大西南与小西南:抗战大后方战略主导下的西南空间分层

"西南"的空间分层现象(即大西南、小西南之分或广、狭义的西南区域界定)是伴随着国民政府对抗战大后方建设的地域设计而产生的,西南大后方建设一方面要求有"关系地带"或广大的"外卫屏障",另一方面强调重心建设区域,与"外卫区域"有所区分。这一地域设计思路直接影响了当时的西南界定意见,形成了时人对西南"中心"与"外卫"区域的空间分层认识。受此影响,谢国度、黄汲清于1939年初从国防地理角度明确提出了大、小西南的意见。"西南"空间分层反映出抗战大后方战略主导下的国防地理对区域界定产生的重要影响。     

The Implications of Policy Stability for Renewable Energy Innovation in the United States, 1974–2009

Government support and commitment are of particular importance for renewable energy technology innovation activities, which are highly contingent on policy and market uncertainty. The research focus of this article is to examine the relationship between policy stability in public resource allocation and policy outcomes in renewable energy technologies. With time‐series cross‐sectional analyses, we test effects of both the stability and magnitude of federal R&D expenditures on patent applications in five renewable energy sectors (i.e., solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and bioenergy) from 1974 to 2009. The findings show that technology innovation is affected by both the magnitude and stability of government financial commitment. Nevertheless, when industries perceive government support over longer time frames, the magnitude effect loses explanatory power to the stability effect. In addition to federal R&D expenditures, policies pertaining to technology commercialization and marketization are a critical determinant of innovation activities. This study demonstrates that incremental, predictable, and credible expenditures facilitate renewable energy technology development. Conversely, a boom‐bust cycle of resource support fails to translate policy goals into intended results.     

The Effects of Beneficiary Targeting on Public Support for Social Policies

We assess the tendency for the public to use group‐centric policy evaluations with evidence from a survey experiment concerning two issues within the social policy domain, health care and aid to cities. By randomly varying target group identity within each issue and using both negatively and positively regarded groups our evidence shows that differences exist in the tendency for members of the public to use group‐centric heuristics. Group‐centric evaluations are related to party identification and political ideology. Across both issues conservatives and Republicans are more likely than liberals or Democrats to adopt a group‐centric heuristic. Partisan and ideological differences suggest that established theories miss the mark by emphasizing how universal policy designs are preferred to designs that target unpopular groups.     

Theories of Governance: Comparative Perspectives on Seattle's Light Rail Project

Governance entails the formulation and implementation of public policies across organizational and sectoral boundaries through coalitions, contracts, and networks. Studies of governance tend to cluster loosely into two theoretic traditions: rational choice and sociological institutionalism. Where the former analyzes actors’ individual interests and information, the latter examines their joint relationships and norms. These different analytic foci can be difficult to reconcile, leaving scholars at a loss as to how to cumulate insights and knowledge across the theoretic traditions. To understand better how the two traditions conflict and support one another in the analysis of governance, this article distinguishes domains of governance and identifies the different theories that the traditions use to study each domain. A case study of a rail transit project compares the insights from these theories, and assesses the quality and the complementarities of the explanations they offer. An analysis of the case generates propositions about the comparative utility of different concepts and theoretic traditions for understanding key governance phenomena.     

The Influence of Problem Definitions on Environmental Policy Change: A Comparative Study of the Yellowstone Wildfires

In the summer of 1988, television viewers across the United States and Canada were transfixed by images of Yellowstone National Park seemingly consumed by flames as wildfires burned almost one million acres of land within the Greater Yellowstone Area. In the wake of the fires, the governments of the United States and Canada both reassessed their policy approaches to fire management and came to two very different conclusions. The purpose of this study is to explore how the wildfire problem was defined in Canada and the United States in the wake of the Yellowstone wildfires, why these definitions were so different, and what effects these different definitions have had on fire policy. As a subtext, this research also highlights the challenges inherent in science‐based decision making.     

NARRATORS OF THE ARCTIC: IMAGES AND MOVEMENTS IN NORTHLAND NARRATIVES

While the use of public policy to construct a Canadian identity has been established in the literature, what is less well understood is whether national identity, once established, might shape Canadians' feelings about these same public policies. This article examines the extent to which citizens' national identities influence their pride in Canada's social security system, and how this relationship may be changing over time. Using data from the International Social Science Programme's 1995 and 2003 National Identity Modules, the article argues that citizens' national identities help explain the contours of social security attitudes in Canada, and that this relationship persists despite significant policy change in the field. Additionally, the paper suggests that political actors may successfully increase public support for their social security policies by “framing” them in ways that appeal to citizens' definitions of Canada.     

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY: A REVIEW OF RECENT WORK ON BLACKS IN CANADA

In 2010 the US declared the Lake Erie water snake a recovered species, but in Canada the snake is still considered to be an endangered species. After explaining the legal similarities between the Ontario Endangered Species Act and the American Endangered Species Act, this article examines a case study with landowner interviews from one US island and one Canadian island. It is concluded that landowner attitudes toward conservation and private property are very similar. Thus, it is argued that bureaucratic differences, particularly institutional capacity and implementation styles, enabled the US but not Canada to recover the snake. The article concludes with a discussion of the need for better communication between the two countries for the purposes of biodiversity conservation.     

Beyond Annexationism: The Central Powers’ Ostpolitik as Structural Transformation, 1917–18

This article explores the eastern policy of Germany and Austria-Hungary during the latter half of the First World War (1917–18). It attempts to go beyond the traditional annexationist–non-annexationist dichotomy prevalent in the literature and approach the issue from the perspective of structural transformation of the international system. It argues that the Central Powers endeavoured to accommodate imperial collapse in Eastern Europe and prevent its further spread by replacing the obsolete system of imperial dynasticism with a new arrangement based on autonomous and semi-autonomous states. German and Austrian leaders often disagreed on implementation and formed temporary understandings across the civilian–military divide. This policy ultimately proved counterproductive, as it failed to contain the westward spread of national and social revolution. Austro-German support for nominally independent states in Eastern Europe, national in form but Central European in cultural and political outlook, inadvertently contributed to further imperial collapse, as the increasingly restless nationalities of Austria-Hungary began to challenge the legitimacy of imperial dynasticism in Central Europe. The Central Powers’ Ostpolitik in 1917–18 became a transformative historical event due to the fact that it facilitated the structural transformation of international relations in Central and Eastern Europe from imperial dynasticism to a system of nation-states.     

‘Politicals’, Tribes and Musahibans: The Indian Political Service and Anglo-Afghan Relations 1929–39

This article examines the way in which the tribal areas of the North-West Frontier came to constitute a recurrent point of contention and dispute in Anglo-Afghan relations during the period under examination. It argues that while much attention has been paid to the way in which the activities of autonomous tribes of the frontier impacted upon British interests, much of the existing historiography has tended to focus upon the physical confrontation between tribe and state and has hitherto ignored perhaps the most complex aspect of the ‘tribal problem’ during this period; its impact upon the Government of India's diplomatic relations with Afghanistan. The article proposes that the period 1929–39 constituted a particularly challenging context for British policy-makers wrestling with the requirement to formulate a cost-effective tribal policy that would suit the interests of British India without undermining the newly emerged, pro-British but inherently weak Musahiban regime. It argues that while the Government of India avoided any fatal breach in relations with the Afghan leadership, the process of frontier policy-making illustrated some fundamental weaknesses in perspective on the part of that government department most closely associated with the formulation of such policy: the Indian Political Service.