China's Energy Security: Challenges and Priorities

In a companion paper to the essays comparing China's and India's economic rise (Prime, 2009) as well as India's energy security (Dadwal, 2009), two specialists on China's energy industries review the country's challenges posed by the need to dramatically increase energy use in order to support economic growth while coping with pressures to reduce environmental impacts from emissions of greenhouse gases. After reviewing the current mix of fuels in the economy and discussing each major energy resource (in terms of proven reserves, production, consumption, and foreign import requirements), the authors focus on measures undertaken by the Chinese government and corporations to improve access to vital supplies. The paper covers efforts to enhance the country's energy security, which include diversifying sources of oil supply, purchasing oil and gas concessions and financing of energy infrastructure development in African and Central Asian countries, instituting reforms to encourage more efficient energy use, and developing alternative energy sources. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O130, P280, Q400. 7 figures, 2 tables, 82 references.     

Displaying the future: techno‐nationalism and the rise of the consumer in Postwar Japan

This paper explains how, in the aftermath of World War II, a type of techno‐nationalism emerged that linked being Japanese to science and technology and the increased consumption of electrical appliances. By closely examining official exhibitions, we can see how the state and private sector strongly encouraged this techno‐scientific dreaming. Dazzling displays highlighted how the peaceful atom would help lead the nation to achieve high economic growth. At the same time, through the judicious purchase of labor saving appliances, consumers could reconcile the need to spend with the need to save.     

Security and the shaping of identity for nuclear specialists

Atomic energy developed from 1940 as a subject shrouded in secrecy. Identified successively as a crucial element in military strategy, national status and export aspirations, the research and development of atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were nurtured at isolated installations. Like monastic orders, new national laboratories managed their specialist workers in occupational environments that were simultaneously cosseted and constrained, defining regional variants of a new state-managed discipline: reactor technology. This paper discusses the significance of security in defining the new subject in the USA, UK and Canada – wartime allies with similar political traditions distinct but trajectories in this field during the Cold War. The intellectual borders and content of the subject developed differently in each country, shaped under the umbrella of secrecy by disparate clusters of expertise, industrial traditions, and national goals. The nascent cadre was contained until the mid 1950s by classified publications and state-sponsored specialist courses. The early context of high security filtered its members and capped enduringly both their professional aspirations and public engagement.     

Public technology: nuclear energy in Europe

ABSTRACT

The concept of ‘public science’ has been fruitfully used to indicate the intricate interrelatedness of science and society. In studies of knowledge and its publics, however, technology has been routinely subsumed under science and the distinctive nature of technical knowledge neglected. We are aiming in this article at conceptualizing the public nature of technologies. First, we start with surveying the literature on public science. Second, we scrutinize various conceptual approaches to better understand the social and cultural factors embedded in technologies. In so doing, we reflect upon the twentieth-century history of technologies as public things. Third, we focus on nuclear energy in Europe as an exemplary case of a large-scale technology which has been shaped as part of public culture. We suggest that the specificities of the nuclear as a publicly shaped societal entity can be understood as an example of the wider category we propose to call ‘public technologies’.     

The demon of technology,mass society,and atomic physics in West Germany, 1945–1957

In the cultural‐political literature of post‐1945 West Germany, atomic energy often functioned as the most potent image of a “demon of technology” fraught with both enormous potential and enormous danger. These critiques of techno‐science also represented a traditional critique of “mass society,” whose erstwhile anti‐western sentiments now had to be sublimated. As the Cold War developed, discussion shifted to ambivalence about Germany's place in the struggle between superpowers, and the “demon of technology” sentiment shifted away from the conservative end of the spectrum. The controversy over the “Göttingen Eighteen” anti‐armaments manifesto of nuclear physicists is indicative of these shifts.     

东北地区资源型城市资源诅咒效应及传导机制研究

通过面板数据固定效应模型,利用东北地区23个资源型地级城市1999-2012年的数据,分析了东北地区资源型城市资源诅咒效应的存在性与主要传导机制。结论显示东北地区资源型城市存在资源诅咒效应;物质资本投资对经济发展起到最为明显的促进作用,制造业投入和教育业投入也具有一定的促进作用,但作用不够显著。城市开放程度与经济发展之间呈现负相关关系,而城市类型与经济发展不存在明显相关关系。传导机制方面,资源诅咒效应主要通过抑制制造业发展、物质资本投入和教育业投入来阻碍经济增长,其中对制造业的负面影响是主要传导因素。煤炭和石油型城市体现出较为明显的人力资本挤出,而其他类城市传导机制作用则比较平均。     

青海能矿资源综合利用政策调研报告

逐步引导企业从资源开发向综合利用方面转变,努力提高资源综合利用水平,转变经济增长方式,走可持续发展道路,是当前各级党委政府迫切需要解决的现实问题。本文简要回顾了青海能矿资源综合利用工作的开展情况,分析了存在的问题,提出了提高青海能矿资源综合利用水平的政策建议。     

Coalition cascades: The politics of tipping points in clean energy transitions

Policy change often involves multiple policy subsystems, as in the case of clean energy transitions. We argue that trans-subsystem policy feedback is a central dynamic in policy change across subsystems. Policy in one subsystem creates benefits/costs and/or learning effects that mobilize actors for policy change in another subsystem, resulting in “coalition cascades” across interdependent subsystems. If coalition cascades lead to the resolution of coordination problems across subsystems, the system reaches a tipping point in policy change. Coalition cascades are thus the transmission belts of trans-subsystem policy feedback. We illustrate our argument in the case of California's clean energy transition. We show how early renewable energy policy spilled over into the subsystems on grid policy—leading to energy storage policy—and on transport policy—resulting in electric vehicle charging policy. The article advances our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning trans-subsystem policy change, offering a model of the politics of tipping points.     

Chemical Analyses of Sarmatian Glass Beads from Pokrovka, Russia

The chemical composition of 18 glass beads from Early Sarmatian period burials were determined using electron probe microbeam analysis and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence. The beads were made from high-magnesia-soda-lime-silica glass, leaded-soda-lime-silica glass, low-magnesia-soda-lime-silica glass and low-magnesia-high-potash glass. Multivariate analysis of the major oxides suggests that there are five distinct glass recipes used to manufacture these beads. These various glass recipes indicate the involvement of the Sarmatians in exchange/trade networks linking the Eastern Mediterranean, the Indian subcontinent, and China.     

Setting the Record Straight: Frame Contestation as an Advocacy Tactic

Policy scholars recognize that most policy arenas are characterized by competition among interests advancing different problem frames with conflicting problem definitions and/or solutions. At the same time, there is little research that empirically analyzes the dynamics of such framing contests. Using a case study of energy policy advocacy by the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund across three decades, I examine the tactics that interest groups employ when faced with agenda conflict. Contrary to what most policy research suggests, I find that interest groups do not avoid public clashes with their competitors; rather, they often willingly engage in confrontational framing techniques. I call this activity frame contestation , and it involves attempts at discrediting opponents’ factual claims, policy ideas, and/or group character. The study reveals interesting differences between groups in the specific types of frame contestation employed. In particular, the use of character frames that attack an opponents’ reputation appears to be linked to group ideology and orientation toward the business community. These findings enhance our understanding of advocacy group decision making and focus our attention on the role of frame contestation in agenda setting and policymaking outcomes.