Ideology and the University

Ideology underpins recent transformations of British universities; it forms an unquestioned backdrop to policy‐making. The ideology at issue is a market‐based neo‐liberalism—accompanied by a doctrinaire private‐sector managerialism. Universities employing this ideology envision it as common sense. The ideology is thus not proselytised, but rather structures the vernacular of university speech. In reality it is a highly politicised ideology masquerading as a managerial reality. Its effect on universities has been profoundly destructive. The dignified public good of higher education has now become a huckstering marketised mechanism. What is so perplexing is the quiescence of universities. The ideology is so hegemonic that it appears exempt from criticism. University administrators are now quite unapologetic ideological functionaries and we need to relearn how to criticise those who manage us. Ultimately no ideology lasts, this present one will be supplanted, the question is what level of damage to civil and intellectual life will it inflict?     

Jihad: a South African perspective

The India, Brazil and South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) established in 2003 brings together three like-minded, democratic, market economies of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic character, sharing a broadly similar economic, political and development situation. At the time of its formation IBSA was widely regarded as representing a novel form of South-South cooperation, transcending older models rooted in the logic of North-South confrontation in the post-colonial, Cold War world. However, now, as the respective countries prepare for their tenth anniversary summit in India, the forum seems to face a growing sense of irrelevance, perhaps even an existential crisis. There has been a proliferation of other forums—notably BRICS and the G20—which means that IBSA needs to differentiate itself if it is to endure. This paper suggests a common vision for IBSA, based on the concept of international liberalism, implying an open international market, well-regulated capital markets and tailored domestic policies such as social policy, health policy and education policy, may well increase the weight IBSA can gain in different international forums.     

论当前中国法律理论与民意的冲突——兼论现代性法律的局限性

法律理论与民意的冲突,目前成了一种不容忽视的冲突。泸州"二奶"遗赠案反映了自由权利与社会责任的冲突;"刘涌案"反映了程序正义与实体正义的冲突;"死刑存废之争"反映了法律理想图景与现实正义观念的冲突。冲突的根源在于:现代性法律以个人主义和自由主义为前提预设,把人视为独立自由的平等个体,把错综复杂多样的社会关系剪裁成单一片面的法律关系,要求尽可能地限制国家权力,甚至主张以"人道"规范一切;但是,社会中的人却不是独立自由的,而是受到多种社会伦理规范的制约;国家职能和社会规范都是多元的;民意具有现实性和综合性的特点。现代性法律与中国民意的冲突,本质上是两种不同的国家社会体制的冲撞。现代性法律只能调整特定的社会关系、满足中国的部分需求。     

Rethinking sensitivity interdependence: Assessing the trade,financial, and monetary links between states

International relations scholars do not adequately conceptualize or measure economic interdependence, a crucial variable in studies of trade and conflict, economic sanctions, and globalization. Most studies conflate vulnerability with sensitivity and confuse interconnectedness with genuine interdependence by relying on inadequate indices of interdependence such as unadjusted trade as a percentage of GDP. Such measures fail to capture the true cost to states of a termination of normal trading relations and ignore completely interstate financial and monetary ties. In this article, we offer a new method, the Contextual Sensitivity Estimator (CSE), for gauging sensitivity interdependence. The CSE addresses existing shortcomings in several noteworthy ways. First, it takes into account the strategic and domestic economic context of external economic linkages. Second, it assesses the composition of trade and the uses of trade proceeds. Third, it provides a detailed conceptualization of critical channels of sensitivity like foreign investment and exchange rate ties. Using Arab‐Canadian economic relations in 1979, after a threatened boycott of Canada, as a case study, we show that our CSE yields a more accurate assessment of sensitivity interdependence than traditional measures.     

