The executive lawmaking agenda: Political parties,prime ministers,and policy change in Australia

In Westminster systems, governments enjoy a privileged position in the lawmaking process that they can use to deliver on their campaign promises and achieve their policy goals. What policy areas do governments seek to affect through lawmaking? How stable is the executive lawmaking agenda? How responsive is that agenda to changes triggered by elections or by transitions in prime minister? This study uses a dataset of 3982 Australian bills introduced between 2000 and 2017 to answer these questions. While it finds considerable stability in the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas, the analysis also indicates that Australia's executive lawmaking agenda is more responsive to changes in prime minister than to changes in the party in power. As the first application of the comparative policy agendas approaches to government bills in Australia, this article offers new insights into executive lawmaking priorities during an especially turbulent period in Australian politics.     

Playing Politics with Sex Offender Laws: An Event History Analysis of the Initial Community Notification Laws across American States

Despite a decline in crime rates, the 1990s witnessed extensive media coverage of several high‐profile stranger abductions and murders of children. State legislators' swift response to the public's growing fear of sex offenders with the adoption of sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws raises questions about the role of politics. Punctuated equilibrium theory and the diffusion of innovation jointly provide a context to conduct an event history analysis to assess the extent to which politics enhanced legislative responsiveness to public opinion in SORN policymaking. Contrary to the commonly held belief that attributes legislative interest in SORN to salient crimes against children, the results suggest that factors such as the percentage of a conservative population, district‐level competition, and state innovativeness accelerated the diffusion of innovation of the laws.     

The Importance of Attention Diversity and How to Measure It

Studies of political attention often focus on attention to a single issue, such as front‐page coverage of the economy. However, examining attention to a single issue without accounting for the agenda as a whole can lead to faulty assumptions. One solution is to consider the diversity of attention; that is, how narrowly or widely attention is distributed across items (e.g., issues on an agenda or, at a lower level, frames in an issue debate). Attention diversity is an important variable in its own right, offering insight into how agendas vary in their accessibility to policy problems and perspectives. Yet despite the importance of attention diversity, we lack a standard for how best to measure it. This paper focuses on the four most commonly used measures: the inverse Herfindahl Index, Shannon's H, and their normalized versions. We discuss the purposes of these measures and compare them through simulations and using three real‐world datasets. We conclude that both Shannon's H and its normalized form are better measures, minimizing the danger of spurious findings that could result from the less sensitive Herfindahl measures. The choice between the Shannon's H measures should be made based on whether variance in the total number of possible items (e.g., issues) is meaningful.     

The "Mouse That Roared": Agenda Setting in Canadian Pesticides Politics

Issue redefinition and venue shopping have been identified as key strategies for enacting agenda and policy change, but much work remains to be done in elaborating these processes. I argue that an important aspect of issue redefinition involves shifting not only the image of an issue but also the bases for considering those issues—what I call policy principles. Policy principles are the core values, beliefs, or guidelines attached to policies that help direct decision making. The emergence and acceptance of new principles by the public and policymakers can be a vital source of policy change, at times having far greater consequences for policy than redefining an issue. Venue shopping is also a multifaceted undertaking involving efforts by policy entrepreneurs and advocacy groups to keep issues out of venues they would rather not participate in as well as move decision making to new arenas. Moreover, while the literature suggests that shifting venues is usually a sensible strategy, sometimes venue shopping can backfire. A case study of the municipal movement to restrict the nonessential use of lawn and garden pesticides in Canada illustrates these theoretical points and shows the applicability of agenda setting models to contexts outside the United States.     

