Legislative responses to wrongful conviction: Do partisan principals and advocacy efforts influence state-level criminal justice policy?

The number of discovered wrongful criminal convictions (and resulting exonerations) has increased over the past decade. These cases erode public confidence in the criminal justice system and trust in the rule of law. Many states have adopted laws that aim to reduce system errors but no study has examined why some states appear more willing to provide due process protections against wrongful convictions than others. Findings from regression estimates suggest that states with a Republican controlled legislature or more Republican voters are less likely to pass these laws while the presence of advocacy organizations that are part of the ‘innocence movement’ make legislative change more likely. We thus identify important differences in the political and social context between U.S. states that influence the adoption of criminal justice policies.     

文学批评理论的双重话语--基于问题意识的再审

作为文学研究的当代知识范型,批评理论在对传统文论的超越中,逐步形成了自己阐释文学的基本思路。新时期以来的中国文论形态却往往从审美关系论域出发,以批评模式对它进行诠释和界说。由此,忽视了贯穿于其中的问题意识与文学研究理论构成之间的对应关联,淡化乃至消解了批评理论的双重性质。正视并阐明当代文学批评理论的话语构成和理论视域,对于当代中国文论更新观念形貌、介入本土文学具有重要的意义。     

Internal migration and citizenship in India

Immigrants and the process of incorporation can elucidate what it means to be a member of a national citizenry and sociopolitical community. However, relatively little scholarship has focused on the potential of internal migration to highlight citizenship outcomes. This article presents fieldwork from Mumbai and Kolkata to show that citizenship status, rights, and belonging are more restrictive for Indian citizens who are internal migrants than for those who are not. It argues that development factors alone are insufficient explanations for citizenship outcomes in India, and shows that internal migrants experience a lesser citizenship status and curtailed citizenship rights because they are migrants rather than because of their impoverishment or because of the limited capacity of the state.     

Positivism,ethics and politics in Africa

Despite the fact that the study of African politics is dominated by ethical postures, as can be seen with the self-proclaimed qualifications of African states and leaders, the debate on ethics per se is not common. The first challenge of this article is to address ethics as an entry point for African political studies. The second challenge is epistemological. It is related to my efforts to examine values and ideals as facts that should be considered seriously in political science. Therefore, positivism is not incompatible with values and ideals. They are part of the political universe. In this regard, African politics shows the symbolic triumph of democratic ethics. Current facts militate for the upholding of those values.     

Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism,mobility and space in a South African township1

The study of multilingual landscapes promises to introduce a new perspective into theories and policies of multilingualism, and to provide essential data for a politics of language. However, the theorization of space and language underlying the notion of linguistic landscape is not able to capture the manifold complexities of (transnational) multilingual mobility that is characteristic of many late‐modern multilingual societies. Basing our argument on signage data from a contemporary South Africa in a dynamic phase of social transformation, we argue that more refined notions of space coupled to a material ethnography of multilingualism could provide a theoretically more relevant and methodologically refocused notion of (multilingual) linguistic landscape. Specifically, we take an approach to landscapes as semiotic moments in the social circulation of discourses (in multiple languages), and view signs as re‐semiotized, socially invested distributions of multilingual resources, the material, symbolic and interactional artifacts of a sociolinguistics of mobility.     

On ‘flip‐flopping’: Branded stance‐taking in U.S. electoral politics1

This article examines stance in U.S. political discourse, taking as its empirical point of departure Democratic candidate John Kerry's epistemic stance‐taking in the televised 2004 presidential debates. Kerry's stance‐taking is shown to help display the characterological attribute of ‘conviction’ and serve as a rejoinder to critics who had branded him as a ‘flip‐flopper.’ His stance‐taking is thus not primarily ‘to’ or ‘for’ copresent interactants, but is largely interdiscursive in character. ‘Conviction’ and its opposite, ‘flip‐flopping,’ suggest further how stance‐taking itself has been an object of typification in the agonistic dynamics of candidate branding and counter‐branding. In moving from epistemic stance‐taking in discourse to models of the stance‐taker as a social type, this article addresses questions about the units and levels of analysis needed to study stance in contemporary political discourse.     

论教育含量对政治参与的制约

教育含量对政治参与的制约是一个世界性的问题。没有全民教育含量的增升和整体素质的提高 ,真正的大众参与和高效的民主管理只能沦为空谈。教育含量既影响政治参与的民主意识 ,又影响政治参与的实际效果 ;既影响政治参与的发展进程 ,又影响政治参与的价值目标。唯物史观逻辑地推演出教育含量与政治参与的统一性 ;当代世界民主国家的政治发展也确凿地印证了二者的相关性。在人类社会的未来发展中 ,充足的教育含量是人的全面发展的必要条件 ;广泛的政治参与是人的彻底解放的必由之路     

宋代文化政策宽明原因新探

宋代文化政策之宽明,作为一种历史现象,是由多种历史条件交合作用而形成的。首先是宋以前中国多元文化格局及宽明文化政策历史传承的结果;其次是宋代抑武重文集权措施之偏倚所造成;另外,“皇帝与士大夫共治天下”的政治格局,使士大夫思想自由、精神独立,对皇权进行约束,是宽明文化政策之保障。     

试论个体政治社会化

个体政治社会化的进程直接影响整个社会政治社会化的发展.个体政治社会化是通过家庭、学校和社会环境的影响等途径实现的.个体政治社会化是随年龄的增长、受教育的增加、社会阅历的丰富而逐渐完成的.     

中国农村基层民主建设的思考

民主政治体制改革是社会主义市场经济发展的必然要求。本文就农村基层民主建设的实际对村民自治的意义法制化、规范化作了比较深入的探讨