gender dynamics of agricultural governance and markets, these discourses risk deepening existing inequalities rather than moving toward meaningful social change.     

伊盟、伊合与中国中东人文外交

伊斯兰世界联盟与伊斯兰合作组织是泛伊斯兰主义制度化的产物,伊盟主要通过朝觐平台间接对伊斯兰国家政治施与影响,伊合则通过推进议题的方式直接对伊斯兰国家政治产生影响;我国历来重视发展与这些泛伊斯兰国际组织的友好关系,并取得了宝贵历史经验与良好的成效;在明确我国与泛伊斯兰国际组织开展人文交流与合作的资源优势、基本目标及其实现途径的基础上,探索我国对中东国家开展“全方位、多层次、宽领域”人文外交的应对之策,旨在进一步提升我国对中东伊斯兰国家的人文外交能力.     

美国应对中东剧变的“奥巴马主义”探析

美国应对中东剧变的政策措施彰显"奥巴马主义",即军事上谨慎用兵,避免直接地面占领或卷入一场针对伊斯兰国家的新战争,而是通过武装反对派推行"阿拉伯人打阿拉伯人",减少人道主义干预的成本;政治上运用所谓美国的"巧实力",让欧洲大国和阿拉伯盟友提出议程设置,充当"急先锋",美国在背后"掌舵",以最廉价的方式延续美国在中东的领导地位;外交上通过议题设置,让联合国人权委员会等国际组织和非政府组织服务于美国政府;经济上运用援助和制裁两手政策来实现政治目标;文化上利用媒体、非政府组织和网络,开展民间外交和网络外交。奥巴马政府试图综合运用军事、政治、外交、经济和文化手段,推动中东反美国家的政权更迭,维护亲美国家的政局稳定。研究表明,无论是主张依靠硬实力的"布什主义",还是主张依靠巧实力的"奥巴马主义",其在中东维持美国领导地位的战略目标,却是一致的。     

Jewish power and powerlessness: Prague Zionists and the Paris Peace Conference

This article explores how perceptions of Jewish power shaped the negotiations between Czechoslovak leaders and Jewish minority representatives at the time of the Paris Peace Conference. In the aftermath of the First World War, Prague-based Zionists embarked on a mission to convince Czechoslovak elites that attacks on Jews were detrimental to the internal stability of the new state and to Czechoslovak interests abroad. As Edvard Bene?, the head of the Czechoslovak delegation in Paris, worked to cultivate an image of the new state as more “Western” and “civilised” than other successor states – a strategy meant to garner international support for Czechoslovak territorial demands and its projected absorption of large minority populations – Jewish activists encouraged his uncertainty with regard to Jews' influence on Western audiences and statesmen. They did so in order to convince him to accept their demands for special protection clauses for the new country's Jews. The paper thus shows that the unprecedented victimisation of Jews and the upsurge in antisemitism during and after the war coexisted with a new bold and public Jewish activism. Yet, Jewish leaders did not in the end have the ability to convince Bene? and his colleagues to give in to international Jewish demands for special protection. Instead, they sought to cultivate a strategic alliance between the state's Czech elite and the Jewish minority which centred on the claim that Czechoslovakia was a particularly welcoming and tolerant place for Jews, an image that would evolve into a significant component of the myth of Czechoslovakia as an island of democracy in Eastern Europe.