Nuclear Policy and Regulation in Japan after Fukushima: Navigating the Crisis

The aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, has seen a public debate emerge over the future desirability of nuclear power in Japan. While Japanese citizens’ suspicion of nuclear power has grown, the nuclear industry and electricity utilities have called on the central government to recommission the country’s reactors amid warnings of devastation for the Japanese economy. This article analyses nuclear policy-making in Japan in the aftermath of Fukushima, with the aim to identify key theoretical, institutional and organisational drivers and constraints to future change in Japan’s nuclear energy policy. Despite the growing anti-nuclear sentiment and concerns about the environmental risks of nuclear power, we contend that the continuing power of vested interests will make it difficult for Japan to completely abandon nuclear power during the course of the next decade. However, given the independence of the newly established nuclear regulator and the fact that an effective veto power is held by local government officials, some of whom are opposed to the recommissioning of nuclear plants in their prefectures, we argue that the nuclear policy and regulatory landscape in Japan will undergo moderate change.     

Taiwan’s Anti-Nuclear Movement: The Making of a Militant Citizen Movement

Social movement studies have constantly focused on research relating to movement strategy, without reaching a consensus on the most viable strategies for realising a movement’s goal. Instead of conceptualising movement strategy as merely a product of movement leaders’ rational calculations, this article analyses a case of strategy shift attributable to leadership replacement and unexpected events. This article examines the significant breakthroughs achieved by Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement following Japan’s Fukushima Incident in 2011, as well as the 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. It argues that a militant citizen movement came into being because a new wave of activism employed non-partisan leadership and demonstrated a willingness to employ disruptive tactics. Mounting protests generated a split among members of the traditionally pro-nuclear Kuomintang political party, which was forced to halt the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant in 2014. With the regime change in 2016 that brought the more environment-friendly Democratic Progressive Party to power, Taiwan is now on course to phase out nuclear energy.     

核恐怖主义与奥巴马政府核战略

基于国际核安全环境的变化和对核恐怖主义威胁的认知,同时为了提升美国在核军控领域的制度和话语霸权,也为了干涉其他国家内政、服务其全球和地区战略,奥巴马政府大大提升了反核恐怖主义政策在美国核战略中的地位。鉴于这一政策为美国在核军控领域制度和话语霸权服务的狭隘性质,它不可避免地存在以下缺陷:反核恐怖主义政策因果关系颠倒;反核恐怖主义政策的目标指向存在一定失误;美国核政策自身存在矛盾。正是由于存在着上述缺陷,决定了奥巴马政府反核恐怖主义政策必然会对国际反核恐怖主义努力产生双重影响。     

China's Creative Industries: Copyright,Social Network Markets and the Business of Culture in a Digital Age

This article analyses the decline of Japanese labour unions and their struggles for revitalisation from a power resources perspective. It demonstrates first that the power resources of labour unions declined in the neo-liberal political process of labour-market deregulation as a result of lower union density, the intensified conflicts of interest among unions and their reduced access to policy-making. Although this situation induced labour unions to change their interest representation to some extent and organise an increasing number of non-regular and marginalised regular workers, the article claims that they are still concerned about protecting the vested interests of regular workers in large companies and their efforts to organise non-regular and marginalised regular workers have been insufficient. In addition, although community unions have aimed to organise these workers extensively, their human and financial resources are too small to do so and revitalise the labour movement.     

Between the street and Aso Rock*: the role of Nigerian trade unions in popular protests

The trade unions’ instrumental role in four decades of successful popular resistance against subsidy removals is widely recognised, but insufficiently understood due to inadequate consideration of the particularities of labour. The subsidy contestations are considered a barometer of Nigerian politics, and the 2012 subsidy protests – often referred as Occupy Nigeria – was one of the largest popular mobilisations in Nigerian history. Whereas unionists described the outcome as a successful demonstration of popular sovereignty, other protesters blamed the unions for unfulfilled democratic opportunities and for succumbing to bribery. With labour theoretical perspectives, this article critically examines the trade unions’ positions, actions and relations during those protests. The article demonstrates, in practice, not only how the unions’ capacities to mobilise, strike and negotiate, were instrumental to the reinstatement of the subsidy, but also how trade unions’ agency is both enabled and constrained by labour's multiple embeddedness in state, civil society and the market.     

