From the Subject of Evil to the Evil Subject: “Cultural Difference” in Postapartheid South African Crime Fiction

This article takes up the question of “crime writing” and rejoins the debate around whether such literature stands in for the “political novel” in postapartheid South Africa. What social function might crime writing be serving? Research by political economists and cultural anthropologists suggests that acts of writing in “social detection” mode (rather than “crime writing”) serve as an allegory for occulted sociopolitical conditions. Cultural difference is seen, once again, to play a pivotal role in the legitimation of power, and writers in the detection mode are correspondingly seen to be probing the possibility of a resurgence of “bad” difference. This notion, it is argued, is a key differentiator in an otherwise murky scene in which the borderline between licit and illicit, and right and wrong, has become obscure. While many South African writers are brought into the discussion, including but not restricted to crime authors, a key novel by leading crime writer Deon Meyer is read as a case study to illustrate the more general points made in the article.     

China’s New Foreign Policy under Xi Jinping

Since taking power, the new Chinese President Xi Jinping has talked of “striving for achievements,” signaling a new theme in Chinese diplomacy. This article first examines the changes in Beijing’s foreign policy structure before moving on to examine the three major schools of thought on China’s immediate relations with its neighbors, implying that the policy focus will lie with the “advance westward” school. Moreover, this article highlights how China is maximizing its influence through economic interaction, whilst noting that economics is also being used to punish hostile countries. Furthermore, it notes that China’s next step is to influence change using the multilateral frameworks of the international system, remolding global rules to China’s benefit. The article concludes by examining Beijing’s leadership role, particularly its commitment to non-alliance, and whether Beijing and Washington can rebuild a more suitable model to reflect both country’s ambitions on the world stage.     

“Rediscovery”, “Reinvigoration” and “Redefinition” in Perpetuity: Australian Engagement with India 1983–2011

For the past twenty‐five years Australia's bilateral relationship with India has been typified by an ongoing process of “rediscovery”, irrespective of whether Labor or Liberal administrations have steered foreign policy. This article explores the reasons why this might be the case by analysing Australia's foreign policy approaches to India spanning the period 1983 to 2011. It interrogates various Labor and Liberal strategies that have been mobilised to “reinvigorate” the relationship and searches for reasons why they have only been partially successful in strengthening Australia's rapport with India. The authors draw upon discussions with strategic affairs editors of India's major daily newspapers and current affairs journals to gain insights into Indian impressions of Australia from a political and foreign policy perspective.     

Backlash Reconsidered: Neoliberalism and Popular Mobilization in Bolivia

This article argues that the common narrative of a Bolivian backlash against neoliberalism should be reconsidered in light of the continuities and mutual constraints between popular mobilization and neoliberal policy reforms. The study draws on literature that conceptualizes neoliberalism as a particular construction of state and social forms; but unlike those works, it includes an analysis of International Monetary Fund policy shifts to understand how popular mobilization constrains policy implementation. Responding to popular mobilization between 1985 and 2006, the IMF came to accept divergence from orthodox policy in order to encourage political stability. The government of Evo Morales and the IMF are mutually constrained by concern for the investment climate. This study further advocates that analysts probe beyond simple binary divisions between “neoliberalism” and “alternatives” and look more seriously for pragmatic strategies for negotiating neoliberal spaces.     

Pre-capitalist Reproduction on the Nepal Tarai: Semi-feudal Agriculture in an Era of Globalisation

This article highlights the continued significance of pre-capitalist formations in shaping the trajectory of economic transition in peripheral regions, even in an era of neo-liberal globalisation. There is a tendency for Marxist scholars to assume the inevitable “dominance” of capitalism over older modes of production. Using a case study from Nepal's far eastern Tarai, this paper seeks to understand the reproduction of feudal social relations in a region which is both accessible and integrated into regional and global markets. The paper traces the early subordination of indigenous groups to feudalism from the eighteenth century onwards, and the political and ideological processes through which these social relations were reinforced. Through examining the historical role of feudal-colonial alliances, however, the paper notes that pre-capitalist reproduction in Nepal is a dynamic process, actively negotiated and reinforced by the external imperatives of capitalist expansion itself as well as through the entrenched political power of landed classes. Today feudal and capitalist formations co-exist and articulate, with surplus divided between landlords and non-farm employers. Understanding the complex dynamics of feudal or “semi-feudal” reproduction in an era of globalisation is crucial if one is to identify avenues for collective mobilisation against inequitable pre-capitalist and capitalist class relations.     

