Foreign aid,debt relief and Africa's development: problems and prospects

In recent years, the Paris club granted a number of African countries, including Nigeria, debt relief. This elicited widespread celebration in the capital cities of affected countries, where it was portrayed as a veritable launch-pad to Africa's development. This paper takes a critical look at the debt relief, with emphasis on its problems and prospects for Africa's development. It is argued that while debt relief does offer some prospects for development, there is little or no evidence to suggest that such an outcome is automatic. The conditions that precipitated the debt crisis in the first instance, including an inequitable international economic order and political conditions tied to aid, are still very present in the debt relief regime. Corruption of the foreign aid regime by both internal and external actors has been compounded by the recent global economic crisis, posing further constraints on the effectiveness of foreign aid in Africa. If debt relief must yield the desired result, it has to be accompanied by a sustainable campaign to fundamentally reform the world order to make it more equitable, together with a drive for good governance that is not only democratic, but also efficient and development-oriented in Africa.     

Konfrontasi and Australia's Aid to Indonesia during the 1960s

This article examines Australia's aid program in Indonesia in the 1960s. With the transfer by the Dutch of West New Guinea to Indonesia in May 1963, the Australian government looked to expand aid to its northern neighbour beyond the Colombo Plan in an effort to cement friendly relations. The events associated with konfrontasi threatened this policy objective. Yet despite Indonesia's belligerent stance, Australia was able to continue its aid program (by supporting the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network) and to keep the lines of communication with Jakarta open. When konfrontasi ended in August 1966 after regime change in Indonesia, Australia was able to rapidly expand its aid program. This article argues that konfrontasi changed the ways in which Australia's aid program in Indonesia was construed, which in turn contributed to a re‐consideration of the role of aid in Australia's foreign policy more broadly.     

俄罗斯对外援助体系研究

2005年以来,随着经济形势的好转和国际地位的提高,俄罗斯开始加大对外援助投入,并逐步建立起自己的对外援助体系。在对外援助政策方面,从学习借鉴西方国家的经验,将对外援助看作履行国际义务、获取国家威望的手段,到主动探索建立符合本国实际的对外援助政策体系,强调对独联体地区国家援助、“软实力”和国家利益。在对外援助管理方面,总统在对外援助政策中居于中心位置,政府负责决策执行,议会负责相关立法工作,各联邦机构分别负责各自职责范围内的对外援助行动,并成立了跨部门协调机构统筹对外援助行动。在对外援助运作方面,俄罗斯将对外援助行动列入国家计划,主要通过多边和双边渠道对外提供援助。在对外援助的评估方面,俄罗斯提出了援助预算资金使用效果评估方法,定期发布对外援助数据和报告,正在逐步完善对外援助评估体系。近年来,俄罗斯对外援助体系出现较大调整,对外援助管理权有从财政部门向外交部门、从政府向总统转移的趋势。     

Coming to terms with neopatrimonialism: Soviet and American nation-building projects in Afghanistan

The author examines how patrimonial forms of domination, as conceived in a Weberian sense, came to pervade the formal bureaucratic apparatuses developed under both Soviet Marxist–Leninist (from the late 1970s) and American-coalition liberal designs (since 2001), creating hybrid states defined by neopatrimonialism. Drawing lessons from the survival and eventual collapse of the Najibullah regime following the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces, the article finds that the continued extension of aid and arms, and not the presence of foreign military forces, proved most effectual in sustaining the Afghan leader's patronage-based grip on power. Arguing that the contemporary regime of Hamid Karzai has likewise adopted a neopatrimonial-type rule, these findings have clear implications for current American policy in Afghanistan. America, Afghanistan's ultimate patron, can better ensure stability in the region by extending aid to Karzai than by continuing a large and costly military occupation of the region.     

Casey: Four Decades in the Making of Australian Foreign Policy

Richard Casey was involved in shaping Australian foreign policy for over four decades. Casey's attitudes, ideas, policies and actions towards the rest of the world are therefore an important part of a Liberal tradition in Australian foreign policy. To examine Casey's place in the Liberal tradition this article explores Casey's positions on the great international issues of two periods: the 1930s and the 1950s. The conclusion of the article is that three key ideas shaped Casey's foreign policy, and therefore also lie at the centre of the Liberal tradition; firstly, a strong attachment to the idea of the English speaking alliance; secondly, a realist perspective on international affairs; and, thirdly, a consistent strand of anti-communism.     

