加州宪法第13条修正案与美国财产税改革

美国各州的财产税体制,经历了不断修正与完善的过程,其中,1978年以全民公决形式通过的加州宪法第13条修正案,起到了一定的先导和示范作用。此后,在全国范围内,财产税税率和评估值增长幅度等宏观调控的决策权由地方政府转向州政府;同时,各州地方政府在继续以财产税作为最重要的税收来源的同时,增加了服务类收费,并接受联邦政府及州政府的资助,以扩展财源,巩固税基。结合这次改革与以往历次调适,可以看出,财产税作为地方性税种,符合社会经济发展的需要,有其不可替代的意义。从这一点出发,有助于准确认识美国财产税的大致走向并丰富我们对美国地方政府的认识。     

三个重大法令对美国职业教育发展进程的影响

美国职业教育发展过程就是美国联邦政府通过运用立法的手段干预各州职业教育发展的历史。从19世纪60年代以来,美国联邦政府颁布了《莫雷尔法案》、《斯密斯一休斯法案》、《退伍士兵权利法案》等一系列教育法令这些法案奠定了美国职业教育改革与发展的法律基础,为美国职业教育的改革与发展提出了明确具体的要求并提供了强有力的经济基础,有力地推动了美国各州职业教育的改革与发展进程。我国应该借鉴美国运用立法来促进本国职业教育发展的历史经验,大力改进我国的职业教育立法工作,加快我国职业教育的改革与发展。     

三个重大法令对美国职业教育发展进程的影响

美国职业教育发展过程就是美国联邦政府通过运用立法的手段干预各州职业教育发展的历史.从19世纪60年代以来,美国联邦政府颁布了<莫雷尔法案>、<斯密斯-休斯法案>、<退伍士兵权利法案>等一系列教育法令这些法案奠定了美国职业教育改革与发展的法律基础,为美国职业教育的改革与发展提出了明确具体的要求并提供了强有力的经济基础,有力地推动了美国各州职业教育的改革与发展进程.我国应该借鉴美国运用立法来促进本国职业教育发展的历史经验,大力改进我国的职业教育立法工作,加快我国职业教育的改革与发展.     

美国新版25美分系列纪念硬币（七）

从1999年起．美国联邦政府授权联邦造币厂(Umted States Mint)。在全国50个州按各州批准加入联邦政府的先后．结合各州的地理环境、风土人情、人历史、科学成就、建筑雕塑及经济资源等不同特点为题材．在充分发动广大知识界、化艺术界、史学界、钱币界和学生居民等群众的基础上．采用自下而上．由群众创造设计。州政府组织力量筛选评议后报财政部长核准的办法．     

州际竞争与美国福利政策的调整(1969-1999年)

美国大多数州曾规定,新迁入者须住满一年才有资格申请福利救济.在1969年的“夏皮罗诉汤普森”案中,此类规定被判违宪.在此之后,各州为避免成为吸引穷人的“福利磁铁”而展开竞争.竞争主要表现在两个方面:一是探底竞赛,二是争取差别对待新迁入者.国会允许各州经批准后进行相关改革实验,并在此基础上通过《个人责任与工作机会协调法》,增加州政府实施福利项目的灵活性和自主权.这使得福利救济领域的州际竞争更趋激烈.随之而起的差别对待新迁入者的风潮被1999年“萨恩斯诉罗”案的判决止住,但各州为进一步降低本州福利的吸引力而进行的探底竞赛还在继续.     

《1958年国防教育法》的颁布对战后美国职业教育的影响

1958年美国国会颁布了《国防教育法》,授权联邦政府为各州教育事业的发展提供巨额经济援助。《国防教育法》的颁布实施,为美国职业教育的发展赢得了源源不断的经济支持,推动了美国高等教育朝着民主化、多元化、终身化的方向发展。研究美国颁布《国防教育法》促进本国职业教育发展的历史经验,对于加快我国职业教育改革与发展,具有重要的现实意义。     

美国商品奴隶制性质试析

众所周知,美国历史上曾存在过人类文明史上最野蛮的资本主义商品奴隶制,时间持续了二百多年之久。自1619年黑奴输入弗吉尼亚起,美国南部各州蓄奴之风渐次滋长。1641年马萨诸塞州首先从法律上确定了黑奴的终生奴隶地位,以后黑奴制便相继在各殖民地合法化。早期奴隶制     