Organised Labour,Dualisation and Labour Market Reform: Korean Trade Union Strategies in Economic and Social Crisis

Labour markets across industrialised countries have seen an increasing polarisation between insiders and outsiders as a result of labour market deregulation and welfare retrenchment, with governments responding to rising pressure from employers. But where are trade unions in this process of labour market deregulation and dualisation? Insider/outsider as well as producer coalition approaches portray organised labour as a structurally conservative force that is ready to prioritise the interests of insiders at the expense of those at the margins of the labour market. Rather than protecting the entire working class, unions are seen as being “complicit” in labour market dualisation that leaves an ever greater number of workers vulnerable. Our examination of the Korean case, though commonly perceived as an example of unions pursuing particularistic interests, does not comply with this image, but shows greater union inclusiveness in the face of socio-economic and socio-political challenges. Understanding the change in Korean trade union strategies, we highlight the critical importance of union identities shifting towards social movement unionism, in addition to the perceived imperative to revitalise the movement in order to remain a meaningful social force.     

Vietnam’s and China’s Diverging Industrial Relations Systems: Cases of Path Dependency

ABSTRACT

This article explains why Vietnam and China, one-party states that allow only one official trade union, are traversing different paths in their trade unions’ institutional structures, the state’s and trade union’s attitudes towards strikes, their willingness to allow independent trade unions and willingness to engage with the international labour union movement. These will be examined in terms of the path dependency of their recent histories, in which changes have been incremental on a path laid down by pre-existing entrenched institutions, until each national system no longer operated properly and new contingencies obliged the leadership to revamp the system. As a consequence of China’s and Vietnam’s divergent path dependencies, when external contingencies finally forced institutional change, countries have veered onto divergent trajectories – the Trans-Pacific Partnership energising Vietnam to debate the acceptance of autonomous trade unions, while Xi Jinping in China has intensified Party control over industrial relations.     

The Impact of 3/11 on Japan

The question posed in this paper is whether the triple disaster of 3/11 constitutes a ??critical juncture?? in Japan. We can point to minor discontinuities in Japanese policies, institutions, and identity caused by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdown that eventuated on March 11, 2011, but in the year following the event there was no evidence of a critical change. The disaster and post-disaster situation in Japan are summarized, and an explanation for the lack of critical change in nuclear policy??an area where change might have been expected in view of the fact that European countries reacted to 3/11 with critical changes in nuclear energy policy??is sought by comparing the ability of mainstream theories of Japanese politics to explain the situation.     

Blurring the borders between old and new social movements: the M15 movement and the radical unions in Spain

This article analyses the relationships between the M15 movement and radical labour organizations in Spain. Based on semi-structured interviews and document analysis, it concludes that to the extent that the economic crisis has evolved, the relations between the M15 and the trade unions have moved from mistrust to convergence. This is especially evident in the case of radical trade unionism with which the M15 shares several features. Although the M15 has been studied as an example of a ‘new social movement’, recent changes suggest certain shifts in relation to the type of activated subject and to the motivating factors for collective action. One of the consequences of this is the closeness to the institutions of the workers’ movement, which blurs the borders between old and new social movements.     

Labour Unrest in Vietnam and China: Insurgency or Contained Contention?

This article reviews three recent books on labour politics in Vietnam and China: Angie Tran’s Ties That Bind: Cultural Identity, Class and Law in Vietnam’s Labor Resistance; Jeffrey Becker’s Social Ties, Resources and Migrant Labor Contention in Contemporary China: From Peasants to Protesters, and Eli Friedman’s Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Post-Socialist China. These three books capture the changing patterns of labour unrest and labour institutions in Vietnam and China, which are accounted for by the social foundation of resistance as well as the political economy of capitalist development. Their main contribution to the existing literature is that they draw out the new dynamics and new venues within the state that can both enable and constrain labour resistance and struggle in these countries. However, this article also argues that these works have not adequately theorised the nature of change within the state and the role of the law in labour resistance. It therefore suggests that bringing in the law to socio-political institutions is essential to a research agenda that explores continuity and change in labour politics in Vietnam and China as transitional economies.     

