The war‐making state and privatisation

States, created with the central purpose of defending national independence, resist the process of macro‐economic reform since it appears to limit their power to pursue this aim. The states of the former Centrally Planned Economies were marked out by their extreme subordination to the military drive, so the resistance to reshaping the ‘war‐making state’ into a ‘market‐facilitating state’ is considerable. The transition tends to be halted where the old structures of central control are ended without markets supplying alternative imperatives — a ‘rent‐seeking state’ is created. These themes are examined in relationship to privatisation of state owned enterprises in four countries: Russia, China, Vietnam and the Ukraine.     

Change in state power,international conditions and peasant producers: The case of Kenya

Arguments for food self‐sufficiency at the level of small‐scale farms invariably refer to the need for national self‐sufficiency. This article shows that state‐inspired attempts to impose self‐sufficiency upon specialised middle peasant producers in Kenya have had the effect of reducing the supply of marketed food and increasing food imports. A change in the character of presidential power has also inhibited food production by large‐scale farms and this, together with imported price shocks, has reduced the supply of food for commercialised peasants who produce for international markets. Only very specific political conditions make it possible for international and internal circuits of capital and exchange to be harmonised through the power of a nation state.     

The power of partnerships in global governance

Development partnerships are frequently represented as a way of giving recipient countries ‘ownership’ of their development programmes, whereas critics argue that partnerships are little more than conditionality by another name. Drawing on analyses of governmentality in modern liberal societies, this article advances an alternative understanding and argues that development partnerships can be regarded as a form of advanced liberal rule that increasingly govern through the explicit commitment to the self‐government and agency of recipient states. Focusing in particular on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), it argues that as a form of advanced liberal power, partnerships work not primarily as direct domination and imposition, but through promises of incorporation and inclusion. They derive their power through simultaneously excluding and incorporating, and by using freedom as a formula of rule partnerships help produce modern, self‐disciplined citizens and states by enlisting them as responsible agents in their own development.     

The United Nations convention against the taking of hostages: The inside story

Abstract

This article briefly outlines the four‐year negotiating process from early 1976 to late 1979, which it was necessary to follow before agreement could be reached and the United Nations General Assembly adopted, by consensus, an international treaty designed to make the act of hostage‐taking a universal crime. The treaty requires that a ratifying state prosecute an international hostage‐taker found within its borders or hand over the hostage‐taker to another state for prosecution. It fills existing gaps in international law by abolishing existing “safe havens” for hostage‐takers. The article focuses in particular on the third and final three‐week meeting of the thirty‐five‐nation Ad Hoc Committee established by the United Nations to carry out this task and shows how agreement was finally achieved.     

The "End Of History" 20 Years Later

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumphant celebrations of the West, a new chapter of history has opened featuring the rising powers of Asia, led by China. Though embracing free markets, China has looked to its Confucian traditions instead of liberal democracy as the best route to good governance. Will China manage to achieve high growth and a harmonious society through a strong state and long‐range planning that puts messy Western democracy and its short‐term mindset to shame? Or, in the end, will the weak rule of law and absence of political accountability in a one‐party state undermine its promise? Francis Fukuyama and Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean thinker who has become the apostle of non‐Western modernity, debate these issues. In this section we also republish a collective memoir by George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand, recalling their fears and hopes two decades ago as they brought the Cold War to an end.     

Learning from Conflict

Efforts to achieve comprehensive international agreement on measures against international terrorism through the United Nations have failed until now. In a review of United Nations proceedings on the subject since 1972 the author sets forth the principal issues that have occupied the minds of the participants. Chief among them was the question of the scope and effect of a condemnation of international terrorism. Agreement on what the term itself included could not be reached because of fears of the adverse effect of a condemnation on existing struggles for national liberation and self‐determination. Nor could agreement be had that violence for the achievement of political ends should be confined to the areas of actual tension. Hence, there could be no common understanding on the question of who were to be regarded as “innocent” victims. The author concludes with a suggestion that a step‐by‐step effort might have yielded a better outcome.     

The water and the fish: Public opinion and the provisional IRA in Northern Ireland

Abstract

The methods and goals of the Provisional IRA make it difficult to categorize it simply as a “terrorist” group. Its longevity and its affinity to Irish political culture suggest that it will not be defeated by force but by being rendered irrelevant. This is likely to come about as a result of the state demonstrating its own legitimacy among those sections of the Catholic community which have been understandably reluctant to give the state their full allegiance in the past. Survey evidence supports the contention that the Provisional IRA's goals and grievances are shared by many who would spurn their tactics.     

