Subregional economic zones,politics and development: The Philippine involvement in the East ASEAN Growth Area (EAGA)

In Southeast and East Asia there has been a recent trend towards setting up subregional economic zones often known as ‘growth triangles’. This article examines the concept of subregional economic zones and then focuses on the history of the recently established East ASEAN Growth Area (EAGA) locating it in the wider Philippine policy context. The article also assesses the likely contribution of EAGA to Mindanao's future development, paying particular attention to the political issues which could impinge on the attainment of economic prosperity.     

Chinese migration: still the major focus of Russian Far East/Chinese North East relations?

Abstract

In contrast to Sino-Russian relations at the state-level, regional cooperation between the contiguous Russian Far East and Chinese North East has been difficult to achieve, despite the existence of seemingly natural economic complementarities. This article asks why this is the case and argues that one important stumbling block, i.e. negative reactions to Chinese labour migration, has become less problematic. Situating Russian Far East/Chinese North East relations in a regionalist framework the article compares the salience and framing of major issues in regional relations in Chinese and Russian media at the national and regional levels. Contrary to earlier research, the findings suggest that economic and regional development issues, and not Chinese migration into the Russian Far East, are by far the most salient sets of issues on both sides. However, significant differences in the framing of these issues suggest that a convergence of opinion on the desirability of regional cooperation masks contradictory expectations for the direction of regional development.     

Das institutionelle Erbe des „Treuhand-Regimes“ in Ostdeutschland: Zentralisierung oder Auflösung in der bundesstaatlichen Normalverfassung?

The unification of Germany in 1990 deeply affected the traditional structure and mechanisms of the former West German federal state. The grave and deeply rooted economic problems in East Germany as well as the strong position of the federal government and the relative weakness of the East German state governments during the economic transformation made it highly possible that a centralization within the federal state even beyond East Germany would occur. Empirical research on the privatisation agency ‘Treuhandanstalt’ and its successor organisations, which is presented in the article, demonstrates what development the relationship between the federal and the East German states has taken in this policy area since 1990. The article further analyses if the centralization thesis can be confirmed and what can generally be concluded about the essential characteristics of the current federal system.     

Geopolitics and the Making of Regions: The Fall and Rise of East Asia

There is a good deal of scepticism about the prospects for regionalism in East Asia. There are, however, grounds for supposing that the outlook for regional integration in East Asia is brighter than it has ever been, partly as a consequence of the rise of China. This article explains why an earlier attempt to integrate the region under Japanese imperialism failed, why US foreign policy has effectively foreclosed any possibility of East Asian integration up to now and why it may be accelerating as a consequence of China's growing economic and political impact on the region. To explain these different historical experiences I draw on a form of critical geopolitics which has recently emerged in economic and political geography and which can usefully be incorporated into international relations scholarship.     

Institutional transfer,social learning and economic policy in Eastern Germany

This article applies a model of social learning to examine the pattern of economic policy change in eastern Germany since reunification. It argues that the virtually complete transfer from West to East of the institutions and policies for regional economic development locked eastern states into a process of largely incremental policy change. This is so despite the large ‘performance gap’ between economic policies pursued and progress in revitalising the eastern economy. Empirical evidence is drawn primarily from a case study of Saxony.     

India's security partnership with Singapore

Abstract

In recent years, India and Singapore have developed a strong bilateral security and economic partnership that has assumed a central position in India's strategic engagement in Southeast Asia. Having sought strategic engagement with India for many decades, Singapore has now successfully positioned itself as India's leading political partner and economic gateway to the region. At the same time, India and Singapore have actively pursued close defence ties, including frequent joint training and the assumption of an active maritime security role by India in Southeast Asia. The recent decision by India to allow the Singapore air force and army to operate long term training facilities on Indian territory represents a significant development in Indian strategic practice and may presage a more permanent Indian security presence in East Asia. This article will examine these developments and consider to what extent the emergent security relationship between India and Singapore should be seen as a desire to balance China's growing economic and political dominance of the region and to what extent it reflects a ‘natural’ strategic sphere for India stretching from Aden to Singapore and beyond into East Asia.     

Ethics revisited in a society in transition: the case of the former East Germany

Since 1990, the German government has been demanding from the civil servants of the former East Germany a new adaptability and creativity that was never promoted in the GDR bureaucracy. The article analyses the change of ethics in the former East Germany after 1990. It looks at the development of the German civil service, discusses the economic disparity between East and West, and examines the ethical tradition in the former socialist country. It uses the case of the selection in 2001 of the city of Leipzig by BMW as the location of a new manufacturing plant as an illustration of the new goal‐oriented activities of the present Eastern bureaucracy. More than 250 European cities were competing for the new plant, which will create over 10,000 jobs. The level of performance of the Leipzig bureaucracy in the BMW case reveals the new efficiency and professionalism of the former Eastern civil service. In addition to Leipzig, virtually all the local and state administrations from the former East Germany have developed a sense of the necessities of the time, including globalization. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

