Labour protest and industrial peace: Russian steelworkers’ encounters with economic reforms and unravelling social protections

Abstract

This paper is about knowledge limits and the financial crisis. It begins by examining various existing accounts of crisis which disagree about the causes, but share the belief that the crisis represents a problem of socio-technical malfunction which requires some kind of technocratic fix: the three variants on this explanation are the crisis as accident, conspiracy or calculative failure. This paper proposes an alternative explanation which frames the crisis differently as an elite political debacle. Political and technocratic elites were hubristically detached from the process of financial innovation as it took the form of ‘bricolage’, which put finance beyond technical control or management. The paper raises fundamental questions about the politicized role of technocrats after the 1980s and emphasizes the need to bring private finance and its public regulators under democratic political control whose technical precondition is a dramatic simplification of finance.     

India’s non-alignment in the telecommunications sector

India has long been wary that telecommunications firms from China and the US would come to dominate the sector. After the June 2020 border skirmish with China, India has redoubled its efforts to limit the influence of Chinese firms on its networks, while at the same time relying on funding from China and the US to become an international leader in its own right in 5G technology.     

China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea

China's defiance of the arbitration tribunal ruling overwhelmingly rejecting its extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea has exposed competition between the United States and China, attracting regional states into their respective strategic orbits. China's attempt to challenge America's traditional position as the regional maritime power is gaining strength.     

The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule in China: A Gramscian Approach

Journal of Chinese Political Science - This paper intends to provide a framework for conceptualizing and interpreting the resilient capacity and adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party to cope...     

Soft Power With Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Independent Candidates in China’s Local People’s Congress Elections

In the Chinese political system, according to the constitution, the people’s congresses at the primary level are the only institution which the voters can directly elect. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightly controls the “direct elections” and takes every measure in the elections to prevent grassroots power from entering even the primary-level people’s congresses. In recent years, grassroots power has kept struggling for its legal rights in the “direct elections” held in a few localities. The conflicts between the grassroots power and the authoritarian party in the “direct elections” have become an interesting political phenomenon, a subject deserves close observation and research. This paper studies the background of the independent candidates, their motivations and behaviour in elections. The paper also examines the party’s control in the elections and thus exposes the true nature of China’s people’s congress “direct” elections. The paper argues that independent candidates can have little impacts on China’s political structure at the current stage because of the party’s tight control, but their political participation has the most democratic value, compared with the “reforms” instigated and carried out by the CCP.     

Diverse Multilateralism: Four Strategies in China’s Multilateral Diplomacy

This article addresses Chinas multilateral diplomacy by identifying four distinct strategies: watching, engaging, circumventing, and shaping. The typology builds on two literatures: power transition theory, and the more recent ??assertiveness?? discourse in the West. Drawing from a range of cases in both the economic and security domains, the article argues that China??s multilateralism is diverse, and that it cannot be un-problematically characterized as either status-quo or revisionist in nature. However, the general trend appears to be towards engagement, but with an assertive tact as China??s interests become further entangled in the business of international institutions.     

History and Thought in China’s Traditions

The recent turn to China??s traditions has the potential to correct for the Eurocentrism of Political Science theories. Nevertheless, the overwhelming emphasis on political thought, especially Confucianism, may have its drawbacks. This article suggests that political scientists who are interested in building theories and drawing policy implications should study the verifiable, i.e., history. Unless the purpose is to study philosophy for its own sake, political scientists should study political thought in practice, rather than political thought divorced from history. This article first discusses why it is important to examine history beyond thought. It then analyzes why scholars should not conflate political thought with historical practice. It anchors the analysis with a high-profile recent book on ancient Chinese thought.     

China’s Coherence in International Economic Governance

This article analyzes China’s coherence in international economic governance. When and how is China challenging the rules and norms of the prevailing international economic order? Has China adopted the current rules and norms across the board, or is it proceeding in an ad hoc or piecemeal manner? How can its (in) coherence be explained? To address these questions, I compare China’s profile vis-à-vis three dimensions of the global economic order: trade, investment, and development aid. I argue that in international trade and investment, China has neither sought nor brought about significant change. China is however, offering an alternative to the Western norms that until now have dominated the global development aid regime. China’s establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is notable in this regard, though it is still soon to determine if the Chinese-led development bank will break with existing norms. The article then considers possible theoretical explanations for the variation in China’s behavior across the three areas.     

