Spatial Planning in the Baltic States: Impacts of European Policies

Baltic societies have been transformed rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s, whereas planning institutions and organizational cultures in the Baltic States have only changed rather incrementally despite various national and European pressures for reform. As a consequence, the extent of Europeanization of spatial planning has been limited in the Baltic region, and the effects of cohesion and structural policy measures have been quite modest. This paper focuses on these changes in spatial planning in the Baltic States and is divided into three main parts. The paper begins by describing the historical and cultural context of spatial development in the Baltic States. Second, it discusses processes of Europeanization of spatial planning in the specific context of the Baltic States, and third, it considers whether these processes may be leading to policy convergence in the region.     

Cleaning Up After Globalization: An Ergonomic Analysis of Work Activity of Hotel Cleaners

Hotels and hotel chains are responding to globalization and increased competition through new marketing initiatives, employment practices, and restructuring decisions that are intensifying the work of cleaners. In this paper, we report on how such work intensification at two hotels in Montréal, Canada, is changing the nature of cleaners’ jobs. Specifically, we found that the numbers of operations to be completed, the numbers and weights of items to be cleaned, and the effort involved have all increased. “Flexible” employment relationships and outsourcing have also worsened cleaners’ workloads. In response to our research, the labour union representing cleaners has negotiated a lower number of room assignments per cleaner, as well as an improved way of taking into account the variability of work when determining the quota of rooms to be cleaned. Despite this, new marketing strategies continue to intensify work. We conclude that standards and regulation on a governmental level are a necessary complement to union actions.     

Stem Cell Policies in the United States and in Germany

The article compares policymaking in the field of human embryonic stem cell research in the United States and in Germany. Although experimental research with human stem cells is controversial in both countries, restrictions on research are much more strict in Germany than in the United States. In order to explain the contrast between the United States and Germany in dealing with human embryonic stem cell research and to predict possible future developments, we need to look carefully at a number of important differences in the interpretations and discourses of embryonic stem cell research and their consequences for the strategies of institutions and actors in the political-regulatory realm.     

宋代的孤幼檢校政策及其執行——兼論南宋的“女合得男之半”

孤幼不僅存在撫育的問題,還有財產遭侵奪的危機。漢唐政府沒有把照顧孤幼視爲政府的責任,直到宋代,纔有專門針對孤幼生活與財產的制度設計。孤幼檢校法有保障孤幼生活,與保全其財產的作用。兒女分產法是專爲分配孤幼家產而立的新法。前者只要有宗親族人願意撫育孤幼,國家就不强制執行該法。後者源自張詠的判例,是由男子承分中撥出部分作爲孤幼的生活費,而調整男、女的財產比例,遂出現"女合得男之半"的特別法。但《名公書判清明集》所引兒女分產法極爲簡略,實際運用上有模糊空間,又可能與父系成員的利益發生衝突,所以該法只見於南宋,往後便不再行用。     

Electricity Transformed: Neoliberalism and Local Energy in the United States

Abstract: The concept of neoliberalism is explored with respect to the history of the electricity industry and policy in the USA. Rather than view “neoliberalism” as an all‐encompassing form of governmentality or a hegemonic regime, it is instead situated in a political field of competing ideologies, policies, practices, and agents that includes social liberalism, socialism, and cooperativism, with hegemonic and redistributive forms of both social liberalism and neoliberalism distinguished. The field approach enables a dynamic interpretation of the history of the electricity industry in the USA that tracks the relative role of government intervention in the economy, scale shifts in the level of government intervention, and the extent to which the policies favor elite accumulation or redistribution to less favored economic categories. The field approach also enables an analysis of local responses to market restructuring that suggest some examples of redistributive politics, even local socialism, that have emerged as a consequence of marketplace restructuring.     

Forks in the Road: Energy Policies in Canada and the US since the Shale Revolution

ABSTRACT

This article examines policy responses in Canada and the US to the shale revolution and changing North American oil and gas markets. We outline the effect of the shale revolution on North American oil and gas markets, and how the subsequent energy policy choices in each country changed the relationship between Canada and the US. In the US, increasing production, combined with the policy imperative of maintaining energy security, led to less support for Canadian supply and the subsequent on-off-on saga of the Keystone XL pipeline. In Canada, growing concern about the balance between the environment and the economy led to stalled pipeline development and reform of regulatory systems, problems exacerbated by the new policy direction in the US.     

