Regulation of Liberalised Network Industries: Infostructure as a Missing Link

The aim of this paper is to evaluate how infostructure has been reformed in the liberalisation process of network industries, which has involved third party access to the network through a comparison of the electricity, railway, and civil aviation sectors in Switzerland. Our theoretical argument posits that infostructure is a missing link in the study of the regulation of liberalised network industries. Infostructure is defined as the control and command services that are necessary for monitoring the access to and optimising the uses of infrastructure. Our empirical comparison of the sectors aims at answering the principle question: What is the impact of the management of infostructure on the liberalisation process and the structure of liberalising markets? This study of the liberalisation of network industries in Switzerland highlights the potential strategic function of infostructure in the context of opening to competition and internationalising markets. Infostructure management can impact infrastructure ownership and service operation in terms of market structure and constrain access to the infrastructure and the market. Infostructure could also weaken the capacity to regulate the entire sector from regulatory agencies, particularly when self‐regulatory arrangements control third party access to the network.     

Between exception and rule

Abstract

This article challenges the all-too-common assumption in the literature on Vietnam that Ho Chi Minh City's political economy has evolved differently from the rest of the country since the economic reforms of the late 1980s. Questioning the association of Ho Chi Minh City with reform, the article charts the rise of new state business interests and the growth of the “gatekeeping” state in the city during the 1990s, as party-state institutions moved to exploit new opportunities that emerged with the dismantling of the central plan and the growth of the market economy. In light of this characterization, the article argues that rather than seeing the city as set apart from the rest of Vietnam we can speak of a “common reform political economy.” If correct, this position casts doubt on existing literature, which commonly explains Ho Chi Minh City's supposedly distinctive evolution under reform with reference to its unique pre-1975 history, especially the period from 1954 to 1975 when the country was divided along the seventeenth parallel. Asking how we might marry the fact ofHoChi Minh City's distinctive history with the reality of its un-distinctive evolution under reform, the article concludes by calling for a rethink not only of the legacy of 1954-75 for Ho Chi Minh City's latter-day development but also of the way in which the city's shorter period under central planning nevertheless left its mark.     

The East European agrarian reforms of the middle of the nineteenth century in a new historical perspective

Organizational change processes involve many stakeholders, but the roles of capital owners and managers have not received enough attention in research on organizational change. Exploratory research results in Estonia elucidate how the interplay of owners and managers influences strategic change efforts in an organization operating in a rapidly changing transition economy. In addition to linking theoretical approaches to organizational change and development to corporate governance challenges in transition economies, this article uses data from interviews with 26 prominent decision-makers in Estonia to highlight the differences between foreign and domestic owners in controlling managers in the strategic change processes.     

Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance in Southeast Asia: Cambodia,Indonesia, and the US Naval Area Medical Research Unit 2

Abstract

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) pose international security threats. What cultural, political, and economic challenges stand in the way of setting up EID Surveillance infrastructure? Are there general principles that might guide engagement with developing countries and support such infrastructure? Using the US Naval Area Medical Research Unit 2 as a common denominator, this study compares barriers to EID surveillance in Cambodia and Indonesia and presents key factors that constrain disease surveillance systems. As extensive interviews revealed, low levels of development in general are the main impediments to building EID surveillance infrastructure and are perhaps beyond the scope of health and scientific agencies at this point. Ultimately, political economy matters and promoting greater understanding of these issues is a critical first step in mitigating negative outcomes.     

How Coordinated Capitalism Adapts to the Knowledge Economy: Different Upskilling Strategies in Germany and Switzerland

The rise of the knowledge economy challenges coordinated models of capitalism by requiring their skill formation systems to produce a workforce with higher skills. This paper examines how coordinated capitalism adapts to upskilling pressures by jointly studying general education and vocational education and training (VET) at both upper-secondary and tertiary levels. Employing a comparative research design covering German and Swiss upskilling efforts over the past 50 years, we observe important differences. Switzerland, with influential small firms and weak union presence, focuses on keeping VET an attractive option at upper-secondary level by favoring VET graduates' access to tertiary education. By contrast, Germany, marked by large firm dominance and influential unions, concentrates on expanding general education throughout and adding vocational elements later. Our analysis suggests that firms' reform preferences are conditioned by their size and political constraints to reform.     

