Neoliberalising Education: New Geographies of Private Tuition,Class Privilege,and Minority Ethnic Advancement

Geographic research on neoliberalism has explored the restructuring of educational landscapes wrought through marketisation of preschool, school and higher-education provision and considered the responsibilisation of parents and children for educational outcomes. This study develops understanding of the contingent emergence of neoliberal educational reform, and its progressive and regressive impacts, through an examination of the burgeoning private tuition market in England and Wales. The paper outlines the contours of the previously hidden supplementary education industry, demonstrating that it reinforces regional and classed inequalities, while opening possibilities for ethnic minority advancement. Conceptually, the paper advances debate about socio-spatial specificity in neoliberal change, showing that the intersection of policy, free markets and consumer behaviour reshapes the educational landscape in ways that extend beyond state intention and control. Through these processes, contingent market forms are produced that offer social mobility for some, but ensure the social reproduction of enduring regimes of power.     

Truncated Decision Making and Deliberative Implementation: A Time-Based Policy Process Model for Transitional China

The time dimension has not attracted enough attention in policy process research in China, yet speed is the most distinctive feature of China’s recent development. This article, based on observations of China’s policy practices, proposes a new research perspective for understanding how the Chinese government has been able to address policy challenges in an era of rapid transition. The approach adopted by the government allows decision makers to respond quickly to serious problems with a truncated decision-making process, and then implement the decisions through a more gradual deliberative process. The article examines China’s coal-mining industry reform as an empirical case to illustrate how this governance approach has been used to achieve major policy reform, namely property rights reform for coal mines, while simultaneously maintaining stability, regulating production safety, and stimulating industrial development. The article concludes with a discussion of the broad implications of this pattern for improving the effectiveness of public policy both in and outside China.     

伪蒙疆政权的绵羊改良活动

日本树立伪蒙疆政权后,为了掠夺该地区丰富的畜产资源,实行畜产统制政策。羊毛统制是畜产统制的核心,即对绵羊的增产改良、羊毛的收购、对外输出等,实行强制性的政府指导、控制措施。其中,绵羊改良是羊毛统制政策的重点之一。为了获取重要战略资源羊毛,日本将该地域作为大陆绵羊改良的基地,通过伪蒙疆政府、日系企业、蒙古绵羊协会等组织对肉、皮兼用型的蒙古原种绵羊进行改良,实质是为日本的对外侵略扩张提供羊毛这一急需的战略资源。     

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.     

Credibility in Policy Expertise: The Function of Boundaries Between Research and Policy

As science becomes an increasingly crucial resource for addressing complex challenges in society, extensive demands are placed upon the researchers who produce it. Creating valuable expert knowledge that intervenes in policy or practice requires knowledge brokers to facilitate interactions at the boundary between research and policy. Yet, existing research lacks a compelling account of the ways in which brokerage is performed to gain credibility. Drawing on mixed‐method analysis of 12 policy research settings, I outline a novel set of strategies for attaining symbolic power, whereby policy experts position themselves and others via conceptual distances drawn between the “world of ideas” and the “world of policy and practice.” Disciplinary distance works to situate research as either disciplinary or undisciplinary, epistemic distance creates a boundary between complex specialist research and direct digestible outputs, temporal distance represents the separation of slow rigorous research and agile responsive analysis, and economic distance situates research as either pure and intrinsic or marketable and fundable. I develop a theoretical account that unpacks the boundaries between research communities and shows how these boundaries permit policy research actors to achieve various strategic aims.     

Housing in the face of crisis: The influence of Israel's 2011 protest on housing policy

Do social protests affect government housing-related decisions? If so, in what way? To answer this question this study examines the influence of Israel's 2011 social protest on the government's housing policy, using an empirical cumulative-aggregative analysis of housing-related decisions over the past two decades. The empirical analysis is based on two generic classifications of government interventions commonly used in housing literature: first, decisions aimed at increasing the housing stock (supply-side), as opposed to policies aimed at augmenting consumers' financial capacity to obtain adequate housing (demand-side); and second, decisions that encourage homeownership as opposed to those that promote rental housing. The research findings show that the 2011 social protest definitely affected Israel's housing policy, because it prompted the government to engage in housing. However, the interventions introduced focused largely on increasing the inventory of housing units (supply-side) for homeownership and benefited mainly members of the middle class who qualify for mortgages and investors. Thus, despite the increase in government involvement in the post-protest period, Israel's housing policy has remained neoliberal, though in an advanced form of neoliberalism that combines market-oriented policies with centralized tendencies, which we call “centralized neoliberalism.” The study discusses the findings and their implications for various population groups. Given the current global affordable-housing crisis, the findings are relevant to many countries whose existing neoliberal housing policy is failing to address housing-market problems and challenges.     

