Challenging the European Union: the rising powers and the USA in the Doha Round

In this article, the challenges posed to the European Union's (EU) role in trade policy and its implications for development policy during the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda, also known as the Doha round, are highlighted. The authors argue that transformed power relations have created a situation characterized by role uncertainty, for the emerging powers but also for the EU. Priorities among multiple possible roles – in the existing trade regime, in relation to the global South and in the ongoing negotiations – become subject to redefinition. For the EU, heavily wedded to a multilateralist and reformist mission because of its own history, this process is particularly difficult. The EU's traditional role conceptions as a leader and a benign partner to developing countries have been challenged and partly replaced by a more realist approach.     

On the Age Against the Poor

Abstract

This article focuses on Dominican migration to the United States (U.S.) after 1965. Dominicans left their homeland pressured by economic needs, the desire to improve their lives, and encouraged by a de facto immigration policy that facilitated their exodus. Once in the U.S., most Dominicans encounter an economy that increasingly demands skills and levels of schooling they do not possess. Rather than a prosperous life, in the new land, Dominicans face high unemployment levels and an alarming state of poverty. Paradoxically, while the needs of Dominicans continue to be unmet in the new society, the social policies and the conditions that push them out of their country remain in effect. On its part, the U.S. has responded by adopting a number of immigration laws to control the entrance of unwanted and unneeded job-seekers. As a result, the number of Dominicans coming to the U.S. has begun to decline as the number of Dominicans deported to the Dominican Republic has increased. In the end, poor Dominicans are pushed back and forth by both societies whose immigration policies mask their unwillingness to respond to the needs of the group. The article also discusses the impact on the Dominican community of 9/11 and the crashing of the AA flight 587, on November 12, 2001.     

Examining the EU-China Relationship in the Aftermath of the Economic Crisis

ABSTRACT

This article examines how, if at all, the changed economic order in the aftermath of the economic crisis in 2008 has shaped the relationship between the EU and China. Theoretically, two prevalent opposing narratives in the public discourse are presented and linked to two crude versions of mercantilism and economic liberalism in the scholarly literature. The mercantilist line of reasoning posits that China will gain more political weight with its increasing economic strength. The economic liberal line of reasoning suggests that China’s economic weight does not translate into political power. These two opposing theoretical claims are examined by process tracing two most likely cases. This article concludes that despite its increased economic strength, China has enjoyed limited success in persuading the EU and its member states to change their position(s) on policy areas involving strategic interests.     

The iPod and the Queen, the Kindle and the King

President Barack Obama has extended the hand of engagement to the Muslim and Arab world, while warning Israel against new settlements in occupied Palestine and hedging his bets with remote drone strikes against Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan. The new CIA director, a military historian and the Somali-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali assess his strategy.     

Revising the Democratic Revolution--into the Americas

This article examines the claims of the democratic peace thesis by tracing the embedding of democracy in three countries: Nicaragua, Brazil and Colombia. In so doing it highlights the way in which the democratic peace that has spread in the post-cold war period has to be understood as part of a continued imperialist strategy by the core capitalist states and their dominant social forces in the modern world system. The meaning of democracy in this revolution is to promote and instill a form of corporate government that reinforces private power against human needs and rights. Nonetheless, this is an unstable strategy and the three examples considered here illustrate that this creates space for anti-capitalist opposition to organise and challenge this restricted conception of democracy.     

Assessing the New Washington Pluralism from the Perspective of the Malaysian Model

This paper discusses the post-Washington Consensus development paradigm, questioning whether the changes it embodies are sufficient to open up the development debate. We show that the new paradigm, which might be called ‘Washington Pluralism’, harbours three pluralist principles. It maintains that development is 1) contingent on culture; 2) contingent on history; and 3) requiring a multidisciplinary perspective. We assess these principles on the basis of an analogy with the Malaysian Model, which embodied the same three principles. We show that, in Malaysia, the first two evolved into cultural determinism and historicism, respectively, while the third created a discourse in which institutions, politics and culture were reduced to instruments for development. Consequentially the proliferation of the idea of a Malaysian Model has been associated with increasing authoritarianism in Malaysia rather than with increased openness. On the basis of this analogy we conclude that the three pluralist principles are not sufficient to create an open development debate.     

Recalling the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumphant celebrations of the West, a new chapter of history has opened featuring the rising powers of Asia, led by China. Though embracing free markets, China has looked to its Confucian traditions instead of liberal democracy as the best route to good governance. Will China manage to achieve high growth and a harmonious society through a strong state and long‐range planning that puts messy Western democracy and its short‐term mindset to shame? Or, in the end, will the weak rule of law and absence of political accountability in a one‐party state undermine its promise? Francis Fukuyama and Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean thinker who has become the apostle of non‐Western modernity, debate these issues. In this section we also republish a collective memoir by George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand, recalling their fears and hopes two decades ago as they brought the Cold War to an end.     