Old Tools and New Movements in Latin America: Political Science as Gatekeeper or Intellectual Illuminator?

This article argues that social democratic and orthodox Marxist conceptualizations of politics are unable to "engage in solidarity" with many new forms of Latin American popular politics. Such movements challenge the politics of representation, the market economy, and the state form by reinventing territorialized experiments in self-government, which politicize place, subjectivities, and social relations. Developing a critique of these frameworks of political analysis, this article argues that conceptual categories combining the insights of autonomist or open Marxism and poststructuralism and the critical reflections and theorizations by Latin America's newest social movements enable a deeper engagement with such movements. This critique challenges academics committed to progressive social change to reexamine long-held notions about the nature and agents of social transformation and the epistemological categories that orient our research. It argues that if we fail to do this, then we risk becoming gatekeepers of the status quo.     

Judicial Performance and the Rule of Law in the Mexican States

What determines how judicial institutions perform? Prominent theoretical approaches, such as international political economy, institutional rational choice, social capital, and structural theories, suggest that international economic actors, political competition, political participation, and poverty may all be important forces driving institutional behavior. This study analyzes these various theoretical approaches and uses qualitative and statistical analysis to compare judicial performance in the Mexican states. It provides evidence to support the institutional rational choice hypothesis that political competition generates judicial independence. Poverty, political participation, and an export‐oriented economy seem to influence judicial access and effectiveness.     

Explaining the (Non-)Encampment of Syrian Refugees: Security,Class and the Labour Market in Lebanon and Jordan

In Lebanon and Jordan the (non-)encampment of Syrian refugees is serving states’ labour market goals. The Lebanese economy ‘requires’ large numbers of non-encamped low-wage Syrian workers, but the Jordanian regime assists its Transjordanian support base by restricting poor Syrians’ access to the labour market through encampment. While acknowledging the importance of both states’ differing historical experiences hosting refugees, and the security and budgetary motivations for policies of (non-)encampment, this article uses a critical political economy analysis of economic and labour market statistics to dislodge the centrality of the security discourses that increasingly inform discussions of refugee populations and the policies directed towards them. It demonstrates that the camp is not only a space of humanitarianism or a fertile ground for armed militancy, but a tool through which states spatially segregate those refugees, of certain socio-economic classes, whom they deem surplus to labour market requirements.     

The bazaar in ruins: rent and fire in Barakholka,Almaty

ABSTRACT

Since 2013, there have been multiple fires in bazaars in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Most of these fires have occurred in Barakholka, the largest bazaar in Central Asia, known for wholesaling in apparel, shoes and low-quality household and office supplies. Ownership of Barakholka is opaque. Using recurrent Barakholka fires as my point of departure, this article contributes to scholarship by describing how the clearing of old bazaars is followed by new property developments and the imposition of new rent regimes. In doing so, I argue that fire – a form of ruination that not only destroys property but also severs networks and people's relationship to a place – is illustrative of how the bazaar, as a new institution within an emerging post-Soviet market economy, was moulded by private interests, and repeated, often ruinous assertions of control over property. I also argue that this process was embedded in a larger political economy that sought to ‘civilize’ the earlier marketplaces. This article is based on ethnographic interviews and repeated visits to the Barakhola between 2016 and 2018, and media accounts of the fires.     

日本参加TPP的“内忧”与“外患”

文章分析了日本参加TPP谈判问题所面临的困境及其对未来内政外交走向的影响。首先,在经济方面,日本因参加TPP谈判将面临是继续保护农业还是扩展制造业出口以振兴经济的矛盾;其次,在政治方面,由于参加TPP谈判日本将面临由于各利益集团冲突引起的国内政治矛盾;第三,在外交方面,因为参加TPP谈判,日本将与美国围绕以农业为主的市场开放的程度问题进行博弈,同时也陷入如何协调美国市场与中国市场的关系的矛盾。文章认为日本将不会在短期内解决这些矛盾,而只能在国内政界重新整合与国际格局进一步发展变化的过程中逐步得到解决。     

Global money laundering and its domestic political consequences in Kyrgyzstan

This paper examines how Kyrgyzstan's two post-communist political regimes used offshore accounts to launder money and broker lucrative deals with international business partners. It argues that easy access to global financial institutions and availability of offshore markets strengthens a corrupt regime's grip on both political and economic matters and gives regime members a feeling of invincibility both domestically and globally. Offshore connections contributed to the emergence of a vast shadow economy inside Kyrgyzstan that includes clandestine hydropower exports, manipulations in the financial sector, and organized crime. The paper particularly focuses on the non-state actors who served as brokers to mediate connections between regime incumbents and international markets.     