The Consociational System of Democracy in Kosovo: Questioning Ethnic Minorities' Special Status in Kosovo's Constitutional Regime

This article examines the constitutional position of ethnic minorities in Kosovo, the individual features, and the key protection mechanisms applied therein. At the outset, the article provides a general introduction to the topic, illustrating the character of Kosovo's state model. Subsequently, it builds upon the view that Kosovo was shaped under an international supervision, which aimed to establish a state freed from mono-ethnicity, which is regarded as both multi-ethnic and a state of citizens. The article proceeds to explain the institutional mechanisms established with the objective to protect and uphold the ethnic minorities’ position at both central and local levels. Furthermore, it discusses the affirmative human rights law standards granted to ethnic minorities—both at personal and collective levels. The article concludes by suggesting that the constitution of Kosovo provides for a broad degree of self-rule to ethnic minorities, which, in turn, provides them with the capacity to enjoy a rather constitutive position as regards the essential components of the polity.     

Animal rights,political theory and the liberal tradition

Those scholars who have sought to argue for a higher moral status for animals, including the granting of rights to them, have come primarily from the liberal tradition. Their accounts are persuasive, albeit practically unrealistic. Animals can be incorporated into a liberal theory of justice whether they are inferior morally to humans or regarded as their moral equivalents. This article argues that where animals are excluded from theories of justice, as in the work of Rawls, the relationship between liberalism and the protection of animal interests becomes problematic. In theoretical terms, the influential emphasis within liberal thought on moral pluralism, whereby society or the state are prevented from intervening in what is regarded as the private realm, is clearly inimical to the protection of animal interests. Even more significant is the fact that the practical utilization of this moral pluralism in liberal democracies is detrimental to the welfare of animals.     

Jordan's Unfree Workforce: State-Sponsored Bonded Labour in the Arab Region

This article contributes to understandings of contemporary forms of unfree labour by offering an ethnographic perspective on a region which so far has been overlooked in the scholarly literature on the subject – the Arab world. It describes the sponsorship system through which tens of millions of foreign workers are employed in Jordan, Lebanon and the Arabian Gulf states and argues that it constitutes a form of bonded labour. One of the main features of this form of unfree labour is the role played by states in facilitating and enforcing it. This example complicates the commonly held assumption that since slavery and bonded labour have been legally abolished in most countries, contemporary forms of unfree labour exist primarily in extra-legal zones outside the boundaries of government oversight. On the contrary, in the context described here the state is not merely turning a blind eye but actively enabling bonded labour. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Jordan and Sri Lanka, the article focuses on the position of Sri Lankan women employed in domestic service to illuminate workers’ experiences of the sponsorship system and the institutional apparatuses that buttress it.     

The overloaded state

The conditions that produced Israel's strong state and the implications of that state are not likely to be replicated elsewhere, exactly. However, Israel's case offers some general lessons that ought to be considered by advocates of a strong bureaucratic state, as suggested by the New Public Administration of the 1968 Min-nowbrook Conference. These include: poor management of public enterprises and social services; high inflation; politicization of public sector employment; a plethora of centrally defined rules, many of which are evaded in the interests of flexible administration; lack of moderation in policy demands; and perpetuation of the state's dominance of the economy as it becomes the first resort of groups in distress.

This essay explores conditions in Israel for a movement in the academic profession of public administration whose roots and principal focus have been in the United States.

The self-proclaimed New Public Administration in the United States began with the Minnowbrook Conference in New York in September 1968. The mood of many conferees was antagonistic to the political establishment that seemed more intent on pursuing an unpopular war and maintaining law and order than in responding to demands for domestic social services. Several papers and much of the discussion stressed the need for public administrators to take upon themselves the articulation of, and response to, demands that had not found effective representation among the elective legislators and chief executive.⁽¹⁾

Here the concern is with those aspects of the Minnowbrook perspective that imply both more responsibility and more power for government bureaucrats.

Israel has what may be the most powerful bureaucracy in all of the democracies. Israel's special history and circumstances make its details unlikely to be replicated elsewhere. Nonetheless, it suggests lessons for those who would strengthen the bureaucracies of other countries.

There are positive and negative features of a powerful state. In a society that is relatively homogeneous, feels beselt by outsiders, and whose cultural and religious values shape the character of public policy, as in the Israeli case, the balance of a powerful state may be positive. Even in such a case, however, there are negative features of the strong state. Those who do not feel themselves in tune with the majority of the moment may pay a great price in the sacrifice of what they feel are their legitimate rights. In a heterogeneous country that is divided by a great plurality of world views, and where a individualistic, free-market tradition is prominent, as in the American case, the consequences of a powerful state may be severe.⁽²⁾

There may be no lessons in the Israeli case that are simple and direct. Yet the weight of the more general warnings may justify this exercise.     