New Constellations of Social Power: States and Transnational Private Governance of Palm Oil Sustainability in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

This article considers whether private sustainability standards can lead to lasting change in corporate and state agricultural practices implicated in the environmental damage and social conflicts caused by oil palm cultivation in Indonesia and Malaysia by examining in detail the social processes through which non-state actors engage in governance. Sceptics of private regulation point to the powerful state–business patronage networks in these countries as structural impediments to reforming this sector. Drawing on the literature on global production networks, I show how producers deeply embedded within such supportive local political economies nevertheless choose to comply with stringent global private standards to reduce risks to their global operations. It was the renewed emphasis on supply chain “traceability” to demonstrate responsible corporate behaviour to investors, buyers and consumers that served to embed globally-oriented palm oil plantation firms and their upstream suppliers into emerging ethical supply chains. Embedding occurs through three social processes – surveillance, normalising judgement and knowledge transfer. The private regulatory developments analysed in this article, though relatively recent, are supported by a diverse transnational coalition of principled and instrumental interests and have created significant openings for a new, or at least, parallel, and more progressive, private regulatory order in Malaysia and Indonesia.     

Third Worldist relativism: A new form of imperialism

This article challenges relativist and Third Worldist ideas which continue to influence the Left. It is argued that while the Left should remain critical of western domination of the global political economy, this should not be confused with the assumption that anti-western positions in the “Third World” are always and necessarily progressive. This is illustrated by a discussion of recent western interventions in the Third World. It is argued that a “Third Worldist” approach is based on a spurious relativism which has recently enjoyed a revival through the rise of post-modern social theory. In rejecting these approaches the case is made for a restatement of a genuine universalism and internationalism, which is equally critical of western imperialism and conflicts with the “Third World.”     

Narratives of the Dispossessed and Casteless: Politics of Land and Caste in Rajarhat,West Bengal

ABSTRACT

This article examines the political narratives around a two-decade -old process of land acquisition and development in the “global city” Rajarhat, a former rural settlement in the Indian state of West Bengal. These narratives are built against the backdrop of a neoliberal state acting as a corporate facilitator, particularly in matters of land, and the concomitant dispossession. The multifaceted politics of Rajarhat took shape during the erstwhile communist regime in West Bengal, the dichotomy of a self-identified Left state engaged in forceful and violent land acquisition thus forming an interesting paradox. The article also presents evidence against the long -held political myth of caste relations being irrelevant in Bengali politics, by examining the upper-caste -dominated social relations in Rajarhat and the formation of low-level cartels or “syndicates” in the area . In conclusion, the article points to the reinvention and redeployment of caste relations – even in increasingly urban spaces where “hierarchical” caste practices are usually taken to be on the decline – rooted in the duality between land struggles and development.     

World Market Regionalism at the Asian Development Bank

Accounts of the “new regionalism” two decades ago identified a growing trend towards co-ordinated state action at the regional level in pursuit of both security and political economy concerns – new in terms of its “bottom-up” character, post-Cold War logic, heterogeneous focus, and relation to globalisation. More recently, proponents of “regulatory regionalism” have suggested that regional projects reshape and transform states themselves. This article identifies an emerging “world market regionalism,” within which regions are addressed in terms of their position within the world market, and regional projects are strategically oriented towards the “completion of the world market” in its dual aspect as expansion of trade and transformation of social relations of production. The focus is on the purposive transformation of the region in pursuit of global competitiveness. A detailed account is given of such a project of world market regionalism developed over the last two decades at the Asian Development Bank. It is aimed at transforming the region, and individual states within it, into a space contributory to a wider global project aimed at “completing the world market” and transforming both the social relations of production and individual attitudes and behaviour.     

Russia’s economic policy in 2015–2016: the imperative of structural reform

In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, we have seen uneven development in the leading advanced and emerging economies, new models of economic growth that vary from country to country, uncertain prospects for globalization and challenges of “regional globalization,” looming currency re-configurations, as well as shifting energy price dynamics and their influence on political and economic prospects of particular states. This paper discusses current challenges for social and economic policy in the context of the history of the past 30 years. With reference to Russia, it focuses on a new growth model, structural transformation (including import-substitution issues), economic dynamics, fiscal and monetary concerns, and social issues. It concludes by addressing the priorities of economic policy.     

