The Occurrence and Consequences of Electoral Mandates in Historical Context

This study revisits the debate over electoral mandates by assessing the occurrence and consequences of landslide electoral victories since the 1860s. The study builds on Keeler's (1993) formulation of mandates in terms of the opportunities afforded by an election. Viewing elections as creating policy opportunities allows a more straightforward assessment of the relation between election outcomes and the legislative activity that follows. The idea of policy windows also avoids some of the criticisms directed at electoral mandates. Using public laws enacted from 1860 to 1998,1 find that landslide electoral victories precede less active Congresses almost as often as they precede surges of legislative activity. Using qualitative historical information, I further find that the legislative opportunities afforded by a landslide victory are conditional upon unity of the president's party.     

Matching Rates and Mandates: Federalism and Children's Medicaid Enrollment

An important focus of the federalism literature has been on analyzing the responses of lower levels of government to the financial incentives of intergovernmental grant programs. But grant conditions and mandates are also important features of grant programs, and these have received considerably less attention in the literature. This article examines the implementation of federal Medicaid mandates during the 1980s and 1990s to explicitly compare the relative responses of the states to matching rate incentives and statutory mandates. Using individual-level information on program enrollment to measure policy implementation, the results indicate that the federal mandates led to large changes in children's Medicaid enrollment. In contrast, the effects of the federal matching rate were much more limited. Moreover, the statutory mandates not only raised the average level of enrollment but also reduced the degree of policy variation across the states. While the current pattern of federal Medicaid matching payments reduces policy variation to some extent, these effects are modest compared to the impacts of the mandates. Mandates are a more powerful instrument for national policymakers than the comparatively weak fiscal incentives provided by matching rates.     

Private Citizens as Policy Entrepreneurs: Evidence from Autism Mandates and Parental Political Mobilization

Growing bodies of research in the social sciences point to politicians, bureaucratic officials, interest groups, and other actors who serve as policy entrepreneurs. In this paper, we argue that private citizens can also serve a primary role as policy entrepreneurs. To analyze this phenomenon, we investigate the behavior of private citizens and their role in changing state policies surrounding insurance mandates for autism coverage. Using a thematic analysis of focus groups and interviews conducted with individuals active in the push for autism policy change, we demonstrate that private citizens meet all of the requirements identified for policy entrepreneurs in the existing literature. We then investigate when, why, and how these private citizens step forward into the policy process as entrepreneurs. We show that entrepreneurship occurs when private citizens have needed resources, a sense of duty to fix a policy status quo they see as unjust, and a stake in policy change. We conclude by discussing the importance of our findings to the study of public policy and their generalizability beyond autism policy.     

Samoa on the World Stage: Petitions and Peoples before the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations

One of the innovative aspects of the mandates system of the League of Nations, the oversight regime applied to the former German and Ottoman territories seized by the Allied Powers in the First World War, was that it included a right of petition. Inhabitants of any territory governed under mandate, or any interested outsider, could petition the League of Nations if they believed that the stipulations laid down in Article 22 of the League Covenant or in particular mandate texts were being violated. This article explores the origins, development, politics and scope of the practice of petitioning under the mandates system, arguing that it was much more significant, extensive and consequential than has previously been recognised. Petitions rarely offered petitioners redress; instead, they made visible the assumptions about racial and civilisational hierarchies, and the realities of power, on which the system was based. Yet petitions were not only revelatory of political relations but also altered those relations in turn, as petitioners used the opportunity of appeal to learn the skills of claim-making, international lobbying and political mobilisation. The article looks closely at one dramatic case—that of the mass movement against New Zealand's administration of the mandated territory Western Samoa in the late 1920s, which involved numerous petitions to the League—to illustrate these points.     

Evaluating Comanagement for Social‐Ecological Fit: Indigenous Priorities and Agency Mandates for Pacific Walrus

Governance arrangements such as comanagement are regarded by many as promising arenas for effective natural resource management. However, measuring comanagement's success at achieving conservation goals has been equivocal. Our research evaluates the lack of conclusive outcomes through a critical consideration of how different goals and values inherent in comanagement affect the institutional (or policy) diagnostic of “fit.” More narrowly, sustaining natural resources requires that management policies foster fit between the scales of sociopolitical processes governing resource use and the scales of ecological processes regulating a resource. Without a process that encourages such harmonization, theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that comanagement regimes are unlikely to accomplish long‐term conservation goals. We use a case study of walrus comanagement under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act to demonstrate that when the formal institutions preconditioning comanagement do not develop out of a deliberative process among comanagement partners, two major problems can arise: (i) Policy institutions mismatch ecological and social processes relevant to resources and communities; and (ii) data to assess the fit of institutions and support learning is more difficult to acquire. In our case study, both these factors constrain the ability of comanagement to foster walrus conservation or support the capacity of Native Alaskans to adapt to contemporary social and environmental conditions. Our research concludes that to achieve marine mammal conservation, previous institutional arrangements framing comanagement that are predicated on static conceptions of people and ecosystems must be redesigned to provide better policy fit across local to international priorities. To do so requires opening up deliberative spaces, where Western science and priorities are confronted with indigenous perspectives. However, the benefit of enhancing deliberation carries risks and costs related to trade‐offs between the values of democratic process, and protections for both wildlife species and indigenous groups.     

