Globalization and the governance of space: a critique of Krasner on sovereignty

This paper examines the literature on the relationship betweenglobalization and sovereignty, focusing on the arguments ofStephen Krasner as to the limited changes to this relationshiprepresented by globalization. Contra Krasner, this paper arguesthat globalization represents a fundamental challenge to theway in which space is governed. The paper outlines three conceptuallenses through which to look at the governance of space: Foucaulton social practices; critical politics and Henri Lefebvre; andR.B.J. Walker on sovereignty. It then discusses Krasner's recentbook on sovereignty, and offers a series of criticisms of hisargument, particularly in its treatment of the impact of globalization.This leads to a discussion of the three main interpretationsof globalization: sceptical, hyperglobalist and transformationalist.The paper concludes by arguing for a transformationalist viewof sovereignty and consequentially a view of its impact on sovereigntythat is very different to that proposed by Krasner.     

India’s Pakistan problem: operation Parakram revisited

ABSTRACT

Why did India launch and later withdraw from the exercise in coercive diplomacy – Operation Parakram – against Pakistan in response to the attack on India’s Parliament by terrorists based in that country? This paper marshals factors operating at the systemic, state and individual/small-group levels of analysis to show that, despite the paucity of evidence on decisionmaking of the kind required for an effective foreign policy analysis (FPA) approach, a reasonably clear picture can be developed. It combines deductive logic relating to state behavior in a nuclearized environment with the limited empirical evidence available to show that India never intended to go to war and that the operation was essentially a bluff that, having eventually reached a dead end, was called off.     

Public relations in the public eye: Two case studies of the failure of public information campaigns

Abstract

The authors examine two instances in which public relations efforts undertaken in behalf of foreign governments became the subject of public attention or controversy, finding in each case that the news image of the client government worsened. Comparing their results with other research that has identified more positive public relations outcomes, they conclude that public awareness of the manipulative efforts distinguished these cases and contributed to the observed effects.     

Hybrid security governance in Africa: rethinking the foundations of security,justice and legitimate public authority

This article asks whether the concept of ‘hybridity’ offers a more convincing account of security governance in Africa than the standard state-focused models. It seeks to clarify the complex intersections between formal and informal, state and non-state security actors, and the varied terrains on which hybridity is constructed, instrumentalised and recalibrated over time. Rather than romanticising informal or ‘traditional’ institutions, it suggests that they too embed their own power hierarchies, become sites of contestation, and do not work equally well for everyone, least of all for the weak, vulnerable and excluded. Thus the focus is placed upon the real governance of security in hybrid systems, and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion (including gender biases) they reinforce. Finally the paper considers how policy-makers and shapers can work with the grain of hybrid security arrangements to create more legitimate, broadly-based and effective African security governance.     

中国和印度：英国作家笔下的两个“东方”——“英语世界中的印度书写”研究系列之九

在吉卜林、叶芝等英国作家笔下,出现了与两个“东方”即中国和印度有关的文化信息。探索这些作家笔下的中国叙事和印度书写之异同,成为本文的旨趣所在。英国作家对于这两个“东方”形象的描绘反映出西方看待东方的许多复杂信息。     

EU FTA negotiations with India: The question of liberalisation of public procurement

The proposed bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union has thrown up many contentious issues among which public procurement is an important one. While India is reluctant to include public procurement in FTA, the European Union (EU) has been insisting that FTA without liberalisation of public procurement is not on the negotiating table. What makes India particularly attractive to the EU is not only the size of its public procurement market but also its rapidly growing economy and demand for infrastructure which presents EU firms with an opportunity to gain market access into this sector under the FTA setting. The EU is insisting on national treatment and non-discrimination as also transparency in Indian procurement system. Indian companies aspire to crack open public procurement market in the EU by entering it through the services sector. However, they are finding EU procedures for ‘data adequacy’ and policies relating to work visa difficult. India’s reluctance to negotiate government procurement under the FTA framework is also attributed partly to administrative costs required for making changes to existing framework and for establishing institutions to implement bilateral obligations. Though several deadlines have been missed, an agreement that could bring mutual benefit for both the EU and India is not out of reach.     

Two crises, two responses: adjustment of economic governance in ASEAN and the European Union

The financial crisis of 1997/1998 in Southeast Asia triggered institutional developments inside the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and beyond. They deepened intra-regional cooperation in the economic area and laid down the foundations for the ambition of creating an ASEAN Economic Community that would allow easier exchanges of productive factors. Concurrently, ASEAN also widened its response in the financial domain by initiating various “ASEAN plus” arrangements to pool risks and address volatility in financial markets. The European Union (EU) was hit by the global financial crisis in 2008 and subsequently by the sovereign debt crisis. The EU response to this has been a deepening of legally binding macroeconomic cooperation and the strengthening of the regulatory framework. On top of this, and contrary to the ASEAN case, the EU 27-Minus initiatives go further towards closer political coordination. In parallel, the legally binding scheme has been adopted to strengthen the stability of the Euro Area. This paper analyses the policy responses in both regions to their respective crises. It aims at understanding the driving forces behind the different policy responses, looking at both the region-specific and the more generic institutional and regulatory responses to the crises.     

