Evolution,retreat or rejection: Brazil’s,India’s and China’s normative stances on R2P

This paper outlines the development and evolution of the normative positions of China, Brazil and India on issues surrounding the responsibility to protect (R2P) by charting their engagement in the ‘institutionalized conversation’ within the United Nations. In doing so, it seeks to dispel characterizations of these states as having adopted individual or common positions that either wholly reject or accept R2P. The nuances of the adaption and adoption of their postures need to be appreciated. Indeed, of the three component ‘pillars’ of R2P, they find themselves in general accord regarding Pillar One (state responsibility) and Pillar Two (prevention and assistance). It is on Pillar Three (reaction and response) that they diverge from each other and find themselves most at variance with ‘Western’ agendas of intervention and regime change. This divergence is most sharply drawn at present, in light of the Libyan and ongoing Syrian experiences.     

Louis Fischer and India, 1947–1964: Gandhi’s Disciple,Nehru’s Bête Noire?

This article focuses on the shift in the attitude of the liberal American journalist Louis Fischer to India. It contrasts Fischer’s admiration of Mahatma Gandhi and his support for Indian independence, expressed vociferously and prolifically in the period 1942-47, with Fischer’s criticisms and eventual opposition to the personality and foreign policy of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. Going beyond Fischer’s reputation as a “friend of India” earned through his works on Gandhi and his efforts for Indian independence, thus far considered as the only important prisms to study his views on India, this treatment of Fischer situates his criticism of Nehru within his personal development as an anti-communist in the late 1940s and 1950s. This shift in Fischer’s attitude from Gandhi to Nehru provides an interesting personal sidelight to the intergovernmental relations between India and America in that period.     

Demands,responsibility, and influence in Malawi’s participatory agricultural extension services

Participatory governance offers the potential to deliver responsive and accountable services. This article tests this expectation by looking at how members of participatory extension platforms in Malawi understand the meaning of “demand-driven” services, and allocate responsibility and influence in service provision. Results show that most respondents agree on bottom-up extension services that respond to expressed farmers’ needs (86% of respondents), and assign responsibility and influence widely across state and non-state actors. While these findings suggest that these participatory mechanisms can promote responsiveness to farmers’ needs and accountability, they also point toward different governance challenges in extension services.     

Online clustering,fear and uncertainty in Egypt’s transition

Does the uncertainty associated with post-authoritarian transitions cause political and social polarization? Does ubiquitous social media exacerbate these problems and thus make successful democratic transitions less likely? This article examines these questions in the case of Egypt between the 11 February 2011 fall of President Hosni Mubarak and the 3 July 2013 military coup, which overthrew President Mohamed el-Morsi. The analysis is based on a Twitter dataset including 62 million tweets by 7 million unique users. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, we demonstrate how clusters of users form and evolve over time, the density of interactions between them, and the flow of particular types of information through the clustered network structure. We show that the Egyptian Twitter public developed into increasingly isolated clusters of the like-minded which shared information unevenly. We argue that the growing distance between these clusters encouraged political conflict and facilitated the spread of fear and hatred, which ultimately undermined the democratic transition and won popular support for the military coup.     

Modernism,gender and consumer spectacle in 1920s’ Tokyo

A lot has been written about how, in the first decades of the twentieth century, cinema validated new perceptual structures and how these affected literary narrative. But the department store was also a vital part of the mobile spectacle of modernity. Ginza and its department stores provided experiences of urban flâneuring and visual consumption that would have important effects on gender and subjectivity. This essay focuses on three short stories published between 1922 and 1931, all set in department stores or on the Ginza: Tanizaki Jun'ichirō’s ‘Aoi hana’ (The Blue Flower, 1922), Itō Sei's ‘M hyakkaten’ (The M Department Store, 1931) and Yokomitsu Riichi's ‘Nanakai no undō’ (Seven Floors of Exercise, 1927). The stories share a radically experimental modernist form: fragmented interior monologues, montage-like juxtapositions, abrupt shifts of narrative perspective. They are also connected in their preoccupation with looking, with the drama of seeing and being seen. My analysis traces how the domain of vision becomes a place of struggle over subjectivity, how gendered visual hierarchies are undermined and at least temporarily reversed.     

