Routes of funding,roots of trust? Northern NGOs,Southern NGOs,donors, and the rise of direct funding

This paper, based on a review of SIDA's funding of NGOs in Bangladesh, explores the changing relationships between bilateral donors, Northern NGOs (NNGOs), and Southern NGOs (SNGOs). It compares direct and indirect funding routes between donors and SNGOs. Most SIDA funding of SNGOs was previously undertaken through Swedish NGOs. As SNGO competence and capacity has increased through their own efforts at professionalisation, through wider recognition and support from government and by the provision of 'capacity building' partnerships with NNGOs, these Southern organisations have taken up positions within the burgeoning 'third sectors' of aid-recipient countries alongside the governmental and business sectors. SIDA has increasingly funded SNGOs directly through its Dhaka office. The paper sets out to address two main themes in the context of Swedish aid to NGOs in Bangladesh. Firstly, as bilateral donors provide an increasing proportion of their resources to NGOs, how can sound and responsible funding relationships based on mutual trust be built between bilateral donors and NGOs? Secondly, how can NNGOs work usefully in contexts where the number and capacity of local SNGOs has expanded significantly?     

Letter of Thanks from Students of Yuanlongsi Primary School, Baota District, Yan''''an

Respectable uncles and aunts of Chinese Association for International Understanding Respectable Japanese Friends, Thank you for sparing time to come to our school. Without the efforts of uncles and aunts of CAFIU, without the generous donation of the Japanese friends, there would be no today's ceremony of endowment. So we, all the students of Yuanlongsi Primary School, express our most sincere gratitude to uncles and aunts of CAFIU and the Japanese friends who have done a lot for our …     

Repression,Grievances, Mobilization,and Rebellion: A New Test of Gurr’s Model of Ethnopolitical Rebellion

The concept of polarity has been subject to imprecise and often diverse use. This note explores problems associated with the varied use of the term and proposes an alternative approach to classifying international systems which treats horizontal and vertical dimensions of power as distinct structural variables. In this approach, the present system is distinguished from the classical balance of power system containing pluralized patterns of conflict on the one hand and from the Cold War system with a marked concentration of power on the other. In the contemporary system polarized patterns of conflict coexist with processes of power diffusion. To the extent polarizations persist in a more diffuse power setting, the decentralized power balancing system through which stability was sought in multipower systems cannot function‐nor are the polarized conflicts likely to be controlled as a result of the two‐power effort at balancing power which occurred during the post‐war period. The factors affecting the stability of the present system, it is suggested here, can be better understood by examining analogous structures in which processes of power diffusion occur in the context of polarized conflict and not as a result of spurious comparisons which mistake the diffusion of power for the pluralization of conflict.     

Jiang Zhenghua, Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of NPC Visit Finland

mutualunderstandingandpromotedthedevelopmentoftherelationshipbetweenChinaandFinland.Duringthemeeting,JiangZhenghuagaveparticularaccountofChina'scurrentpoliticalandeconomicsituation,scientificconceptofdevelopmentaswellastheconstitutionalamendment.Thevisithasdeep-enedthefriendlycooperativetiesbetweenCAFIUandSITRAandlaidthesolidfoundationformoreextensiveanddeeperexchangesbetweentheminthefuture.Mr.RaimoSailas,PermanentSecretaryofState,MinistryofFinanceandChairmanoftheBoardofSITRAsaidtha…     

President,Vice-Presidents,Advisors and Council Members of the 9~(th) Council of CAFIU

President:LiGuixianVice-ChairmanoftheNationalCommitteeoftheChinesePeople'sPoliticalConsultativeConference(CPPCC)Vice-Presidents:IsmayilAhmadVice-ChairmanoftheStandingCommitteeoftheNationalPeople'sCongress(NPC)ChengSiweiVice-ChairmanoftheStandingCommitteeoftheNPC,ChairmanoftheCentralCommitteeoftheChinaDemocraticNationalConstructionAssociationJiangZhenghuaVice-ChairmanoftheStandingCommitteeoftheNPC,ChairmanoftheCentralCommitteeofChinaPeasantsandWorkers'DemocraticPartyLuY…     

Civil War Settlements,Size of Governing Coalition,and Durability of Peace in Post–Civil War States

We examine the ways in which the size of the governing coalition in a post–civil war state affects the durability of the peace. Previous studies relate the durability of the peace to the outcome of the civil war, the extent and forms of power-sharing arrangements, and the role of third-party security guarantors. We argue that the way conflict terminates and the power-sharing agreements between former protagonists structure the composition of governing coalition in the post–civil war state. Any settlement to civil war that broadens the size of the governing coalition should increase actors' incentives to sustain the peace rather than renew the armed conflict. Peace is more likely to fail where the governing coalition is smaller because those excluded from the governing coalition have little to lose from resuming armed rebellion. To test these propositions, we analyze data on post–civil war peace spells from 1946–2005.     

Hostage Diplomacy: Britain,China, and the Politics of Negotiation, 1967–1969

During the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution in 1967–1969, China's violation of the diplomatic norms of the international community reached an unprecedented level. Two dozen British diplomats and private citizens on the mainland became de facto hostages of their host government. In response to China's hostage-taking, the British government preferred quiet diplomacy to extreme retaliation such as a rupture of diplomatic relations and economic sanctions. It focused on negotiations through minimal publicity and reciprocal gestures. But in China, the British found a culturally different negotiating partner that was obsessed with principles rather than details. Through a step-by-step negotiating approach recommended by the Sinologists in the British Mission, London was finally successful in securing the release of its detained nationals. The lesson of Britain's quiet diplomacy was a culture-sensitive approach to negotiation and the ability to separate the hostage question from the wider political and economic relationship that would facilitate the resolution of future hostage crises.     