Postretrenchment Politics: Policy Feedback in Chile's Health and Pension Reforms

Through a comparison of three periods of health and pension reform in Chile, this article develops an explanation for the incremental form of social policy change that some Latin American nations have witnessed in recent years, despite the dramatic rise of left governments. It describes “postretrenchment politics,” which constitutes a realignment in the way politics plays out in countries that have undergone social policy retrenchment. In postretrenchment politics, the strengthened position of private business interests, combined with political learning legacies and lock‐in effects generated by reforms, results in incremental political change, despite renewed efforts by left parties to address inequality. Global capital also plays an important contextual role, and may influence postretrenchment politics. In postretrenchment politics, newly reformed systems may achieve greater equity, but they do so in fragmented form.     

Working On,Through and Around the State: The Deep Marketisation of Development in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This article describes an important new push by international financial institutions towards broadening and deepening capitalist social relations in the underdeveloped world in ways well beyond Washington Consensus structural adjustment or even post-Washington Consensus forms of institutionally-oriented “participatory neo-liberalism.” Described here as the “deep marketisation of development” (or simply “deep marketisation”), this process is attracting increasing resources that are formally allocated directly to private actors around states, while also demanding and promoting shifts in state form and function that relate to cultivating “enabling environments” for capital and facilitating “access to finance.” The article begins by conceptualising deep marketisation and placing it in historical and political context. The second section presents examples of deep marketisation in action in the work of the World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, in the Asia-Pacific. The article concludes by highlighting some serious concerns with the deep marketisation agenda.     

Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures,Sorting and Strategy

This article accounts for why and how democratisation in Korea, although facilitated by social forces from below, has contributed to deepening social polarisation by accelerating economic liberalisation. In assessing this seemingly paradoxical dynamic of democratisation in Korea, this article offers an analysis of contemporary Korean politics and political economy alternative to currently prevailing approaches. Prevailing approaches tend to frame recent socio-economic and political changes in Korea brought about by democratisation and the financial crisis of 1997-98 as the encroachment of the market over the state, and of the external (the global) over the internal (the national), as if these bipolarised categories assume zero-sum relations. This article posits democratisation processes as class and social struggles and such factors as the global economy, the positioning of Korea in the world-system and the history of US intervention, that are typically perceived as external constituents, as active social and class forces. Informed by this framework, this article explores contemporary Korean politics and political economy as a set of contradictory processes of political and economic liberalisation, democratisation and “de-democratisation.”     

Japan as an Active Agent for Global Norms: The Political Dynamism Behind the Acceptance and Promotion of “Human Security”

Japan has shaped a distinct human security policy based on evolving policy preferences of successive domestic political leaders and the gradual assimilation of external norms into its own foreign policy. Independent experts have played a particularly significant role in advising Japanese policy elites on how human security could be used by Japan to become an “intellectual leader” within the United Nations and other relevant institutions. This article explores those processes that occurred in the early phase of norm acceptance on the part of key Japanese policy actors and change agents in Japan from the late 1990s through 2003. It argues that human security has served as an effective approach for Japan to establish itself as a more independent foreign policy actor in contemporary international politics.     

The second path to capitalism: A model of international development

This article examines debates about the industrialisation of parts of the periphery (in particular East Asia) in the context of the impasse in development theory. It is argued that neo-classical theory, regulation theory and the theory of the new international division of labour, all fail to adequately explain the rise of the newly industrialising countries, and indeed all share a methodology which reads off events in the “periphery” from the actions of metropolitan countries. An alternative approach is suggested, which combines analysis of the “global” and the “local.” This analysis suggests that there are competitive disadvantages for late developers in the global political economy, and in putting forward this view a brief critique of flexible specialisation is made. Finally, it is argued that these competitive disadvantages are dealt with in different ways by different nations in the periphery. The main factors shaping this process will be indigenous classes and state structures.     

