Policy Design and Social Construction amid Mass Protests
Studies on mass protests primarily examine the process, consequences and implications of protests from such angles as resource mobilization, political structure and opportunity, as well as policy frameworks, with little attention paid to the guiding role that related government policy have in dealing with mass protests. This paper analyzes the basic characters of government policies, further explains the basic logic behind their design, and takes the response to the Wukan incident as a typical case for confirmatory analysis. The study find that policy elements such as policy purpose, target groups, policy tools and executive bodies have remarkable underlying assumptions about effectiveness. If some assumptions fail to occur, policy failure is likely to appear. Therefore, in face of varying circumstances, it is recommended that policy design attach importance to elements about social construction, and adopt an open, interactive model which involves protesters in policy design.
Organizational Structure Change and Hybridity: Enhancing Uncertainty as a Response to Competing and Changing Institutional Logics
Confronting the uncertain environment, this article adopts a case research approach to resonate with the studies of hybridity. It aims to explain how the perception of uncertainty in the institutional environment affects the adaptation of organizational structure in pursuing legitimacy for hybrid organizations. Based on the empirical data collected from a two-staged fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the case analysis concentrates on the correlation between the evolution of institutional logics and organizational structure change from a diachronic perspective. The findings indicate that in the face of competing and changing institutional logics, Chinese mass media organizations have gradually shifted from a dominated blending strategy in the exploration stage to a deeply compartmentalizing strategy in the stable stage. The hybrids can deal with the uncertainty of the institutional environment by enhancing the uncertainty of the organizational structure. Consequently, the case evolves an organizational integration through internal legitimacy. It manifests a possibility for hybrids of combining the two major response mechanisms in one process.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1