The contested terrain of land governance reform in Myanmar

State control of land plays a critical role in producing land dispossession throughout the Global South. In Myanmar, the state’s approach towards territorial expansion has driven the country’s system of land governance, resulting in widespread and systemic land grabbing. This article investigates ongoing land governance reforms as key terrains for contesting such abuses of power. Employing a relational land governance approach, we view reform processes as shaped by changing power-laden social relations among government, civil society, and international donor actors. Legal and regulatory reforms in Myanmar potentially act as sites of meaningful social change but in practice tend to maintain significant limitations in altering governance dynamics. Civil society organizations and their alliances in Myanmar have played an important role in opening up policy processes to a broader group of political actors. Yet, policies and legal frameworks still are often captured by elite actors, becoming trapped in path dependent power relations.     

The politics of Japan's free trade agreement

For a long time, the Japanese government showed awkward and indecisive attitudes towards trade policy. There was strong opposition from the two political actors — bureaucrats at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — to market opening in the agricultural sector. This article highlights private interests and the public interest of MAFF bureaucrats and LDP politicians and examines how the evolving perception of the interests has influenced debates and the progress of free trade agreement (FTA) policy over agriculture. The central argument is that economic linkages and institutional cooperation in East Asia have changed basic interests of MAFF bureaucrats and LDP politicians, and such changes, then, have induced new moves in Japan's FTA policy towards countries of the region.     

The voice and loyalty of business in Kuwait: merchant politics in times of contention

According to the classic rentier state theory literature, the political activity of Kuwaiti merchants effectively ceased after the government acquired oil rents. More recent works explain business alliances with the government through the competition for resources between the capitalist class and the population at large. This article argues that the merchants’ political position vis-à-vis the ruling powers has not been consistent and has shifted between ‘voice’ and ‘loyalty’. To explain the choice of political action by the Kuwaiti business community the article compares the merchants’ role in two major contentious events—the popular uprising of 2011 and the 1989 pro-democracy movement. Despite the similarities between them, in 1989 prominent business figures were in the vanguard of opposition, while after 2011 they chose to re-emerge as government allies. The comparison suggests that the shift from ‘voice’ to ‘loyalty’ can be explained by the changing political field. I contend that the rise of new social forces and new types of political opposition antagonized business and forced it to side with the government in order to pursue its vital rent-seeking interests.     

Grassroots Bureaucracy: Intergovernmental Relations and Popular Mobilization in Brazil's AIDS Policy Sector

How does the state ensure the implementation of national policies in a context of decentralized political authority? This article identifies a new strategy utilized by national bureaucrats to regulate the behavior of subnational politicians: mobilizing civil society as government watchdog and political advocate. In the context of decentralized governance, in which local politicians administer most social sector programs, reform‐minded bureaucrats often find that they have little control over the implementation of their progressive policies. In Brazil's AIDS policy sector, however, bureaucrats have ensured the successful implementation of their policies by developing allies outside government. These state actors—here called activist bureaucrats—have been largely overlooked in the English‐language literature, yet they form a new layer of politics in Latin America.     

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.     

‘Municipal entrepreneurs’: local politicians and the delivery of urban sanitation in Kumasi,Ghana

ABSTRACT

The municipal government in Kumasi has been the focus of numerous reforms to improve local policymaking and delivery of public goods to the city’s dwellers. Yet, the reforms have spurred strategic reactions from local actors who exploit institutional ambiguities to pursue their interests. This paper draws on empirical data on the city’s sanitation franchising to show how ordinary local politicians exploit reform ambiguities; they establish themselves as local entrepreneurs to deliver urban sanitation services and also contest the municipal executive. The manipulations do not only undermine reforms proffered by the regime and external actors but the municipal government’s promise to deliver efficient public services also becomes problematic. Management of urban sanitation is a contested arena between bureaucrats and political actors all vying for their interests. The sanitation reforms are eventually subsumed under the ‘local politics as usual’ logic.     

Local Value Chain Development in Vietnam: Motorcycles,Technical Learning and Rents Management

This article analyses how foreign direct investment drives technological upgrading in the motorcycle industry in Vietnam. Using the analytical framework of rent management, the article evaluates the rent management mechanisms that provided the incentives and pressures for domestic firms to develop a local value chain by participating in the foreign supply network. This article offers a case study analysis of two periods: 1995–2000 and 2000–05. Two case studies examine the exchanges between lead firms and their suppliers; between multinational corporations and local firms; and among the state, private and foreign firms in the context of the value chain for motorcycle production. The analyses suggest that industrial upgrading has been predominantly driven by foreign direct investment starting in the early 2000s. In addition, market competition among Japanese and Chinese lead firms led to significant technical learning for domestic firms through collaboration with foreign firms despite the government’s failure to effectively monitor rents or implement industrial policies.     