China’s Russia/Ukraine Problem,and Why It’s Bad for Almost Everyone Else Too

The war in Ukraine, the international responses targeting Russia, and China’s reaction to the conflict point to complex and possibly growing China-related challenges for international order and security, especially in the Indo-Pacific region. On issues of great power diplomacy, state sovereignty, economic sanctions, and the use of military force, the lessons Beijing’s behavior appears to teach and the lessons Beijing may be learning in the context of the Ukraine crisis are complex but mostly bode ill. These Ukraine-related developments are greater causes for concern because they are consistent with, and likely to reinforce, prior trends and patterns in China’s perceptions and behavior.     

Abe＇s Shrine Visit： Characteristics,Motivation and Consequences

Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine on December 26, the anniversary of his second premiership. His visit on the 70-year anniversary of the release of the Cairo Declaration represents a flagrant defiance of the post-war international order. It features the following three characteristics.     

The EU’s Asia: renegotiating boundaries, renegotiating norms

The global financial crisis and the shift of economic strength to a rising Asia have ushered in European introspection and allusions to the decline of the European Union (EU). The EU’s ambitions to have a normative impact in the world have been called into question. The seven articles in this guest-edited issue explore processes of change relating to geopolitical definitions, regional actorness, interregionalism, and normative power within the framework of EU–Asia relations. This introduction contextualises the themes taken up in the different articles. It considers important divides in the recent history of Europe–Asia relations and outlines key transformations in the global environment, before critically reflecting on the significance of normative power for Europe.     

Repression,Grievances, Mobilization,and Rebellion: A New Test of Gurr’s Model of Ethnopolitical Rebellion

The concept of polarity has been subject to imprecise and often diverse use. This note explores problems associated with the varied use of the term and proposes an alternative approach to classifying international systems which treats horizontal and vertical dimensions of power as distinct structural variables. In this approach, the present system is distinguished from the classical balance of power system containing pluralized patterns of conflict on the one hand and from the Cold War system with a marked concentration of power on the other. In the contemporary system polarized patterns of conflict coexist with processes of power diffusion. To the extent polarizations persist in a more diffuse power setting, the decentralized power balancing system through which stability was sought in multipower systems cannot function‐nor are the polarized conflicts likely to be controlled as a result of the two‐power effort at balancing power which occurred during the post‐war period. The factors affecting the stability of the present system, it is suggested here, can be better understood by examining analogous structures in which processes of power diffusion occur in the context of polarized conflict and not as a result of spurious comparisons which mistake the diffusion of power for the pluralization of conflict.     

Japan’s Middle East Policy, 1972–1974: Resources Diplomacy,Pro-American Policy,and New Left

Commentators generally accept that the Yom Kippur War and subsequent oil crisis crystallised Japan’s overtly pro-Arab stance. This analysis challenges that view—even after the oil embargo, Japan’s Middle Eastern policy was both discretely and, at times, blatantly pro-American. Admittedly, the Japanese government had a seemingly ambiguous attitude towards the Arab–Israeli conflict and on-going conflict between oil-producing countries and oil companies; however, responsible for formulating the Arab–Israeli policy, the Foreign Ministry preferred to follow American leadership in the region for reasons of national security and Cold War imperatives. The Foreign Ministry’s response to the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre, a radicalised Japanese New Left terrorist attack, revealed a determination to gain international credibility by more actively supporting the West. Lod buttressed the influence of the pro-American contingent in the government; and the 1973 Arab oil embargo did not undermine their position. Although the Cabinet eventually issued a public statement supporting the Arab cause to satisfy the Japanese public, the pro-American contingent succeeded surreptitiously in bringing the Cabinet together to uphold the American-led petroleum order as well as United States leadership in Cold War politics.     

