Relational coupling of multiple streams: The case of COVID-19 infections in German abattoirs

After a series of COVID-19 outbreaks among employees in the German meat-processing industry, the Work Safety Control Act protecting these workers made it on the government's agenda in July 2020. From a Multiple Streams perspective, local corona hotspots may be understood as policy windows for introducing respective measures. However, this alone is not sufficient to explain agenda setting. This study investigates the coupling of streams within policy windows. Introducing the notion of relational coupling to the MSF research agenda, discourse network analysis provides a new methodology to reveal entrepreneurial activities. Studying the German mass media discourse on the issue identifies two stages: (1) An initial problem brokerage without coupling of core policies, followed by (2) a coupling across all streams based on a focusing event. We argue that relational coupling allows for an enhanced understanding of agenda setting.     

Neoliberalism,massification and teaching transformative politics and international relations

‘Massification’ describes the significant increase in the proportion of the global population seeking tertiary qualifications. It is a defining feature of the global international education sphere and is often seen as linked to negative outcomes such as declining academic standards and increasing managerialism in universities. Massification, however, is not wholly or even mostly a negative for the generations of new students who now have access to tertiary education. Education can still be a transformative experience for students exposed to a rich learning environment. The question this symposium raises is how the disciplines of politics and international relations can ensure they maintain quality teaching and learning for students from subject design to program design. The collection aims to initiate a disciplinary debate in Australia, which has hitherto been missing.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Low Salience Policy Subsystems: Struggles Under a Smooth Surface

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), a well-known framework used to understand policy changes at the subsystem level, is predicated on the idea that coalitions with distinct beliefs compete to influence policy subsystem decisions. The ACF is noted as being most appropriate for, and is typically applied to, high salience policy areas. However, scholars have noted the need to also apply the ACF to less typical application settings in the interest of theoretical refinement. This paper thus explores the applicability of the ACF to Day Habilitation and Employment services systems for working-age adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in two U.S. states, Washington and Pennsylvania, both of which have experienced distinct state-level policy changes during the last two decades despite low levels of public attention and conflict. Using a mixed-methods approach, the paper identifies the presence of two advocacy coalitions (Employment First and Choice) in both states. The study concludes that there is sufficient evidence to apply the ACF to these low salience subsystems, noting theoretical and practical implications for scholars and policymakers interested in applying the ACF to similar settings.     

态度与价值:遗产旅游体验模式探析——以苏州平江历史文化街区为例

"遗产资本化"(Heritagization)是遗产被用于实现特定目标的社会进程,是遗产旅游的核心,遗产旅游开发是遗产资本化的当代形式,遗产旅游开发的直接目标即向公众提供真实性的遗产体验。本文结合苏州平江历史文化街区的旅游产品开发案例,根据对社交媒体(Social Media)中旅游博客(Blog)原创文本的内容分析(Content Analysis,CA)和语义网络分析(Semantic Network Analysis,SNA),挖掘旅游者对案例遗产旅游地的个人态度和价值认知情况,进而提出一个由旅游者对遗产的个人态度及其遗产价值认知所构成的遗产旅游体验开发框架,勾勒出文化遗产旅游开发的战略导向。     

基于层次与等级的城市旅游供给分析框架

在总结和评价已有城市旅游分析思路和框架的基础上,本文提出了基于层次与等级的城市旅游供给分析框架。新的分析框架强调了旅游供给层次和旅游城市等级的重要性,特别给定了层次与等级之间的重要程度,适用于比较城市研究,具有良好的理论张力。本文以苏州、桂林和黄山为例,具体应用和检验了该分析框架,并解释了三市城市旅游发展方式的差异:苏州城市功能和地位的提升促进了城市旅游向结构性增长方式转变;黄山单一的城市功能结构严重制约城市旅游向新的发展方式转变;桂林拥有良好的经济基础,产业发展呈现多元化,具备城市旅游发展方式转变的基础条件,但仍需要在城市旅游核心要素和旅游形象上做相应的调整。发展方式的转变依赖于相应的基础条件,并不是所有旅游城市都具备。城市旅游的发展方式是多样化的,以旅游为单一核心产业的城市旅游发展方式也具有合理性和可行性。基于层次和等级的城市旅游供给分析框架,能够解释城市旅游发展演变,比较不同城市旅游发展的差异,为城市旅游发展方式的研究提供帮助。     

