Revolution, State Building, and Foreign Policy

Book reviewed in this article:
Daniela Spenser, The Impossible Triangle: Mexico, Soviet Russia, and the United States in 1920s     

新中国的农业合作化与农村工业化

新中国建立后以农业合作化对个体小农经济的改造,与农村工业化是同一个问题的两个方面。农村工业化包括农村工业企业的发展和农业工业化,关于农业合作化对农村工业化的作用,可以从发展农村的工业企业和促进农业工业化两个方面来考察,与社会主义市场经济相适应的农业合作化应成为新的历史条件下推进农村工业化的主要途径。     

Policy Influence and Policy Responsiveness in State Pollution Control

This article develops an integrated theory of state policy influence and responsiveness, then operationalizes this theory to account for variations in the strength and scope of state water pollution control and hazardous waste management programs. The analysis finds that economic, ideological, interest group, and political system characteristics act in concert to affect state policymaking, and that the influences behind policymaking vary systematically and predictably across policy areas within environmental protection.     

Agricultural Research Policy

Abstract

From Galileo's measurement of time by musical beats at about half-second intervals to modern atomic clocks, progressively more accurate instruments have been developed and are here reviewed. Both the mechanical and the pendulum clock were major advances and led to theories of a clocklike universe in the 17th century. Barrow, Newton and Leibniz treated time as mathematical concepts and in the 19th century time as a linear advancement became accepted as evolutionary biology extended the vision of time to millions of years. In modern physics, Einstein's special relativity introduced 'time dilation', an idea somewhat contrary to our common sense intuition but now supported by abundant empirical evidence.     

Renewable Energy Politics: Policy Typologies,Policy Tools,and State Deployment of Renewables

This paper investigates the competing forces driving the development of renewable energy in the American states. We formulate a framework of state renewable energy politics and develop a set of hypotheses regarding the role of politics, policies, and prices in renewable energy development. We test these hypotheses with a fixed effect vector decomposition model using a panel data set for the U.S. states from 1990 to 2008. The results indicate that renewable energy development is influenced by regulatory institutions, the party affiliations of the governor and legislators, and the professionalism of the legislature, accompanied by the effects of various policy instruments.     

加速实施并积极推进农业产业化进程促进民族地区农业经济发展

辽宁省民族地区经过二十多年的改革开放。民族经济已取得一定的发展,但与省内及全国发达地区相比。存在很大差距。农业产业结构调整又一次为民族地区发展经济提供了难得的机遇。本文从主、客观几个方面论证了辽宁省民族地区如何实施并积极推进农业产业化结构调整。使民族地区农业经济获得持续、稳定的发展。     

Rethinking State Rail Policy

In the last two decades, many states established rail promotion programs in an effort to limit the contraction of their railroad networks. Now federal funds for rail projects are nearly exhausted, and states must decide whether to expand considerably their levels of internal funding for short line investments. Such a decision requires a careful articulation of policy goals, combined with sound cost-benefit techniques. Research shows, however, that states often fail to evaluate the full range of costs and benefits when considering rail investments. Instead, the economic development benefits of local rail service frequently are overstated, while the potential for rail investments to meet broader transportation planning needs is neglected. This paper evaluates the rationale behind state intervention in the rail industry, discusses the tendency of states to focus on economic development to the exclusion of other benefit categories, and presents summary results from an analysis of an investment project in North Carolina. The paper suggests that state funding for rail projects is more likely to be justified based on intermodal substitution benefits generated by local rail service, rather than the railroads' potential to increase jobs.     

试论摄政王多尔衮的朝鲜政策

从顺治元年开始,摄政王多尔衮成为清朝主要决策者。由于战略形势的巨变,为了得到朝鲜的物资援助,多尔衮及时调整了朝鲜政策,使得清与朝鲜的关系由征服与被征服者的关系开始向传统的宗藩关系转变。白顺治元年到顺治七年,虽然时间很短,但由于处于清王朝建立全国性统治的关键时刻,多尔衮的朝鲜政策承上启下,对清与朝鲜实现长期稳固的宗藩关系意义重大。除勇猛果敢、具有杰出的军事指挥才能之外,史料记载多尔衮具有多重性格,在摄政初期顾全大局、治军较严,后期则独断专横、脾气急躁、耽于享乐,因此这一时期的朝鲜政策也打上了多尔衮个人的鲜明烙印。本文主要从多尔衮摄政这一时期对皇太极制定的朝鲜政策的继承与调整以及其个人对政策实施的影响两个层面来阐述天聪年间至顺治初年的清廷对朝政策。     

Institutions, Bureaucratic Decisions, and Policy Outcomes: State Insurance Solvency Regulation

Although over the past 2 decades several scholars have documented a link between institutional arrangements and policy choices, few studies have demonstrated how different institutional arrangements give rise to different policy outcomes. Further, although some studies have related bureaucratic resources to policy decisions, almost none have illustrated that the way state agencies actually deploy regulatory resources—policy outputs—significantly influences policy outcomes. Focusing specifically on the insurance industry in the United States, in this article we illustrate the impact of state regulatory activities on the solvency of firms in the insurance industry from 1987 to 1997, and in doing so we emphasize the differences between policy outputs and policy outcomes. In the case of policy outputs, for example, we find that elected insurance commissioners, divided state government, budgetary resources, and larger insurance sectors lead to more aggressive solvency examinations of insurers. In addition to examinations, however, we discern an important role for both regulatory and political institutions in subsequent insurer insolvencies.     