Sporting Relations: Diplomacy,Small States,and Germany’s Post-war Return to International Sport

ABSTRACT

Germany’s post-war return to international sport was not uniform across all federations. The nature of each sport—summer versus winter, team versus individual—influenced the speed with which each international sport federation dealt with the issue of Germany’s return. Some federations allowed German participation even before they formally re-admitted the country to federation membership. However, sporting relations were not the only issue considered by international federations. The historical political relations between Germany and its smaller European neighbours were as important. The combination of the historical relationship amongst European states—especially memories of the Second World War—and internal sport federation dynamics affected state relations within the broader international system. The actions taken by the international sport federations provided examples—in areas that would not result in another world war or destroy Western alliances—of how Germany could return as a full member of the international community. The debates regarding Germany’s return across a number of international sport federations reveal the complex interaction among memory, politics, and practical matters.     

Interstate Relations,Perceptions, and Power Balance: Explaining China’s Policies Toward Ethnic Groups, 1949–1965

Why do multi-ethnic states treat various ethnic groups differently? How do ethnic groups respond to these state policies? We argue that interstate relations and ethnic group perceptions about the relative strength of competing states are important—but neglected—factors in accounting for the variation in state-ethnic group relations. In particular, whether an ethnic group is perceived as having an external patron matters a great deal for the host state's treatment of the group. If the external patron of the ethnic group is an enemy of the host state, then repression is likely. If it is an ally, then accommodation ensues. Given the existence of an external patron, an ethnic group's response to a host state's policies depends on the perceptions about the relative strength of the external patron vis-à-vis the host state and whether the support is originating from an enemy or an ally of the host state. We present five configurations and illustrate our theoretical framework on the eighteen largest ethnic groups in China from 1949 to 1965, tracing the Chinese government's policies toward these groups, and examine how each group responded to these various nation-building policies.     

Securitising proliferation, failing security governance: the European Union’s role in India and Pakistan’s nuclear rivalry

In 2003, the European Union declared the threat of weapons of mass destruction ‘potentially the greatest threat to our security’ and increasingly called for the issue of nuclear proliferation to be managed within its preferred multilateral security governance frameworks. In spite of this, and the increased securitisation of proliferation, the EU has fundamentally continued its historical record of failing to engage with India and Pakistan’s nuclear rivalry, and has not been able to move significantly beyond a relationship with South Asia based on trade and aid. This is deeply problematic given the regional instability posed by the Indo-Pakistani enduring rivalry, and the fact that Pakistan is not only an unstable nuclear weapons state, but has been known to harbour international terrorists and nuclear proliferators. Given these conditions, as the EU acknowledges, the stakes of failing to engage could not be higher. A deeper analysis of EU engagement, however, demonstrates that EU security governance is limited, ineffectual, inconsistent and largely perceived as neo-colonial in what is the world’s most likely nuclear flashpoint. If the EU is to be considered a global actor in security governance, a key objective of the Treaty of Lisbon, then this needs to be redressed.     

China’s Public Diplomacy Rhetoric, 1990–2012: Pragmatic Image-Crafting

During Hu Jintao’s period of leadership, careful public diplomacy language was deployed by the People’s Republic of China from 2000–2012 to describe the international system and China’s role within it. The terms looked at in this analysis are those introduced in the 2000s to recalibrate the ‘multi-polarity’ [shijie duojihua] emphasis of the 1990s. These terms have been deployed within a general ‘reassurance diplomacy’ that emphasised concepts like ‘responsible Great Power’ [fuzeren da guo], ‘multi-lateralism’ [duobian zhuyi], ‘good neighbourhood policy’ [mulin zhengce], ‘democratisation of international relations’ [guoji guanxi mingzhuhua], ‘peaceful rise’ [heping jueqi], ‘peaceful development’ [heping fazhan] and ‘harmonious world’ [hexie shijie]. Ambiguities, implications, impact, and tensions surrounding these terms are considered, and China’s deliberate adjustments pinpointed. China’s soft power intentions emerge from its instrumentalist use of diplomatic rhetoric, though a credibility gap also emerged between actions and words by 2012.