With friends like these: foreign policy as personal relationship

Governments are run by humans who have sympathies and moods. The study of leaders' personalities, albeit not widespread, is an important tool for foreign policy analysis. Plus, friendship is a feeling that decision-makers like to express for each other. This paper analyses the activity of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's three times premier, who has made ‘friendship’ a central tenet of his personal foreign policy. Three cases are considered, namely, Berlusconi's relationship with George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin. The paper concludes that his friendship-based foreign policy has somehow worked; but, because he decided to ignore Italy's structural constraints in the international arena, he ended up wasting opportunities and resources.     

决策者到底如何归因?——一项基于美国外交档案的研究

面对充满不确定性的世界。个体通常通过一种被称为归因的心理机制从不完全的信息中解释他人做出某种行为的原因。类似但更为特殊的心理机制也会发生在当一个国家的决策者需要理解另一个国家的行为以采取某种应对之策的时候。当外交决策者们在试图解释他国的行为时,他们会将哪些变量纳入他们的考虑范畴?他们对他国行为进行归因的方式是否会因情境的不同而有所变化?如果确实有所变化,那么他们在归因时将会存在哪些倾向和偏见?外交决策者通常从能力、决心、利益、意图和该国所处的战略环境五个维度来认知另一个国家行为的原因。而恐惧和族群中心主义均会作用于这五个维度,并且在不同的情境下,两者在各维度的作用方式有所差异。为了验证唐世平提出的行为归因理论,作者采用了一种特殊的内容分析技术——逐字解释文本分析——对1945-1947年间的美国外交档案进行了分析和编码,试图利用二战结束至冷战开始这段时间内美国的主要决策者对苏联行为所进行的数以百计的归因,并对上述归因理论进行经验上的探索。验证结果表明,描述性的证据分析部分支持了这一新的归因理论,但也挑战了这一理论中关于能力、决心和环境维度的部分推断。     

The More Assertive and Pragmatic New Energy Policy in Putin’s Russia: Security Implications for Northeast Asia

The article examines Russia’s New Energy Policy (NEP) and its impact on Northeast Asian security and the development of the Russian Far East. In contrast to analyses highlighting competition between China and Japan for Russian resources, to the contrary it is argued here that greater cooperation among consumer states in Northeast Asia would be beneficial for Russia. Although the NEP has resulted in changes in the composition of foreign investors in Russian energy projects, the author suggests that Moscow is interested in multinational cooperation in the energy sector because it would help diversify the regional energy market and contribute to the development of the Russian Far East and eastern Siberia.

日本政府对企业人力资源开发支持政策变迁对我国的启示

以"终身雇佣制"为基础的"企业培训"为日本的经济发展提供了人才保证,可以说是日本经济实现高速增长的支柱之一。但随着日本国际、国内经济环境的变化,为实现从后发展经济向工业化经济转变而形成的日本型经济体制开始动摇。支持日本经济发展的强有力的"日本型企业培训"由于失去了制度保障而受到了很大的冲击。针对上述情况,为促进企业积极、持续地进行人力资源开发,以保持日本经济发展的可持续性。日本政府在支持企业人力资源开发方面政策采取了一些政策,值得我国政府学习和借鉴。     

The coordinate plane of global governance

The ‘coordinate plane of global governance’ developed in this paper describes the trade-off between static gains and dynamic losses associated with international policy harmonization. A simple model illustrates how potential gains result from producing positive international spill-overs, whereas potential losses come from restricted systems competition between national policy regimes. The solution to this model allows identifying the cut-off level between policies suitable for global harmonization and policies which should better not be centralized. An application of the concept to selected policy fields illustrates its relevance for decision-making on global governance.

明治时期日本政治精英的中国观——以原敬为中心

日本近代政党政治家原敬(1856—1921)的中国观具有典型的时代烙印,即"适时适机"地从中国牟取利权。同时,原敬的中国观亦有其独特的思维模式和见解:"对清政略即对欧政略,对欧政略即护国政略。"另一方面,原敬在这一时期已经将目光更多地转向日本资本主义在中国的经济利益。从重视经济利益和国际竞争的角度出发,原敬认为日本在外交上不能采取强硬的举措,要注意和中国官民"友好相处",在中国维持一种对日本而言比较和平的氛围。     

Strategy of Chinese policy entrepreneurs in the third sector: challenges of “Technical Infeasibility”

Studies of policy entrepreneurs have become a staple of public policy research. Very few such studies deal with the circumstances of China. This paper aims to remedy this oversight by exploring the mechanisms of policy change in China. Using John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams (MS) Model, the author develops the “Technical Infeasibility Model.” The paper tests the MS model’s applicability to China by examining strategies put forth by Chinese policy entrepreneurs in the third sector. It considers how they may successfully promote change by using a strategy of proposing a relatively radical policy concept that is politically acceptable and technically infeasible to policy makers. To illustrate such a strategy, this paper considers a case of policy change involving Chinese urban vagrants. The policy on “Detention and Repatriation,” which was first implemented in 1982, was challenged following the Sun Zhigang Incident in March 2003. Shortly thereafter law scholars filed two suggestion letters to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee calling for a constitutionality review of the Detention and Repatriation System. Though it was “technically infeasible” to air such a proposal in China at that time, the State Council initiated action to abolish certain provisions of the Detention and Repatriation System. However, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee did not conduct a constitutionality review.

Did Jamie Oliver Really Put School Dinners on the Agenda? An Examination of the Role of the Media in Policy Making

Healthy eating is high on the government's agenda in current times and to all intents and purposes the media appears to have played a crucial role in putting it there. While media focus is no doubt intense and playing a vital role in public education (take Jamie Oliver's 2005 Channel 4 documentary, ‘School dinners’, for example), the question that lies at the heart of this article, is whether the media has led the government agenda on healthy eating and school dinners as appears to be the case. A close examination of the evidence suggests otherwise: government policy was already well set before the media began to show a concerted interest and hence its influence on policy‐making is more limited than might be expected. Rather than setting agendas per se, the media's role has been to refine and energise existing policy areas and to facilitate implementation.     

Ordering Disorder – On the Perplexities of the Partnership Literature

The literature on public‐private partnerships (PPP) has proliferated in recent years. However, confusion about the actual meaning of PPP still abounds. As a consequence, contradicting findings and statements about PPP flourish in the literature. This article reviews the literature, and argues that there are different streams of PPP research which operate with qualitatively different notions of the PPP concept. Accordingly the literature is divided into four different PPP ‘approaches’. By doing so the article offers some clarification concerning an increasingly complex concept. The article concludes that an authoritative definition of PPP – one that can encompass all the different variations of the concept currently in use – is not logically possible.     

The Values Shaping Australian Asylum Policy: The Views of Policy Insiders

Drawing on interviews with former political leaders and senior public servants, this article maps the values that have guided asylum policy decisions over the past three decades. The findings support the view that a culture of control permeates policy decisions, but pushing deeper, that policy‐maker perceptions of asylum issues are shaped by two primary values: nation building and good governance. Values that tend to preoccupy policy critics, for example human rights, compassion, international legal obligations and national character, are by no means absent, but are subsumed within and harnessed to the desire to be a good engineer and responsible governor. The study adds to the insights required for constructive dialogue between governments and refugee advocates, and affords a comprehensive framework within which asylum policy can be understood and analysed.