馆藏文物描述元数据方案探讨

信息社会中博物馆的知识传播职能从被动转向主动,博物馆采用信息技术管理藏品和相关数据,不仅要满足传统业务需求,也要面向网络环境中的使用者。在此过程中,文物藏品信息在互联网环境下的呈现,需要采用标准化的描述元数据方案和受控词汇描述文物的核心信息。该研究首先说明文物数据标准的定义与类型,阐述文物描述元数据的概念与作用,并对比CONA、CDWA Lite、Object ID和第一次全国可移动文物普查的描述元数据方案,说明元数据方案差异反映出的设计需求和结果差异;再进一步对比大英博物馆、大都会博物馆、北京故宫博物院、台北故宫博物院线上文物藏品检索方式,通过检视其检索结果的信息结构与内容,阐述合理的描述元数据方案能呈现丰富信息并导向精准检索。最后建议我国文物博物馆领域应完善文物数据标准,文博机构应制定规范化的文物描述元数据方案和配套实施的编目规则与本地受控词表;文博机构官网在线藏品检索系统应考虑用户需求,呈现完善的编目成果。     

Self‐determination and a shattered star: Statehood and national identity in the Somali Horn of Africa

This article explores the articulation—in different forms, at different periods, and by different actors—of ‘national self‐determination’ in Somalia and across the Somali‐speaking regions of the Horn of Africa. It explores how this concept can be understood in the context of protracted political fragmentation in Somalia—considering unresolved debates over the ideological foundations of state reconstruction, disagreements about the suitability of federalism, aspirations for the recognition of an independent Republic of Somaliland, and the distinctive trajectory of the Somali Regional State in Ethiopia. Taking a comparative, cross‐border and wide‐angled historical approach, the article argues that ideas of an ethno‐linguistically, culturally and religiously defined Somali ‘nation’ continue to coexist (and be reproduced, updated and used) within an environment of extreme political fragmentation and across multiple ‘state’ boundaries. This argument is made through comparative analysis of contemporary examples of the performance of Somali state and nationalist identities within and beyond the region and the distinctive transnational Somali‐language media environment within which these ideas circulate and compete.     

Information transparency,monitoring, and incentives under decentralization: Evidence from China's fiscal reform of “province managing county”

Monitoring is deemed crucial for the incentivization of a decentralized organization, but its function relies on information transparency between the central authority and the delegated individuals. We test this hypothesis by considering changes in the fiscal behavior of Chinese county governments following an exogenous fiscal reform in 2004/2005 that removed information obstacles between provinces and counties. Employing data on 590 Chinese counties from 2000 to 2009, we find that counties in the reform provinces adopt a more proactive fiscal policy after the reform, suggesting that they become more incentivized in the political competition for economic growth. Such effects are stronger in counties with fewer competing peers and counties with either high or low ranks in the records of economic growth among peers. The increase in counties' productive spending leads to higher economic growth in later years.     

Analyzing the association of policy narratives with problem tractability in the implementation of EU decisions: Evidence from the phytosanitary policy area

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) suggests that narratives can be employed to define and contest policy problems. Yet, few NPF studies have explicitly addressed the narrative portrayal of problem intractability. What role do narratives play in a situation of uncertainty about the causes and solutions of the problem, when strong divergences regarding the values and interests of the policy actors exist? The article anchors the NPF to the literatures on problem definition and implementation to advance two propositions about (a) how differences in the use of narrative elements can be suggestive of the degree of problem (in-)tractability; and (b) whether other elements of tractability, namely the presence of a valid causal theory, are associated with the usage of narrative strategies. I test the propositions by analyzing media commentaries surrounding the implementation of European decisions to tackle a tree-killing epidemic in Italy. The findings suggest that narratives can helpfully illustrate the intractability inherent in the policy debate. However, narratives can also develop independently of factors that the implementation literature understands as conducive to lowering intractability, namely knowledge accumulation. The NPF may represent a promising alternative to understand policy implementation processes.