坚持两条腿走路--关于方志问题的思考

方志工作举步维艰,主要原因之一是方志部门和方志工作者自身没有把工作做好。坚持领导、思路、工作、经费两条腿走路,才能走出一片方志工作的新天地。     

我们需要什么样的美国早期史

2006年秋天,在南开大学任教的美国早期史知名学者阿伦·库利科夫,着手筹备在中国召开一次美国早期史的国际学术研讨会.他与我商量邀请中国学者的事,希望我提供一个名单.我当时不假思索地告诉他,中国从事早期史研究的人相当少,如果要吸收一定数量的中国学者参加会议,只有两个办法:一是延展早期史的时间下限,二是对研究生敞开大门.当会议正式召开时,中方与会者多达40余人,其主力确实是研究生,此外还包括不少研究19世纪前期和中期的学者,而真正专攻早期史的学者则为数寥寥.     

《新语》校注补义

陆贾《新语》是西汉初年的重要作,但历来研究甚少。近年王利器先生汇旧注古本,撰为《新语校注》一书,甚为精当。本从校勘、注释两个方面对王进行了补正。     

Freud's impact on aphasiology--aphasiology's impact on Freud

In 1891, Sigmund Freud published a book on aphasia. Although Freud's contribution to aphasiology could have been important in retrospect, it was hardly acknowledged for three quarters of a century. It may have had an impact on psychoanalytic theory, but this was not acknowledged by Freud. If there are neurological roots in psychoanalysis, they are buried by paradigmatic shifts in Freud's theory.     

喜看楚墓研究的新进展--兼评《长沙楚墓》

本文评述现已发掘的东周列国墓葬中占大多数的楚墓的研究发展情况,特别是最近十多年出版的河南信阳长台关、淅川下寺,湖北当阳赵家湖、江陵望山、雨台山、九店,以及湖南长沙近郊等7部楚墓发掘报告的学术价值。其中尤其对2000年出版的《长沙楚墓》一书,作了详细的评论。     

基于经济学基础的酒店收益管理研究

收益管理是近年来在服务行业应用广泛的一种新型管理模式,收益管理给国外许多酒店带来明显的效益增长,因而成为酒店经营研究中被学者持续关注的热点问题。在我国酒店业,收益管理还是一个较新的概念,收益管理研究的发展尚处于起步阶段,酒店企业全面应用收益管理的实践甚少,本文将结合国内外收益管理的研究现状,分析收益管理的经济学基础,为我国酒店业实施收益管理提供一种新思路和借鉴。     

国外旅游目的地竞争力研究综述

随着世界范围内旅游目的地竞争的日益激烈,旅游目的地竞争力正逐渐成为国内外研究的热点领域。国外旅游目的地竞争力研究起步早,已经较为成熟,主要包括旅游目的地竞争力概念的界定、影响因素的分析以及竞争力的评价等。本文通过对国外旅游目的地竞争力的研究文献的梳理和回顾,重点分析了旅游目的地竞争力的影响因素和竞争力评价研究,并指出了未来研究的方向。     

基于专利地图的旅游业专利研究

旅游业专利技术是衡量旅游业技术创新的重要指标,本文利用专利地图理论和方法,直观展示旅游业专利的总体趋势、技术生命周期、国际专利分类,并深入挖掘旅游业专利信息。     

墙盘铭文札记

墙盘铭文经诸家释读后,文意趋于明朗,但仍不无遗义。本文就铭文中的“达殷(田允)(畯)民”“亟狱”、”司夔”等语及(能攴)字的内涵加以探讨,提出了自己的看法。此外,作者还探讨了与墙盘铭相关的(?)钟铭“(?)五十颂处”的涵义。     

上博简《容成氏》字词考释二则

本文讨论了上海博物馆藏战国楚竹书《容成氏》里的“酋清”的“酋”和“夹州”的“夹”两个字,认为它们古音分别和“淑”和“冀”字相近,“酋清”应当读为“淑清”,“夹州”就是文献中的“冀州”。