全球化背景下的工会运动:以欧洲主要国家为例

文章试图通过对欧洲儿个主要国家工会密度和工会结构特征的描述,以及这些国家的工会运动发展的多样性及其原因的分析,勾勒出欧洲工会运动的基本特征.文章认为,欧洲工会运动在面对经济全球化挑战之时,工会自身应对挑战的方向和能力至关重要;同时,在许多国家出现的工会密度下降的现象,并不表明工会在现实的政治、经济、社会生活中不再重要.在这些欧洲国家中,由于某些特殊的制度安排,工会会员虽然减少,但是工会依然可以为广大的劳动者谋取福利.     

Globalization: Captors and captive

Globalization studies are not really global. Rather, globalization research mainly centres on, and emanates from, the OECD countries. To begin to change the balance, it is important to pose a set of pertinent and penetrating research questions. Animated by theoretical and empirical research undertaken largely in southeast Asia, these questions call for painstaking analyses of dominant moral codes, various actors' attempts to turn the globalization scenario to advantage, cultural and political struggles to assert some control over market forces, and tensions within a framework based on neoliberal values and policies. The act of capturing establishes a hierarchy between the captor and the captive. This hierarchy is not a dichotomy, but an ordering of power and a division of labour. The captors of course seek to remain on top, and the captured attempt to ascend from the bottom of the heap. Such structural and dynamic relationships must be contextualized and, today, are integral to the epochal transformation known as globalization.     

Causality between transnational terrorism and tourism: The case of Spain

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to devise a methodology for estimating the impact of transnational terrorism on tourism. Using monthly data from 1970–1988, we estimate the relationship between terrorism and tourism for Spain. We find that terrorist events have had a significant negative impact on the number of tourists visiting Spain. A typical incident is estimated as scaring away just over 140,000 tourists when all monthly impacts are combined. Moreover, the causality is unidirectional: terrorism affects tourism, but not the reverse.     

Strategic bureaucracies: transnational funding and mundane practices of Ghanaian local governments

The influence wielded by international development actors in Global South bureaucracies remains enormous. These actors actively shape the policy-making practices and funding of local state bureaucracies. Nevertheless, local bureaucracies have become adept at strategically appropriating that influence to their own benefit and to appear legitimate in order to exact development funds for their everyday tasks. Empirical data from two local self-governing areas in Ghana show that attempts towards gaining legitimacy are not only influenced by self-interest but also by external development funds seeking to promote the performance of the local state. Despite numerous institutional changes to enhance participation, the daily tasks of the local political structures tend rather to focus on assessments and qualification for development funds. Although these funds add to the local resource pool, at the same time they inhibit the realisation of the local state’s grandiose promise of reforms promoting participatory development.     

The transnational state and the BRICS: a global capitalism perspective

It is commonplace for observers to see the increasingly prominent role of the BRICS in international economic and political affairs as a Southern challenge to global capitalism and the power of the core Trilateral nation-states. Extant accounts remain mired in a tenacious realist debate over the extent to which the BRICS are challenging the prevailing international order. I suggest that we shift the paradigmatic focus in discussion of the BRICS phenomenon towards a global capitalism perspective that breaks with such a nation-state/inter-state framework. Global integration and transnational capitalist class formation has advanced significantly in the BRICS. BRICS protagonism is aimed less at challenging the prevailing international order than at opening up space in the global system for more extensive integration and a less asymmetric global capitalism. The article examines agricultural subsidies, US–China relations and international trade agreements as empirical reference points in arguing that the concept of the transnational state provides a more satisfying explanatory framework for understanding the BRICS phenomenon than the variety of realist approaches. By misreading the BRICS critical scholars and the global left run the risk of becoming cheerleaders for repressive states and transnational capitalists in the South. We would be better off by a denouement of the BRICS states and siding with ‘BRICS from below’ struggles of popular and working class forces.     

