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Since the late 2000s, the Chinese government has been adopting active industrial policies to create a market for electric vehicles. While celebrated as a success nationally and internationally, a closer look reveals a mixed picture with market growth concentrated in only a few cities. On the basis of heterodox industrial policy literature, Chinese-language policy documents and interviews, we develop an analytical framework to empirically study electric vehicles deployment at the city-level, and to assess the achievements and obstacles of implementing industrial policies in this sector. We particularly stress the interrelatedness of policies governing the demand structure of the electric vehicles market and its main complementary sector, the charging infrastructure, which need to be aligned in the progressively more complex segments making up the electric vehicles market. Taking this industry as a case study, we contribute to the wider debate on the determinants of industrial policy effectiveness.

Introduction A number of studies in different countries have highlighted discrimination of sexual and gender minorities in healthcare environments. Although Portugal has made considerable progress in the acquisition of rights for LGBT people, there are still gaps in the training of health professionals. Among these, nurses are at the forefront of many of the close interactions with patients. This article aims to ascertain the social representations of sexual orientation and gender identity among nurses in Portugal from a sociological perspective. Methods A quantitative survey of Portuguese nurses was conducted in an online questionnaire. The data were collected between May and July 2020, and the participants were recruited through the Portuguese Nurses Association. The universe of the study consisted of 75,928 nurses, from which a sample of 899 was obtained. Results The results showed that Portuguese nurses tended to have a positive social attitude towards non-normative sexual orientations and gender identities, which they perceived as a natural expression of human diversity. This attitude was stronger among the younger, politically left-leaning participants without a religion, and close to LGBT people. The vast majority recognized that they lacked adequate training in LGBT issues and a significant part expressed the need to bridge that gap, mainly with regard to gender identity. Conclusions and Policy Implications This study provides insights into the insufficient inclusion of LGBT matters in nursing courses, and the need for ongoing, and specialized training. Knowledge and cultural competencies in the care of LGBT people should be guaranteed and made universal for nursing and other health professionals in order to reverse the reduction in their access to healthcare and ensure respect for the human right to health for LGBT people.

This paper has the objective of bringing to light and comparing two different types of institutional arrangements existing in two different prefecture-level cities in China: Nanjing and Suzhou. Although both are considered affluent cities, and located in the same broad economic area, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), and the same sub-provincial region, Southern Jiangsu, the cities present markedly distinct local institutional arrangements and accumulation regimes. The paper argues that the historical legacies of Nanjing and Suzhou have moulded the distinct institutional arrangements found in both cities, and that institutional path-dependences shaped the policies and strategies the cities decided to implement, eventually leading to distinct accumulation regimes. This study privileges a political economy definition of institutions (Amable, 2003; Boyer, 1988), and employs the concept of institutional complementarities (Amable, 2016; Aoki, 1994) in order to tackle the institutional arrangements of Nanjing and Suzhou. Initially, the paper introduces the debate on the nature of China’s state, arguing that the country is better characterized by its internal institutional heterogeneities, and that these heterogeneities often reveal themselves at subnational levels. Then the paper proceeds by presenting the analytical framework employed in this research and, after introducing the definitions of institutions and institutional complementarities, a comparison between Nanjing and Suzhou is presented. The final sections summarize the institutional characteristics and accumulation regimes found in both cities and conclude with the analysis.