China–Japan interaction in the Middle East: a battleground of Japan's remilitarization

As most studies on Middle East–East Asian relations focus on the interregional dimension, the manner in which relations between East Asian powers influence, and are influenced by, their policies in the Middle East are largely overlooked. Attempting to add another layer to the study of Sino-Japanese relations, this article explores whether Sino-Japanese rivalry extends to the Middle East. This undertaking requires a conceptual distinction between measures related to Sino-Japanese competition in the Middle East and measures which are related to their rivalry. Building on a minimal definition of interstate rivalry, the article argues that neither the effort to secure energy supply nor their economic or political competition there is shaped by their rivalry. The only field that can be associated with that rivalry is Japan's quasi-military activity in the Middle East, which may enhance its security policy's revision. That, in turn, causes much concern and criticism in Beijing, thus assigning the region a certain role in their relations.     

Review Article: Don't Discard State Autonomy: Revisiting the East Asian Experience of Development

Rapid East Asian economic growth was commonly credited to the existence of strong, autonomous developmental states. Subsequently a new 'institutionalist' school of thought emerged which argued that an effective state must be connected to civil society, not autonomous from it, and which reinterpreted East Asian development in these terms. This paper is a critical reappraisal of the institutionalist school. The evidence of state autonomy (seen in relativistic rather than absolute, either-or terms) in East Asia's recent history is too great to be ignored. And since some institutionalists themselves acknowledge autonomy as a necessary foundation for developmentally effective relationships with civil society, we should recognize autonomy as a potentially important element of state capacity. State autonomy remains an important analytical concept that deserves the attention of scholars.     

Crisis management and the diversity of capitalism: fiscal stimulus packages and the East Asian (neo-)developmental state

Abstract

This paper contributes to the understanding of East Asian capitalism by investigating the political economy of crisis management in Japan, Korea and China during the global economic crisis. Reacting to the global shock of the economic crisis that began in 2008, East Asian capitalism has remained a distinct state-led model that differs substantially from the liberal, neo-corporatist or welfare state varieties of capitalism in the West. More specifically, this paper studies the fiscal stimulus packages implemented by East Asian countries to address the global financial crisis from 2008 to 2010. We find that East Asian fiscal stimulus packages were comparatively large and supply-side-oriented. Unlike in the West, where a (short-lived) revival of demand-side-oriented Keynesian strategies stimulating consumption could be observed, East Asian countries reinforced industrial policies and supported investment and international competitiveness. We argue that the East Asian variety of crisis management can largely be explained by a path-dependent transformation of the East Asian developmental state into a neo-developmental competition state.     

区域经济发展中城市体系分维研究——以陕西省关中地区为例

借助分形理论考察了陕西省关中地区城市规模分布自20世纪80年代以来的变化趋势.根据统计资料,对关中城市群不同等级城市的经济效益进行实证分析,得出关中城市群的城市规模分布已经影响了关中地区的区域经济发展,需要充分重视中等城市在区域经济发展中的重要作用,要将追求区域整体经济效益最大化作为城市化建设的重要目标的研究结论.     

Canada's goal in the Asia Pacific

Canada's chief goal in the Pacific is to gain a greater share in the economic growth of East Asia while promoting regional stability through middle power multilateralism. Like other Western countries in the Pacific Canada should strongly support trans‐oceanic groups like the ASEAN PMCs and the APEC group as well as the numerous non‐governmental organizations devoted to keeping the countries on both sides of the Pacific cooperating together, both developed and developing. Both the US under Clinton and Canada under Chretien seem to believe the economic future of their countries depends to a significant extent on participating in East Asian economic development. Giving good economic relations precedence over sanctions suggests that they have committed themselves to that course. If successful, Canada's regional activism may help to counter its weakening European ties and its greater absorption into North America, and it may help to increase its foreign influence and independence.     

Human rights and development: the case of local government transformation in South Africa

Local governments throughout the world are assuming a more important role in economic development of their communities as an increasing number of governments begin to decentralise powers and functions. As these lower levels of government seek sustainable local economic development (LED) strategies the human rights approach towards development becomes pertinent as globalisation accelerates. This article proposes an emphasis on socio‐economic rights as the basis for sustainable LED in developing countries. The article is based on the experience of South African local government in the period after 1994, leading up to the first democratic local government elections on 5 December 2000. Proceeding from the view that the promotion of human rights is necessary for the promotion of economic development, the article critically assesses the role of local government in the promotion of LED through a rights‐based approach. It is argued that the identification in the South African Constitution of local government with basic service provision (recently emphasised by a Constitutional court judgement) will place socio‐economic rights at the centre of LED strategies in South Africa. It is argued that this is indeed the most appropriate cornerstone of LED in South Africa. However, the transformation process that leads the country towards its progressive Constitution needs to be maintained and this article identifies five broad areas for transformation that may still be needed to entrench an adequate human rights culture within the sphere of local governance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Land grabbing’ or harnessing of development potential in agriculture? East Asia's land-based investments in Africa