博物馆文物的防震保护研究（三）——陈列文物的地震安全性分析

通过分析博物馆馆藏文物的悬吊、固定、浮放等基本放置形式,探讨了文物的陈列特征及其可能造成的震害因素。综合考察和分析研究了国内外浮放式物体及陈列文物的运动状态,指出陈列文物在地震发生时的主要危害性运动是滑移和倾覆。根据相关浮放物在地震作用下的计算方法、上海博物馆文物的陈列特征及防震设计参数,提出简便实用的浮放式陈列文物稳定性计算模型,编制了适合上海博物馆文物安全性分析的计算程序。并以上海博物馆文物陈列的3类接触材料、4楼中国古代玉器馆的典型陈列文物为试点,计算了陈列文物在地震中遭受破坏的临界值。表明在设防水准的大震和中震情况下,目前陈列现状的绝大多数文物均存在倾覆和滑移安全隐患,但当文物所受到的地震动减小到110gal时可满足陈列安全。     

景观生态视角下周边环境与旅游景区协调规划研究——以平遥古城为例

在景区周边环境涌现出许多与景区不协调问题的同时,旅游者对景区周边环境的要求却在提高,因此忽视周边环境与景区完整性的做法已不适应当前旅游的发展。本文引入景观生态学的边缘效应、岛屿生物地理学、景观连接度、景观对比度和中度干扰基本理论,以平遥古城作为案例,对景区周边环境与景区间协调规划问题进行探讨。认为景区周边环境应从维持稳定性的集中与分散结合、加大连接度和利用异质性和发挥场效用的延展文化意境、体现地域特色和互利共生方面进行规划设计。     

Heterochronism in the Moisture Supply of Eurasia in the Middle Ages (Landscape Ethnos,V)

The author relates climatic fluctuations in inner Asia to the political fate of the nomadic inhabitants from the 1st century A. D. to the 18th century. He thus establishes an absolute chronology of climatic changes related to latitudinal shifts in storm tracks. Previous articles in this series appeared in Soviet Geography, June 1964, February 1966, and December 1966.     

Texts and Contexts in the Globalizing Academic Marketplace: Comments on the Debate on Geopolitical Remote Sensing

A prominent political geographer adds to the exchange of views presented in the two preceding papers in this issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics (Antonsich, 2006; Moisio and Harle, 2006). His comments extend beyond the debate on geopolitical remote sensing (a term originated by the author) to the need to more fully contextualize concepts and practices in human geographic research and to examine more closely the role played by internationalizing (and English language-dominated) publishing markets in the review and publication of papers that increasingly cross the borders of linguistic contexts. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O52, Z13.     

冷战后亚太地缘政治格局与中国安全利益

冷战后,亚太地区地缘政治格局发生重大变化,中国的主导作用和地位进一步加强,中国在亚太的安全利益向纵深发展。同时,随亚太格局变化产生的国际矛盾斗争,对中国的安全利益构成严峻挑战。政治安全利益、军事安全利益、经济安全利益是中国在亚太地区安全利益的核心成分。政治安全利益内容广泛,包括国家统一、民族关系稳定、反对宗教势力渗透、维护政治稳定等;军事安全利益着重表现为捍卫祖国统一、维护领土完整、防范军事威胁以及军控和防止核扩散;经济安全利益涵盖金融安全、稳定的资金来源和良好的投资环境、资源安全特别是能源安全、市场安全、运输线安全、海外投资安全等。     

Trauma in the Crusader period city of Caesarea: a major port in the medieval eastern Mediterranean

Caesarea is the first fortified city to undergo palaeopathological analysis of its Crusader period inhabitants. This study of the 12th and 13th century population aims to determine the major types of trauma present, whether from weapon injuries or accidents. Since the Crusades were known for the significant number of battles and raids that took place, weapon injuries were expected to be common. Thirteen cases of trauma are described and a highly unexpected pattern has come to light. These cases do not include one single example of weapon‐related trauma. Every fracture is of a type expected from accidents or interpersonal violence without weapons. Possible explanations include the location of the city deep within Frankish territory and the robust city walls giving effective protection to the inhabitants, and also that the population were involved in activities that left them prone to accidents but not weapon injuries. The other important finding from this study was that the cases of lower limb long bone spiral fractures had healed in a near‐anatomical alignment. This is not what we would expect, as a proportion of these injuries would normally have been unstable and tend to heal poorly aligned. The good position could have resulted from surgeons' use of splints to immobilise the bones while they healed. This suggestion is supported by laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem, which stated that surgeons were to be punished if they allowed such fractures to heal at an angle. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.