Democratisation: Antidemocratic and democratic elements in the political culture of China

The nature of the political culture itself is often seen by commentators as the cause of democracy failing to take root in China; the antidemocratic elements of that culture being overemphasised while the democratic elements are underemphasised. This paper examines the application of the ideas of democratic culture in China to the current state of play, including the possibility of the democratic card being played by factions within the Chinese Communist Parry (CCP). There are indeed cultural problems associated with Chinese democratisation such as cultural anomie, unconscious authoritarian personalities, the legacy of egalitarianism, the radical polarisation of Chinese culture, difficulties of institutional compromise and the irrational control of aggression and fear. While the antidemocratic culture is stronger at present than the democratic culture, the new Chinese democratic culture is likely to gather strength in the future.     

Nationalism,patriotism, or national reference? A response to Jacopo Custodi

Jacop Custodi elaborated recently a response to our article “A nationalist party with non-nationalistic voters? Discussing the limits of nationalism in party categorisation” published in the journal Nations & Nationalism. We consider the work of Custodi is an important and original contribution to the study of left politics and nationalism. This being said, we reflect on the negative consequences of overstretching the category nationalism, both referring to parties and to political discourse. The aim of this reply is unpacking and explaining these negative consequences and offering an alternative as well as responding to some specific points raised by Custodi in his reply.     

胶东青铜器科学分析

本文通过考古实物的科学分析,认为早在西周时期胶东青铜技术便发展到了一定水平,战国后便发展到了较为成熟的阶段,大约自西周始,胶东青铜技术与中原便是大体同步发展了的.文章最后还将胶东青铜合金成分与《考工记·六齐》作了比较,并提出了“六齐”既不是生产经验的总结,也不是指导生产实践的工艺规范,而是一种试验资料的反映和归纳的观点。     

Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision: A meta-analysis

The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods using a meta-analysis approach to systematize the wide range of empirical approaches and modeling frameworks found in the previous literature. Our analysis confirms the presence of moderately increasing to constant returns to scale in the provision of local services with no reduction in the average costs of production in the delivery of most local public services beyond a certain, modest jurisdictional size, which many studies have estimated at 10,000 residents. Also, the potential for economies of scale differs at least across three traditional services: education, water and sanitation, and garbage collection, being highest for education and lowest for garbage collection. Our analysis also offers guidelines for future empirical research in this area. Physical output and production cost data should be used, together with translog specifications for the modeling of cost functions. Last, we find evidence that the determinants of output cost elasticity include bidirectional publication bias and population density but do not include the presence or absence of modern “lean” production technologies or the (perceived) capital intensity of the sector, contrary to conventional wisdom. These findings have significant policy implications for countries considering jurisdictional consolidation programs.     

Inter- and intraregional inequality in a spatial economy

In this paper, we develop a three-region economic geography model with workers of heterogeneous skills and mobility rates to consider how first-nature, regional differences impact both inter- and intraregional inequality. In our model, the skill premium within a region summarizes both the degree of intraregional inequality between mobile, skilled workers and immobile, unskilled workers and the interregional inequality through differences in the welfare of unskilled workers across regions. Regions with the highest skill premium have the greatest degree of intraregional inequality and provide the lowest level of welfare to unskilled workers, relative to other regions. We find that the skill premium will be higher in regions with a greater supply of unskilled labor, lower supply of housing, or are more remote. An increase in a region's housing supply or centrality will lower intraregional inequality and raise the welfare of the local, unskilled workforce. However, the magnitude of these changes are declining in the initial number of skilled workers in the region. The model is extended to consider imperfectly elastic housing supply. The larger the price elasticity of housing, the larger the range of values, such that more populated regions will host a disproportionate share of skilled workers, have lower levels of intraregional inequality, and provide higher levels of welfare for unskilled workers.     

Police and Politics in Aesthetics-Based Urban Governance: Redevelopment and Grassroots Struggles in Enninglu,Guangzhou, China

Rancière's theorisation of police, politics, and aesthetics offers an illustrative framework to understand urban (re)developments. While extant works have examined separately the art of governing through aesthetics and the political subjectivities of those having no part in the frame of visibility and intelligibility, this study argues that hegemonic aesthetic regime and bottom-up aesthetic practices can be mutually constitutive and reside in relationships of co-existence and mutual negotiation. Drawing on over a decade's investigation in Enninglu, a neighbourhood district in Guangzhou that underwent several rounds of political struggles related to redevelopment and conservation, we reveal how local residents negotiated aesthetic norms enacted by the state. Particular attention is paid to the interactions between the aesthetic regime imposed by the state and grassroots people reclaiming their own aesthetic sensibilities, culminating in a contingent, inconclusive, and “impure” space of politics. Both political subjectivities and aesthetic norms are redefined ongoingly in this process.     

古铜矿遗址围岩表层有害生物的防治

铜绿山古铜矿遗址地处长江中游地区、空气湿度大、围岩表层有害生物成片生长蔓延,对遗址的长期保护造成极大威胁。对此采取了改变遗址的环境条件、喷涂消杀药品的方法,消除了围岩表层有害生物的危害。经过一年半的观察表明该方法是可行的。     

Bayesian Spatial Filtering for Hedonic Models: An Application for the Real Estate Market

This article presents a Bayesian method based on spatial filtering to estimate hedonic models for dwelling prices with geographically varying coefficients. A Bayesian Adaptive Sampling algorithm for variable selection is used, which makes it possible to select the most appropriate filters for each hedonic coefficient. This approach explores the model space more systematically and takes into account the uncertainty associated with model estimation and selection processes. The methodology is illustrated with an application for the real estate market in the Spanish city of Zaragoza and with simulated data. In addition, an exhaustive comparison study with a set of alternatives strategies used in the literature is carried out. Our results show that the proposed Bayesian procedures are competitive in terms of prediction; more accurate results are obtained in the estimation of the regression coefficients of the model, and the multicollinearity problems associated with the estimation of the regression coefficients are solved.