Tourism's vulnerability and resilience to terrorism

Personal security is a major concern for tourists. Most tourists will seek safe and secure destinations and avoid those that have been plagued by terrorism. This research quantifies the relationship between terrorism and tourism in 95 different countries and territories using international tourism demand models. After controlling for income, we find there is no long run effect of terrorism on international tourism demand and the short run effect is quite limited from a global perspective using panel data models. Only nine countries out of the 95 show a long run impact of terrorism on tourism and 25 countries out of the 95 show a short run impact using time series models, implying that international tourism is resilient to terrorism. The influence of terrorism is diverse in destinations with different political instability, income levels and tourism intensities.     

Rewards from public office and the selection of politicians by parties

We investigate the relationship between the quality of politicians, defined in terms of their competence (skills), and rewards from public office in a game between parties and citizens in which parties play a crucial role in the selection of politicians. Parties shape the selection of politicians by manipulating information about the quality of their candidates. An increase in the rewards from public offices leads to two opposing effects on the average quality of politicians. The first is a selection effect, whereby more skilled citizens enter politics, leading to an increase in average quality. The second is a manipulation effect, as parties have the incentive to further manipulate information to increase the probability of election for their unskilled candidates, from whom they can extract higher rents in the form of service duties. We find that the second effect dominates when (i) parties’ costs of manipulating information are sufficiently low; (ii) even in the absence of manipulation, the quality of information available to citizens about candidates is sufficiently poor; and (iii) the net gains from becoming a politician for unskilled citizens are sufficiently larger than those for skilled citizens. These findings provide a rationale for the ambiguous sign of the empirical relationship between the quality and pay of politicians.     

Exploring the ‘layeredness’ of recurring natural resource conflicts: The role of Loita Maasai leadership in the Naimina Enkiyio Forest conflicts in Kenya

This article examines two successive conflicts over the same forest in Kenya, which, when analysed separately, have led to interpretations that do not hold when the conflicts are studied in relation to each other. Inspired by political ecology, it employs a processual view of natural resource conflict, which recognizes that such conflicts may be ‘layered’ and composed of various struggles − or layers − at once, and that some of these struggles may not be discernible at first sight or when resource conflicts are studied in isolation. The conflicts presented in this article occurred between 1993 and 2005 and revolved around the Naimina Enkiyio Forest in south Kenya. They were initially triggered when a local authority, Narok County Council, and later the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), intended to implement plans and projects that would affect the way the forest was being used by the Loita Maasai. Rather than viewing the conflicts as being between a local community and powerful outsiders, I argue that they are best seen as different crystallizations of coalitions between local and outside actors running along a longstanding cleavage in the Loita’s leadership. This article examines how opposing Loita leadership groups forged outside alliances and mobilized support and resistance in Loita and elsewhere. In doing so, it will demonstrate that a particular layer was overlooked or minimized in the various interpretations that have been posited for the separate conflicts, namely a longstanding struggle within the leadership of the Loita Maasai. In fact, this struggle has proved to be crucial for providing a valid and consistent explanation that holds for the two conflicts when they are considered together.     

Explaining rural land use change and reforestation: A causal-historical approach

Research on human-environment interactions is bedeviled by two key analytical challenges: integrating natural and social science information and demonstrating causal connections between proximate and distant influences. These challenges can be met by adopting an event-focused, causal-historical approach to research methodology, referred to here as Abductive Causal Eventism (ACE). With ACE, researchers construct causal histories of interrelated social and/or biophysical events backward in time and outward or inward in space through a process of eliminative inference and reasoning from effects to causes, called abduction. ACE is contrasted with three leading approaches to human-environment research: Land Change Science (LCS), Socio-ecological Systems (SES), and Political Ecology (PE). For illustration, ACE is applied to a study of post-War environmental change in two rural watersheds in Saint Lucia, West Indies. Findings reveal that the most consequential change has been the widespread reforestation of lands abandoned from farming. This change occurred irrespective of the type of land tenure, but was especially commonplace on lands with steeper slopes and further from roads. Reforestation during the 1960s and 1970s was caused by a combination of commodity market challenges, abandonment of subsistence cultivation in response to smaller family sizes, and sizable out-migrations of younger adults overseas. The expansion of banana cultivation in the 1960s and then again in the 1980s slowed and in places reversed this trend. But an especially large wave of farmland abandonment swept the island from the mid-1990s to early-2000s because the banana export market collapsed as a result of preferential market access being eroded by a series of WTO trade rulings. These effects have been reinforced by a surge in investment from return migrants and the tourism industry which has drawn labour out of farming while also creating economic incentive and political support for protecting more forests on both private estates and public lands. Yet, the post-War trend in reforestation may have ended as agriculture displays signs of rebounding and residential and tourism development expands unabated into the countryside. This study demonstrates the advantages of using ACE where explanations entail diverse types of causes operating across space and over time.     

广东省渔业保险财政补贴问题研究

由于渔业的产业特性和风险特征,开展渔业保险困难重重。与广东渔业经济发展的现实需要相比,渔业保险供给略显不足。文章通过对广东省渔业保险的实践考察以及广东省财政补贴渔业保险的实证分析,强调广东省应对渔业保险进行更为有效的财政补贴,从而提高广东省渔业保险的社会效益,并从财政补贴的角度为进一步发展广东省渔业保险提供政策建议。     

学生宿舍在大学生思想政治教育中的功能探索

高校学生宿舍是大学生学习、生活的重要场所,在新的历史时期,宿舍的特定性能决定了它的角色已不再仅仅为学生提供课余之外的休息场所。如何充分利用学生宿舍环境的独特性,积极开展大学生思想政治教育,已经成为一个亟待研究的重要课题。本文旨在通过对学生宿舍角色转换重新定位的研究,探索高校学生宿舍在大学生思想政治教育中的多样性功能。     

安溪茶行业协会与台湾茶行会的比较分析

近年来安溪茶产业迅速发展,但安溪县茶行业协会却并没有随之得到应有的发展。本文将把运作比较成熟的台湾茶商会与安溪茶行业协会作对比分析,运用组织化行为理论,结合实地调研的情况,构设出一种尽可能符合安溪实际情况的未来茶行业协会的构建模式。     

改进高职院校思想政治理论课教学的思考

加强与改进大学生思想政治教育是一项重大而紧迫的战略任务。它是坚持社会主义的办学方向,提高大学生的思想政治素质,培养全面发展的中国特色社会主义事业的建设者和接班人的需要。文章结合加强和改进大学生思想政治教育的主要任务和高职思想政治理论课的教学要求,对如何加强与改进高职院校思想政治理论课教学提出几点思考。     

独立学院招生Web系统与数据挖掘的结合与应用

本文把Web报名系统与数据挖掘相结合,建立独立学院招生决策模型。首先,建立一个适用于数据挖掘的招生Web报名系统,用它来采集更直接、更客观的考生数据;其次,用关联规则对考生数据进行挖掘,发现数据中的潜在的规则,作为我们进行招生宣传的决策依据。     

Political Marketing: The Cause of an Emerging Democratic Deficit in Britain?

SUMMARY

Political marketing, as a set of techniques for policy design and development, was welcomed as a route towards a more participatory form of democracy. However, as New Labour attempted to rebrand itself to suit key segments of the electorate, we find that voters are not participating to any greater extent. In fact sections of the electorate are rejecting the democratic process, feeling that parties have little care for those outside their target segment. This paper questions the way New Labour employed marketing and, drawing on primary data, relates this to the dramatic fall in turnout in 2001.