Property rights and the challenge of the technological modernization of the mexican state

This article focuses on the technological challenges arising from two broader challenges of the Mexican state: growth and equity. In order to face the first one, Mexico needs safer and more comprehensive property rights, especially given the changing array of goods characteristic of contemporary economies. Mexico also needs to take into account the new context of a global economy, subject to rapid changes and highly dependent on information flows. Securing property rights and growing within a global economy call for the technological modernization of the Mexican state. The second challenge, equity, also requires of such modernization: nowadays policy-making in areas such as education, health, etc. requires complex analytical capacities and extensive data bases. That is more the case when the Mexican state needs to act through incentives and market signals instead of through the traditional mechanisms of command and control.     

Third Worldism and the lineages of global fascism: the regrouping of the global South in the neoliberal era

We come to an analysis of Third Worldism through an historical understanding of the development project, one that locates Third Worldism as a moment in a broader series of resistances both to capital and colonialism, and to the techniques used by the state to maintain hegemony. Viewing Third Worldism in this wider context, we argue, enables us to not only explain the failure of Third Worldism to deliver on its vision of emancipation from colonialism, but to also explain the shape of contemporary resistance to the world capitalist order. We argue that the theory and practice of development depends on a certain biopolitics, rooted in a regime of sovereign state control, and designed to mobilise citizens in ways favourable to capital. We hold that Third Worldism embraced this form of sovereignty and its biopolitics. Further, by blending cultural studies analysis with a Polanyian interpretation of the rise of fascism, we argue that Third Worldism can be situated as a moment in the maturation of ‘global fascism’. Finally, we argue that contemporary resistances to neoliberalism have recognised the complicity of the state with capital. These ‘new internationalisms’ arise from the ashes of Third Worldism, with an altered understanding of ‘sovereignty’ that challenges the trajectory of the Third World sovereign state.     

Governance in the UK Public Sector: the Involvement of the Governing Board

Governing boards are a prominent feature of many public sector organizations today. These boards have been modelled on the private sector board of directors. Like company boards, one of their main functions is to provide strategic leadership and policy direction for the organization. The role of managers and chief executives is to implement this. This paper examines the extent of involvement of one public sector board, the school governing body, in strategic activity. Using empirical evidence from a number of semi-structured interviews conducted in schools, its findings indicate that governing bodies are not involved at a high level in strategy within schools. Rather, headteachers are more likely to be undertaking this activity. Reflections are made about the relevance of the 'board of directors' model for both governing bodies and the public sector more generally.     

Revisiting the Concept of the Failed State: bringing the state back in

The policy and donor communities have placed great importance on fixing ‘failed states’. World leaders have cited failed states as one of the greatest threats to the global community. Nevertheless the concept of the failed state is currently subject to a backlash from the academic community. Scholars have criticised the failed states literature on theoretical, normative, empirical and practical grounds. We provide a brief overview of these main concerns and offer a more systematic method for measuring ‘state failure’. Coming up with better ways of assessing how states underperform will enhance our understanding of how institutional decay affects stability and development and, most importantly, will provide an improved system of early warning for practitioners.     

Disputes on the Question of Wartime Education and the Formation of an Educational Policy for the Guomindang in the War

Abstract

The divide between the Western-emphasized and Chinese-emphasized approaches in Chinese musical modernity has shaped the thinking and practice of Chinese music. In colonial Shanghai, where the divide was solidified, the divide was organizationally represented by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Great Unity Music Society. Both forces, however, engaged with the same ethical and political discourse of nation-building. For example, both looked up to the colonial Shanghai Municipal Orchestra as a desirable model. Assessing such subtle connections, this article uses the idea of network to overcome the dichotomatic limitation of the divide, while examining its foundation. Drawing upon concepts of “weak ties” and “conflictual ties,” this article shows how interdependence and rivalry overlapped in the emerging musical network, which shaped the new discursive, performance, and compositional practices in both forces. Both forces, indeed, were equally constitutive of the emerging “field” of music in Chinese modernity.     

Terminating the oldest living regulator: the death of the interstate commerce commission

This paper examines the termination of the oldest federal regulatory agency, in light of existing policy termination theories. The need for the ICC was severely reduced by major deregulation of railroads and trucking in 1980, changes from which also reduced the ICC's ability to maintain external interest group support. Still, although its budget and staff were cut, the ICC survived intact for 15 more years, until budgetary politics found it to be a useful symbolic target for termination. We also argue that this case shows the utility of putting termination theory into the larger framework of policy change, a literature that itself has largely ignored the critical element of policy and organizational termination.