Letter of Thanks——by Mr. Yan Yongliang,headmaster of Yuanlongsi Primary School of Baota District,Yan''''an at the Computer-donating Ceremony

Today,we are here holding a ceremony for donating computers for long-distance teaching. This is of great significance for our school's modern long-distance teaching. First of all,on behalf of all teachers and students,I would extend heart-felt thanks to CAFIU,the Japanese friends,leaders and comrades from the Poverty Alleviation Office of Baota District. This year,the party committee and government of Baota District have paid great attention to pushing forward rural long-distance teach…     

The Diffusion of Drone Warfare? Industrial,Organizational, and Infrastructural Constraints

Many scholars and policymakers are concerned that the emergence of drone warfare—a first step toward the robotics age—will promote instability and conflict at the international level. This view depends on the widely shared assumption among International Relations scholars that military hardware spreads easily, especially in the age of globalization and real-time communications. In this article, we question this consensus. Drawing from the literature in management, we advance a new theory of diffusion of military innovations and test its two underlying causal mechanisms. First, we argue that designing, developing, and manufacturing advanced weapon systems require laboratories, and testing and production facilities, as well as know-how and experience that cannot be easily borrowed from other fields. Second, we argue that the adoption of military innovations requires both organizational and infrastructural support. We test our two claims on three types of combat-effective drones: loitering attack munitions (LAMs), intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance drones (ISR), and unmanned combat autonomous vehicles (UCAVs). We find that even wealthy, advanced, and militarily capable countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have struggled to produce or adopt such platforms. We conclude that concerns about the diffusion of drone warfare appear significantly exaggerated, as do claims that globalization redistributes military power at the global level. More generally, our analysis sheds light on how the interaction between platform and adoption challenges affects the rate and speed of diffusion of different military innovations.     

Speech by Mr.Lawrence Fortun,Congressman of the Philippine House of Representatives

<正>Greetings…Allow me to begin by extending,on behalf of the Philippine delegation,our heartfelt gratitude to the Chinese Association for International Understanding(CAFIU)for this excellent opportunity for greater understanding of China and its relations to the Philippines,the ASEAN and the rest of the world.This exchange has likewise been an important occasion for us to share our insights on these relations in the light of our common interests and aspirations as     

Threats,opportunity, and force: Repression and diversion of domestic pressure, 1948–1982

This paper explores empirically how domestic political and economic challenges affect political leaders’ propensity to respond with the use of force at home and abroad. The foreign policy and world politics literatures are replete with references to leaders’ alleged use of external conflict when confronted with domestic challenges, but rarely consider domestic responses to dissent or the role of interstate threats. Comparative research on repression primarily focuses on linkages between domestic challenges and leaders’ resort to repressive policies, but ignores international alternatives. Neither literature considers the influence of external threats and opportunity structures on resort to use of force and coercion at home and abroad. Alternatively, we contend that foreign conflict and repression are complementary and potentially interchangeable policies that leaders may use to maintain political power in the face of domestic pressure. We hypothesize that the level of domestic political constraints conditions the opportunity and likelihood of selecting either repression or foreign conflict in response to domestic challenges. Since the ability to capitalize on external conflict involvement in all likelihood is not independent of international opportunity structures, we explicitly address differences in the availability of historical interstate animosity. We test our hypotheses on resort to repression and external dispute involvement on a global sample of political leaders for the period 1948–82. Our results indicate that repression and external conflict involvement appear to be largely independent and driven by different challenges: While there is some evidence that domestic conflict increases the likelihood of disputes and that external threat may promote repression, there is little support for the idea of direct substitution in kind since leaders frequently combine both dispute involvement and repression.     

Radicalisation theories,policing practices,and “the future of terrorism?”

This article explores how theories of radicalisation have placed an emphasis on the development of an indicators-based approach to identify individuals who might engage in politically motivated violence. We trace how policing agencies have juxtaposed the search for indicators as a defence against criticisms of racial profiling. However, through an analysis of Canadian counter-terrorism training programmes, we demonstrate that the search for radicalisation indicators reaffirms pre-emptive and discriminatory security practices. We insist that despite efforts to theorise radicalisation outside of the practices of the “war on terror”, current trends risk rationalising prejudicial policing that affirms social exclusion and injustice.     

Zhang Zhiming, Council Member of CAFIU Visit Japan

AttheinvitationoftheJapan-ChinaFriendshipAssociation(JCFA),CAFIU'sthree-mem-berdelegationheadedbyZhangZhiming,CouncilMemberofCAFIUpaidavisittoJapanbetweenMay21to29,andattendedthe53rdAn-nualConferenceoftheJCFAinwhichitdeliveredaspeechentitledDeveloptheSino-JapanFriendshiptoPromotePeaceandProsperityinAsiaandtheWorld.Afterthat,thedelegationalsocalledupontheassociationsinAlchiCountyandTokyo,metSena-torOkataYasuoandmembersofHouseofRepresentativesincludingHatoyamaYukio,KondoShoic…     

Neutral,Biased, or Both? Discursive Construction of a Mediator's Dual Role

Within a theoretical and methodological framework based on critical discourse analysis and the principle of the objective, and using recordings from a civil case concerning an inheritance dispute, this article explores how a mediator in China employed various discursive strategies to foster conflict resolution and construct a dual role. On the one hand, he tried to maintain an impartial stance, but on the other he violated neutrality by acting selectively against one party. I suggest that the mediator, influenced by social ideology and/or his own interests, appears to be “neutral” but is sometimes “biased,” resulting in the performance of dual roles that combine the functions of problem solver, judge, and mediator. This finding facilitates greater understanding of what Chinese mediation is and how it operates.