东南亚国家核能发展战略与新动向分析

随着国际油价不断上涨以及能源需求的日渐扩大,东南亚国家将目光转向了核能,泰国、印尼、越南、马来西亚、菲律宾、缅甸甚至柬埔寨等国都相继提出了核能发展战略,并计划于2015年建成东南亚第一座核电站。但这些国家对核能的监管等能力受到东盟内外的质疑,尤其是日本福岛核电站危机后,东盟国家的核能开发战略以及与此相关的环境安全等问题引起全球的关注。东盟国家的核能开发战略可能放缓,但这些国家的核能开发计划不会完全停止。     

Eastern Figures: Orient and Empire in British Writing

This article outlines the labour impacts and social consequences of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis and 2008–09 global financial crisis on Southeast Asia. Both had adverse consequences on output, employment, income and poverty in the region, although the impact of the global financial crisis was much less severe compared to the Asian financial crisis. Economies recovered quickly from both crises. However, labour markets continue to be characterised by informal, vulnerable and precarious employment. The crises and the ensuing efforts of employers to resort to increased flexibility in labour hiring in both crisis and recovery periods fanned labour protests despite the diminutive size of the trade union movement and the underdeveloped system of industrial relations in most countries. In turn, these protests have triggered national and regional debates on rules for labour contracting, minimum wage adjustments and social protection. These debates have remained unresolved even as the region is gearing up for fuller economic integration in 2015 labelled as the ASEAN Economic Community.     

Multialignment and Indian Foreign Policy under Narendra Modi

This article examines India’s emerging approach to foreign policy: multialignment. It argues that since the mid-2000s India has developed multialignment as a means of achieving what it perceives as its core interests and ideals in international relations. Characterised by an emphasis on engagement in regional multilateral institutions, the use of strategic partnerships, and what is termed ‘normative hedging’, multialignment is being utilised to boost India’s economic development and national security, as well as to project influence and promote its values. The article traces the emergence of this strategy during the governments of Manmohan Singh and its implementation and extension by the new government of Narendra Modi. It analyses the key arguments that have been presented in its favour and the ways in which it was been put into practice. It concludes with a brief assessment of multialignment as a strategy, as well as the prospect that it will deliver the dividends expected by India’s foreign policy elite.     

Production Politics and Migrant Labour Advocacy in Singapore

Since 2005, NGO activism, calling for greater legal protection for contract migrant workers has been the most concerted challenge to Singapore’s migrant labour regime. Despite a severely restricted civil society space, migrant labour advocacy has delivered small but significant reforms to laws covering migrant labour. The existing literature on migrant labour advocacy focuses on the importance of civil society space in determining the outcomes of organised contention. In the Singapore context, the limitations of advocacy are emphasised and explained in terms of the illiberal nature of the People’s Action Party-state and the strategies deployed by non-governmental organisations. Such an approach is limited in its explanatory potential as it only states what political spaces are not available without examining how spaces for contention are created. In contrast, this article identifies the production politics between migrant workers and their employers as crucial in influencing the extent to which spaces for non-governmental organisation contention can be carved out. Accordingly, this article argues that forms of production politics leading to worker desertion from the workplace, rather than tactical accommodation, have provided non-governmental organisations with the impetus to push forward reform agendas within an authoritarian political environment.     

Trade Unions and Employment Relations in Italy during the Economic Crisis

Abstract

Many of the usual assumptions about the impact of the economic crisis on trade unions and employment relations only partially fit the Italian case. Trade unions during the crisis showed resilience both organisationally and as important actors in economic and political life. Also, the national industry level reaffirmed itself as the key level in industrial relations. Explanations of these unexpected outcomes have to do with some features of all three actors of Italian employment relations. Trade unions have become over time a relevant actor not just in the industrial relations arena but in several other spheres of Italian society and politics. As to employers, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have tended to prefer national sectoral-level agreements and set rather low wage standards, while employers’ associations have shown an organisational interest in preserving centralised bargaining where they play a role. Finally, governments have been too weak and short-lived to follow a consistent strategy of unilateral decision-making.     