”Once you establish a commission … you have the devil's own time passing an act abolishing it.”⁽¹⁾.     

The changes in the migration patterns in the post-Soviet states: the first decade

Following a short-term burst of migration activity after the dissolution of the USSR, the current situation is marked by the unusually low population territorial mobility, defined by both the political and, increasingly, the socioeconomic factors. While this trend indicates some degree of minority accommodation, it also demonstrates the depth of economic crisis and increasing socioeconomic differentiation. Visible also is the disproportionate influence exercised by Russia on the formation of migration flows in the region. Remaining the major recipient of migrants, Russia increasingly plays a role of supplier of labor migrants to the West, and acts as a “bridge” for those attempting to reach Western Europe. Meanwhile, Russia still lacks an effective legislative base, institutional mechanisms, and political will for dealing with the new migration flows.     

21世纪初印度与亚太多边机制关系分析

随着世界经济的区域化和全球化,多边外交成为一个国家矗立于世界舞台的重要途径,尤其对新兴大国来说更是如此。为了尽快融入亚太地区,印度非常重视对多边外交的应用,积极开展与亚太多边机制的合作,努力使这种合作向制度化方向发展。本文主要分析印度与亚太多边机制关系发展的现状、动因及其意义。     

Mayoral scalar strategies and the role of the central state after the financial crisis

Much has been written about state rescaling, politics of scale and the rise of cities and regions in Europe. Little is known, however, about the impact of the financial crisis on these processes. By taking the view of city mayors, this paper presents a comprehensive and timely re-evaluation of central tenets of this literature in the turbulent aftermath of the financial crisis. The analysis shows the variegated pathways of state rescaling before and after the financial crisis, the multifaceted scalar strategies with which mayors have responded in different countries and cities, and the impact of such strategies on their perception of a centralisation towards the national state. The paper concludes by emphasising the continued dominance of the central state, whereas potentials for the rise of cities are rather to be sought at subnational than at European or global scales.     

Propaganda and the Question of Criminal Intent; the Semantics of the Zachistka

This article seeks to explore the origins and evolution of zachistka (‘cleansing’) and the particular role it played in the second Chechen war of 1999–2005. It argues that zachistka has become part of state, military and media representations of violence, building a psychological environment in favour of war. The article seeks to understand how the propaganda of the Russian Ministry of Defence might have contributed to the perpetuation of war crimes or incitement to atrocity crimes in the region.     

Financing the health care of the aged.

The Medicare and Medicaid programs, which were enacted through the 1965 amendments to the Social Security Act, placed the federal government in the central role of assuring access of the aged and the poor to needed medical care. In this article the trends in the sources of financing medical care services for the aged are examined. The distinction in terms of insurance coverage between acute care services and long-term care services is highlighted. The effect of the programs in terms of reducing the aged's direct financial cost of medical care, increasing their access to medical services, and improving their health status is explored. The unanticipated increase in the cost of these programs has led to a change in emphasis in public policy, from assuring access to mainstream medical care to containing the cost of providing care. The direction of new federal policies is analyzed, and it is concluded that no longer will it follow the private sector's specifications of the conditions and arrangements under which health services are provided to program beneficiaries.     

The Rise of the Rest Warms the Planet

tokyo —America's post‐World War II commitment to universal rules of openness has spread economic gains far and wide, enabling new prosperity on a global scale. It is this American‐forged stable world order that has led to what Fareed Zakaria refers to as “the third great powershift” in the last 500 years: the “rise of the rest,” which follows on the rise of the West and the rise of the United States as the dominant Western power. It is indeed a remarkable legacy of American hegemony that China, India and others are rising, or arising anew, without the pillage, plunder and war associated with the emergent great power experiences of the past.     

Complex political emergencies and the state: Failure and the fate of the state

It is argued that an understanding of the role and nature of the state and of processes of state collapse are vital for understanding Complex Political Emergencies for various practical reasons and for drawing general lessons from particular experiences: CPEs are often rooted in prior state collapse; humanitarian assistance may have to contend with a fractured, ineffective or nonexistent state; part of post-conflict recovery will involve reconstituting the state. Such lessons can only be generalised where there is some degree of shared context and experience. As a tool for facilitating comparisons of like with like and for understanding the inter-relatedness of several factors, a typology of situations is drawn up on the basis of the state and its dynamics and of the origins, forms and trajectory of the CPE and of interventions into it.