East Asia in a unipolar international order and Europe’s role in the region

This article attempts to explore the post-Cold War international system in which regional orders intermingle their influence. It pays special attention to regional conflicts in East Asia in the new era and what roles global powers could play to maintain regional stability. I will first examine the characteristics of the new global order after the end of the bipolarity. I will then focus on American foreign policy in the new international system in the context of its dealing with major global events that have strategic implications for its relations with other major global powers. As to discussions of regional orders, this article focuses on East Asia, where conflicts between states have not evaporated despite the relaxation of the global Cold War confrontation. What makes this area special is the involvements of many great powers and less-powerful nations that could somehow easily manipulate the seniors into the conflicts to their favour. While the regional order in East Asia is being shaped by the post- Cold War international order, the regions peace and conflicts will in turn significantly influence global order. Finally, I will argue that dealing with problems in East Asia should acquire involvements of powers that would give necessary momentum to the existing participants to solve conflicts by the means of multilateralism. The European Union (EU) is often forgotten for its role in contributing to world order, and the EU should be taken seriously by the powers in East Asia as a possible player in maintaining the regional peace. I conclude that both global and regional security depend on continuing US unipolarity, strengthened by the co-operation of the EU in the form of multilateralism. By the same token, US unilateralism without a EU counter-balancing it, only invites potential challengers, such as China, to threaten the USs preponderant position, thereby destabilising world peace.This article was supported by a research project (NSC-P3-2414-H-004-018) of the National Science Council, Taiwan, which is gratefully acknowledged.     

Bremst der Föderalismus den Leviathan? Bundesstaat und Sozialstaat im internationalen Vergleich, 1880–2005

This paper examines the impact of federal state structures on welfare state development in the six classic OECD federations since the 1880s. Starting from the widely acknowledged assumption in comparative public policy research that depicts federalism as an impediment to the expansion of the Leviathan, we demonstrate that federalism has facilitated as well as impeded social policy development. Development is contingent on several time-dependent factors, including the degree of democratization, the type of federalism, the stage of welfare state development and early distribution of social policy responsibility. Federalism also has had an impact on patterns of benefit provision, and we identify a variety of bypass strategies by which the six federations were able to overcome their built-in constitutional rigidities. These institutional changes had a lasting structural impact on the emerging patterns of social security. Overall, federalism has contributed to a status quo bias in social policy, not only because it delayed the early consolidation of national social programs but also, more recently, because it has protected the welfare state against retrenchment.     

Developing new measures of welfare state change and reform

Abstract. Since the publication of Gøsta Esping–Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Esping–Andersen 1990), which built its typologies on a rich database of detailed programme characteristics, it has been generally accepted that measures of social expenditure are an inferior, and even a misleading, source of information concerning the character of welfare state development. The problem is, however, that the kinds of detailed programme data Esping–Andersen used are not routinely available, while the quality of social expenditure data has been improving rapidly, culminating in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) now regularly updated and highly disaggregated Social Expenditure Database (SOCX). This article explores the possibility of using SOCX to devise measures of the extent, structure and trajectory of welfare state change and reform in 21 OECD countries over the period 1984 to 1997. On the basis of these measures, it suggests that there has been almost no sign of systematic welfare retrenchment in recent years and only limited evidence of major structural transformation or programmatic reorientation.     

Victim-offender race and support for capital punishment: A factorial design approach

Existing research suggests that juries are more likely to condemn murderers to death when offenders are black victims are white. It remains to be seen, however, whether these decisions reflect broader racial prejudices in society that are imported into the jury room. If they do, then insuring equity in capital sentencing may be beyond reach. Accordingly, this study uses factorial design methodology to examine whether members of the general public are more supportive of capital punishment when asked to rate a vignette describing a murder involving a white victim and black offender as opposed to other victim-offender racial combinations. Our analyses suggest that the race of the offender, but not the victim, has a significant influence on support for capital punishment. Thus, procedural safeguards alone may be unable to eliminate racial bias in capital sentencing.