The Problems of Mexico: An Analysis of a Sociological Discourse

Based on an empirical analysis of articles published between 1987 and 2006 in three major Mexican sociological journals, my research traces the continuities and discontinuities in the study of the alleged malfunctioning of Mexican society. The study of how sociologists represented Mexican society has revealed several discursive dynamics. The traditional economic and political perspectives blaming social problems on elites predominate. Studies of electoral system flaws, political contention, lacklustre democracy in unions, and union collusion with industrial capitalism abound. More recently, however, the introduction of the study of globalisation has transformed the examination of these issues.     

Reviews

The expansion of the global economy and the governance deficit it has generated raise questions about the possibilities for regulating the practices of participants in global production networks. This paper focuses on the regulation of industrial relations in Cambodia's textile and garment industry – a unique ensemble of state, trade union, private sector and international institutions that is promoted as a “fair model of globalisation.” We track the trajectory of Cambodia's industrialisation and insertion into the global economy over three interrelated phases: first, the beginnings of export-orientated garment production in the mid- to late 1990s; secondly, the promotion of Cambodia as an “ethical producer” from 1999; and, thirdly, privileging “competitiveness” in global production networks over labour compliance for its advantage. In doing so we centre our analysis on the complex intertwining of global production, the genesis of the unique ensemble of actors in Cambodia and the anomaly of Cambodia's labour movement.     

Global Crisis and Latin America

This essay examines Latin America's experience in the crisis and restructuring of world capitalism from the 1970s into the twenty‐first century, with particular emphasis on the neo‐liberal model, social conflicts and institutional quagmires that have engulfed the region, and the rise of a new resistance politics. The empirical and analytical sections look at: Latin America's changing profile in the global division of labour; the domination of speculative finance capital; the continued debt crisis, its social effects and political implications; capital–labour restructuring, the spread of informalisation and the new inequality; the passage from social explosions to institutional crises; the new popular electoral politics and the fragility of the neo‐liberal state. These issues are approached through the lens of global capitalism theory. This theory sees the turn‐of‐century global system as a new epoch in the history of world capitalism, emphasising new patterns of power and social polarisation worldwide and such concepts as a transnational accumulation, transnational capitalists and a transnational state. Finally, the essay argues that global capitalism faces a twin crisis in the early twenty‐first century, of overaccumulation and of legitimacy, and explores the prospects for social change in Latin America and worldwide.     

哈萨克斯坦石油精英及其对能源政策的影响

哈萨克斯坦是一个经济结构严重受制于能源经济和依靠石油寻租的油气生产国。国有大型油气公司的高级主管对该国的能源政策具有举足轻重的作用。石油精英通过与政治精英建立非正式的关系网络,不仅影响本国能源部门的发展,而且还介入政治决策和政治制度。而哈萨克斯坦普遍存在着制度的不透明性、法律的不确定性和总统决定的随意性,助长并养成了非正式政治体制的固化,加强了威权主义的趋势,并进一步鼓励寻租和腐败行为的延续。     

Gender Equality (And its Absence) in Singapore’s 2015 General Elections

Abstract

With the dust settled after Singapore’s 2015 parliamentary elections, the only aspect pundits and Singaporean politics watchers could agree on was that the People’s Action Party’s comeback from its performance at the 2011 elections, although not of Lazarus proportions, was most certainly unexpected. While the result of the 2015 elections has gone through several post-election analytical mills, what has been oddly absent in such analyses is a discussion of gender in Singaporean politics. This article considers the relationship between gender and Singaporean politics through the experience of the 2015 election and its results. It shows that while Singapore has moved some way towards assuaging the demands of liberal feminists for greater representation in the political sphere, much more has to be done in order for gender equality to be achieved. The article argues for the Group Representation Constituency method of electing parliamentarians to be adapted to ensure a greater number of female parliamentarians while a quota system may be required for cabinet to be truly representative of the female demographic of Singapore.