Tibetan Range Wars: Spatial Politics and Authority on the Grasslands of Amdo

This article focuses on one of the most disturbing features of life on the Tibetan grasslands today: intractable, violent conflicts over pasture. The author argues that understanding spatial and historical dimensions of the process through which Amdo was incorporated into the People's Republic of China (PRC) helps us make sense of these conflicts. State territoriality attempts to replace older socio–territorial identities with new administrative units. However, histories remain inscribed in the landscape and lead to unintended consequences in the implementation of new grassland policies. The author draws on Raymond Williams’ insight into residual formations to theorize the relationship between range conflicts and secular state officials’ lack of authority. At the same time, dispute resolution by religious figures challenges both triumphalist readings of state domination and romantic notions of Tibetan resistance.     

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

Public authority does not always fall within the exclusive realm of government institutions; in some contexts, institutional competition is intense and a range of ostensibly a‐political situations become actively politicized. Africa has no shortage of institutions which attempt to exercise public authority: not only are multiple layers and branches of government institutions present and active to various degrees, but so‐called traditional institutions bolstered by government recognition also vie for public authority, and new emerging institutions and organizations also enter the field. The practices of these institutions make concepts such as public authority, legitimacy, belonging, citizenship and territory highly relevant. This article proposes an analytical strategy for the understanding of public authority in such contexts. It draws on research from anthropologists, geographers, political scientists and social scientists working on Africa, in an attempt to explore a set of questions related to a variety of political practices and their institutional ramifications.     

威尼斯城市共和国的公共空间与贵族政治

文艺复兴时期,威尼斯以其社会的繁荣稳定在欧洲享有盛誉。它独特的地理环境,以及发展成熟、高度集中的城市公共空间是其贵族政府实施社会管理的良好舞台。本文从威尼斯城市公共空间的形成历史和现状入手,以广场、街道以及剧院为具体事例,分析贵族政府管理城市公共空间的方式,指出在文艺复兴时期,威尼斯公共空间的主要作用为:1.培养民众的城市认同感;2.宣传贵族政治思想,树立和维护共和国独立、稳定、和谐的形象;3.抑制私人势力膨胀,缓解社会危机。这些手段成功地使威尼斯的城市社会生活不断公共化,城市的公共空间的发展凌驾于私人空间之上。     

Paying Attention to Politics: Public Responsiveness and Welfare Policy Change

In order for the democratic process to work properly, it is vital that the public pays attention to politics and signals its opinions and preferences back to its representatives; if this is not the case, representatives have less incentive to represent. This article deals with the question of whether and how the public responds to welfare policy change. The thermostatic model departs from the assumption that the public responds to policy change with negative feedback, in relation to its preferred level of policy. The empirical analysis tests this model on public responses following the implementation of a consumer's choice model in Swedish primary health care. Did the reform trigger a thermostatic response from the public, and how should this be interpreted? A contribution in relation to previous research is the inclusion of ideological orientation and proximity, variables which, I argue, condition the nature and direction of public responsiveness. The study was designed as a natural experiment in which preferences of privatization of health care were measured before and after the health care reform of 2009/2010. The results provide partial support for the thermostatic model: preferences for further privatization decrease after the reform, but primarily within one subgroup. Additionally, public responses are demonstrated to vary according to ideological orientation, where the right‐oriented react thermostatically and the left‐oriented do not. The article contributes to a further understanding of the relation between policymaking and public opinion and to the expansion of thermostatic theory.     

The Dynamics of Incrementalism: Subsystems, Politics, and Public Lands

A host of research has been produced in the decade since Baumgartner and Jones' theory of punctuated equilibrium first drew attention to the dynamics of policy change over time. Much of this research follows a topic across time, highlighting the shift from negative to positive feedback as challengers push an issue from subsystem to institutional level. Far less attention has been paid to the periods between major punctuations, neglecting key questions about whether incremental periods reflect an absence of challengers or the successful defense of established subsystem interests.
This research is a comparison of policy change across two segments of environmental policy. The breakup of the timber subsystem was a clear victory for environmentalists, yet these same actors have been largely unsuccessful at dislodging established grazing interests. These findings highlight the strategic value of venue shifting for bypassing entrenched interests and illustrate the potential for successful challenges to occur in judicial venues.     

Public School Search Policies and the "Politics of Sin"

In recent years, high school students have been subjected to greater levels of drug searching and surveillance on school grounds. The effect of such searching is potentially wide-ranging, because public schools "play an important role in socializing students according to the norms and mores of society" ( Vergari, 2000 ). Using the "morality politics" framework, this study reports and analyzes the presence of random, suspicionless drug searches in the Nebraska public schools. Whereas most studies of morality policy have focused on the state as the unit of analysis, we consider the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of principals in regards to drug policies in schools. Our findings, based on a survey of 181 high school principals, reflect several features of morality policy. There has been a significant rise in the number of random drug searches, despite the principals' observation that these measures neither lessen drug use nor catch perpetrators. The most important predictors of drug policy are pressure from local sources, perception of the problem within the community (but not the schools), and the racial composition of schools. Principals articulate limited concern for student rights, and students largely accept searches without resistance. In the discussion, we consider these findings in light of recent court rulings and introduce the potential ramifications of waging the drug war in our nation's classrooms and hallways.     

Private Politics,Public Strategies: White Advisers and their Aboriginal Subjects

This paper investigates the working relationships that have emerged between Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal people involved in the governmental project of ‘Aboriginal self‐determination’. I argue that these partnerships developed into significant sites of administrative and cultural mediation, both delineating and channelling the aspirations of Aboriginal people and government. As such, they facilitated the formation of various strategic forms of Aboriginal cultural and political subjectivity and thus helped operationalise the policies of Aboriginal self‐determination.