社区参与和旅游社区一体化研究

社区参与被视为旅游业可持续发展的重要内容和环节,但由于社区参与在实施过程中受到社区经济发展水平、体制、政策、居民价值观念等诸多因素的影响,制约了社区参与的程度和效果。本文从这一角度出发,对社区一体化思想理念的形成、内涵、思想构架和制约因素进行了深入阐述,旨在为我国社区参与的有效实施和社区旅游的可持续发展提供理论参考。     

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING AND ANALYZING ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOUR

Encouraging environmental action by citizens in developed nations has become a major priority for governments who are seeking to reach environmental targets by exhorting individuals to participate in a range of behaviours to ameliorate the negative impact of their lifestyles. Such activities conventionally include energy saving, water conservation, waste management and forms of ‘green’ consumption. Current policy discourses are focused around a linear model of behaviour, which assumes that an awareness of environmental problems and knowledge of how to tackle them will lead to individual ameliorative actions. This paper explores these assumptions by applying a previously developed conceptual framework (Barr et al. 2001) to a range of environmental actions, to show how a variety of different factors influence environmental action. Using data from a major (UK) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research project in Devon, United Kingdom, data on environmental actions collected during the project are interrogated to uncover the relationships between environmental actions and how these are influenced by values, personal situations and attitudes. The research demonstrates that environmental action is structured around people's everyday lifestyles (rather than a compartmentalized notion of behaviour) and that these have radically different antecedents.     

Debating Some Past and Present Research Frameworks and Methodologies in History on Places and their Peoples in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Histories regarding places and their peoples in South Africa can be traced to the early days of History being practised as an academic discipline. However, practising this form of history under (and outside) the flag of regional history was formalised only in the mid seventies, while informalised research practices in the field continued as methods complementing various schools of thought. Narrowly perceived local histories were considered as inclusive of the formalised and informalised regional history practices as knowledge contributing towards a broader understanding of a (geographically defined/ politically demarcated) region. Of interest is not only the historiography in this field (of which a few pointers are shared in this discussion) but some of the frameworks and methods to research and to record regional histories that have been used in the past. Equally of interest are the ways in which these frameworks and methods are still applied and thought of as dynamic and progressive to assist the historian to progress towards producing and packaging research as part of a comprehensive, all inclusive approach in creating knowledge as regional history studies. In South Africa, an extensive debate on how regional history studies should be broadly defined and understood when undertaking research, still falls short. This is due to the variety, diversity and complexity of knowledge contributing to the pool of information that should be packaged as regional history studies. To contibute towards a framework of understanding and packaging knowledge in this field of meaning to regional history studies, the reader is further exposed to an extended structure of perhaps understanding and doing research in this field: a field that has always been regarded as having the potential to be both integrative and multidisciplinary by nature. Yet its integrative analytical abilities also rest on the outcome of narrow-defined histories done on spaces and places before it is possible to embark on bigger research analyses in, for example, the spirit of modern social history applications to regional history studies. This discussion on ways to understand the limited past and present of regional studies (historiographically and methodologically) in South Africa is offered to encourage further debate.     

Of Barriers to Entry for Medium and Large n Multiple Streams Applications: Methodological and Conceptual Considerations

Recent literature reviews on contributions applying the multiple streams framework (MSF) concluded that although the framework is prolific, there is a lack of contributions testing it in a larger sample size. By addressing which barriers to entry medium and large n MSF applications face and by suggesting ways to handle them, we aim at providing researchers with a benchmark contribution for developing MSF‐guided research designs based on a medium to a high number of cases. Building on an overview of the few existing medium and large n MSF studies, we address three challenges researchers must deal with: (1) choice of dependent variables and case selection; (2) operationalization and measurement of the framework's (predominantly figurative) key concepts; and (3) choice of a method that corresponds with the framework's research questions. In the latter regard, we focus on the pros and cons of employing regression analysis and qualitative comparative analysis. We conclude that although the barriers to entry are high for testing the MSF in a larger sample size, they are not insurmountable.     

《人民日报》汶川大地震报道框架理论分析

《人民日报》关于汶川地震的报道是一次成功的灾难报道。本文试从框架理论的角度,以《人民日报》关于汶川地震的报道为例,探讨媒体对灾难报道的重大突破。本文运用框架理论,详尽而具体地分析《人民日报》在汶川地震发生后一个月内的所有报道,试从研究中发现《人民日报》是如何在报道中再现＂汶川大地震＂这次突发性公共事件,以及《人民日报》是如何设置这次突发性公共事件的报道框架,以为今后媒体在面对重大突发性公共事件时公如何树立正确的新闻框架提出建议。