The Electoral College and the election of 2000

The United States is one of few contemporary democracies that does not choose its chief executive officer through direct popular vote. Rather, the President of the United States is formally chosen by the Electoral College, and a majority of votes in the Electoral College is required to secure election to the Presidency. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush won a 271–266 majority in the Electoral College despite the fact that his opponent, Al Gore, won about half a million more popular votes.The Electoral College system can be conceptualized as a mechanism by which the results of separate elections in each state and, since 1964, the District of Columbia, can be aggregated to produce a nationwide outcome. It has not experienced major reform since 1804, despite the fact that many critics have regarded the system as archaic, outmoded, and essentially undemocratic. Since the early nineteenth century, more than 600 proposed constitutional amendments concerning the Electoral College system have been proposed and debated in Congress. Some would eliminate the Electoral College system altogether and replace it with direct popular vote. Others would retain the Electoral College system but change the way electors are selected or affect the relationships between popular and electoral votes in each state.Because the popular vote in Florida was very close, and because the remaining states were so closely divided, Florida proved to be the pivotal state in the 2000 presidential election. The closeness and controversy surrounding the Florida outcome has renewed efforts on the part of critics to eliminate or reform the system. However, analysis of the 2000 campaign underscores the fact that both sides based decisions concerning their campaign strategies and allocations of human financial resources in an effort to win an electoral college majority, within the constraints of the present system. It is unlikely that there will be sufficient support to overturn or reform the system through constitutional agreement in the foreseeable future.     

以色列议会选举制的特点

本文①认为,以色列虽实行西方式的议会民主制,但其选举制度与英、美等西方国家相去甚远,特点鲜明。以色列议会选举采用单一选区比例代表制度,即全国为一个选区,以政党或集团为单位参加竞选,然后根据各党派在全国范围所得总票数,按比例分配议席。其结果是,各政党或联盟从未获得单独组阁所需半数以上的议席(61席),均不能单独组阁,必须组成联合政府。以色列议会选举制是造成国内党派滋生和政坛混乱的主要根源,它为代表少数人利益的小党充斥以色列政坛提供契机,中小党派的"剩余能量"和"超常影响力"又激励了中小党派的产生,导致恶性循环。     

The Electoral Politics of Economic Reform in Australia: The 1998 Election

Like many other advanced industrial democracies, Australia has experienced major and ongoing economic reform over the last two decades, the pace of which has, if anything, increased since the election of the Liberal‐National government in 1996. These developments have led to a growing sense of economic insecurity among many voters. Many of these concerns were focused on the 1998 election, when the Liberal‐National Coalition advocated the introduction of a goods and services tax. This paper uses the 1998 Australian Election Study (AES) survey to examine the impact of economic evaluations, economic insecurity and economic issues on voting in the election. The results demonstrate the existence of widespread economic concerns across the electorate, but that the Coalition gained a marginal electoral advantage on the tax reform issue. Economic issues were also a cause of defection to the new One Nation Party, although further analysis reveals that its support was motivated more by race and ethnic concerns than by economic discontent.     

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.     

西安事变与日本的对华政策

日本在1936年8月全面确立以分裂华北为中心的对华政策,随后即初步付诸实施.西安事变的爆发打乱了其侵华步骤,也使得"一致抗日"成为当时中国最具国内号召力和国际影响力的目标.事变期间,日本最初采取"沿续并促进"的方针,企图趁机继续实施以往的对华政策;在明确情况后,被迫采取静观待变的态度,却又坚决干预中国的"容共"问题.事变的迅速和平解决,最终打破了日本的阴谋.事变后,中国团结抗战局面的形成,迫使日本统治集团重新认识中国,日本政局也出现大动荡.林内阁期间,主要以"佐藤外交"修改以往的对华策略,但并未根本放弃既定的对华政策."佐藤外交"夭折后,近卫内阁又回归于广田内阁时期的对华政策,最终在"七·七"事变后走向全面侵华之路.     

