Is Taipei an Innovative City? An Institutionalist Analysis

This paper explores whether Taipei is an innovative city by critically examining Taipei’s industrial and economic performance, developmental visions and spatial planning, as well as institutional settings and political contexts. With the aid of institutionalist perspective, the author argues that Taipei’s innovative efforts are mostly policy innovation, rather than institutional innovation. The author also describes the institutional dynamics that have caused the lack of Taipei’s institutional innovation. The case study of Taipei could be helpful in conducting comparative studies on urban innovation.     

Separatism,coexistence and the landscape: Jews and Palestinian-Arabs in mandatory Haifa

Haifa was named a ‘mixed city’ by the British, who ruled Palestine from 1917 to 1948, in reference to the two national communities that inhabited the town. This definition was not neutral, and reflected the Brits aspirations to create national coexistence in Palestine among the diverse urban societies.

Reality was more complicated. The basic assumption of this paper follows the idea that the bi-national urban society of Mandatory Haifa developed into dual society, albeit with much overlapping in economic and civil matters, but takes it one step further: through highlighting changes in the urban landscape, I wish to argue dominance of the national European modern Hebrew society over the Palestinian-Arabs and the traditional and oriental Jewish societies and ideas alike. The changes in the urban landscape tell us the story of Zionism's growing influence and dominance, and the way the urban landscape was used to embody Zionism's modern European ethos. The neighbourhood's segregation, therefore, represents not only the effort to separate but to create a modern national ‘sense of place’ that influenced the city development.     

Turning the tide? The emergence of national urban policies in Africa

It is widely believed that national urban policies in Africa are rare. This is a concern bearing in mind the formidable challenges posed by urbanisation in the context of low incomes and weak institutions. The paper unpacks the concept of urban policy and what it means for the way in which cities grow. It considers the situation in five countries with different approaches. The evidence indicates increasing interest in steering urban growth through coordinated actions on land, housing and infrastructure. The positive developmental arguments seem to carry more weight than the threats of disaster if squalor and social unrest are not addressed. Yet the appropriate policy responses are not clear-cut and there are many dilemmas faced. Capacitating city governments to plan and invest in networked infrastructure appears to be one of the priorities.     

Can Civil Society Organizations Solve the Crisis of Partisan Representation in Latin America?

This article takes up the question of whether civil society organizations (CSOs) can and do act as mechanisms of representation in times of party crisis. It looks at recent representation practices in Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, three countries where political parties have experienced sharp crises after several decades of mixed reviews for their party systems. At such moments, any replacement of parties by CSOs should be especially apparent. This study concludes that the degree of crisis determines the extent that CSOs' representative functions replace partisan representation, at least in the short term. Where systems show signs of re‐equilibration, CSOs offer alternative mechanisms through which citizens can influence political outcomes without seeking to replace parties. Where crisis is profound, CSOs claim some of the basic party functions but do not necessarily solve the problems of partisan representation.     

Conflict or Cooperation? Political Relations between Governors and Mayors in Major Cities in Argentina

This article explores the nature of the relations between the governors and the mayors of major cities in Argentina. The vast majority of the literature assumes that municipal governments in Argentina are weak, and that mayors therefore align with the provincial authorities. This study argues that there is more diversity in the relations between officials of both levels, and that, in some cases, these relations are openly contentious. Four ideal types of relations are identified, based on political affiliation and type of relation, through the systematisation of 43 cases of major Argentine cities.     

The Reality of Virtual Reality: The Internet and Gender Equality Advocacy in Latin America

This article examines the internet's potential to democratize gender equality advocacy in Latin America. Based on field research in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, it challenges the assumption that the internet's horizontal organization and widespread dissemination inherently or inevitably lead to greater democratization. It advances two interrelated arguments. First, the internet's potential to foster democratic relations and effective strategies in civil society depends on the consciousness with which advocates adopt, share, and deploy the technology. Second, the internet is a critical resource for marginalized or socially suspect groups and subjects, providing a unique means to express and transmit often ostracized ideas and identities.     

The controversy over the delimitationof the Turco-Syrian frontier in the period between the two world wars

The main objective of this study is to analyze the effects of discourse in the production of designed landscapes within the urban environment. The study concentrates on the social construction of space within the framework of Lefebvre's spatialization trilogy and Foucault's approach to power in order to investigate a public park as a tool for studying the emergence of order and power relationships in society. In this work, Lefebvre's ‘spatial practice’ concept was considered a ‘discursive practice’ providing a conceptual ground for the discussion of the problem. Additionally, Lefebvre's definition of spatialization is reconceptualised along with Foucault's notions of power, knowledge and discourse. The problem is studied in reference to Atatürk Park in Bal?kesir, a small city and regional capital located in the western part of Turkey. Through the discourse of the modernization process, how Atatürk Park as an urban space been socially constructed has been described and analyzed.     