‘Better in kung fu movies than in political parties’: Labour’s Factionalism and a Reappraisal of Eric Hobsbawm’s Political Thought

Eric Hobsbawm will forever be a giant intellectual figure. Yet, an aspect of his work is underappreciated—the case for a more pluralistic, dynamic and intellectually inquiring Labour Party. As such, his political thought is particularly relevant given the recent election of Keir Starmer, and the avowed quest for ‘unity’ in bringing Labour back to power. Hobsbawm came to believe that political strategies which sought to exploit social and political stratification and conflict—such as vilifying reformist political movements and those of moderate persuasion—doomed Labour to permanent opposition. A broad-based people’s party, uniting objectives of solidarity and aspiration, was the only viable class politics. Although from the Marxist tradition, Hobsbawm believed Labour’s purpose was to make liberal democracy function more effectively, rather than creating an alternative economic and political system. Suggesting conflict was more suited to kung fu movies, Hobsbawm’s predominant theme of ‘anti-factionalism with a purpose’ remains apposite today.     

Brazil’s Samba with China: Economics Brought Them Closer,but Failed to Ensure their Tango

Journal of Chinese Political Science - There are many who expect China’s rising foreign direct investment (FDI) in, exports to, and economic collaboration with Latin American countries will...     

Spaces of exception: governing fuel poverty in England’s multiple occupancy housing sector

Homes in multiple occupancy (HMOs) – residential properties containing common areas shared by several households – are a growing feature of the housing landscape across the UK. They have often been subject to political stigmatization as a result, in part, of comprising poor quality dwellings. This paper uses a “spaces of exception” framework to explore the juridical and material mechanisms involved in the rise of fuel poverty among people living in HMOs. Having analysed evidence from interviews, census data and the secondary literature pertaining to the English context, we highlight the processes that have led to the biopolitical othering of this housing stock in institutional and infrastructural terms. We argue that the expansion and persistence of fuel poverty in HMOs are promoted not only by the disproportionate concentration of low-income residents in relation to the rest of the private rented sector, but also by the socio-technical configurations that underpin this type of housing. Fuel poverty can thus be seen as the joint outcome of broader practices of legal, political and material delegitimization.     

Introduction to China’s Economic Statecraft: Rising Influences,Mixed Results

Journal of Chinese Political Science - China’s embrace of a comprehensive and aggressive economic statecraft as part of its grand strategy indicates a paradigm change in its foreign policy....     

China’s Political Stability: Global Comparisons

Throughout most of the 20th Century, China had suffered tremendous economic and human losses due to political instability. It is in the most recent decades that the Chinese people have managed to live with political stability. The economic benefits of political stability can hardly be overstated. Yet, China’s political stability is by no means assured. Is China stable or unstable? Is the Chinese regime strong or fragile? To answer these questions, this study has selected a total of 12 sets of publically available indices to measure political instability and placed China on a global scale of comparisons with all the others, both advanced and developing, in the world. It also makes specific comparisons between China and the other four countries of the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The findings of our global comparisons give China no reasons for celebration. However, China has no reasons for paranoia either. China has indeed faced many threats or challenges to political stability, but, as our study demonstrates, China is no more politically unstable or fragile than many others. Ignoring or underestimating the ripple effect of any destabilizing world event will do China no good, but overreactions also serve China’s interests poorly as fear or paranoia can be highly contagious.     

Sovereignty,Human Rights,and Responsibility: Changes in China’s Response to International Humanitarian Crises

The question of whether human rights are above sovereignty has dominated China’s human rights discourse. Relying on a sovereignty-human rights spectrum, this article reviews China’s behaviors, particularly its participation in the UN Security Council, in managing the three major international humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era—Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, and finds that there have been impressive changes in China’s response to the crises. Yet, a content analysis of China’s official discourse on human rights finds that China’s attitudes towards sovereignty and human rights have not changed much. Drawing on constructivist international relations theory, this article attempts to explain the paradox. It is argued that the international discourse on the “responsibility to protect” has brought about changes in international norms regarding violations of human rights and humanitarian law, and that, having undergone in recent years an identity change from a defensive power of bitterness and insecurity to a rising power aspiring to take more responsibility, China is more concerned about its national image and more receptive to international norms, which has led to the changes in its response to international humanitarian crises.     

A Reply to ‘Labour and Antisemitism: A Crisis Misunderstood’

In their 2020 Political Quarterly article ‘Labour and antisemitism: a crisis misunderstood’, Gidley, McGeever and Feldman argue that the Labour Party’s responses to its antisemitism crisis have been misguided because its understanding of antisemitism is wrong. We must look less at cases of individual antisemites and more at the ‘reservoir of stereotypes and narratives’, in which the long (but unacknowledged) history of left antisemitism has deposited its ideas—and from which they can be easily retrieved. This response challenges the reservoir concept as ahistorical, and culturally adrift, lacking the components necessary for cultural understanding—of being rooted, contextualised, complex and contradictory, evolving and regressing, but always home to inconsistent, yet coexisting, ideas and prejudices. The authors simply ignore the political dynamics of this crisis which have allowed antisemitism to be weaponised and made it all but impossible to have a calm, serious, rigorous reflection and public debate about antisemitism, and about Israel/Palestine. Such a debate is long overdue.