India and Pakistan: Interpreting the Divergence of Two Political Trajectories

While suggestions were made in the 1990s that Pakistani and Indian political trajectories were converging as Pakistan took steps towards democratisation and India showed increasing signs of authoritarian centralisation, the following analysis offers a more historically sensitive view that suggests the opposite is true. In over fifty years of independence, institutional and societal structures have worked to create the political systems that we see on the Indian subcontinent today, and have helped define the potentially explosive Indo-Pakistan relationship so threatening in today's world. By analysing the ways in which different historical legacies act upon the current political cultures in both India and Pakistan, we engage in a fuller understanding of the contributing factors to the status quo in each. Further, historical analysis may shed some light on the expected trajectories of these two countries as they attempt to reinvent themselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century.     

Security governance in Europe: a return to system

The security governance literature has developed in four waves: the first is dedicated to matters of definition; the second to conceptual debate; the third to matters of application in the European setting and the fourth to how well the concept works in extra-European regions and at the global level. For all this effort, security governance as a concept remains problematic: it still has some way to go before it obtains clear definitional precision, conceptual clarity and a secure standing as concept in Security Studies. We address some of the theoretical and methodological difficulties common to the literature and argue that security governance has become overly preoccupied with agency and has thereby neglected structure. It has, in other words, obtained an actor-centered focus and so tended to conflate security governance as an analytical category with the specific actions of security actors. It has thus moved forward little in its ability to determine how and why security actors behave in the aggregate and whether that behavior reflects wider systemic properties. We thus ask in a third section whether it is worth returning to systemic thinking on security governance especially in the European context where the concept has had its most sophisticated application.     

The gender dimension of migration in India: the politics of contemporary space in Orissa and Rajasthan

Much internal migration in India, including the states of Rajasthan and Orissa, is distress-led. Previously issues pertaining to gender were overlooked, because migration tended to be viewed as chiefly a male movement, with women either residual in the process, or dependent followers. Contemporary migration is taking place in a world marked by a deeper belief in the importance of equality of opportunity across socio-political divides. This article stresses the need to analyse migration through the differential experiences of women and of men in the context of a highly gendered world.     

印度建国后邦级区划变动中的两次重组浪潮探析

通过对印度建国后邦级区划变动情况的分析,我们可以发现在其邦级区划的频繁变动中存在两次重组浪潮。第一次重组浪潮以语言问题为依托,印度政府按主要语言将全国邦级区划从29个邦调整为14个邦、6个中央直辖区。第二次重组浪潮发生在印度东北部,是印度政府应对边疆民族问题的举措,这一地区的邦级区划从1个邦、2个中央直辖区调整为6个邦。这两次重组浪潮是特定时期或特定地域印度民族矛盾焦点的体现和中央一地方博弈的结果,也是我们考察印度社会政治发展的特殊视角。     

India 2025: the public distribution system and National Food Security Act 2013

The Government of India introduced the National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013 to strengthen the public distribution system (PDS) in India. Extending the PDS service network is a contentious issue, especially for India’s rural regions. This article aims to estimate the level of expansion of the PDS network, additional food grain requirement, and increased storage facilities required to serve the growing population of India up to 2025. The statistical analysis highlights the need for significant changes in the PDS to meet NFSA, and the findings can aid policy-makers to design a more robust PDS.     

Informal democratization: brokers,access to public services and democratic accountability in Indonesia and India

This article compares the role of brokers in mediating access to public services in India and Indonesia. Brokered state-citizen interaction is generally considered to be detrimental to democratic accountability and governance. Yet recent studies are emphasizing that brokers can also be empowering. Reconciling these contrasting assessments, I argue in this paper that the character of brokerage networks shapes the capacity of citizens to hold their politicians and bureaucrats to account. Employing over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in both India and Indonesia, I develop a comparative framework that compares brokerage networks in terms of their degree of fragmentation, institutionalization and levelling. In Indonesia the versatile and more state-centered nature of brokers networks plays into the hands of incumbents, while the fragmented and more levelled nature of India's brokerage networks strengthens democratic accountability. I use this comparison to advance the argument that the evolution of brokerage networks constitutes an important, yet little-noticed dimension of democratization processes. When citizens gain access to public services through networks that are fragmented, institutionalized and less marked by social hierarchies, politicians and bureaucrats face stronger pressures to perform.     