Bright Lights,Big Cities? Metropolisation,Intergovernmental Relations,and the New Federal Urban Policy in Switzerland

Disparities between increasing urban economic power and cities' limited political autonomy have put pressure on intergovernmental relations in many countries. Some authors have claimed that this process leads to a strengthening of the position of cities with respect to higher state levels such as regions or the nation state. The aim of this article is to test this hypothesis for the case of Switzerland. In the first part, we show that, due to the existing intergovernmental framework, the current dynamics of urbanisation (which we describe as “metropolization”) have produced specific problems for governance in Swiss urban areas: spillovers in the distribution of costs and benefits, new political cleavages between core cities and surrounding communes, as well as increasing autonomy conflicts between cities and cantons. In the second part, we argue that initiatives taken in order to tackle these issues of urban governance have contributed to transforming Swiss federalism. “Politikverflechtung” is increasing in urban areas. In particular, the new federal urban policy has introduced a new vertical dimension of co‐operation between cities, cantons and the Confederation. Although Swiss cities have gained new influence in the process, we conclude that cantons still hold the key position. Therefore, like other federalist countries, Switzerland has not experienced a considerable strengthening of urban governments with respect to higher levels. Nevertheless, current developments in this area can be seen as a move away from the hierarchical pattern of co‐operative federalism towards a more heterarchical pattern of multi‐level governance in Swiss intergovernmental relations.     

The World Bank and Policy Reform in Mexico and Argentina

This article examines the World Bank's role in the market policy reform experiences of Mexico and Argentina. It argues that while reform was driven by domestic elites, the bank played an important role, providing technical advice and financial support and helping to spread market reform ideas. The nature of the bank's involvement, however, differed substantially in the two countries because of their distinct political arrangements, histories, and geopolitical positions in regard to the United States. In the recent era of second-generation reforms, the World Bank's involvement in compensatory policy development has become more focused, although still more intense in Argentina than in Mexico. This involvement has important implications for the quality of democracy, insofar as the 1990s market reforms were formulated by insulated international policy networks unaccountable to the public. Recently, the bank has declared its commitment to involve civil society in its lending policies, a move that may have important implications for democratic development.     

Civil-Military Affairs and Security Institutions in the Southern Cone: The Sources of Argentine-Brazilian Nuclear Cooperation

This paper analyzes the conditions in which the governments of Argentina and Brazil founded security institutions in the early 1990s, while they were democratizing. It advances the hypothesis that international cooperation in the security field is often linked to the evolution of civil-military relations. Civilian leaders in both countries established institutions and sought international participation deliberately to achieve civilian control and gain leverage over the military establishment, which they sorely distrusted. The need to stabilize civil-military relations at home was therefore the prime motivating force behind the emergence of security institutions in the Southern Cone. Three mechanisms were at work: omnibalancing, policy handling, and managing uncertainty. These mechanisms are derived from three different schools of thought: realism, organizational-bureaucratic models, and theories of domestic political institutions. Besides explaining the sources of nuclear bilateral cooperation, this argument also serves as a critique of two prominent theories in international relations that attempt to explain cooperation and peaceful relations among democracies: neoliberal insti-tutionalism and democratic peace theory.     

中部地区核心城市都市圈发展与消费结构优化——以大南昌都市圈为例

考察郑州、武汉、合肥和大南昌都市圈这四大中部地区都市圈,从边际消费倾向、需求收入弹性、需求价格弹性三个方面比较其核心城市消费结构,发现大南昌都市圈核心城市中城镇居民的生活水平逐年改善,正在由以生存型消费为主的基本阶段跨越到以发展型消费为主的注重消费质量的阶段,但其进度略落后于其他中部省份单中心都市圈的核心城市。大南昌都市圈要实现赶超,需着重增加城镇居民收入和提升供给产品质量,充分发挥消费空间,通过消费驱动的核心城市经济增长引领都市圈的发展。     

Metropolitan Change and Uneven Distribution of Urban Sub‐Centres in Mexico City, 1989–2009

The spatial expression of urban centrality in big cities is generally associated with several urban nodes. The major purpose of this article is to identify the spatial pattern of urban sub‐centres in Mexico City during the period 1989–2009 and how changes in urban centrality have given way to a more polycentric urban structure. A double‐threshold method was used for comparing the polycentric structure of a single city over time examining the variables of number of jobs and tertiary employment density; this approach for identifying employment centres is proven in a megacity of a developing country.     

Sites of power,instruments of public intervention: the Palace of Congress and the construction of federal power in Argentina, 1880–1916

SUMMARY

This article intends to provide an analysis of the process of building a house for the Argentine congress between 1880 and 1916. After the presidential campaign and revolution of 1880, Argentina entered a new political era that saw the definition of a political system under the hegemony of the Partido Autonomista Nacional and the consolidation of the federal state. The defeat of porteño militias in 1880 represented the end of the project of a national state controlled from Buenos Aires and the transformation of the city into the federal capital of the country. This new role meant that the city now needed buildings to accommodate new functions, a house for parliament among them. This article explores the significance of building the Palace of Congress as part of a broader plan by politicians, urban planners and bureaucrats to place symbols of republican greatness in central areas of the new capital. This study also focuses on the parliamentary debates that discussed the allocation of public funding for the construction of congress and the importance of giving the new capital examples of monumental architecture as a way to underscore its new political status. Finally, this article analyses the impact of the debates in congress and in the press about allegations of embezzlement and corruption that surrounded the building of the Palace of Congress.     

