Regime Change and Foreign Policy: Portugal,Indonesia and the Self-determination of East Timor

This article argues that the nature of interim governments is not a satisfactory explanation of foreign policy initiatives, or their absence, during particular types of transition to democracy. The proposal is rejected for two main reasons. On the one hand, both the Portuguese (1974-76) and Indonesian (1998-99) transitions to democracy provide evidence that contradicts the proposal. On the other hand, the proposition does not explain which foreign policy decisions are taken and the reasons why. This article argues that we should focus instead on the new individual and corporate evaluations and strategies that come about inside a country as a result of new elite alignments, following the installation of a democratic regime, which opens a window of opportunity for making foreign policy changes. Moreover, the perceptions of the international community also influence the decision-making of individual and corporate interests and their strategies. Where the preceding authoritarian regime pursued foreign policies that the international community regarded as illegitimate, then there will be incentives to change policy. This approach sheds more light on the case studies involving Portugal, Indonesia and East Timor, by identifying correctly the foreign policy initiatives that were taken during the regime transitions to democracy and by explaining the underlying reasons.     

Development and political legitimacy: the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan

Development's policies are based on a set of premises: state‐building, state of law, democratisation, accountability and privatisation. The idea is that the Western concept of democracy could be implemented through the development of a ‘civil society’ of the building from scratch of new institutions. Such a model works when there is political will from the local political authorities and the society to adopt such a model (as was the case in Poland and Hungary after the collapse of the Soviet Union). But in any case a policy of development should be based on political legitimacy. In Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, political legitimacy means abiding with nationalism, Islam and local political culture (often based on clan‐ism and networks). In Iraq, the US policy has deliberately ignored the issue of legitimacy. In Afghanistan, because the US intervention was not part of a great design, it relied more on local constraints and thus has been more effective, or at least, less disruptive. The issue is not opposing a Western model of democracy to a national authoritarian political culture, but to root democracy into the local political culture. If not the policy of strengthening civil society, through political and military pressure as well as NGO's, has a disruptive effect and may lead to a conservative, nationalist and religious backlash.     

Pakistan: the political economy of militarism

Ahmad Faruqui is an economist, who serves as a fellow with the American Institute of International Studies. He is the author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. Julian Schofield is an assistant professor in political science at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research examines the effects of arms races, particularly in relation to South Asia.     

中国与东帝汶关系的历史、现状及前景

东帝汶民主共和国(DemocraticRepublicofEastTimor)地处东南亚的边缘 ,位于太平洋与印度洋之间的努沙登加拉群岛最东端 ,西与印度尼西亚接壤 ,南和澳大利亚隔海相望 ,面积1.48万平方公里 ,首都帝力。东帝汶是世界上最年轻的国家 ,它原是葡萄牙殖民地 ,后被印度尼亚西所占领 ,最终在国际社会的帮助下 ,于2002年5月20日正式宣布独立。东帝汶是一个与我国相距万里之遥的小国 ,但在我国对外关系中亦占有不可忽视的地位。本文主要就中国与东帝汶关系的历史、现状与前景作一些介绍与分析。一中国与东帝汶两国人民之间的交往具有悠久的历史 ,南宋…     

The primacy of political security: contentious politics and insecurity in the Tunisian revolution

The removal of Ben Ali's regime in Tunisia signalled the start of the Arab Spring. The abrupt nature of the regime change raises questions about why it happened in the way it did. This article examines the contextual factors that precipitated the regime change through the lens of political security. The aim is to examine how political insecurity in society led to the emergence of opposition sufficiently organized to unseat Ben Ali. The paper develops a framework to consider how the loss of legitimacy by the regime opened the space for opposition. Attempts to restrict opposition failed to address underlying claims, leaving the way open for the opposition to unite following the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi.     

