The Clash of Civilizations Revisited

Going through a protracted period of transition since the end of the Cold War, the world order in the making is neither what was nor what it is yet to become. It is in “the middle of the future.” To get our bearings in this uncertain transition, we explore the two grand post‐Cold War narratives—“The End of History” as posited by Francis Fukuyama and “The Clash of Civilizations” posited by the late Samuel Huntington. Mikhail Gorbachev looks back at his policies that brought the old order to collapse. The British philosopher John Gray critiques the supposed “universality” of liberalism and, with Homi Bhabha, sees a world of hybrid identities and localized cultures. The Singaporean theorist Kishore Mahbubani peels away the “veneer” of Western dominance. Amartya Sen, the economist and Nobel laureate, assesses whether democratic India or autocratic China is better at building “human capacity” in their societies.     

The Clash of Civilizations Revisited

If ever proof were needed of Samuel Huntington's idea that “relations between societies in the coming decades are most likely to reflect their cultural commitments” it can be found in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's experience as a woman standing up against traditional Islamic culture while living in Europe. In this section, both Samuel Huntington and Ayaan Hirsi Ali discuss the continuing clash of cultures in what Hirsi Ali calls our “age of confrontation.”     

The Iron Ring in Dutch Politics Revisited

Representatives of Dutch organizations were traditionally given a chance to defend the interests of their members in the many boards, councils and commissions that together form the corporatist channel in The Netherlands. The harmony and welfare the Dutch population has enjoyed since the Second World War are ascribed in part to the work of these institutions. They helped to bridge political gaps of class and religion by building compromise and consensus. But advisory committees and councils have also been described as somewhat shady and essentially closed institutions, forming an iron ring around the departments that hampered necessary policy changes. In this article, based on case studies on the selection of members of committees and a survey of all members of committees advising the central government, we will explore to what extent committees can still be described as bastions of conservatism. We will briefly describe selection processes, sketch a portrait of committee members and compare some characteristics of committee members and civil servants of individual ministries.     

The Flypaper Effect Revisited: Intergovernmental Grants and Local Governance

Abstract

Local governance arrangements shape the incentives of local actors, which may in turn influence fiscal choices. By emphasizing the role of local government institutions in local fiscal choices, we seek to bridge between median voter and Leviathan models prevalent in the literature. We then offer some preliminary evidence to support this explanation by empirically testing several propositions regarding the flypaper effect in intergovernmental grants. One limitation of the median voter model is that the model does not consider political institutions and their influences on government expenditures. In this study, we attempt to capture the influence of political dynamics in determining public expenditures by considering institutional variables. Test results show that the political institutional variables could be one of the explanation variables for the flypaper effect.     

MNE Affiliation,Firm Size and Exports Revisited: A Study of Information Technology Firms in India

In this study we argue that the export performance of affiliates of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in developing countries is determined differently from that of licensees of foreign firms or of domestic firms. Our empirical results for the information technology sector in India show that exports of MNE affiliates are greater when they have larger foreign equity stakes that bring more tacit knowledge transfer and complementary FDI advantages and when they import more explicit technology from the purchase of licences. Standard export determinants such as firm size and capital intensity do not matter for MNE affiliates, but they do for licensees and domestic firms.     

The Danger of Global Austerity

The United States accuses China of subsidizing its entire export economy through artificially undervaluing its currency. China accuses the United States of fiscal profligacy while flooding the world with easy credit to keep its economy afloat. This dispute reflects the reality that the world's two largest economies are built on opposite dynamics of production and savings vs. consumerism and debt. In Europe, the wages of unsustainable debt that financed the welfare state have also come due. Rebalancing the global economy in this context is not only a matter of fixing exchange or interest rates and extending the retirement age. It must also involve a recalibration of democracy in both East and West. Two Nobel economists, the Greek prime minister, a ranking Chinese economist and the former chief economist of the IMF address these issues.     

Accumulation by Dispossession and Its Limits: The Southern Africa Paradigm Revisited

The dispossession of agricultural producers from the land has long been considered a condition of successful capitalist development. The main contention of this paper is that such dispossession has in fact become the source of major developmental handicaps for at least some and possibly many countries of the global South. We develop our argument by focusing on the South(ern) African experience as a paradigmatic outlier case of accumulation by dispossession—that is, as one of its extreme instances capable of highlighting in almost ideo-typical fashion its nature and limits. After reconstructing interpretations of capitalist development in Southern Africa that in the early 1970s established the region as a paradigm of accumulation by dispossession, we discuss how useful these interpretations are for understanding the more recent developmental trajectory of South Africa. We then suggest ways in which these interpretations from the 1970s should be reformulated in light of subsequent developments. We conclude by briefly examining the theoretical and policy implications of the analysis.     

The European Neighbourhood Policy: Conditionality Revisited for the EU's Eastern Neighbours

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is modelled on the institutional and procedural experience of the EU's eastward enlargement, although it explicitly excludes a membership perspective. It thus aims to define an alternative incentive for domestic reform in neighbouring countries, referred to as ‘a stake in the internal market’. This article suggests that the ENP amounts to a form of ‘conditionality-lite’ for non-candidate countries. Within the ENP the key defining elements of conditionality—clear incentive and enforcement structures—are vague for both the EU and its neighbouring countries. Thus, the ENP is conceptually and empirically weak when measured against a simple, rationalist conditionality model. In line with the alternative understanding of conditionality as a process rather than a clear-cut variable, the main function of the ENP is twofold: it provides an external reference point which domestic political actors in the ENP countries can choose to utilise when it fits their agenda (both pro-EU or anti-EU); and a loose framework for socialisation. This process of socialisation involves both the EU and the ENP countries. Through an analysis of the ENP process in Ukraine and Moldova it concludes that while the ENP tries to prevent a repeat of the EU's ‘rhetorical entrapment’ in further eastward enlargement, it paradoxically paves the way for a ‘procedural entrapment’ in ENP countries that harbour membership aspirations and provides a momentum, though not a guarantee, for conflict resolution.     

The BRICs Come of Global Age

The world is rapidly evolving on many fronts. Brazil, Turkey and other emerging powers are taking their own initiatives and building their own global links outside the old frameworks of the G‐8, the United Nations Security Council and NATO. The “third way” politics of Tony Blair that embraced globalization from the left of center in Britain has given way to the Tory party once again. Just as recovery from the financial crash seemed on the horizon, Europe's sovereign debt crisis has erupted. The historically unprecedented pace and scale of urbanization in China is transforming the politics of the Communist Party. President Lula of Brazil, former US treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Singapore's foreign minister George Yeo and others take stock of these manifold developments.