Abstract

Large-scale foreign investment in Africa's abundant but largely underutilized arable land has been criticised by international NGOs and social movements as ‘land grabbing’, which limits access of smallholder farmers to land, deprives local people of their livelihoods and threatens local and national food security across the continent. By way of contrast, many host governments and some leading international development agencies regard land-based investments as beneficial for development in terms of providing the necessary capital and technological know-how for modernising the region's neglected agriculture including take-off in agribusiness and agro-industrialisation, which is vital to much needed economic diversification in many African countries. East Asia's participation in the global land rush on Africa is examined from the standpoint of these two different perspectives: while China's growing presence and involvement in trade and investment in mining, energy and infrastructure in Africa is well known, less recognised is its involvement and those of other East Asian countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in agriculture through large-scale land acquisitions. The development consequences and policy implications of these foreign land-based investments are analysed from a political economy perspective, which identifies motives, interests and benefits of the different actors and addresses the question of governance in terms of transparency and appropriate institutional arrangements to safeguard land rights and food security. In the bigger picture, the paper argues that the negative consequences of land grab has to be seen alongside the benefits flowing to Africa from growing economic relations with China and other dynamic East Asian economies and learning from the development experiences of those countries. African countries however need to re-assess the current approach and relationship with foreign land-based investors and decide how best this trend can be used to forward their economic and social agendas.     

Japan's ‘green’ economic diplomacy: environmental and energy technology and foreign relations

The principal regional organizations in East Asia and Asia-Pacific, ASEAN and APEC, are widely seen to be crisis-stricken, ‘becalmed’ or ‘adrift’. At the same time, East Asia is witnessing the emergence of a new, as yet embryonic body, ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and ambitious projects implying closer integration between Northeast and Southeast Asia are being mooted. Departing from an analysis of the determinants of the success and failure of regional integration, this article discusses the roots of the perceived decline of ASEAN and APEC and the origins of the rapid rise of APT. The Asian financial crisis in particular, it is argued, has been instrumental both in undermining ASEAN and APEC and in fostering the rise of APT. The crisis has brutally exposed the structural weaknesses of ASEAN and APEC, both of which are handicapped by the political and economic diversity of their member states and the absence of a benevolent dominant state or coalition of states. It has simultaneously fuelled the development of APT because it has greatly strengthened perceptions of mutual economic interdependence and vulnerability in East Asia and resentment against the West and the US. As APT is likely to exhibit similar structural weaknesses to ASEAN and APEC, the odds, however, are against it developing into a strong regional organization, notwithstanding the possibility that, in the near future, external forces and trends (stagnation of world trade liberalization, closer European and American integration) will, if anything, encourage plans for closer East Asian integration.     

Privatization and the Courts: How Judicial Structures Shaped German Privatization

This article examines how legal institutional structures shaped the process of East German privatization by the Treuhandanstalt. It argues that the courts, as an important venue for oversight and accountability, were central to achieving the rapid and narrowly defined privatization carried out by the agency. Moreover, the experience of privatization after 1989 suggests the courts played a far more important role in shaping economic policy than one would have expected from traditional scholarship on public agencies, the courts, or the German legal system.     

Social policy in rich and poor countries: socio-economic trends and political-institutional determinants

Abstract. To what extent can the dramatic differences in social policy efforts in rich and poor countries be accounted for by genuinely political explanations? The hypothesis that is advanced in this article rests upon the combination of two schools of thought in comparative social policy analysis: socioeconomic models which focus attention on levels of economic wealth, need and demand for social security, and models of a comparative-historiographic and political-institution-alist nature. Empirical applications of socio-economic models with lagged dependent variables reveal the existence of two deviant families of nations: overspenders in social policy (such as overspenders of socialdemocratic complexion and of Christian democratic composition) and underspenders (such as the superpowers in East and West as well as Japan and East Germany). The residuals that can be derived from these models are amenable to an explanation which resides in comparative-historiographic political analysis of social policy.     

Embedded state autonomy and legitimacy: piecing together the Malaysian development puzzle

Malaysia's development trajectory has been comparatively successful, and the country arguably represents another example of the 'Asian developmental state'. However, when examined more closely, the Malaysian development experience is a deviation from the ideal-type 'East Asian success model', in that it occurred in the context of a predominantly Islamic cultural background, marked ethnic-religious heterogeneity,a relatively democratic political system, a strong reliance on FDI, abundant natural resources and a confined state autonomy. This article puts the Malaysian puzzle into perspective by giving a holistic account of the country's success against all odds and by applying an analytical framework centred on the concepts of embedded state autonomy and sociopolitical legitimacy. It is concluded that Malaysia's distinctive social, political and economic features constitute a web of countervailing forces that evolved into a positively self-reinforcing, if sometimes precarious, system of socio-economic reproduction.