China's aggressive ‘periphery diplomacy’ and South Korean perspectives

In this special section, the present article reviews South Korean perspectives on China's ‘periphery diplomacy’ with a focus on Chinese behaviour with respect to the East China Sea maritime territory and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). By analysing research papers published by various Korean research institutions and academic journals, this article demonstrates that most Korean scholars hold that as long as China's growth goes on, the tensions between the US and China are likely to intensify. The article also shows that one of the primary concerns of South Korean scholars lies in the question of how South Korea should respond to changing regional orders and a rising China. The article argues that South Korea's strategic dilemma is reflected in a regional structure in which competition between two great powers has recently forced the periphery to impose bilateral ties on.     

Shadow peacebuilders and diplomatic counterinsurgencies: informal networks,knowledge production and the art of policy-shaping

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of informal networks in producing strategic knowledge and influencing policy responses to the 2011 post-election crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The analytical focus is on networks of shadow peacebuilders, defined as actors who are often not visible to the public and who promote a mix of altruistic and personal interests of their broader network by generating strategic narratives and influencing peacebuilding policy. As this article shows, shadow peacebuilders engage in diplomatic counterinsurgencies waged by means of diplomacy, politics, public relations and legal means. Strategic narratives are instrumental in legitimizing diplomatic counterinsurgency, inducing internal cohesion within the network and delegitimizing alternative narratives and policy solutions. Yet the production of strategic knowledge by shadow peacebuilders has its limitations. When the gap between strategic narrative and actions becomes too big, the network risks fragmentation and defeat by other networks that promote alternative strategic narratives and paths of action in the battle over control of peacebuilding policy.     

Relationship Management with Managers of Countrywide Offices of SEESA: A Case Study

Employees are a crucial stakeholder group for organisations since they determine the degree to which they achieve their goals. It is therefore necessary to build strong relationships with the workforce to encourage employee engagement, which implies that employees’ individual goals are aligned to those of the organisation. To build strong relationships, internal communication should be managed strategically. However, when an organisation has offices around the country, internal relationship management can be impeded, which adversely affects the entity attaining its goals. In this qualitative study, the case of SEESA, a national labour law organisation specialising in providing legal services to employers, was investigated to determine the way in which it manages relationships with its nationwide managers. A mixed-method approach was followed, using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to gather data. The findings indicated that, despite studies elsewhere indicating a communication and relationship building strategy as a prerequisite for building strong organisation-employee relationships, the outcomes of such relationships can be present without a formal internal communication strategy. This can occur provided the organisation is inclined towards a symmetrical world view, has an open culture and encourages two-way communication with top management. Suggestions for managing relationships with employees in nationwide offices are made.     

Assessing the European Union’s strategic capacity: the case of EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia

This article argues that the European Union’s capacity to use an operational instrument for the purpose of an articulated objective constitutes an important, but conceptually neglected and empirically underexplored, element of its actorness. In order to fill this gap, the article introduces the concept of strategic capacity and develops an analytical framework for systematic empirical assessments thereof. Drawing on 22 qualitative expert interviews, the framework is applied to the EU’s maritime operation against human smugglers in the Central Mediterranean (EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia). The article finds that the EU so far has displayed a fairly low degree of strategic capacity in its fight against human smugglers. The article argues that this fairly low degree of strategic capacity is not to be ascribed to an institutional apparatus that is unfit for strategic action, but a decision on the part of political decision-makers to give weight to symbolic, as opposed to strategic, action. As a result, the operation has contributed little to the formal objective of disrupting and dismantling human smuggling networks in the Central Mediterranean. In some areas, it has even had an adverse effect on this objective.     

Democratic justice: the priority of politics and the ideal of citizenship

In his Democratic justice and the social contract, Weale presents a distinctive contingent practice-dependent model of ‘democratic justice’ that relies heavily on a condition of just social and political relations among equals. Several issues arise from this account. Under which conditions might such just social and political relations be realised? What ideal of equality is required for ‘democratic justice’? What are its implications for the political ideal of citizenship? This paper focuses on these questions as a way to critically reconsider Weale’s model. After presenting Weale’s procedural constructivism, I distinguish his model from an institutional practice-dependent model, one salient example of which is Rawls’s political constructivism. This distinction allows for a formulation of the social and political equality required for justice in each case. The contingent model assumes that an equality of ‘status’ will generate just social practices, yet it fails to recognise that an equality of ‘role’ is also important to ensure citizens’ compliance. The paper ultimately seeks to show that the contingent model is insufficient to ensure that just social practices will become stable.     