Network relationships and standard adoption: Diffusion effects in transnational regulatory networks

The soft law measures that transnational regulatory networks produce have become increasingly important in regulating cross-border market activity. However, domestic agencies vary considerably in terms of the rate by which these soft law measures are adopted, and the ways in which they spread across jurisdictions are not well understood. This article argues that existing theoretical explanations referring to socialization or power dynamics have a specific network-structural pattern associated with them, and that longitudinal network analysis can be used to test their hypothesized effects. In particular, we study the widespread adoption of the International Organization of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO) Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU). Based on a longitudinal dataset (2002–15) of the inter-agency relationships between securities regulators (n = 109), we use Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models (SAOM) to predict the rate at which transnational standards are adopted by domestic agencies. The results indicate that standard adoption is contagious in the network of securities regulators.     

Informality and Collective Organising: identities,alliances and transnational activism in Africa

This paper is a conceptual exploration of the dimensions of the contemporary politics of informal economies, from the vantage point of collective organising by ‘informal workers’. It inquires into the formation of the political subjectivities and collective identities of informal actors. The importance of the relations between their organisations and other organised actors is illustrated with a discussion of emerging alliances with trade unions. The transnational scales of collective organising by ‘informal workers’ are addressed. The paper suggests an analytical approach that takes account of the diversity of organised actors, of a variety of governing powers and of the various spatial scales of social struggle involved in the politics of informal livelihoods today. The reflections are informed by the considerable social and economic differentiation contained in informal economies and emphasise the importance of the great diversity of actors, positions, agendas and identities for understanding the complex and contingent politics of informality. Empirical illustrations are drawn from the African continent, but the discussions in the paper address wider trends and theoretical debates of relevance for other developing regions.     

Bound Together: The Future of Globalization

Globalization has indeed flattened the earth, paving the way for new beginnings and the resurgence of old cultures alike by levelling the playing field for all comers. While this new era of post‐globalization certainly heralds de‐Westernization by century's end, is it more likely to mean a revival of the old ways of the East or the new hybrid ways of the first global civilization? Some of Asia's most provocative voices, as well as the world's most renowned cellist and cross‐pollinating musician, offer their views.     

The emergence of regulatory regionalism: transnational networks and the diffusion of regulatory agencies within regions

The regulatory regionalism approach has increasingly claimed that a new mode of regional governance is emerging globally. Regional policy regimes, developed in broad social and economic territorial areas, affect the internal transformation of the state. The authors plan to provide comprehensive empirical evidence about the emergence of worldwide regulatory regionalism by identifying how regulatory agencies have diffused very successfully within the regional level in recent decades. The paper aims to identify, using an original methodological design, the ways in which such diffusion of agencies occurred, as this may have theoretical relevance for the study of regulatory regionalism. The authors' hypothesis suggests that transnational political interactions in each regional cluster triggered agency diffusion, contributing to the development of the regulatory state within the countries of each region. To test this hypothesis, the authors employed a data set of regulatory agencies including the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), and most Asian and Latin American countries (+59) from 1950 to 2007, for 15 sectors related to finance, risks, utility and competition. Bayesian data analysis was used to estimate the parameters of interest.     

Globalization and democratization: The response of the indigenous peoples of Sarawak

Globalization is a multi-layered and dialectical process involving two consequent tendencies - homogenizing and particularizing - at the same time. The question of how and in what ways these contending forces operate in Sarawak and in Malaysia as a whole is therefore crucial in an effort to capture this dynamic. This article examines the impact of globalization on the democratization process and other domestic political activities of the indigenous peoples (IPs) of Sarawak. It shows how the democratization process can be an empowering one, thus enabling the actors to manage the effects of globalization in their lives. The conflict between the IPs and the state against the depletion of the tropical rainforest is manifested in the form of blockades and unlawful occupation of state land by the former as a form of resistance and protest. In some situations the federal and state governments have treated this action as a serious global issue between the international NGOs and the Malaysian/Sarawak government. In this case globalization has affected both the nation-state and the IPs in different ways. Globalization has triggered a greater awareness of self-empowerment and democratization among the IPs. These are important forces in capturing some aspects of globalization at the local level.