Embattled authoritarians: continuity and collapse in Central and Southwest Asia

ABSTRACT

Why are some authoritarian leaders able to stave off violent challengers to their rule while others falter? This article analyzes several case studies involving a series of nondemocratic governments and violent non-state actors waging war and posits that different combinations of variables lead to dissimilar outcomes (ranging from “civil war/insurgency”, “regime implosion” or “foreign-based overthrow”, “negotiated peace”, to “strategic advance and retreat”). Accordingly, “embattled authoritarians” require a high level of “political-military aid” over time from a supportive foreign power to effectively combat “violent non-state challengers”. However, it is difficult for such governments to completely escape from “embattled” status, particularly if a supportive foreign power does not exert influence to set parameters for peace between the warring parties and the level of international interference (i.e. political-military aid abetting violent non-state challengers courtesy of other foreign powers) does not recede over time. This article concludes with a forecast on Afghanistan and Tajikistan’s respective futures and discusses how the onset of political instability within the former may serve to destabilize the political situation in the latter.     

Building bridges? South African foreign policy and trilateral development cooperation

As questions concerning international development climb the international agenda, so countries find themselves drawn into a burgeoning number of negotiations on issues ranging from the future shape and direction of the post-2015 development agenda to ‘aid effectiveness’ and international development cooperation. Moving from the position of a ‘beneficiary’ state in the traditional donor–recipient aid hierarchy, South Africa is looking to define its own niche within the wider development diplomacy context as a development partner. This paper provides an assessment of South Africa's evolving approach towards international development cooperation, with a particular focus on trilateral development cooperation, and what this means for Pretoria's foreign policy in bridging the divide between developed and developing country positions within the international development regime.     

Compromising coalitions and duplicitous diplomacy: US support for Tajikistan after 9/11 and its security implications

This article investigates the development of democracy in Tajikistan and analyzes what has earned it the most international acclaim: its secular-Islamic governing coalition. The investigation reveals a compromised and illegitimate coalition that, with American collusion in local regime repression, poses great dangers to international security. The article argues that government repression, leading to increasing radicalization, combines with foreign aid to damage long-term democracy potential in Tajikistan but also works against global security interests by creating doubt about American intentions and possibly allowing a concomitant rise in Islamic radicalism.     

The New Landscape of Jordanian Politics: Social Opposition,Fiscal Crisis,and the Arab Spring

The absence of regime change in Jordan during the Arab Spring obscured two critical trends transforming political order in this authoritarian kingdom. First, new opposition forces demanding democratic reform mobilized, within not only the youth population but also East Bank tribal communities long assumed to be citadels of loyalty. Second, worsening fiscal dysfunction and budgetary pressure have amplified the state's institutional weakness, and precluded the possibility that increased foreign aid could buy off dissent. Such possibilities require a serious reassessment about the foundations of stability in this kingdom. This double bind presents a nascent opportunity with profound ramifications: in the near future, the Hashemite monarchy may be forced to initiate credible political reform, because even a diminished autocracy is superior to a collapsing regime mired in mass insurrection.     

The Seed of Freedom: Regional Security and the Colombo Plan

Established in 1950, the Colombo Plan was a comprehensive program of foreign aid provided to South East Asian nations. In this article I argue that the Colombo Plan had a much broader political and cultural agenda, and cannot be understood from a humanitarian perspective alone. By exploring some of the cultural, ideological and political underpinnings of the scheme I illustrate that, as part of a comprehensive foreign policy, it is best understood as being motivated by international security priorities and the need to ally domestic cultural concerns. Although the Colombo Plan was inherently defensive, it also proved to be something of a progressive force which prepared the ground for a much closer relationship with (and within) the Southeast Asian region.     

杜威教育思想在日本的传播

杜威是美国著名的哲学家和教育家，他的哲学理论和教育思想对日本产生了重要影响。20世纪初，西方的文化和教育思想开始大量涌入日本。在这种背景下，杜威的教育思想也作为外来思想开始传入日本，并在日本文化教育史上占有相当重要的地位。     

Ideas, Economic Pressures, and Pension Privatization

This article maintains that the recent wave of pension privatization has been spurred largely by rising pension expenditures and chronic capital shortages. Many policymakers in Latin America and around the world believed that privatizing their public pension systems would boost their domestic savings rate and resolve the systems' financial problems, thereby reducing their dependence on unstable foreign capital and freeing resources for other, more productive uses. There is no clear evidence that pension privatization will bring these economic benefits, however. To understand why policymakers held these beliefs, we must examine how ideas about pension privatization have formed. Two particularly important factors are the Chilean model and the World Bank's growing influence on pension policy. A probit analysis of the determinants of pension privatization provides support for these arguments.     

Putin and the Public Chamber

In 2004, Putin created a Public Chamber to enhance state-society dialogue and civilian oversight of the state system. Drawing on interviews with individuals active in Russian civil society or the foreign donor community, this article investigates the Public Chamber's role in legitimating Putin's regime. It examines the vision of state and civil society in the doctrine of "sovereign democracy"; Kremlin strategies for enforcing the narrow parameters this vision gives the public sphere; the model of civil society the Chamber provides, and its actual workings. The Public Chamber's ability to legitimate the regime is considered in the context of civil society's status in Russia.     