Local Fiscal Stress in California: Out of Local Control and Driving Toward Growth

Abstract

Many regions of the United States have experienced rapid growth in recent decades with California being the best example of this growth. The dangers of such growth have been evident since the 1970s and yet, neither the state nor local governments have been very successful in implementing growth control policies. Why it is that government has been unable to rein in the growth has been the focus of much research in recent decades. There are essentially two schools of thought with regard to this question. One is that pro‐growth forces—essentially landowners, business elites, and elected officials—actively promote growth because it provides them personally with benefits. The other view, advocated most by Paul Peterson back in the early 1980s, is that elected officials do support and adopt pro‐growth policies, but not by choice. Cities, Peterson argued, are constrained by the economic situation around them and they must do what they can to raise revenues and reduce, or hold steady, expenditures. This research examines a region of southern California that has experienced tremendous growth despite the fact that surveys of resident attitudes within the region indicates that in general, residents favor growth control. This research contributes to an understanding of the driving forces behind the pro‐growth policies of local governments by considering how fiscal constraints placed on local governments by the state may limit the policy options of local elected officials, as Peterson predicted. This study finds that there is evidence to indicate that the revenue‐raising options available to cities may be contributing to pro‐growth policies. And this could help explain why elected officials continue to support growth within their cities despite the fact that residents express negative views toward growth.     

Twilight of impunity for Africa's presidential criminals

This article tracks the fate of six former African tyrants all accused of crimes against humanity: Charles Taylor; Mengistu Haile Mariam; Hissène Habré; Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko and Jean‐Bédel Bokassa. It examines the politics that have determined their fate and finds that, despite changes in international law and opinion since the Cold War, impunity still prevails. Western governments are still willing to trump justice with politics; and African presidents still offer solidarity to club members. For recent tyrants, life is only a little more difficult than it was for older ones. Yet their future may be tougher as the globalisation of justice begins to bite. None will be comfortable with the powers granted the International Criminal Court; nor with western disregard of state sovereignty as it targets heads of government still in office who are deemed guilty of international crime. Even the new African Union has abandoned the doctrine of non‐interference.     

BETTER REGULATION IN EUROPE: BETWEEN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND REGULATORY REFORM

Can the European regulatory state be managed? The European Union (EU) and its member states have looked at better regulation as a possible answer to this difficult question. This emerging public policy presents challenges to scholars of public management and administrative reforms, but also opportunities. In this conceptual article, we start from the problems created by the value‐laden discourse used by policy‐makers in this area, and provide a definition and a framework that are suitable for empirical/explanatory research. We then show how public administration scholars could usefully bring better regulation into their research agendas. To be more specific, we situate better regulation in the context of the academic debates on the New Public Management, the political control of bureaucracies, evidence‐based policy, and the regulatory state in Europe.     

Executive-Led Governance or Executive Power ‘Hollowed-Out’—The Political Quagmire of Hong Kong

New Zealand has long enjoyed a reputation as a country with a corruption‐free state sector. However, social change and the state sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, have rendered that status less secure. While hard‐core corruption does not yet appear to be a major problem, what constitutes corruption can be a function of changing public perceptions and attitudes. Four main types of behaviour of public officials are identified, all of which have a bearing on how corruption is perceived. In New Zealand, there is casual evidence that hard‐core corruption might be more common today than in the past, but the official attitude to the possibility of it increasing seems to be overly sanguine, partly as a result of a very narrow definition of corruption. Vigilance could be enhanced by a stronger role for Parliament's agency, the Office of the Controller and Auditor‐General.     

Perilous semi-presidentialism? On the democratic performance of Timor-Leste government system

ABSTRACT

Timor-Leste chose semi-presidentialism as its government system to steer the country towards a democratic state. This government system became popular in the course of the ‘Third Wave’ of democratization, but has no other example in Southeast Asia. The Timorese Constituent Assembly was guided not by an appraisal of the virtues and pitfalls of competing systems, but by historical and political factors that led it to craft an institutional solution in line with significant features of Timorese society. Yet the specific form of semi-presidentialism adopted in Timor-Leste (‘president-parliamentarism’) is regarded in the literature as prone to instability. However, in spite of episodes of instability, the conclusion emerging from three consecutive presidencies is one of positive steps in democracy-building and consolidation. This is mainly due to the emergence of ‘independent’ presidents who have sought power-sharing arrangements and promoted inclusive governance.     

Reframing the rising powers debate: state transformation and foreign policy

Abstract

The volume that we introduce breaks with the prevalent tendency in International Relations (IR) scholarship to treat rising powers (such as China, Russia, India and Brazil) as unitary actors in international politics. Although a neat demarcation of the domestic and international domains, on which the notion of unitary agency is premised, has always been a myth, these states’ uneven integration into the global political economy has eroded this perspective’s empirical purchase considerably. Instead, this collection advances the concept of ‘state transformation’ as a useful lens through which to examine rising power states’ foreign policymaking and implementation. State transformation refers to the pluralisation of cross-border state agency via contested and uneven processes of fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of state apparatuses. The volume demonstrates the significance of state transformation processes for explaining some of these states’ most important foreign policy agendas, and outlines the implications for the wider field in IR.     