Constructing Reform Coalitions: The Politics of Compensations in Argentina's Economic Liberalization

It is frequently argued that the key to "successful" economic liberalization is to marginalize interest groups that profit from existing regulatory regimes. This paper contends that some established interests can craft public policies to protect their rents in the new market setting. The state may shape the interests of social actors and create proreform constituencies out of old populist and interventionist groups. In Argentina, this coalition building was achieved by constructing reform policies that granted rents in new markets to business and organized labor and by deliberately avoiding unilateral deregulation in sectors where reform would hurt traditionally powerful actors. This argument is developed through a comparative analysis of policy reform in the labor market institutions and protected industrial sectors, areas where the costs of deregulation are said to be unavoidable for the established actors.     

泰国宏观经济政策决策分析

泰国经济政策市场上的供给方包括权力精英、专家官员、国会和政党 ;需求方则包括公众选民、经济性质的压力集团或利益集团、大众传媒和专家学者。经济政策正是多个供求方相互作用 ,讨价还价并达成妥协的结果。作为公共物品的经济政策是国家经济正常运转所必不可少的 ,但市场本身却缺乏提供充足的公共物品机制。从泰国的经济政策决策机制上看 ,除行政机构和国会外 ,市民合作机构的参与是该国经济决策机制的一大特色。此外 ,还有外部因素的干预。     

Education,Federalism and the 2013 Bundestag Elections

The cycle of introducing and recalibrating reforms has become a hallmark of German education policy; progress in updating institutions and policies and educational outcomes is dogged by chronic problems. The drivers of change have been a medley of interests, actors, and socio-economic conditions. Institutional change has blended with established policy-making patterns and a move towards greater ideological pragmatism. Due to its national significance, education is prominently positioned in coalition agreements that precede the formation of a new government but plays a marginal role in federal election campaigns. Its treatment in the 2013 coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and the SPD reaffirms continuity in broad policy goals; the omission of important questions exposed ongoing battles over jurisdiction that are closely tied to conflicts over authority and funding. The results fit a pattern in which flexible policy adjustments and fund distribution result from negotiations among interlocking networks of policy entrepreneurs.     

Governing the Safety and Security of the Malacca Strait: The Nippon Foundation between States and Industry

ABSTRACT

Despite long-standing sovereignty sensitivities, the Malacca and Singapore Straits have been the site of co-operative governance and regime building. Of note is the 2007 Co-operative Mechanism of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, characterised as a milestone achievement in regional co-operation towards improved safety and security in the Straits. Yet, well before the Co-operative Mechanism were also earlier instances of co-operation dating to the 1970s – specifically between the Straits’ littoral states under a tripartite framework and Japanese actors through the Malacca Strait Council. In addition to providing a template for the Co-operative Mechanism, these arrangements offer alternative models of governance and regime building that challenge conventional characterisations of “regional governance” – what it looks like, as well as its driving actors. This article considers the significance of these early efforts, with attention to the ways that the region’s developmental context bears on the actors, structures and processes of governance in Southeast Asia. Not only does this historical process of co-operation give expression to alternative governing arrangements composed of mixed actors and obligations, but an unconventional governance agent – the Nippon Foundation – has played an especially defining role in bringing actors to the table and substantiating the co-operative process.     

China's new patterns of social stratification

Until 1962 the Chinese communist policies of class conflict had been directed at the remnants of China's precommunist class structure. After 1962 the Maoist oligarchy had to concern itself not only with the continuing influence of the ‘bourgeois ideas’ of the old China, but with new patterns of social stratification which had been created by the communist regime. Despite the efforts of Mao Tse-tung, the party and the government cadres have increasingly become an elite set apart from the population. The purpose of this article will be to briefly examine this phenomenum and its impact on Chinese politics.     

Reign-seeking and the Rise of the Unelected in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article develops the concept of “reign-seeking” to capture the unprecedented collective action of the Thai professional and official elite prior to the 2014 military coup and the establishment of a military regime. It argues that this phenomenon reflects broad and deep political dynamics, for which the dominant scholarship on authoritarianism and Thai politics cannot adequately explain. The changing incentives of these supposedly non-partisan actors are interwoven with neo-liberal governance reform driven by a desire for depoliticisation and the minimisation of rent-seeking. This idea has been rationalised in Thailand since the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution resulting in the rise of technocratic and judicial bodies designed to discipline elected politicians and political parties. However, such institutional reconfigurations have consolidated the incentive for people considering themselves to be prospective candidates to “reign” in these organisations. As evident in the 2014 coup, these unconventional political actors – academics, doctors and civil society leaders – made collective efforts to topple the elected government in exchange for gaining selection into the wide range of unelected bodies. Governance reform in Thailand has hitherto reinforced the status quo, although the article further argues that reign-seekers should be seen as contingent, rather than consistent, authoritarians.     

