Suchergebnisse

Effective pandemic response has become an increasingly important focus for research in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. While there are a number of variables that may be considered as influencing effective response, this paper focuses on the potential impact of an "authoritarian advantage" in achieving an effective response in the period prior to pharmaceutical interventions being available with China as a case study. In essence, this paper explores whether China enjoys an authoritarian advantage, and if so, how it functions. This study compares China's SARS-CoV-1 (2003) response with its SARS-CoV-2 (2019) response by exploring the impact of the authoritarian advantage on the state's ability to effectively engage three key explanatory variables — centralized decision-making powers, public support and media engagement.

Concentration of market power is nothing new in the media industries—and neither is government intervention to break it up. For over seventy years, the entertainment industry has operated under the shadow of agreements between the historically powerful film studios and the Department of Justice to stay out of the exhibition market, where the studios had cemented their dominance in the naissance of the American film industry. During the same period, however, understandings of antitrust law have evolved and what was once a discrete "film" industry has ballooned into a massive entertainment marketplace. While today's streaming and technology giants battle the threat of increased regulatory oversight and calls for bolder antitrust enforcement, the general trend of legal and practical developments suggests a far less bleak outlook than that of their Hollywood progenitors.In fact, the policies and arguments supporting the consent decrees that emerged from the 1948 Paramount decision have been severely weakened with the passing of time. The acceleration of diversification in content and content providers has created new industry leaders like Netflix, HBO, and Hulu—and a proliferation of innovative competitors like Quibi and Peacock—that are apparently excused from Paramount's constrictions. Instead, the Paramount Decrees' narrow focus risks stifling the competitive flexibility of "traditional" producers and distributors of theatrical feature films as they seek to combat these new market entrants. In short, the Paramount Decrees appear obsolete given the realities of the film industry today. This Article argues for revisions to, or rescission of, the Paramount Decrees in order to better align the permissible activities of traditional film studios with those of their modern competitors. It provides a thorough review of the concerns underlying the Supreme Court's holding in 1948 and determines that the Court's concerns have been undercut either by subsequent developments in antitrust law or the practical realities of new and dynamic market entrants. While the Court's anticompetitive concerns may still be valid, they appear misplaced when focused solely on those parties still subject to the Decrees. Future antitrust enforcement will instead need to reframe the picture in order to more accurately address risks of market concentration.

In this paper, I draw on pandemic preparedness and response efforts in Taiwan as a case study to argue that the Li Zhang, a straddler institution at the local level, plays a key role in facilitating state-civil society trust and cooperation in pandemic response.

Does variation in state capacity predict compliance with government policies? This article tests the usefulness of state capacity as an analytic tool to evaluate environmental policy enforcement in China. The study employs two methodological approaches: first, a quantitative evaluation of capacity among 10 representative Chinese provinces and their compliance with environmental policies dictated by the Chinese central government and second, a qualitative evaluation of the potential causal relationship between state capacity and compliance. The results of these analyses illustrate the central role of state capacity in environmental policy compliance. The results also point to the importance of non-state-capacity factors. The accuracy of analyses relying on the state capacity model is improved if combined with assessments of the policies to be enforced and the commitment of the government responsible for their enforcement.

Among China researchers, those reliant on field studies in the conduct of their research often face the most daunting challenges. While obtaining funding is a first & often major challenge, the trials & tribulations of fieldwork loom ever large. Relying on primary & secondary sources, this paper explores structural & practical impediments to gathering data in the People's Republic of China. What factors influence the release of data by Chinese sources? How can researchers improve the likelihood of obtaining meaningful data? The paper begins by exploring the structural-bureaucratic & practical obstacles to data collection in China, & then provides suggestions on how to overcome such challenges. While relying primarily on examples from environmental protection-related research initiatives in China, many of the obstacles encountered & the strategies for overcoming those obstacles can be generalized more broadly to other areas of China research. 1 Figure. Adapted from the source document.