Special Issue on electronic media,markets and civil society in East and Southeast Asia: Introduction

Abstract

The government of Hong Kong has been trying to reform the territory's health care financing system since the early 1990s and is finally on the verge of succeeding. The objective of this paper is to assess the reform efforts and explain the causes of repeated failures and eventual success. It will argue that the government's fortunes changed only after it abandoned the core reform goal and decided to pursue peripheral objectives. It will explain the abandonment with reference to the peculiar political system in Hong Kong that makes it difficult for the government to adopt substantial policy reforms in the face of even moderate opposition. The reason for the government's policy incapacity is the existence of liberalism in a non-democratic setting, which allows the government to neither suppress opposition nor mobilize popular support. This has been illustratively evident in its health care reforms when its proposals to improve the system's fiscal sustainability invariably met an early death because they imposed costs on employers, the population or both. The current proposal has fared better not only because it addresses a simpler peripheral problem but also because it offends almost no one and pleases many among the powerful.     

The political rationalities of regionalism: APEC and the EU in comparative perspective

Abstract

The essay is a comparative analysis of APEC and the EU, which looks at the particular sorts of economic orders these institutions are helping to create. It is argued that the two regions display some noteworthy differences that result from different approaches to the problem of economic governance. These differences reflect much more than the relative degree and level of regional institutionalization; they flow from different ‘political rationalities’ that are themselves a function of the very different liberal and illiberal polities in Europe and East Asia. Our key theoretical innovation is to use the framework of political rationality to explain different regional approaches to economic governance; more specifically we argue that the EU and the East Asian members of APEC may be understood as respectively subscribing to broadly conceived liberal and cameralist approaches to economic governance which are in turn reflected in the design of regional institutions.     

Through the European looking glass: citizenship tests in the USA,Australia, and Canada

Discussing new or recently reformed citizenship tests in the USA, Australia, and Canada, this article asks whether they amount to a restrictive turn of new world citizenship, similar to recent developments in Europe. I argue that elements of a restrictive turn are noticeable in Australia and Canada, but only at the level of political rhetoric, not of law and policy, which remain liberal and inclusive. Much like in Europe, the restrictive turn is tantamount to Muslims and Islam moving to the center of the integration debate.     

Who is this we that gives the gift? Native American Political Theory and The Western Tradition

Abstract

The allocation of self-determination rights to minority groups is a highly charged issue around the world, but the difficulties are particularly acute in the case of indigenous peoples within the white settler states. While liberal multiculturalism offers a ‘solution’ to this ‘problem of diversity’ through a system of differentiated citizenship rights, this comes only at the expense of excluding dissenting voices from the intercultural dialogue. Through an engagement with the multi-faceted critique of liberal multiculturalism advanced by Native American political theory, the limits of the recognition paradigm are identified, and the possibilities offered by a reconstructed Proudhonian federalism are described.     

Reconciliation Arguments in John Rawls’s Political Philosophy

Abstract

Recently debates about the worth of “ideal theory” have directed attention to the functions that an account of a perfectly just society can serve. One function is that of “reconciliation”: learning that a seemingly undesirable feature of the social world would exist even in the perfectly just society can show us the value that it has in the present as well. John Rawls has emphasized reconciliation as among the roles of political philosophy. For instance, Rawls claims that his theory of justice can reconcile us to the pluralism of liberal democracies. In this essay, I argue that Rawls’s political theory also can reconcile the inhabitants of liberal democratic societies to the fact that such societies may be cognitively confusing on account of their complexity. Then I contend that Rawls’s work offers valuable theoretical resources for analysing a society’s transparency or lack thereof.     

The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization,Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)

Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion, intervention and statebuilding have once again been explicit features of American foreign policy. Current assessments of this return, however, overlook both their longer term history and their roots in liberal (and not just American) ideology. The contradictions and dynamics entailed in the liberal philosophy of history have already played themselves out once before, in the modernization theories and policies of the early Cold War period. Despite their academic and political failures at the time, the same assumptions now underpin democracy promotion in the post-Cold War period and show signs of the same dynamics of failure. In this two part essay, I argue that the repetition of such counterproductive policies constitutes a recurring ‘tragedy of liberal diplomacy’ in which the shaping of US foreign policy by assumptions deeply rooted in the liberal philosophy of history plays a central part in producing the very enemies that policy is designed to confront and transform.