Situated Cyborg Knowledge in Not so Borderless Online Global Education: Mapping the Geosocial Landscape of a MOOC

Theorising situated knowledge formation in relation to geopolitics, geoeconomics and the geosocial, this article adds to the growing literature that evaluates Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) by studying who actually participates in them, how, and with what sorts of outcomes. Doing so, this article argues against a geoeconomic view of MOOCs as the revolutionary technology of borderless ‘flat world’ education. Instead, it outlines the far-from-borderless landscape of MOOC participation in terms of geosocial unevenness using evidence from the discussion boards of a global MOOC on globalisation. Based on this empirical evidence, this article suggests that MOOCs can enable forms of connective action through online educational networking, but that these forms of cyborg knowledge formation are possible precisely because they are not ‘borderless, gender-blind, race-blind, class-blind and bank account blind’.     

The Legislator as Political Entrepreneur: Investment in Political Capital

This paper applies the standard Austrian theory of capital investment to the standard interest group model of legislator behavior. Distinguishing between reputational capital and representative capital as interdependent forms of political capital, I argue that legislator behavior (specifically roll call voting) can be explained as entrepreneurial investment in political capital under uncertainty. I discuss several examples in which this approach can potentially add predictive power regarding legislative voting.     

Changing Women's Lives: Child Care Policy in Ireland

Child care as a policy issue has been forced to the center of the national planning agenda in Ireland with the report of an expert working group on child care. As Ireland has broken into the ranks of wealthy Western economies, Irish women have joined the formal workforce in ever greater numbers, dramatically breaking the traditional ideology of women as childbearers and homemakers. However, women are now carrying the double burden of work that accompanies the lack of any state policy on child care. This article traces this recent history of the feminizing of the Irish workforce, amidst a fast-changing social context for family life, and the multiple problems confronting the expert working group of securing an adequate range of policies for the provision of child care in a country which has one of the lowest rates of formal state provision in the entire European Union.     

Political bargaining in a federation: Buchanan meets Coase

In recent decades, the issues of federalism and political integration have gained prominence in public debate as well as in the academic realm. A frequently made point is that allowing free secession may protect the minority's interests, thus providing it with an incentive to enter the federation. This paper explicitly considers the political process in the federation arguing that the option to secede may distort the political choices made by the individual regions to improve their bargaining positions. As a result, the allocation of resources in the federation could well end up being inefficient and unattractive for the minority region. In contrast, limiting the secession possibilities by requiring the consent of a majority of voters through a regional referendum, rather than leaving it to the discretion of the legislature, restores efficiency.     

Capital Controls: a Political Economy Approach

The paper examines the economic consequences of political conflicts that arise when countries implement capital controls. In an overlapping‐generations model, agents vote on whether to open or close an economy to capital flows. The young (workers) receive income only from wages while the old (capitalists) receive income only from savings. The authors characterize the set of stationary equilibria for an infinite‐horizon game. Assuming dynamic efficiency, when the median representative is a worker (capitalist), capital‐importing countries will open (close) while capital‐exporting countries will close (open). These predicted patterns are consistent with data on liberalization policies over time and across various countries.     

Political trust as rational belief: Evidence from Chinese village elections

Democratic governance is believed to improve government responsiveness to citizens’ demand for public goods. In China, villagers’ committee elections represent a major progress in China’s development toward good governance. We develop a rational model to explain villagers’ participation. Utilizing a national survey of rural residents in 2005, this paper tests the insights of the model. Two findings are of interest to the students of voting and elections. First, there is disagreement over the causal relationship between political trust and voting. This paper offers a rational interpretation of political trust by emphasizing the informational aspect of the concept. Second, voting is generally theorized as a process of overcoming various costs. The prospect of benefits figures more prominently in Chinese village elections. Our findings highlight the pivotal role of township governments in China’s rural politics and reveal the inner dilemma of democratization in China.     

Political structure as a legacy of indirect colonial rule: Bargaining between national governments and rural elites in Africa

Alliances between national governments and rural elites are observed in postcolonial Africa. Governments rely on rural elites to control rural regions, guaranteeing them a degree of authority and revenue in return. This paper provides a model to analyze the forging of such alliances. Without cooperation between the national government and rural elite, the power of the two competing authorities to compel farmers’ obedience determines the revenue of the government extracted from cash crop production. Hence, with a powerful rural elite, the national government has a weak bargaining position and agrees to a large transfer to the rural elite. Furthermore, the government’s capacity to compel rural residents’ obedience is endogenously determined by the level of cash crop production and the power of rural elites. Because indirect colonial rule is a significant source of the elite control over residents in rural areas, cross-regional variations in colonial policies lead to various forms of postcolonial alliances between African national governments and rural elites.     