Issue Definition in State Economic Development Policy

This paper examines whether an "issue definition" perspective developed by Baumgartner and Jones (1993) can account for the dynamics of state economic development policy. The analysis centers on a case study of Louisiana, and shows that efforts to redefine tax exemptions as a threat to the environment were only partially successful in leading to policy change. I speculate on the reasons for this failure, concluding with the fact that special conditions made it harder to redefine the economic development issue there. I argue further that the dynamics of issue redefinition differ by issue type and according to the level of government responsible for a particular policy.     

State Expenditures and Policy Outcomes in Environmental Program Management

Comparative state environmental research seeks to explain the factors contributing to intergovernmental environmental management. In pursuing the answer to this query, researchers have relied on either fiscal (expenditures) or nonfiscal (ranking) measures of state environmental effort. Respecting the debate surrounding state policy outputs and fiscal versus nonfiscal measures, we evaluate comprehensive state environmental management comparing spending and ranking measures in our analysis. Though pronounced differences do exist between the two models, we find pollution and state size to be the primary factors affecting a state's environmental effort no matter which measure is used.     

Explaining State Budget Punctuations: Policy Transparency,Political Institutions,and Electoral Incentives

What factors cause policies experiencing long periods of stability to be interrupted occationally by a short period of large changes? This study argues that electoral incentives might influence the search, supply, and processing of information on constituency issues, as well as the associated cognitive or institutional frictions, and thus determine the presence and variation of punctuated policies. This article develops and evaluates this claim within a systemic framework consisting of policy transparency, political institutions, and electoral incentives. For the purpose of identifying policy punctuations, this research uses the Generalized Pareto Distribution in the Extreme Value Theory. This study analyzes budget spending data collected from FY 1988 to FY 2008 for all 50 American states. This study finds that greater policy transparency is associated with larger spending stability. By contrast, greater gubernatorial competition is more likely to produce extreme spending changes. Electoral incentives shaped by public preference and political term limits have a profound impact on nonincremental policy changes. The impact of policy transparency is conditional on public preference, while that of electoral competition and legislative professionalism is moderated by political term limits. Particularly, a transparent policy consistent with public preference and legislative professionalism with term limits are more likely to give rise to punctuated policies, while gubernatorial (legislative) competition leads to less punctuated changes when governors (legislators) are subject to term limits.     

法国农业经济政策的历史考察

中古晚期以来,法国政府农业经济政策包括赋税政策,经历了重视、解放、保护、补贴农业的过程。中间虽时有逆转,但基本趋势没有改变。现在的法国是一个高度发达的现代化工业国家,农业在国民经济中所占比重不大,尽管如此,法国政府仍然重视农业的基础地位,厉行惠农政策。法国现代化过程中的农业经济政策经验,对于发展中国家的经济建设具有重要的借鉴意义。     

Sizing Up State Policy Innovation Research

In the literature on state policy innovation, there are three major explanations for what causes a government to adopt a new policy. One is the internal determinants model, which posits that the main factors leading a state to innovate are internal political, social and economic characteristics of the stale. The other two are diffusion models—the regional diffusion model, and the national interaction model—which see slate policy adoptions as emulations of earlier adoptions by other states. Each of the three models has been associated with a distinct strategy for empirical testing. The regional diffusion model has been tested with factor analysis, the national interaction model with time-series regression, and the internal determinants model with cross-sectional regression. In this paper, I explore the ability of these "single-explanation" methodologies to detect the true innovation process underlying stale policy adoptions, by applying these methodologies to data generated from simulated innovation processes with known characteristics. I find that the methodologies often yield incorrect conclusions about the character of innovation. I conclude by presenting an agenda for refining a superior alternative methodology: the event history analysis approach to state policy innovation research introduced by Berry and Berry (1990).     

E-mail Communication and the Policy Process in the State Legislature

E-mail has changed the policy process in state legislatures because political actors now have a new way to present their message to state legislators. What little research has been conducted on this topic examines e-mail communication generally and does not compare results by policy actor. Using an original survey of state legislators in eight states, we test for systematic effects of variables on general e-mail views and for effects specific to particular policy actors. We find that legislators have a nuanced approach to e-mail usage in the policy process with their assessment of its impact differing significantly for constituents, intermediary groups, and policy insiders. Only gender consistently shapes legislators' beliefs about e-mail with all groups, but institutional features, legislator characteristics, and legislator beliefs shape views on e-mail with different target groups. Clearly, legislators are attuned to the audience communicating via e-mail, and they value e-mail with each group differently.