The role of local leaders in regional development funding: Evidence from an elite survey

Many postsocialist countries are run by an elite with links to the socialist legacy and often share similar challenges and issues. We investigate formal and informal factors shaping the role of mayors in accessing regional development funds in Albania, a postsocialist country. With data from one of the largest elite (mayors) survey, we analyze both channels of influence of the mayors: the number of applications and the success rate. We find that mayors bring their communities more funds using formal leadership qualities that intensify the number of submissions. On the other hand, informal leadership remains important in explaining the success rate, as by using networking channels leaders enhance the probability to get financed. Political power is also decisive in the process.     

中国共产党的绝对领导与新中国国防和军队建设

坚持中国共产党对国防和军队建设的绝对领导,是适合中国国情、独具中国特色的军事领导制度,是坚持党的领导和人民民主专政的重要基石,是推进国防和军队现代化建设的根本保证。新中国成立60年的历史充分证明,坚持党对国防和军队建设的绝对领导,是巩固党的执政地位、确保国家安全、维护社会稳定的重要制度。必须坚决抵制国内外敌对势力鼓吹的"军队非党化、非政治化"和"军队国家化"等错误论调,毫不动摇地坚持这一根本原则和根本制度。     

Composing our careers: Susan Hanson's contributions to geography and geographers

Susan Hanson's career exemplifies the notion that our lives are compositions rather than predictable, linear trajectories. In this essay I argue that Susan's career is an empowering example of a collage of woven-together life experiences, substantive research interests, feminist values and progressive professional practices. I illustrate these ideas through three compositions that I trace throughout Susan's career: networking gender; caring geography; and reproducing geography. Susan's work connects and validates the diverse elements of our lives through her scholarship, her commitment to feminist values and her disciplinary leadership.     

The Trump administration and outer space: promoting US leadership or heading towards isolation?

In a relatively short period of time, the Trump administration has been fairly active in the field of space. The reconstitution of the National Space Council, under the direction of Vice President Pence, the President’s signing of Space Policy Directive 1, that calls for the return of humans to the Moon, and the announcement of a National Space Strategy that calls for an ‘America first’ approach in space, have been the highlights of this process. A key component of the administration’s approach has been the promotion of commercial (private) space activities through an effort of regulatory reform intended to facilitate free enterprise and individual initiative in space.

Overall, it is evident that the Trump administration views a consolidated US leadership in space as instrumental to ‘Make America Great Again’. However, due to the lack of cohesion in the management of the US space program, the controversial interpretation of international principles and the US-centred view of space endorsed by the administration, doubts remain as to whether the space policy of the Trump administration will foster US leadership in space or lead to its progressive isolation.     

Owner parties and party institutionalisation in Italy: is the Northern League exceptional?

Studies on party institutionalisation commonly argue that parties with personalist leadership and weak organisation are unlikely to remain in power beyond leadership succession. In other words, these parties will rarely attain their own institutionalisation. From this perspective, the recent Italian political reality represents a conundrum. Three parties of this type – Northern League; Forza Italia; Italy of Values – confronted significant resignation issues concerning their leaders, but only the League, contrary to the theory, made a decisive step toward institutionalisation by removing its founding father and remaining an actor with national blackmail potential. This article addresses this challenge and provides a solution to this conundrum. In particular, the article demonstrates that an approach that considers both party factors and critical events is necessary to account fully for the variance of outcomes and, more generally, for party change.     

Geographical Leadership Mobility and Policy Isomorphism: Narrowing the Regional Inequality of Social Spending in China

The link between geographical leadership mobility and policy isomorphism is rarely discussed in the extant literature. We argue that the geographical leadership mobility encourages local executives to converge their development experiences in their original working jurisdictions and their current positions. The distinct Chinese political personnel system provides an ideal environment that allows researchers to examine the isomorphic effects of geographical leadership mobility. This research builds a dataset of local social spending between 1998 and 2011 as well as a database of the leadership mobility history of provincial executives in China. Results of the spatial panel analysis (SPA) demonstrate that the geographical leadership mobility (i.e., horizontal, top-down, and bottom-up) of governors stimulates the regional isomorphism of provincial education and health care spending. The empirical findings affirm the effectiveness of the effort of the Chinese central government in narrowing the regional inequality of social welfare provision through the geographical mobility of local leadership.     

Australian foreign policy in political time: middle power creativity,misplaced friendships,and crises of leadership

Over the past century, Australian foreign policy orders have been stabilised by the construction of ideas that have reduced uncertainty regarding national interests. Yet, such ideas have often evolved in ways that have engendered misplaced certainty, renewed instability, and crisis. To explain such shifts, I highlight the role of an Australian ‘pragmatic liberal tradition’, one which has enabled alternating tendencies to principled stability or technocratic hubris. In a tripartite model, I trace stages over initial ‘middle power’ efforts to construct ideas that lead states—and particularly great powers—to identify interests in cooperation, misplaced certainty in great power ties which obscures new challenges, and the construction of crises that impede or enable change. Empirically, I apply this framework to the construction, conversion, and crises of the ongoing ‘Reform order’. These span the initial Hawke-era middle power integration of US and regional ties, Howard-era misplaced certainty in US-styled neoconservative bandwagoning and neoliberal macroeconomic accommodation, and evolving constructions of the War on Terror and Global Financial Crisis. In the conclusion, I address theoretical and policy implications, highlighting the initial challenges that crises can pose for middle power leadership, and the subsequent scope for creativity.     

第三代中央领导集体国际战略初探

冷战结束以后 ,面对西方国家的联合制裁和苏东剧变 ,第三代中央领导集体坚持独立自主的外交立场 ,采取灵活多样的外交手段 ,打破西方国家的联合制裁 ;冷静分析苏联解体后的国际局势 ,积极实施全方位外交战略方针 ,为社会主义现代化建设营造良好的外部环境 ;全面改善和调整大国关系 ,谋求面向 2 1世纪的新型伙伴关系的建立 ;面对经济全球化的趋势 ,实施积极主动参与和趋利避害相结合的国际战略方针 ,积极倡导和推动国际政治经济新秩序 ,将一个生机勃勃、在国际上有着举足轻重作用的社会主义中国带进了新世界的门槛     

Keeping Policy Churn Off the Agenda: Urban Education and Civic Capacity

Building on the conceptual framework developed by the Civic Capacity and Urban Education Project, we investigate why sustained reform is so difficult in urban school systems. Our study addresses two questions: How does the concept of civic capacity relate to the policy change process and how do its various components relate to each other? And to what extent does civic capacity foster agenda consensus in the context of urban education reform? To address these questions we focus on the connection between problems and solutions and deal directly with the question of how mayoral leadership impacts this process. Using the Project's survey of key stakeholders and independent indicators of agenda setting and stakeholder support/opposition culled from media coverage in 11 large U.S. cities, we find considerable variation in levels of civic capacity, particularly low levels of stakeholder agreement on reform solutions, but also convincing evidence that strong mayoral leadership may indeed play an important role in fostering greater agenda consensus.