Bound to lead?Rethinking China's role after Paris in UNFCCC negotiations

As the biggest global emitter of greenhouse gases, China is an extremely important actor in international climate negotiations. During the climate summit in Copenhagen, China was blamed for its uncooperative positions particularly from the US side. However, in the Paris climate process, China's participation in international negotiations is more active, and has become a wellrecognized promoter of the Paris Agreement. To understand China's climate policy, the economic and diplomatic strategy should be taken into consideration, especially the changes in the ideas of China's global governance rooted from domestic politics discourse. Moreover, China's symmetrical changes within domestic and international dimension possibly bring out more balanced climate policies and thus the constructive role of China will be the normalcy in the future United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changenegotiations. However, the negotiations after the US presidential elections may change dramatically and yields great uncertainty for global action. Thus, the vacuum of power may be a possible scenario. Will China reinforce its role toward leadership or go back to group politics? This article examines China's concerns, motives, and possible path to climate leadership in the current debate.

Plurk Politics Micro-Blogging Is Changing Political Communication in Taiwan

The use of social media in political communication has demonstrated its significance by the example of Arab Spring and the 2008 US presidential election, but its role in non-western democratic countries like Taiwan has rarely been examined. Micro-blogs share some characteristics with other types of social media but operate in a lighter way that has made it more and more popular among Internet users. Most researchers focus on the better-known Twitter, however, Plurk has found a niche and becomes the leading type of micro-blog in Taiwan and many politicians enjoy using it for political communication. This study seeks to answer the question ＂What patterns do Taiwan Residents politicians exhibit when utilizing Plurk？＂. By combining Habermasian communicative action theory and Foot and Schneider＇s Web Sphere, this research attempts to form a theoretical framework for micro-blogs. In-depth interviews were conducted with Taiwan Residents politicians at various levels and it was discovered that the broad pattern of political communication via Plurk may be characterised in Habermasian terms as strategic, through information broadcasting, public opinion formation, and political mobilization. In addition, this research shows that Taiwan Residents politicians use Plurk to gather information and ideas in exchanges which have dialogic elements.

Globalization： The Paradox of Political Governance in Kenya： Domestic, Global, and Historical Forces

This essay is an historical, global, and intellectually oriented analytical commentary on 2013 general and quinquennial presidential election in Kenya and the factors that contributed to its outcome. The analysis and its interpretive conclusion have been informed via the reading of professor Sagini＇s two books

Determinants of Political Participation in Cote d＇Ivoire： The Case of Voting

This paper assesses electoral participation and studies the determinants of such participation, focusing on presidential elections in Cote d＇Ivoire. We use a dataset on elections in Africa and a survey financed by the European Commission and conducted by the Ivorian Center of Social and Economic Research （CIRES） in 2005. We find a decline in voter turnout since 1990 for both presidential and parliamentary elections. We also find that the probability of voting varies across ethnic groups and significantly increases with education levels, interest in politics, satisfaction with democracy and satisfaction with government but decreases with insecurity during elections. Moreover, we show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between age and the probability of voting. This probability is higher for men than women and for workers and retirees compared to unemployed, but it is low for students. Concerning the vote choice, we find that relative to the ＂program and party＂ criterion, the probability of choosing the candidate on the basis of his individual characteristics decreases with age, insecurity, satisfaction with democracy while it increases with satisfaction with government and with secondary, university or Koran education level.

Positive Discourse Analysis of Hillary Clinton＇ s Concession Address

As a new field in the Discourse Analysis, Positive Discourse Analysis （PDA） is increasingly arousing more attention of linguistic scholars at home and abroad. However, in the field of the concession addresses, the studies on this kind of political text are limited. The winners of presidential election always draw much attention from the world and their speeches, for example, presidential inaugural address has been a hot study topic of linguistics. Nevertheless, the losers of presidential election are always neglected by the world and the study on concession address is scarce and rare. Therefore, the meaning of study on the concession speech helps fill the gap of the discourse analysis. This thesis applies the PDA under the framework of appraisal theory to analyze five concession speeches with a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. This study aims to complement CDA （Critical Discourse Analysis） to emphasize positive social construction of political discourse.

Vanguard Parties and Governance in Africa： Dimensions of Battling for States

Since the demise of colonialism as well as the cold war, Africa has battled to put democratic governments in place. The legacies of these two political and historical landscapes have had a hand in shaping and disfiguring the nascent governments that would be born in Africa with vanguard parties not tolerating opposition. In a bid to stay in leading positions, as founding fathers of revolution, incumbent governments have used different tools, some very unorthodox, from brute force, genocides, governments of national unity and violent elections to stay in power and destroy opposition. This paper seeks to trace how Zimbabwe has fared in establishing a democratic government from Lancaster to the 2013 March referendum. Zimbabwe, following a Lancaster House Agreement C1979）, like Kenya （1960）, held elections in 1980, making R. G. Mugabe the first black Prime Minister and C. Banana the President. Some scholars have argued that the 1980 elections have been the only free and fair elections in Zimbabwe＇s history of elections. To measure the level of democracy in Zimbabwe, the paper shall highlight the euphoria at 1980, read through gukurahundi of 1983, the unity accord of 1987, select parliamentary and presidential elections, the fast track land reform of 2002, the 2009 Government of National Unity as well as the 2013 constitution amendment. The study shall largely make use of desktop and interviews of ordinary Zimbabweans, politicians, and students in universities with regards to matters of governance. The paper concludes that post communist governments have struggled to establish democracy.

Conservative Immigration Reform and Illegal Immigrants

In 1996, Congress enacted Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 （IIRIRA）. Actually, it was a conservative legislation. It not only tightened border control but also strictly limited the public benefits about illegal immigration. Why Congress enacted serious immigration legislation in the 1990s？ Generally speaking, economic factor and politics played an important role in it. In derails, several reasons can account for its conservatism： （1） The first reason is that the increase number of illegal immigration led to the high cost of state governments, many state governments complained it; （2） The second reason is the influence of 187 Act which deported illegal immigration in primary and high school and it produced chain effect for other states; （3） The third reason is political election, including Congress election and president campaign. 187 Act greatly influenced GOP （Grand Old Party） and Congress, which was controlled by GOP, tended to take serious measures to contain illegal immigrants. Did IIRRA work？ In fact, it did not control illegal immigration. After 1990s, more and more illegal immigration entered into America and U.S, has become the nation with the most illegal immigrants in the world. Therefore, Congress should consider comprehensive immigration reform.

“泛蓝”整合前景评估

国民党、亲民党、新党能否成功整合,是影响2004年“总统”选举的关键因素之一。民进党上台后,国、亲、新三党基于反“台独”的共同政治理念以及自身政党利益的考虑,形成“泛蓝军”的大联合。2001年底“立委”、县市长选举后,由于新党实力锐减,“泛蓝军”整合的主体演变成“国亲合作”。