The Paradox of Small Hydropower: Local Government and Environmental Governance in China

Small Hydropower is regarded by the Chinese state as a method for both poverty alleviation and environmental protection in rural areas. This paper finds that local government officials develop an ‘environmentally bundled economic interests’ approach that simultaneously fulfills the central state’s new political mission and local economic development demand. The small hydropower plants however have paradoxically become the destroyer of the environment as local government at different levels develop the plants in an un-coordinated manner. We use the growth of small hydropower in Yunnan province as an exemplar to show the new tendency and problems of China’s environmental governance.     

Africa and the export of China’s clean energy revolution

The spectacular scale and speed of China’s domestic renewable energy capacity development and technology catch-up has in recent years been followed by the ‘go out’ of Chinese clean energy technology firms seeking new markets and opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the growing involvement of China in the development and transfer of renewable energy technologies in Africa and examines the key drivers and obstacles shaping Chinese renewable energy investments and exports. Far from there being some kind of grand or harmonious strategy directed by a single monolithic state, we argue that fragmented and decentralised state apparatuses and quasi-market actors in China are increasingly pursuing their own independent interests and agendas around renewable energy in Africa in ways often marked by conflict, inconsistency and incoherence. Moving beyond the state-centric analysis common in much of the research on contemporary China–Africa relations, we examine the motivations of a range of non-state and quasi-state actors, as well their different perceptions and constructions of risk, policy environments and political stability in recipient countries. The paper explores the case study example of South Africa, where Chinese firms have become increasingly significant in the diffusion of renewable energy technology.     

The Politics of Fear

The future of the European Union has never been more in doubt than at the very moment it has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its historical accomplishments. When the heads of Europe's weakest institutions—the Commission, the Council and the Parliament—collected the prize in Oslo on December 10, 2012 they spotlighted the nub of the problem. Unless these institutions can garner the legitimacy of European citizens and transform into a real federal union with common fiscal and economic policies to complement the single currency, Europe will remain at the mercy of global financial markets and the fiscally authoritarian dictates of its strongest state, Germany. Moving beyond this state of affairs was the focus of a recent “town hall” gathering in Berlin sponsored by the Berggruen Institute on Governance. The meeting brought together current power brokers—such as the contending voices of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, who rarely appear in public together—as well as Europe's top former leaders, key thinkers and young people who will govern in the future. The peace‐building project of the European Union was born out of the ashes of World War II and the anguish of the Cold War. Yet, as George Soros points out, its current inability to resolve the eurocrisis by forging greater union is dividing Europe once again, this time between creditors and debtors. Former Greek premier George Papandreou has warned that this division is fomenting a new politics of fear that is giving rise to the same kind of xenophobic movements that fueled the extreme politics of the Nazi era. To avoid a repeat of the last calamitous century, Europe first of all needs a growth strategy both to escape the “debt trap” it is in—and which austerity alone will only deepen—and to create breathing space for the tough structural reforms that can make Europe as a whole competitive again in a globalized world. To sustain reform, it needs a clear path to legitimacy for the institutions that must govern a federal Europe. The proof that Europe can escape its crisis through a combination of growth, fiscal discipline and structural reform comes from the one country so many want to keep out of the union: Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rightfully boasts of Turkey's accomplishments that resulted from the difficult changes carried out after its crisis in 2001—ranging from quickly cleaning up the banks to liberalizing markets to trimming social benefits to make them more affordable in the long run. As a result, Turkey today is the fastest growing economy in the world alongside China with diminished deficit and debt levels that meet the eurozone criteria that many members states themselves cannot today meet. Turkey has even offered a 5 billion euro credit through the IMF for financial aid to Europe. Germany itself also provides some lessons for the rest of Europe. The obvious reason Germany rules today is because it is the most globally competitive country in the European Union. That is the result of a series of reforms that were implemented starting in 2003 under the leadership of then‐chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Aimed a bolstering Germany's industrial base and its collateral small and medium enterprises which are the foundation of its middle class society, those reforms introduced more labor flexibility and trimmed benefits to make them sustainably affordable while investing in training, maintaining skills and research and development. Even if Europe's individual nation states can shrink imbalances by following Turkey and Germany in getting their act together, the only ultimate way to save the euro, and thus Europe itself, is to build the complementary governing institutions at the European level. For those institutions to become effective, they must be empowered and legitimated by European citizens themselves. To this end, Tony Blair has suggested a bold move: the direct election of a European president. Symbolically, the Oslo ceremonies were a historical turning point for Europe. By recognizing the European Union's peace‐making past, the Nobel Prize challenged Europe to escape once and for all the destructive pull of narrow national interests and passions.