Work,Wages and Gender in Export-Oriented Cities: Global Assembly versus International Tourism in Mexico

Drawing on a rich source of urban labour market data, the Mexican National Urban Employment Survey of 1998, this article addresses the question of how dissimilar export-oriented industries shape urban labour markets, particularly with respect to women workers. It compares Ciudad Juárez, which has an economy based on global assembly production, and Cancún, whose economy is based on international tourism. Employing economic base theory and location quotients, the analysis isolates the impact of the export sectors on the local labour markets. Results show that global assembly and international tourism encourage a mix of occupational and income prospects for both men and women in each of these Mexican cities. Female employment tends to be concentrated in the export-oriented sector in both cases, but the types of occupational and income opportunities therein vary. Overall, the analysis challenges common exploitation arguments that tend to stress the universally shared deleterious working conditions and low wages that result from global integration and export-led industrialisation in contemporary Latin America. It suggests that we pay closer attention to the diverse nature of outward oriented industries, which will tend to differentiate the labour market implications of increasing economic globalisation.     

Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures,Sorting and Strategy

This article accounts for why and how democratisation in Korea, although facilitated by social forces from below, has contributed to deepening social polarisation by accelerating economic liberalisation. In assessing this seemingly paradoxical dynamic of democratisation in Korea, this article offers an analysis of contemporary Korean politics and political economy alternative to currently prevailing approaches. Prevailing approaches tend to frame recent socio-economic and political changes in Korea brought about by democratisation and the financial crisis of 1997-98 as the encroachment of the market over the state, and of the external (the global) over the internal (the national), as if these bipolarised categories assume zero-sum relations. This article posits democratisation processes as class and social struggles and such factors as the global economy, the positioning of Korea in the world-system and the history of US intervention, that are typically perceived as external constituents, as active social and class forces. Informed by this framework, this article explores contemporary Korean politics and political economy as a set of contradictory processes of political and economic liberalisation, democratisation and “de-democratisation.”     

Connecting to regional markets? Transport,logistics services and international transit challenges for Central Asian food-processing firms

Central Asian food processors face a number of constraints when they attempt to export to the region and beyond. The Central Asian economies in focus here are landlocked, and thus lack easy access to sea transport. In addition, the region's transport network was built to reinforce the interdependence of the then Soviet republics, while conflicting economic interests make cross-border cooperation difficult. Based on extensive fieldwork on infrastructure systems and firm export strategies, this paper identifies contemporary infrastructure and transportation issues within the Central Asian region, and makes a novel attempt to examine how these factors lead to challenges for local food processing producers trying to sell their products in the region and beyond.     

Harnessing Africa's sun: China and the development of solar energy in Kenya

Africa has immense energy challenges, characterised by low rates of access to electricity, irregularities and a general shortage in electricity supply. Solar energy provides African governments with the opportunity to address these challenges. With an average quantity of five to six kilowatts of power from the sun per square metre per day, the continent has vast potential for producing energy from the sun. The moderate success that Kenya has achieved in its solar energy industry is commendable and provides a good platform for other countries aspiring to extend electrification to its population through solar energy. China's emerging capabilities in solar technology also offers the continent the opportunity to take decisive steps towards sustainable energy. The proposed partnership between China's Tianpu Xianxing Enterprise and Kenya's Electrogen Technologies to build a solar panel factory in Kenya is a positive step towards addressing energy challenges.     

Democracy and market economy

In the following article, Professor Seizaburo Sato, former Research Director of the Institute for International Policy Studies, addresses the relation between democracy and market economy and the problems that might develop as economic globalization continues to deepen. Liberal democracy and market economy face a number of problems, he says, but they are at this stage the best political and economic systems to follow, and we should take steps to improve them where we can. Although recognizing the positive value of diversity, he emphasizes the importance of international cooperation and a minimum set of common rules. At the same time, he urges constant technological innovation and the fostering of capable political leaders who have a comprehensive vision for the future and a strong sense of public responsibility.     