Institutional Weakness and the Puzzle of Argentina's Low Taxation

Current explanations of taxation levels have identified a host of factors, such as levels of economic development and GDP per capita, tax handles, tax morale, and political regimes. But none of them can account for Argentina's exceptionalism. Using a "transaction cost politics" approach and the case of Brazil for comparison, this article argues that the key to explaining low taxation in Argentina is political instability. Systemic instability affects the tax behavior of governments. Facing an uncertain future, incumbent governments choose to extract resources from society through inflation rather than normal taxation. This article argues that political institutions, particularly federalism, contribute to instability and thereby reduce the discount rates of government policymakers.     

La ñata contra el vidrio: urban violence and democratic governability in Argentina

The article argues that the increase in crime and urban violence in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires, can be explained as an outcome of the interaction of four factors: the new social relations established by neoliberalism; the incapacity of the state to resolve the social conflicts which have arisen from these new social relations; the failure to democratise the security forces; and the exclusion of a sector of society from the rights of effective democratic citizenship. The increase in crime and urban violence is, thus, analysed as a problem of governability.     

Book reviews

Modern armies conduct military operations in urban areas, but rarely do so willingly. Military commanders prefer fighting in open terrain in which forces freely maneuver and use firepower, rather than in urban areas in which obstacles such as tall buildings, narrow streets, and non-combatants hinder control of the battlefield. Most professional military literature recommends refraining from fighting in urban areas and considering urban battles an unfortunate aberration to be avoided in the future. Deliberate choice of an urban battlefield is quite exceptional, deriving mostly from strategic needs or due to the symbolic value ascribed to a particular city or town. Most decisive battles of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 were fought in open areas. However, strategic and political considerations, as well as cultural and sentimental, caused both sides to fight in cities and towns, such as in the case of Jaffa and Tel Aviv metropolitan area, Palestine's major economic center and a main road junction. Both cities also held sentimental value: the dynamically developing modern Jaffa was a symbol of an emerging Palestinian nation while Tel Aviv, the “first Hebrew city,” was the Zionist ideal of urban development.     

The State,Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan,by Germaine A. Hoston

Abstract

This very dense book represents a significant effort to come to terms with the “national question” in radical discourse—the meaning of the nation in relation to, or in opposition to, the state—through the prism of the adoption of Marxist ideas in China and Japan in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a critical problem inasmuch as issues of state-building in China and of state hegemony in Japan have dominated the recent histories of those two countries.     

Can Mercosur Survive? Domestic and International Constraints on Mercosur

Mercosur has survived several crises by resorting to presidential diplomacy, but it risks becoming an empty shell unless member states work to coordinate macroeconomic policies. Its survival depends on the outcome of domestic political struggles in Brazil and Argentina and on the harmonization of exchange-rate policies between the two countries. This article examines the Argentine-Brazilian "trade wars" provoked by successive devaluations of the Brazilian currency, aggravated in 2001 by the Argentine economic crisis. The social explosion in Argentina in December 2001 showed that domestic actors can successfully challenge proglobalization policies. To consolidate, Mercosur will have to address the democratic deficit while building supranational institutions and an effective dispute-settlement system.     

‘The Right to Live with Dignity’: Politicising Experiences of Precarity through ‘Popular Economy’ in Argentina

This article takes an ethnographic perspective to analyse the ways in which social movements in Buenos Aires, Argentina, politicise experiences of precarity through the creation of popular economy initiatives. I argue that we cannot understand these organising processes exclusively in relation to the pursuit of ‘formalisation’ or the improvement of working conditions. In the context of new forms of State intervention, the notions of ‘rights’—to labour and to the city—that these movements put forward, express ways of envisioning full inclusion in society that encompass notions of worthiness and ‘dignified life’, forged over the course of grassroots political action.     

Social challenges and progress in IBSA

The India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum was launched in June 2003 to push for these countries' bids for a place on the United Nation' Security Council, but IBSA's attention has shifted over time towards development and economic reform. This article discusses the progress in addressing social development challenges within the member countries of IBSA. It examines the social achievements of IBSA members, in the context of their economic performance and the Millennium Development Goals. It also assesses the forces which propel these societies' social policies, especially the influence of civil society, and whether there has been benefit in this regard in their collaboration within the IBSA forum. Their experiences show the critical importance of civil society in design and execution of programmes directed towards the poor, an important factor to be kept in mind by multilateral and bilateral agencies involved in poverty alleviation projects in developing countries. The three nations could cooperate to share ideas for effective social welfare programmes, and join together in multilateral forums to form a powerful voice for change.