Debt in just societies: A general framework for regulating credit

Debt presents a dilemma to societies: successful societies benefit from a substantial infrastructure of consumer, commercial, corporate, and sovereign debt but debt can cause substantial private and social harm. Pre‐crisis and post‐crisis solutions have seesawed between subsidizing and restricting debt, between leveraging and deleveraging. A consensus exists among governments and international financial institutions that financial stability is the fundamental normative principle underlying financial regulation. Financial stability, however, is insensitive to equality concerns and can produce morally impermissible aggregations in which the least advantaged in a society are made worse off. Solutions based only on financial stability can restrict debt without accounting for the risk of harm to persons least able to bear the risk, worsen preexisting inequalities, destroy or impair the net worth of households, and impose unfavorable distributive consequences. This article offers a new approach to assist policymakers in developing and evaluating regulation to take criteria in addition to financial stability into account, but which do not undermine the aim of financial stability. It calls for a luck egalitarian approach, offering policymakers options to take the debtor's choices into account while still accounting for cognitive mistakes people often make in debt decisionmaking. It offers a general framework for the underlying principles for the regulation of debt: its focus is not on any particular forms of debt or its regulation but in structuring debt regulation more generally. It offers a set of recommendations on how regulators can take concerns about luck and equality into account in regulatory design.     

健全完善京津冀协同维稳工作机制研究

疏解北京非首都功能是京津冀协同发展的重中之重。这是一项庞大的系统工程,涉及面广,利益关系复杂,对京津冀地区的社会稳定将带来持续深远的影响。外迁企业、重大工程建设、基础设施配套等多方面会触及区域内居民的切身利益,容易引发一系列社会矛盾,并进而影响社会稳定特别是首都的安全稳定。尽管京津冀三地的协同维稳工作机制已运转多年,成效显著,但仍有不尽如人意的地方,需要本着“民生问题无小事,群众利益大于天”的原则,坚持源头治理,进一步健全完善京津冀协同维稳工作机制。     

Understanding EU crisis diplomacy in the European neighbourhood: strategic narratives and perceptions of the EU in Ukraine,Israel and Palestine

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue seeks to better understand the role of communication and perception in EU crisis diplomacy. In a recent Special Issue in this journal, Catarina Kinnvall, Ian Manners and Jennifer Mitzen argue that, “?…?the greatest security challenge facing people across Europe is not physical, despite the threats of Putin and ISIS, but is a sense of fear and anxiety over their daily lives” [2018. Introduction to 2018 Special Issue of European Security: “Ontological (in)security in the European Union”. European security, 27 (3), 249–265]. We take an interdisciplinary approach to widen the scope of studies on European security and offer new avenues for further research into how citizens in the EU’s neighbourhood understand the security challenges they face and the role the EU plays in addressing these. Through this, we aim to bring theoretical and methodological innovation to understanding the role of the EU as an external actor.     

Recasting Leadership Reform in Australian Local Government: A Typology from Political Theory

Changes to elected leadership in Australian local government have seen greater authority assigned to mayors in several jurisdictions. A Discussion Paper recently released under the auspices of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Local Government (ACELG) has recommended further reforms, arguing inter alia that mayors ought to enjoy a personal mandate and a stronger strategic role. This paper places these suggested reforms into context by developing a typology of local government leadership from political theory. We argue that this quadrilateral typology provides a critical portrait of recommendations for stronger leadership which, in this instance, have been transposed from two unitary systems of government (England and New Zealand) to the Australian federal system, without due consideration of the literature examining stronger mayoral roles. It is argued that caution should be exercised when redrafting legislation governing mayoral authority, a process presently underway in New South Wales (NSW).     

Operationalizing Strategy Content: An Example from the Transit Industry

While models of organizational strategy saturate private sector research, public sector research lags behind. The model created by Boyne and Walker (2004) is an exception. The main objective of this study is to operationalize this model using a unique data set from the US transit industry. Through a survey of 103 local transit agencies, we developed separate strategy profiles for each agency that help us answer important questions about organizational strategy. We find that not only do the organizations adopt a mix of strategic stances through the action areas; they also have distinct profiles, which vary greatly between agencies.