Workplace regimes in Sino-Mozambican construction projects: resentment and tension in a divided workplace

Based on a qualitative study of Chinese-led construction projects in Mozambique, this article explores how Chinese engagement in the construction sector affects workplace regimes. The study addresses the following set of questions: What characterises these workplace regimes, and why do the workplace regimes give rise to resentment and tension amongst Mozambican workers? Furthermore, how is labour agency constrained or enabled within these workplace regimes? The data reveals that Chinese companies in Mozambique are granted great freedom to develop workplace regimes as they see fit, characterised by functional flexibility, low pay and few benefits. Furthermore, the creation of a divided workplace, with separate workplace regimes for Chinese and Mozambican workers, exacerbates resentment amongst Mozambican workers. The Mozambican workers employ multiple strategies to express their discontent, but labour agency is constrained by weak national institutional support, and lack of alternative employment opportunities in the local labour market.     

Regime Shift in Japan?Two Decades of Neoliberal Reforms

This paper uses insights drawn from a paired comparison of Switzerland and Japan to give an account of the changes brought about by neoliberal policy adaptation in Japan over the last two decades. In Switzerland, notwithstanding further liberalization of the traditionally liberal regime prompted by the economic hardships of the 1990s, the referendum system helped the Social Democrats and unions to defend their rights and maintain the welfare schemes belatedly established in the 1980s. By contrast, the Japanese ruling party not only delayed liberalization of the protectionist state, but also aggravated fiscal problems by implementing a series of expansionary macroeconomic policies in the 1990s. Thus, without pursuing coherently such neoliberal policies as fiscal consolidation, privatization, or market deregulation, the Japanese state now faces a serious dilemma between the immediate need for structural reforms and the social unease that would result. Focusing on the reform packages of the Nakasone (1982‐87), Hashimoto (1996‐98), and Koizumi (2001‐) administrations, the paper reviews the sequences of reform policies as an interplay among economic challenges, actors’ aspirations, and institutional constraints, and further develops arguments about the segmented structure, peculiar to the Japanese state, that retards political changes.     

Private authority and disaster relief: The cases of post-tsunami Aceh and Nias

Abstract

This article explores the rise of private authority in globalized disaster relief scenarios by looking at the case of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Aceh and its neighboring region, Nias, after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The author places the growing strength and presence of NGOs within the larger context of weak, cash-strapped local governments under decentralization schemes promoted by neoliberal economic policies and argues that under such conditions, private actors such as NGOs are gaining a legitimacy of authority once reserved exclusively for the state. In Aceh after the tsunami, five hundred NGOs began operating relief and recovery efforts on the island with little consultation with local Acehnese government agencies and community organizations. The article concludes by arguing that the example of Aceh, in which public and private parallel systems of relief and recovery have been operating raises long-term issues of accountability for all parties involved.     

Technocracy Questioned: Assessing Economic Stabilisation in Nicaragua

Abstract — The Chamorro government (1990–1996) has finally achieved stabilisation in Nicaragua. At first sight, this government has been a classic example of technocracy, implementing stabilisation and structural adjustment policies as recommended by the IMF and the World Bank. The paper argues that the IMF and the World Bank did have a considerable influence on economic policies, but that these policies suffered from limitations. The priority of internal stabilisation implied that insufficient attention was paid to the external balance, and the liberalisations and privatisations did not create a competitive market economy, but tended to favour a small group. Furthermore, the foreign aid that accompanied the programmes permitted this discretionary government behaviour.     

Bureaucratic Migration Politics: German Support for Common EU Policies on Labour Migration

As a macrostructure, this article uses a bureaucratic politics framework to understand the preference formation of the German federal government on liberalising economic migration policies. This allows unpacking the process of preference formation and linking it to a number of causal factors, which, by influencing the costs and benefits distribution of the relevant actors, shape the position of the government. The article argues that the misfit between the existing national regulations for economic migration and European-level policies has to be zero – otherwise the economic and political adaptation costs for the actors involved are too high. A heated national debate on immigration is negatively related to governmental support for such measures, as the political costs of support skyrocket. Conversely, if the decision-making process happens bureaucratically, this helps to attain governmental support, as the political costs of doing so are kept minimal.     

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.     

Korea's E-commerce: Present and Future

Despite the recent downturn in IT-related markets in some countries, there is no doubt that the "Third Revolution," as the innovation in IT has been dubbed, is here to stay. The growth of the Internet and e-commerce are elements of this IT revolution which are not only changing society in a fundamental way but may be providing an antidote for some ailing economies. In this article, Kim Sang-Bae, chief executive officer (CEO) of Cybertek Holdings, Inc, explains the reasons behind the surge of e-commerce in Korea and the impact it has had on Korean society. Kim argues that the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 may have hurtled Korea into an economic crisis but this may have been the very impetus that prompted the startling rise of e-commerce in Korea from 1998, which in turn contributed to Korea's rapid economic recovery. He argues that in order for this growth in e-commerce to be sustained it is imperative that the Korean Government pursue economic reforms of its domestic market with more vigor.