作为危机的政策咨询:一个危机管理的政治学新定义

专家是危机管理系统的重要组成部门,不同类型的专家在危机咨询中充当的角色并不一样。因此,如何处理在危机管理过程中不同角色之间的关系是危机管理领导者的一项重要工作,也是危机处置取得胜利的重要因素。     

作为危机的政策咨询：—个危机管理的政治学新定义

专家是危机管理系统的重要组成部门，不同类型的专家在危机咨询中充当的角色并不一样。因此，如何处理在危机管理过程中不同角色之间的关系是危机管理领导者的一项重要工作，也是危机处置取得胜利的重要因素。     

Ecological Political Economy: Towards a Strategic-Relational Approach

This article identifies three distinct traditions in what might be described as ‘ecological political economy’. First, a ‘Promethean’ approach posits that capitalism has a relentless drive towards growth and bears responsibility for the wholesale transformation of nature. Second, critics of sustainable capitalism acknowledge the possibility of capitalist futures with a better management of natural resources and carbon emissions. The Strategic Relational Approach, developed by Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum, points to a unique third type of ecological political economy. Each approach is shown to have distinct views concerning the commodification of nature, the role of the state and ways to understand ecological and social transitions. The Strategic Relational Approach points to the possibility of counter-hegemonic strategies and collective mobilization to transform the state and so redirect, control and contain capitalist relations with nature.     

Political rents in a non-corrupt democracy

A fundamental problem in all political systems is that the people in power may extract rents to the detriment of the general public. In a democracy, electoral competition and information provided by the media may keep such rent extraction at bay. We develop a simple model where rents are decreasing in the degree of political competition and voter information. In line with our theoretical predictions, we find that both increased political competition and increased local media coverage substantially reduce direct measures of legal political rents among local governments in a non-corrupt democracy (Sweden).     

Political exchange and the voting franchise: universal democracy as an emergent process

The expansion of democracy presents a puzzle for a rational choice theory of politics: why would those in power choose to dilute their power by expanding the voting franchise? In this article I introduce a new path of democratization, through mutually-beneficial political exchange aimed at securing collective-consumption goods. This political exchange path will produce a more constrained state than other paths to democracy, due to the subjective preferences of the two groups and the possibility of revoking the franchise. I briefly apply the democratization framework to the United State prior to the Civil War.     

Rethinking Political Bargaining: Policymaking with a Single Proposer

Most political bargaining in the U.S. system has two featureswhich are constitutionally mandated: (1) only one actor canmake a formal proposal, and (2) he or she can make an indefinitenumber of proposals. Existing work in economics and politicalscience ignores at least one of these features. I constructa model incorporating both of these components of politicalbargaining. The main finding of this article is that time preferencesand the number of periods have no effect on the equilibriumpolicy outcomes, which are identical to those first stated byRomer and Rosenthal in a one-period model. This result suggeststhat impatience and time preferences may not be key featuresof political bargaining. This model has implications for constitutionaland statutory rules regarding bargaining: it can be appliedto presidential appointments, legislation, citizen initiatives,vetoes and filibusters (e.g., Krehbiel's pivotal politics model),and term limits.     

PACking a punch: Political Action Committees and corruption

Political Action Committees (PACs) are unique and prominent players in American politics. Yet, formal research on some aspects of PACs is lacking. Using US data over the period 1970 to 2009, this research demonstrates that the growth in PACs is positively associated with greater corruption. A 10% increase in the number of PACs per capita would increase corruption by about 8%. Upon disaggregation, corporate PACs, rather than labour PACs, are positively associated with corruption. The effects of economic prosperity, government size and population on US corruption are generally in line with the literature.     

Political competition in a model of economic growth: Some theoretical results

Summary We analyze the role of political competition on the type of economic policies that are selected in a one sector model of economic growth. We identify conditions under which neoclassical optimal growth plans occur, and conditions in which political business cycles occur. We find that the ability commit to multiperiod economic policy leads to less political stability of economic plans.Support for this research was provided in part by NSF grant #SES-9022932 to the California Institute of Technology. We are grateful to a referee for pointing out that our results could be extended to supra majority rules, as in Proposition 1.     

作为战略群体的企业家--一位德国学者关于中国私营企业家社会与政治功能的研究

改革开放以来 ,随着中国社会主义市场经济体制的逐步建立和完善 ,转型过程中企业家的作用日益凸显 ,越来越多的学者关注、重视并直接致力于这一课题的研究 ,相关著作和理论成果层出不穷。由德国著名中国问题研究专家、杜伊斯堡大学政治学研究所和东亚研究所所长、前德中友协主席托马斯·海贝勒教授撰写的《作为战略群体的企业家》(中央编译出版社 2 0 0 3年出版 ) ,堪称这一研究领域的国际前沿性著作。作者以自己对中国近 30年的了解、理解、感知和经验认识为基础 ,从一个欧洲学者的视角出发 ,将理论与实际、定量与定性、多学科交叉综合的研…