Competitive Liberalization,Competitive Imperialism,and Intellectual Property

Aggressive pursuit of free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) by major and minor trading powers alike challenges the conventional wisdom in favor of such pursuit – competitive liberalization. An equally plausible explanation for an active bilateral and regional trade agreement policy, one which effectively de-emphasizes multilateralism, may be competitive imperialism. The protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights is one area in which new provisions, going beyond multilateral rules, are being negotiated and written into FTAs and CUs. Such provisions may yield insights into which characterization of bilateralism and regionalism – competitive liberalization or competitive imperialism – is more apt. Rice Distinguished Professor, The University of Kansas, School of Law, Green Hall, 1535 West 15th Street, Lawrence, KS 66045-7577, USA. Tel. +1-785-8649224. Fax. +1-785-8645054. www.law.ku.edu. J.D., Harvard (1989); M.Sc., Oxford (1986); M.Sc., London School of Economics (1985); A.B., Duke (1984). Marshall Scholar (1984-86). Member, Council on Foreign Relations, Royal Society for Asian Affairs, and Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. Author, Modern GATT Law (Sweet & Maxwell 2005), International Trade Law: Theory and Practice (2nd ed. 2000, 3rd ed. forthcoming 2007-08), and Trade, Development, and Social Justice (Carolina Academic Press 2003). I am thankful to my Research Assistant, Mr. David R. Jackson (B.A., George Mason University, 1992; J.D. Class of 2007, University of Kansas), for his indispensable help on this work. I also am grateful to Dr. Mohammed El Said, University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), for his consistent support and friendship, and for what he has taught and continues to teach me about international trade and intellectual property.     

Mobilizing from the Margins: Domestic Citizen Politics and Yasukuni Shrine

Prime Minister Koizumi’s six consecutive annual visits to Yasukuni shrine played a key role in initiating a new phase of domestic citizen political mobilization not seen since the early 1970s. This paper is based on field research during the Koizumi years (2001–2006) centering on domestic groups that conduct activities in “protection” of or “opposition” to Yasukuni shrine. As a study of street-based politics, this paper seeks to uncover the processes, strategies, and outcomes of citizen responses to elite political action at Yasukuni Shrine as well as explore meaning of their actions within the context of Japan’s democratic polity.

From Marxism to communism: A review article

James D. White, Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, xii + 416 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.