1、政府和政治
A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. Recognition of the state’s claim to independence by other states, enabling it to enter into international agreements, is often important to the establishment of its statehood. The “state” can also be defined in terms of domestic conditions, specifically, as conceptualized by Max Weber, “a state is a human community that （successfully） claims the monopoly of the ‘legitimate’ use of physical force within a given territory.”
Government can be defined as the political means of creating and enforcing laws, typically via a bureaucratic hierarchy.
Politics is the process by which decisions are made within groups. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Many different political systems exist, as do many different ways of understanding them, and many definitions overlap. The most common form of government worldwide is a republic; however, other examples include monarchy, social democracy, military dictatorship and theocracy.
All of these issues have a direct relationship with economics.
2、政府的作用
Government is in a unique position to bring enough resources to bear on a social problem when needed, and to “insure” across the entire society against disasters and personal need. Disaster relief is appropriately the concern of government, rushing resources into areas hit by tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. There is still an immediate and limited role for private philanthropy through organizations such as the American Red Cross, but the fundamental role of relief and reconstruction is best handled by governments. Government, put bluntly, is in a position to coerce all of us to take advantage of this “insurance”, contributing our fair share to insure ourselves and to provide for the needs of the poor and those affected by disasters. Economists and game theorists have proven time and again that we would all under-invest in public goods such as these if we were not forced to do so by taxation. One can fault government for poor planning and for “wasting money”, but private philanthropy can never substitute for the mechanism of society-wide social programs funded and administered by government.
3、政府規則及政府作用
The rules that governments make encompass a wide range of human affairs, including commerce, education, marriage, medical care, employment, military service, religion, travel, scientific research, and the exchange of ideas. A national government—or, in some cases, a state or local government—is usually given responsibility for services that individuals or private organizations are believed not to be able to perform well themselves. The U.S. Constitution, for example, requires the federal government to perform only a few such functions:the delivery of mail, the taking of the census, the minting of money, and military defense. However, the increasing size and complexity of U.S. society has led to a vast expansion of government activities.
Today, the federal government is directly involved in such areas as education, welfare, civil rights, scientific research, weather prediction, transportation, preservation of national resources such as national parks, and much more. Decisions about the responsibilities that national, state, and local governments should have are negotiated among government officials, who are influenced by their constituencies and by centers of power such as corporations, the military, agricultural interests, and labor unions.
4、政府作用：個人依賴政府來對抗科技負麵影響的三大途徑
Individuals rely on governmental assistance to control the side effects and negative consequences of technology.
1.Supposed independence of government. An assumption commonly made about the government is that their governance role is neutral or independent. However, some argue that governing is a political process, so government will be influenced by political winds of influence. In addition, because government provides much of the funding for technological research and development, it has a vested interest in certain outcomes. Others point out that the world’s biggest ecological disasters, such as the Aral Sea, Chernobyl, and Lake Karachay have been caused by government projects, which are not accountable to consumers, so governments should stay out of industry entirely.
2.Liability. One means for controlling technology is to place responsibility for the harm with the agent causing the harm. Government can allow more or less legal liability to fall to the organizations or individuals responsible for damages.
3.Legislation. A source of controversy is the role of industry versus that of government in maintaining a clean environment. While it is generally agreed that industry needs to be held responsible when pollution harms other people, there is disagreement over whether this should be prevented by legislation or civil courts, and whether ecological systems as such should be protected from harm by governments.
Recently the social shaping of technology has had new influence in the fields of e-science and e-social science in the United Kingdom, which has made centers focusing on the social shaping of science and technology a central part of their funding programs.
5、法治的概念
The rule of law, in its most basic form, is the principle that no one is above the law. The rule follows logically from the idea that truth, and therefore law, is based upon fundamental principles which can be discovered, but which cannot be created through an act of will.
Perhaps the most important application of the rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedural steps that are referred to as due process. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance, whether by a totalitarian leader or by mob rule. Thus, the rule of law is hostile both to dictatorship and to anarchy.
According to modern Anglo-American thinking, hallmarks of adherence to the rule of law commonly include a clear separation of powers, legal certainty, the principle of legitimate expectation and equality of all before the law.
6、賓厄姆勳爵觀點：法治的八大規則
Lord Bingham of Cornhill postulated eight sub-rules of the rule of law. It should be noted that Bingham takes a strongly substantive view on the rule of law, and that these sub-rules would be subject to fierce criticism by journalists.
1.The law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable.
2.Questions of legal right and liability should ordinarily be resolved by application of the law and not the exercise of discretion.
3.The laws of the land should apply equally to all, save to the extent that objective differences justify differentiation.
4.The law must afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights.
5.Means must be provided for resolving, without prohibitive cost or inordinate delay, bona fide civil disputes which the parties themselves are unable to resolve.
6.Ministers and public officers at all levels must exercise the powers conferred on them reasonably, in good faith, for the purpose for which the powers were conferred and without exceeding the limits of such powers.
7.Adjudicative procedures provided by the state should be fair.
8.The state must comply with its obligations in international law, the law which, whether deriving from treaty or international custom and practice, governs the conduct of nations.
