网络文化与高校思想政治工作

网络文化对人类社会产生了深刻的影响,受网络文化影响最深、最广的莫过于有较高文化层次的大学生.新时期的高校思想政治工作面临网络科技带来的发展机遇和前所未有的挑战.高校应采取积极的对策,占领网络这块阵地,促使思想政治工作再上一个新台阶.     

从三次战役看《孙子兵法》在《三国演义》中的体现

《三国演义》是中国古代军事战争小说的经典之作,它深受《孙子兵法》的影响。文章以赤壁之战、智取荆州、彝陵之战为窗口,以期窥探《三国演义》中所体现的《孙子兵法》的军事思想。     

Economic sanctions and official ethnic discrimination in target countries, 1950–2003

Conventional studies on the consequences of sanctions tend to focus on the target society as a whole without specifying how foreign economic pressures might affect the well-being of vulnerable groups within target countries – the same groups who often disproportionately bear the burden of sanctions. This study explores the extent to which sanctions increase the likelihood of discriminatory government practices against one of the globally most vulnerable groups, ethnic groups. It is argued that sanctions contribute to the rise of official ethnic-based economic and political discrimination through contracting the economy and creating incentives for the target government to employ ethnic-based discriminatory policies. Using data on over 900 ethnic groups from 1950 to 2003, the results lend support for the theoretical claim that sanctions prompt the government to pursue ethnic-based discriminatory economic and political practices in multiethnic countries. The findings also indicate that multilateral sanctions are likely to be more harmful to the well-being of ethnic groups than sanctions levied by individual countries. Further, the negative effect of comprehensive sanctions appears to be greater than that of sanctions with moderate and limited impact on the target economy. The regime type of the target state, on the other hand, appears to have a significant role only in conditioning the hypothesized effect of sanctions on economic discrimination. Overall, this study’s focus on a vulnerable segment of the target society – ethnic groups – offers a greater understanding of the consequences of sanctions. It also provides additional insight as to how, in multiethnic countries, political elites might domestically respond to external pressures to retain power.     

Growth recovery after civil conflict: a fractional integration approach

Using recent econometric techniques based on fractional integration, we find that developing countries recover their economic growth faster than developed countries in response to a shock. Following this methodology, we find that longer civil conflicts are associated with a faster recovery process. We further investigate this issue by exploring correlations with components of GDP, military spending, institutions and aid and find heterogeneous effects of these channels by duration of conflict. Higher government spending is correlated with faster recoveries post longer conflicts, and higher consumption spending is linked to faster recoveries following shorter conflicts. Military spending appears to be driving the government expenditure that makes countries recover from longer conflicts. More democratic institutions are associated with faster recoveries post short wars but slower recoveries following long wars.     

Educate or Adjudicate? Socioeconomic Heterogeneity and Welfare

I present a formal framework to explore the welfare and distributional effects of a government’s optimal choice over two types of public spending in a closed economy: domestic security (DS) and investment in social capital (SC). Production is characterized as a function of social and physical capital stocks that both vary across the regions. DS stands for total factor productivity, while SC stands for human capital and civic cooperativeness combined. SC accumulates via public spending on universal primary education, cultural, and civic events and such, and is exposed to regional spillover effects. Numerical simulations of the static solution of the government’s welfare maximization problem reveal that the optimal rate of spending on SC (m^*) is negatively related with the income share of physical capital, SC spillovers and fiscal decentralization. Simulations also show that SC homogeneity is positively associated with both the level and equitability of aggregate income. The maximum attainable levels of income, welfare and social cohesion and the most equitable incomes are all observed to realize at some intermediate range of m^* values. In case DS augments SC, however, social cohesion improves and welfare declines monotonously in m^*.     

Military Expenditure,Economic Growth and Heterogeneity

This paper examines the impact of military expenditure on economic growth on a large balanced panel, using an exogenous growth model and dynamic panel data methods for 106 countries over the period 1988–2010. A major focus of the paper is to consider the possibility group heterogeneity and non-linearity. Having estimated the model for all of the countries in the panel and finding that military burden has a negative effect on growth in the short and long run, the panel is broken down into various groupings based upon a range of potentially relevant factors, and the robustness of the results is evaluated. The factors considered are different levels of income, conflict experience, natural resources abundance, openness and aid. The estimates for the different groups are remarkably consistent with those for the whole panel, providing strong support for the argument that military spending has adverse effects on growth. There are, however, some intriguing results that suggest that for certain types of countries military spending has no significant effect on growth.     

Resource rents,institutions, and violent civil conflicts

Natural resources have been blamed for inducing slow growth and sparking civil conflicts and violence. This paper first develops a model to account for the hazard of armed civil conflicts as a manifestation of the natural resource curse, which is mediated by the quality of both economic and political institutions. We then use recently published data on institutional quality and natural resource rents to measure the potential impact of the resource curse on violent civil conflicts using a panel of data for over 100 countries in the period 1970–2010. Our model explicitly accounts for the role of good economic and political institutions in deterring the recourse to violence as well as the extent to which they might weaken the resource rents effect.     

The Weight of the Past(s): The Impact of the Bundeswehr’s Use of Historical Experience on Strategy-Making in Afghanistan

This article seeks to explain the basic dynamics of the development of the German military approach in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2010 by looking at the impact of the Bundeswehr’s established uses of historical experience. First, the German military approach in Afghanistan has slowly evolved from a peacebuilding and mediation mission towards a full-fledged combat deployment. Second, the Bundeswehr’s exclusive focus on the World War II experience has contributed to the emergence of the Balkans experience as a formative experience that shaped initial operational thinking in Afghanistan. Third, because a thorough debate on the historical foundation of counterinsurgency remained absent, the operational shift in 2009 was perceived as a return to ‘classical’ military tasks and thus led to an almost exclusive focus on training for combat.     

浅谈《中国近现代史纲要》课教学中的几个问题

"中国近现代史纲要"这门课目前面临着从教材体系向教学体系转变的关键时期。本文结合作者自身的教学实践,从内容和方法两个维度,提出了三个在教学过程中存在的突出问题。作者希望通过对这三个问题的阐释和解决,达到帮助大学生深入了解国情、国史,深刻领会历史和人民的"四个选择"的目的。     

中学历史教材汉代西北丝绸之路分途地商榷

中学历史教材之中汉代西北丝绸之路插图,图中中段路线南北道分途地当起自鄯善,并非敦煌玉门、阳关,南道支线分歧地当起于皮山,并非于阗。除插图所示自大宛可直抵安息路线之外,自皮山西南行,越过葱岭抵印度河流域,经今克什米尔、巴基斯坦东北部、阿富汗西南、伊朗高原亦可抵达安息。