地方政府行为模式多样性的经济学分析

中国的市场化改革带来了经济领域的分权,导致各地方政府成为具有独立地位的利益主体,分别在特定的约束条件下追求自身的最大化利益。可以将地方政府界定为以地方党委主要领导为首的在地方事务中发挥核心作用的领导层,其在特定的约束条件下追求特定的利益目标。通过地方政府效能分配模型可以说明,不同地方政府由于面临约束条件的差别,产生了利益目标、追求目标方式等方面的差别,因而产生了多样化的地方政府行为模式。     

现代林业制度论纲

我国传统林业制度诞生于计划经济时期,随着经济社会发展,其赖以存在的客观基础已经发生了重大变化。现代林业是市场经济条件下的法治林业,制度创新是实现传统林业向现代林业转变的前提和保障。构建具有我国特色、体系完善的现代林业制度,首要的问题是坚持正确的指导原则并形成合理的制度结构。     

Bottom Up and Top Down? Community Development in Post‐Soviet Armenia: The Social Fund Model

The main objective of this article is to discuss the effectiveness of bottom‐up, community‐driven approaches in promoting community participation and building local capacity within the post‐Soviet social, institutional and political context of Armenia. In exploring this issue, the article examines the nature of local participation and social relations in rural communities in Armenia and the impact of the World Bank‐supported Armenia Social Investment Fund (ASIF) project on the existing forms of local social organization. One of the objectives of the ASIF project was to promote the participation of local communities in their own economic and social development. The research finds that the project did not change the existing patterns of local social organization and had no significant impact on the nature of participation in the beneficiary communities. Bottom‐up, capacity‐building interventions that mainly focus on changing patterns of interpersonal social relations may not be effective in fostering sustainable civic institutions without changes in the nature of a country's governance.     

中国平滑式转型启动的经济学原理--20世纪80年代城镇民营经济重新崛起的契机

中国平滑式体制转型是从所有制结构调整启动的,然而非公有制经济在原计划经济体制时期是受排斥的,那么改革初期为什么会在所有制结构的发展方向上出现180°大转弯呢?详细考察历史,我们可以发现所有制结构调整改革是在当时的就业压力下发生的,1978-1979年,由于知青集中返城使本来已经相当严峻的就业形势压力更大。为了解决失业问题,政府提出“三结合”的就业方针,这一适应性的政策调整行为启动了所有制结构改革,从而使城镇民营经济得以应运而生,所有制结构这个传统计划体制的核心和最难触动领域的改革取得了突破。这一实例反映出平滑式体制转型启动的经济学原理:改革突破口选择的最大压力原则,沿阻力最小化路线推进的边际改革原则和让生产者即期获益的速效原则。     

The limitations of using school league tables to inform school choice

Summary. In England, so-called 'league tables' based on examination results and test scores are published annually, ostensibly to inform parental choice of secondary schools. A crucial limitation of these tables is that the most recent published information is based on the current performance of a cohort of pupils who entered secondary schools several years earlier, whereas for choosing a school it is the future performance of the current cohort that is of interest. We show that there is substantial uncertainty in predicting such future performance and that incorporating this uncertainty leads to a situation where only a handful of schools' future performances can be separated from both the overall mean and from one another with an acceptable degree of precision. This suggests that school league tables, including value-added tables, have very little to offer as guides to school choice.     

Accepting and Negotiating Service Users' Choices in Mental Health Transition Meetings

Across Western welfare regimes, policies emphasize that service users should have more choices regarding their services. This article examines how service choices are presented, responded to and decided in interactions between service users and professionals in mental health transition meetings. Choice is often associated with consumerist user involvement ideas, but in mental health choice also relates to the democratic user involvement approach and to shared decision making between professionals and service users. The results of the study show that professionals construct service users as consumers by offering service options in choice making sequences, expecting users to make appropriate choices. Service users mostly act like consumers by responding to these choice options. However, the study also demonstrates that the professionals do not always accept the user's first choice but respond to them as non‐preferred. Sometimes, they also suggest choices on behalf of the users. In these ‘non‐accepting’ sequences, choices are negotiated in interaction between the parties, rather than users acting as autonomous choice makers. The sequences are based on two kinds of professional reasoning: first, the professional‐led needs assessment and, second, the structure of the service package that the user is being offered. This negotiation has elements of shared decision making and the ‘logic of care’. But it also has elements of paternalist control which challenge both consumerist and democratic service user involvement and suggests consideration of more collectively oriented service user actions.     

The Decoupling of Social Policy Reforms in Romania

Social reforms in Romania have been, from the beginning of the 1990s and throughout the EU post‐accession phase, the battlefield for many domestic and international actors. The article identifies, from an historical institutionalist perspective, the international actors who decisively influenced reforms of social protection in Romania during the transition, with a special emphasis on the EU pre‐ and post‐accession stages. Further, the article attempts to understand the impact of the various external influences on the sustainability and effectiveness of domestic reforms, by assessing the convergence, or the decoupling, between the rationales – i.e. ideologies and values – that explicitly grounded social reforms in Romania and the domestic public rhetoric on social risks and values. Answers to these questions can provide important insights in regard to both the impact of the EU upon new member states and the challenges of EU enlargement for the EU and its core member states.     

Research Subject Advocate: A New Protector of Research Participants

In 2001, the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) directed the 78 General Clinical Research Centers (GCRC) to develop a Research Subject Advocate (RSA) position. The RSA would report directly to the Principal Investigator (PI) of each GCRC and assure compliance of studies conducted on the GCRC with federal regulations and policies. Seven RSAs agreed to be interviewed about their new role. Website documents, electronic correspondence, and presentations at the first annual national meeting of RSAs were scrutinized using discursive analysis to shed light on this new organizational form and its potential for increased protection of human research participants. The RSA role actualizes the ethical principles of respect for persons, justice, and beneficence that are the foundation of the protection of research participants. The results also reveal the regulatory, institutional, collegial, and personal resources and barriers that assist the RSA in the successful implementation of the RSA role. In addition, issues important to the RSAs are described.     

Disaster and Development Paradigms: Too Close for Comfort?

The familiar distinctions between the disaster and development paradigms have become increasingly blurred. Yet, conceptual and policy dilemmas continue to pose challenges for the integration of the two paradigms into a single framework. Drawing on the literature and Ethiopia's Institutional Support Project, this article argues that the increased convergence of the two constructs may be too close for comfort, thus rendering the assertion that disaster‐risk reduction can help achieve sustainable development and vice versa mere rhetoric. Unless there is a shift from focusing on the hazard event to also recognising that disasters are not politically neutral, there is a danger of being locked into the hazard paradigm, despite the different labels, titles or metaphors that may be assigned to it.     

FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE: AUSTRO-MARXISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES

The political theory and practice of Austro-Marxism provided an understanding of culture as an area of political conflict and as a class-based way of life. As a cultural and educational movement, Austro-Marxism defined the framework for transdisciplinary extramural cultural studies. An Austro-Marxist cluster defined by a number of scholars associated by political orientation and an alternative form of academic institutionalization emerged in interwar Vienna. This cluster disagreed with the paternalistic claim of leading representatives of the SDAP. Nevertheless, the SDAP defined the pluralistic framework for the formation of Austrian cultural studies. Socialist-oriented scholars such as Otto Neurath, Edgar Zilsel, Paul Lazarsfeld and Marie Jahoda developed a materialistic idea of culture focused on the social conditions of cultural practices. Furthermore, they provided a profound understanding of mass culture and popular culture.