Building infrastructure in southern Africa: Introductory remarks'

A key finding of a study for the African Development Bank which the author directed was that co‐operation in building infrastructure should be the cornerstone of immediate integration efforts in Southern Africa. A priority is to restore, repair and to enhance the region's infrastructure on a basis that can be sustained and financed.

What a regional approach can make possible is illustrated through an examination of the electricity power, transport and communications, and water supply sectors. Recommendations include the progressive withdrawal of the state from dominating the provision of infrastructure and utility services, while strengthening its role in the regulation of private sector activity, the creation as far as possible of a single regional market for major services and outputs, harmonisation of tariff and taxation policies, creating incentives for investment and involving popular participation in infrastructural projects.     

The politics of rebellion and intervention in Ituri:the emergence of a new political complex?

This article offers an interpretation of the present conflictin Ituri based on social analysis. Other than the conventionalaccounts which depart from the presence of foreign troops onCongolese soil, reduce the war to a struggle for natural resourcesor see it as the result of age-old ethnichatreds, the authorstry to place this conflict into its social setting. The centralargument of this article is that the outbreak of violence inIturi has been the result of the exploitation, by local andregional actors, of a deeply rooted local political conflictfor access to land, economic opportunity and political power.Firstly, it is assumed that the destruction of the local socioeconomicfabric and the emergence of ethnicity as the main basis forpolitical mobilization has been the result of a long historicalprocess in which access to land, education, political positionsand economic dominance have played a crucial role. Secondly,it is asserted that, although foreign elements (i.e. the UPDFand RDF, formerly RPA) have contributed significantly to theescalation of the political crisis in Ituri, the war has alsoprovided a perfect platform for local political and economicactors to redefine their position in this new political andeconomic landscape. Eventually, this emerging political complexhas led to the development of a new political economy whichis characterized by a shift from traditional to military rule,to privatized, non-territorial networks of economic control,and to the consolidation of ethnic bonds in the economic andpolitical sphere.     

Judicial Justice for Special Economic Zone Land Resistance

Abstract

The context for land resistance in liberalising India is dynamic. As the state promotes capital investment, lines between public and private are blurred. Land is central to these efforts, as new industries, mines, large-scale agricultural projects and infrastructure initiatives all require vast amounts of land. The introduction of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in the Indian state of Goa highlight land deal tensions. Following protests rallying thousands and widespread public mistrust of land and regional planning processes, the state’s chief minister halted the zones. This action mollified public unrest and temporarily appeased anti-SEZ social movements. However, scepticism arose as the chief minister failed to legally de-register the zones and return SEZ lands to original owners or collectives. Amidst state inaction, movement members sought judicial justice. Protest and corruption theories are integrated with political interpretations of liminality in this article to frame how social movements shift their patterns of intervention in response to or in anticipation of inaction. Enhanced opportunities for corruption, exemplified by the SEZ model, lead movements to adapt strategies of resistance beyond state-oriented protest. The interventions discussed represent a shift in the ritual form of protest and the degree of political engagement with the judiciary. The multi-faceted contestation altered power structure, while politicising and scrutinising land deals.     

Traditional Excluding Forces: A Review of the Quantitative Literature on the Economic Situation of Indigenous Peoples,Afro‐descendants,and People Living with Disability

Unequal income distribution in Latin America and the Caribbean is linked to unequal distributions of human and physical assets and differential access to markets and services. These circumstances, and the accompanying social tensions, need to be understood in terms of traditional fragmenting forces; the sectors of the population that experience unfavorable outcomes are also recognized by characteristics such as ethnicity, race, gender, and physical disability. In addition to reviewing the general literature on social exclusion, this article surveys several more specific topics: relative deprivation (in land and housing, physical infrastructure, health and income); labor market issues, including access to labor markets in general, as well as informality, segregation, and discrimination; the transaction points of political representation, social protection, and violence; and areas in which analysis remains weak and avenues for further research in the region.