联邦党人与反联邦党人关于宪法批准问题的争论

《美国宪法》是近代世界最早、也是迄今为止延续时间最长的一部成文宪法。在它制定至批准的3年中,联邦党人与反联邦党人展开了激烈的辩论,各自发表了他们建立国家的一系列设想。通过对他们在争论中所涉及的联邦政府的性质、联邦政府与州政府的关系、《权利法案》等焦点问题的探讨,有助于揭示宪法最终获得批准的深层原因,并重新认识两大派别在美国宪政发展史中的地位和作用。     

美国加州举办华工劳作生活图片展览会

“中国早期移民在萨克拉门托河流域农业活动”的展览会,前不久在美国加利福尼亚州首府萨克拉门托的州政府大厦展出。这个展览会,展出了八十多幅图片。其主题是     

美国的州规划

美国的州是全国第一级行政区划,相当于我国的省。由于美国各州政府在本州经济社会发展中面临着一系列重大而复杂的问题,因此作为决策有效工具的州规划日益引起人们的关注。     

A Vision of Mount Holyoke in the Ottoman Balkans: American Cultural Transfer,Bulgarian Nation‐Building and Women's Educational Reform, 1858–1870

American missionaries introduced a project of female educational reform among Bulgarian Orthodox Christians in their attempt to promote a Protestant reformation in the Ottoman Balkans. This case study of American‐Bulgarian interactions in the town of Eski Zaǧora (Stara Zagora) illuminates a hitherto unexplored projection of American culture abroad and highlights the connections between women's education, religion, and national identity. In the face of Ottoman secular reform and American religious reform, Bulgarian women appropriated American educational ideals to demand improved schooling for Orthodox girls in the name of national progress. Ironically, by promoting female education, missionaries ensured the failure of their Protestant reformation and inadvertently contributed to shaping a Bulgarian national discourse during a period of increasing Balkan nationalism.     

19世纪末20世纪初美国大众化杂志的发展

19世纪末20世纪初,美国大众化杂志迅速兴起和发展。大众化杂志有如下几个特点:迎合大众口味;内容贴近社会现实;价格低廉;有一个稳定增长的、数量较大的读者队伍。美国大众化杂志的兴起和发展,是当时美国社会政治经济状况决定的,并对20世纪初美国黑幕揭发运动的兴起和发展,以及20世纪初美国社会的变革和转型起了重要的促进作用。     

Historicizing territorial currencies: monetary space and the nation-state in North America

In the growing scholarly literature analysing the origins of the territoriality of modern states, the historical roots of territorially homogeneous and exclusive national currencies have been quite neglected. This neglect is surprising not only because these `territorial currencies' are seen as one of the central symbols of the modern nation-state, but also because it is in the monetary realm where challenges to the practice of territoriality are particularly apparent in the contemporary age. This article analyses the historical reorganization of monetary structures that produced territorial currencies focusing on the North American region. It demonstrates that this development involved a set of elaborate and extensive state initiatives which took place at different speeds after the mid-nineteenth century in Canada, the United States and Mexico. I argue that the different timing of these reforms across the three countries demonstrates well how this monetary transformation was associated closely with the broader political project of building modern nation-states on the North American continent, a process that followed a different trajectory in each country. Specifically, I show that the creation of territorial currencies was seen by state authorities to be intricately connected with the consolidation of three dimensions of nation-states in North America: their economic territoriality, the direct link created between state and domestic society, and the sense of collective identity among their inhabitants. The analysis contributes to scholarship that historicizes territoriality and the nation-state, as well as to our understanding of the nature and significance of challenges to territorial currencies in the contemporary age.     

The Cross or the Double-Cross: Roman Catholicism,Anti-Communism,and the Political Theology of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

The Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen was an advocate of American Catholic patriotism and opponent to the spread of totalitarianism, especially communism. He grounded the two positions in what I call the “ecclesial foundation” in which he defined American citizenship in terms of membership in religious institutions. In Sheen's view, religious institutions provided the ultimate, spiritual ends for humankind. Therefore, the American government had to protect, above all, religious liberties at home and abroad. Totalitarian regimes, which Sheen believed sought to replace spiritual with material ends of the state, violently deprived their subjects of religious liberty and, therefore, embodied the spirit of the anti-Christ. Only the Vatican had the spiritual and moral authority to identify this spirit, and—especially after the Second World War—only America had the military and economic power to confront it. Ironically, this argument was an appropriation of the old Nativist arguments against the Vatican itself. The Nativist argument was that religious liberty of Protestant churches was the source for political authority of the American state to use against the absolute, arbitrary, foreign dictator in Rome. Sheen's appropriation and redeployment of the old narrative persuaded millions of Americans to oppose totalitarian ideologies and view, after centuries of distrust, American Catholics as loyal citizens.     