Japanese political economy revisited: diverse corporate change,institutional transformation,and Abenomics

Abstract

This introductory article to the special issue on “Japanese Political Economy Revisited: Diverse Corporate Change, Institutional Transformation, and Abenomics” starts with a short summaryof the changing perceptions of Japan's political economy from its meteoric rise as worldwide leading model in the 1970s and 1980s to its demotiontoa problem and reform case since the later 1990s. Based on this overview, it identifies some striking issue and open questions in this conventional view of Japan's political economy as problem and the high expectations on Abenomics as Japan's current economic reform programme. Then we discuss the articles of the special issue and their new contributionsto a better understanding of the developments at the corporate level as well as institutional change and economic reforms at the macro level in the last two decades. Finally, this introductory article ends with a short outlineof a new research programme and four central research questions about the Japanese political economy.     

State formation and the political economy of India: The Rudolphian paradigm

Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph were world renowned political scientists and iconic academic couple who devoted six decades of their lives to teaching and researching India and South Asia. The liberal-centrist Rudolphian framework is clearly evident in their numerous works. Their writings show the innovativeness and interpretative richness of methodological pluralism questioning the hegemony of western theories and categories. The Geertzian notion of “culture bound” contextualism was central to their ideas on concept formation and “situated knowledge” paradigm. The phrases like “situated knowledge,” “self as other,” “imperialism of categories,” “modernity of tradition”, “living with difference,” and “post-modern Gandhi” provided newer conceptual tools and vocabularies in their writings. Writing within the broader framework of liberal-centrism, they continued to counter generalizations and deepen our understanding about the puzzle of Indian democracy and nature of the Indian state.     

冷战后澳大利亚对东帝汶政策的评析

在东南亚地区,随着束埔寨问题的解决,东帝汶问题就成为该地区最主要的安全问题之一。东帝汶问题自1974年印尼入侵东帝汶以来一直是地区热点之一。在东帝汶走向独立的过程中,外部大国特别是澳大利亚发挥了特殊的作用。本文试图通过对东帝汶独立过程中澳大利亚外交政策的演变来探究澳大利亚作为中等强国的外交逻辑。     

The political economy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: a US perspective

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), signed in February 2016, is the most ambitious free trade deal of the postwar era. The 12 TPP countries account for nearly 40 percent of the world's economy. Coupled with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—which is still being negotiated between the United States and the European Union—the TPP represents an attempt by the Obama Administration to lead in promoting regional trade and investment arrangements despite the failure of the Doha Round to reach a comprehensive global trade deal under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. Although the agreement among the 12 TPP countries has been reached, ratification by their legislatures is pending. Ratification by the US Congress remains uncertain due to complex economic and political factors in the United States, including the presidential election of 2016.     

The economics and political economy of going beyond the GATS

This paper addresses the economic and political economy factors explaining why countries agree upon services commitments in regional trade agreements (RTAs) going beyond the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), what we call the commitments gap. Using a unique dataset comprising of detailed schedules of services commitments disaggregated by sub-sectors and covering almost all countries that are members of a services RTA, we are able to quantify the extent to which geographical, systemic as well as economic and institutional factors correlate with a country’s pattern of RTA commitments that go further than commitments made at the WTO. Strong explanatory variables are asymmetries between negotiating partners and market size, together with endowments in mid-skilled labor and institutional governance. Whereas some of these forces are strongly positively associated with commitments made beyond GATS, others are significant determinants that correlate negatively with a country’s commitment patterns in RTAs. We also find strong differences between services industries providing evidence that not all economic and political economy factors are of equal importance for all services. For instance, financial and construction services often diverge significantly from our general pattern of explanations.     