Material Realities: Why Indonesian Deforestation Persists and Conservation Fails

Indonesia’s deforestation is a crisis of global proportions. Its causes are highly complex, spanning local social and community dynamics to national political hierarchies and global corporate politics, current and historic. Development plays a key role, with global neo-liberal imperatives leveraged, resisted and competing with myriad multi-level agendas and actors. Gramscian analysis of logics and ideology, which combine to construct a global and local “common sense,” helps to explain the mixed messages of policy and conservation, which themselves make Indonesian deforestation and its solutions so complicated. Solutions to forest destruction, presented in the form of payment for ecosystem services, multi-stakeholder initiatives, improved governance and transparency within a neo-liberal market framework, have had limited success. The reason for this limited success lies in the notion, encouraged by multilateral and development thinking, that commodification of communities and nature will also conserve forests. Drawing on fieldwork in Indonesia and the United States, this article argues that discrepancies in development and economic policy, which lead to ecologically destructive outcomes like tropical deforestation, cannot be patched up by innovative market tools. Rather, they reflect irreconcilable flaws in contemporary political economy.     

Bright Lights,Big Cities? Metropolisation,Intergovernmental Relations,and the New Federal Urban Policy in Switzerland

Disparities between increasing urban economic power and cities' limited political autonomy have put pressure on intergovernmental relations in many countries. Some authors have claimed that this process leads to a strengthening of the position of cities with respect to higher state levels such as regions or the nation state. The aim of this article is to test this hypothesis for the case of Switzerland. In the first part, we show that, due to the existing intergovernmental framework, the current dynamics of urbanisation (which we describe as “metropolization”) have produced specific problems for governance in Swiss urban areas: spillovers in the distribution of costs and benefits, new political cleavages between core cities and surrounding communes, as well as increasing autonomy conflicts between cities and cantons. In the second part, we argue that initiatives taken in order to tackle these issues of urban governance have contributed to transforming Swiss federalism. “Politikverflechtung” is increasing in urban areas. In particular, the new federal urban policy has introduced a new vertical dimension of co‐operation between cities, cantons and the Confederation. Although Swiss cities have gained new influence in the process, we conclude that cantons still hold the key position. Therefore, like other federalist countries, Switzerland has not experienced a considerable strengthening of urban governments with respect to higher levels. Nevertheless, current developments in this area can be seen as a move away from the hierarchical pattern of co‐operative federalism towards a more heterarchical pattern of multi‐level governance in Swiss intergovernmental relations.     

Contested policymaking in Russia: industry,environment, and the “best available technology” debate

The centralized nature of the Russian political system and the dominance of the executive can obscure the role played by other actors in the policymaking process. This article aims to further our understanding of the Russian policy process by examining the ability of industry to determine policy outcomes. An example from the environmental policy process concerning the introduction of the “best available technology” will be presented. This highly contested policy led to significant opposition from industry groups and disputes between government actors. The case demonstrates that industrial interests in Russia are able to exert considerable influence on the policy process; however, this influence is not absolute and requires closer scrutiny. Political leadership was found to be an important factor in achieving policy outcomes. However, for the most part, the policy process was found to be heavily bureaucratized, and dominated by a range of competing interests.     

Vietnam Giai Phong!

This article critically assesses the relationship between the claimed fall in global poverty and the rise of China in recent years. It questions the mainstream “pro-globalisation” argument, which suggests that there is a causal link between neo-liberal, “pro-globalisation” policies, and falling poverty and rising China. It is argued instead that the evidence concerning poverty reduction is ambiguous, and it is not the case that the most successful developers have adopted pro-globalisation policies. This latter contention is examined through consideration of the relationship between Chinese development and globalisation, with particular emphasis on the “transnationalisation” of capital and the rise of global commodity chains, and how this has produced new forms of uneven development in the global economy.     

Alexei Navalny and challenges in reconciling “nationalism” and “liberalism”

This article examines the challenges and complexities in the efforts by political activist Alexei Navalny to reconcile “nationalist” and “liberal” modes of thinking in the current Russian environment. After deciphering three major axes of Navalny's narratives on the national question, the author then discusses the social and political context within which the national-democratic (Natsdem) movement was forged. Natsdems, who are simultaneously pro-European and democratic but also xenophobic, and who target an audience among the urban middle classes, reflect a fundamental shift in Russian society. The last part of the article discusses the paradoxes of Navalny's trajectory, in which a failed theoretical articulation between “nationalism,” “democracy,” and “liberalism” nonetheless has translated into a political success.