工业化时期英国城市环境问题及其成因

工业化时期,英国城市环境问题主要表现为:极其恶劣的居住环境,不容忽视的大气污染,日益严峻的河流污染,这些对英国社会造成持久而深远的危害。城市环境问题的产生,除了受工业化时期的技术制约以外,还与当时人们对环境污染的漠视态度以及“自由放任”的工业化模式有关。英国在城市环境问题方面经历的教训,为后发展国家提供了前车之鉴。     

日本的产业技术扶持政策与实施手段 以太阳能产业为例

日本经济的核心是日本企业以持续技术革新为基础的国际竞争力。日本企业之所以能持续进行技术革新是与日本政府的政策引导和支持分不开的。本文指出日本政府在国家总体目标之下,利用自身的信息优势和资源优势,根据时代的变迁,制定不同的产业技术政策,通过政策引导,使企业能够明确技术革新的方向,并通过对市场的增进为新技术提供需求,从而促进新兴产业的发展。     

SMEs and Their Peripheral Innovation Environment: Reflections from a Finnish Case

As it has now been widely argued, innovation is ever more seldom the product of isolated firms but usually requires a combination of multiple technologies, skills and competences, part of which have to be acquired from outside the boundaries of the innovating firm. As the literature on regional systems of innovation and other territorial innovation models suggests, the region is the most appropriate spatial level for investigating and understanding the nature of firms’ external knowledge acquisition in their innovation processes, as well as for identifying the critical actors and factors contributing to them. Unlike the majority of studies focusing on the innovation activities of firms at the regional level, this paper focuses not on the actual importance of different location factors, but on the perceptions of small- and medium-sized firms entrepreneurs of the quality of different factors in their regional innovation environment. By identifying differences between the perceptions of innovative and less-innovative firms, this study contributes to the literature on innovation as a regional-level phenomenon, and also tentatively puts forward some managerial and policy implications, as well as suggestions for further research.     

西部大开发与自然环境保护及生态建设

当前已经开始的西部大开发 ,是事关我国现代化建设和中华民族长远生存与发展的重大战略问题。本文在详细分析了西部现有生态环境的基础上 ,对在大开发中如何保护自然环境及进行生态建设作了论证。     

自然环境变迁与十六国政权割据局面的出现

中国古代历史发展的自然环境及自然环境变迁对历史进程的影响,起一个具有重大理论和现实意义的问题。东汉末年以来自然环境变迁是西晋灭亡和十六国割据局面形成的重要原因。由于全球性寒冷干燥期的出现,我国北方沙漠面积不断扩展,各游牧民族原有的生存环境不断恶化,于是纷纷南迁,起着西晋统治集团内乱之际,夺取了政权。     

The Pluralist Paradox: The Decline of Economic Interest Groups in Zambia in the 1990s

New democracies attempting to implement political and economic reform simultaneously are considered to face a dilemma, as democratization may undermine economic reform by encouraging political participation and empowering interest groups that are unlikely to benefit from reform. This article compares relations between interest groups and the government under one‐party and multiparty rule in Zambia. Contrary to the assumptions of pluralist theory, the article argues that the influence of interest groups declined as a result of political and economic liberalization. Political liberalization in Zambia has so far resulted in a proliferation of civic associations and a weakening of corporatist links between the state and economic interest groups that had been granted some real influence in the previous authoritarian regime. This ‘pluralist paradox’ has meant, at least in the initial phases of multiparty rule, that interest group resistance has not constituted a significant threat to the sustainability of the reform programme, or to the electoral prospects of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD).     

Shifting Winds: Explaining Variation in State Policies to Promote Small‐Scale Wind Energy

States have increasingly taken leading roles in U.S. environmental policymaking over the past two decades. As laboratories of democracy, states have developed different levels and mixes of policies to address climate change, nonpoint source pollution, alternative energy, and other challenging environmental issues. Policy scholars have sought to explain variation in state environmental policy through two primary theoretical lenses: internal determinants and regional diffusion. While our understanding of state environmental policy adoption has grown to identify which variables are most important, less is known about how these variables interact in particular states to influence policy adoption. This study examines the interactions of variables from both theories to explain how state policies for small‐scale wind energy promotion were adopted in three U.S. states. Our results highlight the nuanced role of citizen ideology, which may be important in contexts at either end of the ideological spectrum but less important in the middle—where economic development is more critical. Results also indicate that interstate competition may be over environmental as well as economic leadership. Interestingly, strength of the wind resource is not necessarily correlated with policy adoption for small‐scale wind energy promotion.     

Acts of Aid: Neoliberalism in a War Zone

Abstract:  International aid is a dynamic bundle of geographical relationships at the intersection of war, neoliberalism, nature, and fear. The nexus between development and security warrants further conceptualization and empirical grounding beyond the instrumentalist and alarmist discourses that underwrite foreign aid. This article examines two such discourses, that of "aid effectiveness" and securitization, that serve to frame an analysis of aid to Sri Lanka. Since 1977, neoliberal policies of international assistance have shaped the country's economy and polity, and, since 1983, government troops and militant rebels have been at war. International aid focuses on economic development and support for peace negotiations, but little attention has been paid to the ways in which these agendas intersect to shape donor behavior and aid delivery. Drawing from research on international aid agencies operating in Sri Lanka, in particular the Canadian International Development Agency, the geopolitics of aid are analyzed.     

Windspeed Maps for Tasmania and Their Use in Wind Energy Assessment

Laplacian smoothing spline functions have been used in a detailed spatial analysis of monthly and annual mean windspeed values in Tasmania. The techniques used here have been described in detail by Hutchinson et aL and the present paper significantly extends their results for Tasmania. The windspeed maps are discussed in detail with particular emphasis on their use for the assessment of Tasmania's wind energy potential