7、馬丁·路德金的非暴力反抗
The strategies that Dr. Martin Luther King used were non-violent resistance. Martin Luther King believed in non-violence resistance because of the situation that blacks were in at the time. If a dispute was to break out between a black man and a white man and it resulted in physical violence, the black man would not even be asked what happened; instead, the white man put the blame upon the black man. But with the use of the non-violence resistance method, you can use the press to publicize what is being done when a black man is being attacked just for obeying the law and doing what everyday people do every day. What should African Americans do in the face of violence? —Martin Luther King made a pamphlet saying the do’s and don’ts to avoid having violence with a white person when riding on a bus. This pamphlet was made to all black people who were taking the bus in order to avoid any violence. It caught national attention which basically started the civil rights movement.
What is the path to greatest strength and dignity? The greatest path to strength and dignity is the path where you believe in what you are doing. It should be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not for cowards. It takes more courage to stand up to somebody hitting and do nothing hitting back.
8、馬克斯·韋伯觀點：官僚主義
Max Weber has probably been one of the most influential users of the word in its social science sense. He is well-known for his study of bureaucratization of society. Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him and a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the continental type is—if perhaps mistakenly—called “Weberian civil service”.
Weber described the ideal type bureaucracy in positive terms, considering it to be a more rational and efficient form of organization than the alternatives that preceded it, which he characterized as charismatic domination and traditional domination. According to his terminology, bureaucracy is part of legal domination. However, he also emphasized that bureaucracy becomes inefficient when a decision must be adapted to an individual case.
According to Weber, the attributes of modern bureaucracy include its impersonality, concentration of the means of administration, a leveling effect on social and economic differences and implementation of a system of authority that is practically indestructible.
9、韋伯關注的四大官僚主義問題
Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy concerns:
1.The historical and administrative reasons for the process of bureaucratization （especially in the Western civilization）
2.The impact of the rule of law upon the functioning of bureaucratic organizations
3.The typical personal orientation and occupational position of a bureaucratic officials as a status group
4.The most important attributes and consequences of bureaucracy in the modern world
10、支配官僚機構的七大原則
A bureaucratic organization is governed by the following seven principles:
1.Official business is conducted on a continuous basis.
2.Official business is conducted with strict accordance to the following rules: the duty of each official to do certain types of work is delimited in terms of impersonal criteria.
3.The official is given the authority necessary to carry out his assigned functions. The means of coercion at his disposal are strictly limited and conditions of their use strictly defined.
4.Every official’s responsibilities and authority are part of a vertical hierarchy of authority, with respective rights of supervision and appeal.
5.Officials do not own the resources necessary for the performance of their assigned functions but are accountable for their use of these resources.
6.Official and private business and income are strictly separated.
7.Official business is conducted on the basis of written documents.
11、官僚作風官員的五大特征
A bureaucratic official:
1.is personally free and appointed to his position on the basis of conduct.
2.exercises the authority delegated to him in accordance with impersonal rules, and his loyalty is enlisted on behalf of the faithful execution of his official duties.
3.appointment and job placement are dependent upon his technical qualifications.
4.administrative work is a full-time occupation.
5.work is rewarded by a regular salary and prospects of advancement in a lifetime career.
An official must exercise his judgment and his skills, but his duty is to place these at the service of a higher authority. Ultimately he is responsible only for the impartial execution of assigned tasks and must sacrifice his personal judgment if it runs counter to his official duties.
12、不同國家的政治經濟製度不同
The political and economic systems of nations differ in many ways, including the means of pricing goods and services; the sources of capital for new ventures; government-regulated limits on profits; the collecting, spending, and controlling of money; and the relationships of managers and workers to each other and to government. The political system of a nation is closely intertwined with its economic system, refereeing the economic activity of individuals and groups at every level.
13、全球化的範疇
Globalization can be found in five different areas: economic, cultural, political, religious, and social systems.
It should not be narrowly confused with economic globalization, which is only one aspect. While some scholars and observers of globalization stress convergence of patterns of production and consumption and a resulting homogenization of culture, power, stress, and hunger, others stress that globalization has the potential to take many diverse forms. In economics, globalization is the convergence of prices, products, wages, rates of interest and profits.
Globalization of the economy depends on the role of human migration, international trade, movement of capital, and integration of financial markets. The International Monetary Fund notes the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions, free international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology.
14、全球化的測量指標KOF
As globalization is not only an economic phenomenon, a multivariate approach to measuring globalization is the recent index calculated by the Swiss Think tank KOF. The index measures the three main dimensions of globalization: economic, social, and political. In addition to three indices measuring these dimensions, an overall index of globalization and sub-indices referring to actual economic flows, economic restrictions, data on personal contact, data on information flows, and data on cultural proximity is calculated. Data are available on a yearly basis for 122countries. According to the index, the world’s most globalised country is Belgium, followed by Austria, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The least globalised countries according to the KOF-index are Haiti, Myanmar the Central African Republic and Burundi. Other measures conceptualize Globalization as Diffusion and develop interactive procedure to capture the degree of its impact.
15、經濟全球化的四大衡量標準
Looking specifically at economic globalization, it can be measured in different ways. These centre around the four main economic flows that characterize globalization:
1.Goods and services, e.g. exports plus imports as a proportion of national income or per capita of population.
2.Labor/people, e.g. net migration rates; inward or outward migration flows, weighted by population.
3.Capital, e.g. inward or outward direct investment as a proportion of national income or per head of population.
4.Technology, e.g. international research & development flows; proportion of populations （and rates of change thereof） using particular inventions （especially “factor-neutral” technological advances such as the telephone, motorcar, and broadband）.
To what extent a nation-state or culture is globalised in a particular year has until most recently been measured employing simple proxies like flows of trade, migration, or foreign direct investment, as described above.
16、全球化對國家的三大影響