Income inequality,distributive unfairness,and support for democracy: evidence from East Asia and Latin America

Concern about rising economic inequality is widespread among ordinary citizens, academics, and policymakers. In particular, income inequality not only intensifies the conflicts between the rich and poor citizens but also leads to political instability. In this article, we investigate how income inequality is related to people’s support for democracy by including both objective and subjective measures of inequality. Using data collected from 28 democracies in East Asia and Latin America during 2013 and 2015, we demonstrate that inequality, measured in either a subjective or objective way, decreases with people’s satisfaction with democracy. In addition, we find that in East Asian countries, subjective measures of inequality, perceived unfairness of income inequality in particular, provide a better explanation of people’s dissatisfaction with democracy than the Gini index, a commonly used objective measure of inequality. Our findings are robust to different model specifications and offer micro-level evidence suggesting that unfair income distribution undermines the consolidation of democracies.     

Bureaucratic façade and political realities of disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan

Internationally sponsored disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan was characterised by a marked divergence between the bureaucratic process designed by the UN and the political reality of disarmament. The bureaucratic process had several flaws of its own, which were particularly obvious in the case of DIAG, but the main reason for the substantial failure of disarmament was the absence of political will among key Afghan partners. International players in the process choose to compromise on ratherunfavourable terms, saving the façade of demobilisation thanks to the formal disbandment of the militias incorporated under the Ministry of Defence, but in fact allowing thousands of militias to continue operating throughout the country. The article shows how the very limited impact of DDR and even more so DIAG was already obvious in the early stages of the process and was deliberately ignored. The article concludes that the compromise could at least have achieved some limited aims, such as delegitimising the militias, had not many of their leaders been allowed to compete successfully for parliamentary seats shortly afterwards.     

The political economy of stalemate: organised crime,corruption and economic deformation in post-Dayton Bosnia

‘The biggest security threat to this country is not nationalism; it’s criminality, corruption and unemployment'2 More than seven years after the end of the Bosnian war and despite some $5 billion in international reconstruction assistance, Bosnia's economy remains stagnant and dysfunctional, while the country is rapidly gaining a reputation not as an emerging market economy but as a lawless and ungovernable state dominated by organised crime and corruption. This paper assesses Bosnia's post-Dayton political economy, arguing that the nexus between organised crime and corruption, on the one hand, and nationalist political forces, on the other, represents the most significant obstacle to the development of a market economy in Bosnia and poses a growing threat to the country's peace process. This situation is the product of Bosnia's particular post-war and post-socialist environment, which has created a powerful class of elites with an interest in perpetuating the status quo of a largely unreformed economy. In this context, international efforts to impose economic reforms from above, and to encourage local authorities to embrace a reformist marketisation and rule of law agenda, have met with little success. The paper concludes by suggesting that international peace building efforts need to pay greater attention to the ‘enforcement gap’ that has en abled crime and corruption to flourish in Bosnia.     

东亚国际劳工移民的流动特征及其动力机制——基于政治经济学的分析向度

20世纪70年代末80年代初，在日本雁行模式推动下，东亚地区内的贸易总量和投资规模不断增大，经济相互依赖性日益增强，由此带动了区域内国际移民劳工的流动。东亚国际移民劳工是指该地区内的劳工为了就业的需要从出生所在国或居住国迁往东亚地区的其他国家，从迁移时间看，既包括短期合同性移民劳工，又包括少数事实上的永久性国际移民劳工；     

Turkey and the IMF: A case study in the political economy of policy implementation

Research into IMF program implementation has usually taken the form of large sample regression analyses. A more detailed explanation is offered in this paper through a case study of program implementation in Turkey between 1999 and 2004. Our research is based on a series of in-depth interviews with policy makers, program negotiators, bureaucrats, interest groups and IMF personnel. Our results reinforce hypotheses that emerge from the theory of implementation and the large sample econometric work, but they also offer new and enhanced explanations. Program implementation depends on a range of factors which interact with one another. These include domestic political economy factors, such as the importance of special interest groups, political cohesiveness and program ownership by the government and the IMF, but also other idiosyncratic factors such as, in the case of Turkey, the existence of a crisis, the desire to join the EU and the role of influential technocrats. Our research has implications for the design of IMF programs.