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.     

法学研究的经济学维度——基于法律经济学的思考

法律经济学作为经济学帝国主义的重要表现 ,它是用经济学的方法和理论来考察、研究法律和法律制度的形成、结构、过程、效果、效率及未来发展的学科 ;它是法学和经济学科际整合的边缘学科。本文在阐述了法律经济学的发展历程及基本理论思维后 ,提出了法律经济学运动带给我们的几点思考     

'I'm Proud of the British Empire': Why Tony Blair Backs George W. Bush

This article considers the three main reasons behind Tony Blair's support for the post-9/11 foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration, especially the war on Iraq: first, Blair is on a neo-imperial mission, with deep roots in his personal development, to re-order the world to better suit British interests; secondly, Bush and Blair independently agree that the post-1989 period represents wasted time, years of drift that could have been used to press home Anglo-American dominance; and thirdly, an agreement that 9/11 opened the space for a radical restructuring of international relations and the setting of a more interventionist global agenda.     

Militarism,states and resistance in Africa: exploring colonial patterns in stabilisation missions

ABSTRACT

The article explores how stabilisation missions reproduce the patterns that constituted colonial states. Following African historiography, the article argues that stabilisation’s militarised approach to neutralising resistance, its racialisation of targets and its aim to constitute and reform state authority evoke how colonial states were forged by the inseparable relationship between authority, force, race, production and resistance. However, it will be shown that those patterns cannot be fully understood without an account of the broader structure of coloniality and imperialism. In so doing, the article aims to contribute to bring together different literatures on contemporary peace-building interventions and contemporary militarism by examining the relation between militarism, coloniality and imperialism. It focuses on the Democratic Republic of Congo to show how an intensified use of force against resistance, added to frames that see Congolese politics as deviant, has guided the goal of restoration of state authority, and with it, different economic reforms, all of which have reinforced the military and economic power of national and international elites, without reporting significant benefits to the population at large.     

再论文化帝国主义问题

由于资本主义的扩张不能完全依赖于军事征服,文化帝国主义是帝国主义的必然走向。文化帝国主义的基本结构是:器物上的文化帝国主义是基础,制度上的文化帝国主义是整个帝国主义的最终目标,观念上的文化帝国主义更具有操作的关键性。在当代,现代化的全球化将绝大多数发展中国家纳入西方的文化叙事结构之中,所有发展中国家应该不断深入研究现代化神话后面的东西,学会以全球的方式思考和行动。     

生态帝国主义与全球化

“全球化”是伴随着资本主义社会的兴起而开始其自身的发展历程的。全球化从一定程度上说是资本主义制度在全球的扩张，是资本主义的全球化，始终伴随着资本主义财富的积累和权力的增大。资本主义的经济、政治、文化在资本主义全球化的过程中起着重要作用，但同时，生态问题也是一个不容忽视的重要因素，生态帝国主义是资本主义发展的策略手段，是资本主义制度权力扩张的必然结果，也是推动资本主义全球化的重要力量，并且也在为资本主义向社会主义的转化积累着条件。该文试图从欧洲过去1000年的生态扩张历程和当前资本主义生态危机转移的角度来说明生态帝国主义在全球的扩张。     

战后美国霸权的经济实质及其未来——重读列宁《帝国主义是资本主义的最高阶段》的启示

运用列宁关于帝国主义的思想来剖析今天的美国霸权,仍然具有重要的理论意义和实践价值.战后美国霸权的经济实质是美元霸权.美元霸权推动美国经济日益加深其寄生性和腐朽性.美国维系美元霸权,追求垄断利润的目的,日益推动其成为21世纪全球战争的最大策源地,并将最终导致美国的衰落.     

大学生消费价值观遭遇文化帝国主义

作为当代市场经济社会中不可或缺的人格素质要求,大学生的消费行为及其价值观的形成过程应当被视为一个全面的意识形态教育及其信念的建构过程。在西方消费社会的文化价值观连同其中的意识形态开始直接影响当代大学生的思想状况的时候,有必要适当调整大学生思想政治教育的视角,开展围绕着“消费价值观教育”的相关改革。     

Guest editor's introduction

In 1933 the army of the nascent Iraqi state launched an exterminatory attack on members of the Assyrian community who had fled to Iraq during the First World War. 'The Assyrian affair' which at the time sent shock-waves around the world has now been largely forgotten. But an examination of its origins and causation reveals much about the nature and pattern of modern genocide. Levene argues that typecasting genocide as the outcome of prejudice, racism or even xenophobia, while these may be significant ingredients, proves to be insufficient as a comprehensive explanation. Rather, these factors need to be analysed within the context of an emerging international system of nation-states. This itself may be a factor in helping to catalyse the most extreme and radically ideological responses, especially from new and untried national elites seeking to overcome perceived obstacles to their state's development and genuine independence.     

Imagining modernity: the language and genealogy of modernity in nineteenth-century Arabic

This article employs the methodology of conceptual history to contest two of the most common theoretical approaches dominating our understanding of modernity in the field of Middle Eastern studies. The first approach relies on the assumption of incompatibility between modernity and Islam and captures Arab modernity using concepts such as ‘adoption’. The second understands Arab modernity through concepts such as ‘imitation’, contending that it is a legacy of Western imperialism. This article challenges both theories by examining the genealogy of tamaddun (civilization, being civilized), a pivotal concept used in nineteenth-century Arabic to imagine modernity. The genealogy of tamaddun elucidates that medieval paradigms derived from the concept of madina (polity) were rediscovered, reimagined, and reused in the context of the rise of the nation-state and the challenge of Western imperialism. The article suggests understanding Arab modernity and its critique from within, rather than outside of, the temporality of the historical condition.