Towards Development-Oriented Foreign Policy in Latin America: The Cases of Ecuador and Chile

Latin American nations have, in varying degrees, struggled to form a foreign policy which successfully incorporates developmental issues. Through an institutional analysis, this article identifies the institutional frameworks within which a development-oriented foreign policy (DOFP) is more prone to emerge. It is argued that DOFP has not been able to be consolidated, as foreign policy has primarily remained a tool for regime survival. This is largely because of the institutional exclusiveness and presidentialism embedded in Latin American diplomacy – making foreign policy notoriously vulnerable to regime appropriation. By conducting a comparison between Ecuadorean and Chilean foreign policy, the article sheds light on the institutional components which have allowed the latter to successfully incorporate a development agenda and the former to stumble in its efforts.     

Strategic Reassessments: Aid and Bureaucracy in Australia-India Relations 1951–1970*

Australia-India relations during the Cold War years were tense. The dominant argument in the current literature that explains this tension is the Nehru-Menzies dissonance, which resulted in fundamentally opposite readings of the Cold War. However, the role of Australian aid to India has been understudied in the bilateral relations literature. India was the largest receiver of Australian aid between 1951–1969, but in 1969, there was a marked decrease in this aid as Indonesia replaced India as the main aid recipient. By drawing on archival material, this article suggests an additional explanation for the dramatic change to the Australia-India relationship. By examining the role of Australian ministers and senior bureaucrats, this paper argues that between 1951–1969, Australia’s aid to India was driven by its strategic interests in India. However, by 1966 Australia’s strategic interests in India became tenuous due to the souring of United States-India relations, primarily because of the stresses of the Vietnam War. Thus, a sizeable cut in Australian aid to India was made in 1969 and the subsequent decision to make Indonesia the foremost beneficiary of its aid was a result of strategic reassessments in Australian foreign policy, to adhere more closely to United States (US) interests in Asia.     

Ethnic Conflict and State Building in Burma

Commentaries on contemporary Bangladesh give increasing attention to the role of religion, particularly its more “fundamentalist” forms, in public politics. Here we offer an alternative analysis that explores the significance of religion in people's everyday lives, concentrating on its articulation in community politics. We draw on an important local distinction between dharma understood as a moral foundation for life and dharma understood more narrowly as “religion.” Our empirical analysis suggests that it is the former sense of dharma which has greater relevance for the moral order of the community, and is used to evaluate and structure its social and political institutions, including those identified as “religious.” This perspective furnishes fresh insights into the dynamic relationship between religion, politics and social change in modern Bangladesh.     

从东南亚到非洲:日本对外援助的政治经济学

2006年,日本对非洲的援助开始超过亚洲,非洲成为接受日本对外援助最多的地区。这一变化是长期以来日本对外援助理念、与受援国关系建构以及与主要援助国互动关系变化的反映。本文试图构建一种援助体系的分析框架,并确定了影响对外援助的三组关系:援助国与受援国的关系、对外援助与国内政治的联系、对外援助与国际社会的联系。日本对外援助理念和政策的变化正是这三组关系在不同阶段影响程度不同的反映。通过研究发现,日本的对外援助已经远远超出了经济利益和人道主义考虑的范围,将援助作为外交和战略工具逐渐成为其对外援助的一个重要特征。日本的对外援助是援助研究中比较有代表性的案例,通过这一研究能更好地认识国际援助的发展。另外,日本对外援助过程中的一些经验教训也能为中国提供借鉴。     

Foreign policy options for a new South Africa

Progress towards the creation of a post‐apartheid South Africa raises questions about future foreign policy. In this article a framework for analysis and forecasting is developed. The basic assumption is that a future foreign policy will be driven by the kind of regime which will emerge in a New South Africa. Such a regime will have to develop foreign policy orientations to deal with its regional and global environments and the manifestation of a variety of foreign policy issues in these environments.

A semi‐democracy is foreseen for a New South Africa which will adopt a regional leadership oreitnation towards its neighbours and a consumer orientation towards the global community. The framework makes provision for regime improvements which will lead to fuller international participation or regime decline which will result in international marginalisation.     

Was können Soziologen von Moral verstehen?

The paper deals with the role of morality within society, pointing out the relevance of empirical research on morals for sociological theory. According to Durkheim the moral sense concerns the relation between individuals and society. The observable formats of it are “moral reasoning” (in the sense of developmental psychology), which occurs on the mental level, and “moral communication” (in the sense of conversation analysis), emerging on the social level. Regarding the relation between moral competences and social contexts, an affinity can be found between the competences concerning “rule-consciousness”, “taking the perspective of the other” and “societal attitude” on the one hand and the communicative types of “scandal”, “conflict” and “social field” on the other hand.