美国华人社会与"9·11"事件

"9·11"事件对美国华人而言,它是一次灾难,更是一次机会.华人社会在事件中的表现,让美国主流社会重新认识了华人社会.     

Eugenics as Indian removal: sociohistorical processes and the de(con)struction of American Indians in the southeast

Although research on the history of the eugenics movement in the United States is legion, its impact on state policies that identified and defined American Indians has yet to be fully addressed. The exhibit, Our Lives: Comtemporary Life and Identities (ongoing until September 21, 2014) at the National Museum of the American Indian provides a provocative vehicle for examining how eugenics-informed public policy during the first quarter of the twentieth century served to "remove" from official records Native peoples throughout the Southeast. One century after Indian Removal of the antebellum era, Native peoples in the American Southeast provide an important but often overlooked example of how racial policies, this time rooted in eugenics, effected a documentary erasure of Native peoples and communities.     

The Tortoise or the Hare? Incrementalism,Punctuations, and Their Consequences

In this article, we contrast the long‐term consequences of incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium. We test what the impact of each of these types of policy change is on long‐term budgetary outcomes for the American states. Policy scholars have applied both theoretical approaches to the study of budgetary spending as an extension of policymaking. Given the two contrasting paradigms of policy change, we develop the following line of inquiry: Does punctuated equilibrium create a different budget in the long term than incrementalism? We address this question through an analysis of American state budgets because the U.S. states provide a rich variation in both budgetary outcomes and political institutions. We use budget data from all American states across all government functions for the period between 1984 and 2009. We find that, first, state budgets and budget functions vary in their degree of punctuation and, second, the degree of punctuation in a state's budget function corresponds to smaller long‐term growth. Additionally, the kind of spending matters: allocational budget categories are more likely to exhibit punctuations.     

美国进步运动研究评述

从研究方法的角度看,国外主要是美国学界关于进步运动的研究大体可分为专题研究、综合研究与比较研究。特别是在20世纪70年代以来,进步运动研究超越民族国家范畴,在跨国比较研究方面取得了重大进展。从构成进步运动的主体看,19世纪末20世纪初的美国进步运动是由复杂多样的改革运动组成的,得到不同的变革力量的倡导与支持。作为改革的进步派不能简单地以阶级或阶层划线,他们因不同的问题忽而协同作战,转而又互为敌寇或各自为战。尽管进步运动具有多样性,但并不排斥其一致性或共性的存在。从进步运动的目标与内容看,它是一场新的历史条件下重建民主与资本主义的社会政治运动,而作为支持进步运动的意识形态,即进步主义,究其实质,是属于自由主义范畴的。作为全国范围内的首次变革运动,进步运动奠定了现代美国政治、经济与文化的基础。     

中古教廷财政收入动态考察

中世纪教皇的财政来源由属世与属灵两种收入构成。前者是教皇担当世俗封建宗主而获得的收入 ,主要反映教皇与教皇国的财政关系 ;后者是教皇充当天主教世界首脑而获得的收入 ,反映教皇与西欧各国教会的财政关系。通过对两种财源不同时期在教廷总收入中所占比重的量化分析 ,证明以教会大分裂为界 ,教皇的财源发生了从依赖于属灵收入到属世收入的转变。教廷属灵财权的萎缩为近代民族国家的兴起与宗教的改革铺平了道路     

Medical education reform efforts and failures of U.S. medical schools, 1870-1930

The dramatic decline in the number of US medical schools in the early twentieth century has been traced to a medical education reform movement that gained momentum after the Civil War. The major parties to reform-the universities themselves, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), state licensing boards, the American Medical Association (AMA), and Flexner-had different interests and strategies, however, and scholars have continued to debate the impact each had on the decline. To isolate the independent effects that the temporally intertwined forces for reform had on medical school failures, this study applies statistical survival analysis to an extensive and unique data set on medical schools operating in the United States between 1870 and 1930. Contrary to the views of some scholars, the results indicate that schools closed in response to critical evaluations published by the Illinois State Board of Health in the nineteenth century and the AMA and Flexner in the twentieth century. Additionally, the results indicate that schools were less likely to have failed if they adopted certain reforms implemented at leading schools or joined the AAMC, and were more likely to have failed if their state's licensing regulations mandated lengthier premedical and medical training.