Security governance in a comparative regional perspective

This article aims to explore the relationship between domestic economic and political conditions and the performance of 14 regional organizations over a range of security provisions. It argues that the willingness of member states to increase the range of security provisions of a regional organization is influenced by the combination of high levels of economic and political development and low levels of dispersion among the members of a regional organization. In order to evaluate this assumption, two aspects of regional organizations are explored. The first is to examine the development of security governance provisions of 14 regional organizations as well as the levels of empowerment or autonomy of those organizations. The second is to analyze how six economic and political variables influence the range of security provisions and the degree of empowerment of regional organizations. The final part of the article examines how regional organizations play a significant role in stimulating and reproducing regional governance orders.     

Towards security governance as a critical tool: a conceptual outline

This article argues that security governance can and should be reframed as a critical tool that enables us to understand and reappraise concrete practices of security provision. Security governance needs to move beyond the functional mapping of different governing arrangements and the presumption that security governance leads to effective and legitimate problem-solving in a quasi-automatic manner. In this article, we propose a framework that identifies the essential characteristics of security governance and turns them into critical questions with the aim to reveal persisting frictions and dilemmas. First, we trace the rise of security governance as concept and practice over the past decade and identify its central characteristics with regard to prerequisites, structures and consequences. Second, we reframe the core characteristics of security governance into critical questions and thereby develop an understanding of security governance as a critical tool. Finally, we illustrate the relevance of this approach with examples from EU security governance.     

Canal bureaucracy and the corruption nexus around water in the Mumbai hinterland: Questions for development and governance in Maharashtra,India

This is a case study of corruption in an irrigation project in a “tribal” belt of the Mumbai-Konkan region in India. Using Robert Wade’s framework of the corruption nexus in the irrigation department, it critically examines, among other features, the relationship between junior section engineers on the one hand, and senior executive engineers and politicians on the other. The article highlights key features of this nexus in the specific context of tribal Maharashtra, and shows that junior section engineers and bureaucrats in irrigation projects often wield informal power and can frequently block the activities of rent-seeking senior executive engineers and politicians. The article later relates this account of bureaucratic politics to throw light on the social, political and economic dynamics of water management in the context of the intensely competitive inter-sectoral politics of water sharing in the Mumbai-Konkan region.     

A tale of a decade: European security governance and Russia

In the decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall the governance of European security has undergone a profound transformation. The beginning of this decade witnessed the end of the Cold War and, in parallel, the establishment of relatively inclusive mechanisms for addressing security‐related issues. While these mechanisms have largely endured (and, indeed, have been complemented by other types of interaction) they have not prevented the emergence of forms of exclusion on the continent. This is a condition of particular significance to Russia. Compared with its Soviet predecessor, it now enjoys far less influence in European security. Its exclusion, however, is only relative. Russia has retained a meaningful role and ‐ recent controversies over NATO enlargement and Kosovo notwithstanding ‐ the bases of its accommodation with the West still remain in place.     

Bargaining over local public good provision in nested social dilemmas: A comparative study of variation from South India

In rural India, decentralized government schemes and assembly constituency development programs represent major channels through which local public good provision is realized. This polycentric governance structure confronts local leaders with a distributional conflict, which is nested in a social dilemma situation. Based on a controlled case study approach, we investigate the provision of small-scale infrastructure in three South Indian communities. Apart from roads and drinking water facilities that directly appeal to the residents of a community, local leaders bargain over infrastructure contracts, which serve as patronage resources in interactions with politicians from higher government levels. A comparative game-theoretic analysis of the results suggests that coordination through political party identities has translated into alternative bargaining strategies and hence varying distributional outcomes regarding contracts and local public goods in the communities under review. The study concludes with recommendations for polycentric institutional design.     

Religion as a Factor in Ethnic Conflict: Kashmir and Indian Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT

Ethnic conflicts with a strong religious component do not have merely domestic or foreign causes and consequences. As a result, internationalization of ethnic conflict has become an important subject of inquiry both in terms of pure research and policy-oriented studies. This article presents a case study of Indian-Pakistani relations over Kashmir, used to evaluate the role of religion and the explanatory power of the approach presented here. The aim of the study is to apply a foreign policy approach that simultaneously incorporates domestic and external factors in an analysis of how and in what ways religious elements of the Kashmir question affect India's foreign policy. The approach, an application of “systemism,” contributes to current developments in the realist school of international relations through its emphasis on the need to look at both international and state levels in combination. Earlier applications of realism, as both neotraditional and structural realism clearly demonstrate, tend to remain restricted to one level or the other. In this approach, a religious dynamic can have a domestic source yet be effectively examined in terms of international ramifications.     

Security governance in the maritime commons: The case for a transatlantic partnership

Power distribution in the maritime commons is changing. The inevitable relative decline of U.S. sea power provides an opening not only for China as a rising challenger but also for the European Union as a cooperative security provider. Although such a claim may have seemed farfetched a few years ago, the performance of the European Union in the counter-piracy Operation Atalanta off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, illustrates the possibility that the European Union will prove to be an unexpected player in the maritime commons in the twenty-first century. This possibility suggests a renewed transatlantic dialog over the governance of the maritime commons.