Japan's Sporting Diplomacy: The 1964 Tokyo Olympiad

At a time when Japanese foreign policy was constrained by the legacies of war and the exigencies of the Cold War, hosting the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was conceived as an alternative means of engagement with the international community. The sporting diplomacy of the Tokyo Olympics centered around elevating Japan’s international position by engaging the people of the world on a grassroots level. The pervasive notion that sports are separate from politics helped smooth Japan’s return to the international community, while concerns about the image presented to foreign audiences motivated efforts to internationalize Japan, in terms of both the physical infrastructure of the capital and attitudes of the people. The development of infrastructure for the Games—including new buildings, roads, and trains, and even a satellite to facilitate live international broadcast—all contributed to making Japan more “international.” The event was a great success for Japan, both athletically and diplomatically, and sports diplomacy became a lasting component of Japan’s foreign policy, still used today to promote international connections and develop greater knowledge and understanding of Japan. At the same time, this build-up of soft power also cleared the way for the development of greater hard power by Japan.     

浅析瑞士银行业发展的原因

瑞士银行运用传统的诚信体制,使用高级的保密制度,利用优秀的服务质量,采用完备的管理技术,应用先进的金融设备,通过几代人的不断努力创新后,创造了无与伦比的银行文化。目前在银行这个重要的服务领域内,很少有一个国家能够像瑞士那样称霸长达上百年的。     

The Ideological Foundations of Arguments About Native Title

The political disputes over native title in Australia have generally been interpreted without recourse to ordinary ideological categories. The general failure to engage with ideology has hampered scholarly analysis, stunting the vocabulary and content of debate, as well as giving the content of public deliberation on the issue a curiously free-floating quality. In this article it is contended that arguments about native title are amenable to being understood as a product of the interaction of a range of well-known normative frameworks: liberalism, social democracy, conservatism, nationalism, socialism and transcendentalism. Each of these six ideologies furnishes rationales both for and against native title by focusing on different elements or preoccupations within the respective ideological traditions. A typological framework is proposed which outlines a range of ideal type positions in relation to native title.     

The Specter of Revolution: Reconsidering Japan's Decision to Surrender

Existing studies of the Pacific War tend to focus on the adverse military situation in explaining Japan's decision to surrender. Special emphasis has been placed on both the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet entry into the war. Although these are no doubt critical to understanding the end of the Pacific War, they fail to tell the whole story. This paper seeks to broaden the scope of the scholarly debate by focusing on Japan's domestic situation as a major factor behind the decision to surrender. It argues that a near-obsessive fear of social revolution among Japan's conservative ruling elite played an important role in prompting Japanese elites to make the decision to end the war.     

Shades of Orange: The Electoral Geography of Ukraine's 2004 Presidential Elections

Two American geographers and noted specialists on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine describe and analyze the three rounds of Ukraine's pivotal and highly contested presidential elections in late 2004. In an effort to shed light on the underlying demographic and socio-economic correlates of the vote (e.g., age, income, urban/rural residence, language/ethnicity), the authors pay special attention to changes among the rounds, providing background to widespread allegations of electoral fraud in round two (first runoff). Finally, they summarize results of bivariate and multivariate regression analyses that reveal which among the various correlates contribute most to explaining differences in the vote. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O18, R10. 6 figures, 5 tables, 26 references.     

战后日本的中国研究

战后初期,在日本,最先活跃民间的中国研究机构是中国研究所(简称中研)。它成立于1946年1月,由战争期间在满铁调查研究机关工作的人员、新闻记者、左翼人士等组成。中研以向日本国民介绍和宣传中国革命和新中国的实际情况为己任。关于新中国的状况、中国共产党的方针、毛泽东思想等资料除外务省以及外联团体作为内部资料收集整理以外,到50年代前半期,由中研介绍的资料占很大比重,在增进日本国民对新中国的了解和关注方面,中研所起的作用可谓不小。     

日本12团体呼吁书——不能把否定宪法、踏上国际孤立道路的教科书传授给孩子们

由“新历史教科书编纂会”成员执笔编写的中学历史教科书已经部科学省公布审定合格,可供社会选用了。