The inverted cycle: Kabul and the strongmen's competition for control over Kandahar, 2001–2006

Afghan tribes and local communities have been exposed to foreign patronage since at least the 19th century, but the scale of patronage relative to Afghanistan's internal economy increased dramatically after the late 1970s. Inevitably, this had a major impact on Afghanistan's own internal dynamics and on the mechanisms of political legitimisation. This article focuses on the province of Kandahar, which occupies a privileged space in Afghan politics and history, having given origin to almost all of the country's ruling elites. It deals with three groups of tribal strongmen, who tried to use tribally based patronage systems to stake a claim to local power.     

The crisis in U.S.-China policy, 1991: The role of congress

The history of U.S. government decisionmaking on China policy since the June 1989 Tiananmen incident shows several episodes of dramatic confrontation between President Bush and his supporters in the administration and the Congress, and large numbers of congressional members of both parties critical of the administration’s China policy. Up to the present, 1991 clearly marked the highwater mark in the ongoing U.S. policy debate. In general terms, the debate went through three distinct stages in 1991, with the crisis coming during critical votes on conditional MFN legislation in July. At year’s end, all sides in the debate anticipated continued strong congressional criticism of Chinese practices and Bush administration policy, but critics seemed unable to make substantial inroads among those senators who supported the Bush administration’s stance, assuring continued MFN trade treatment for China.     

Gender and the academic profession in contemporary Tajikistan: challenges and opportunities expressed by women who remain

This article attempts to describe the deleterious impact of higher educational changes affecting female faculty members working in Tajik universities in the post-Soviet era. Over the past two decades, the social and economic position women gained during Soviet times has significantly eroded, bringing enormous challenges to education and higher education access, completion and staffing. The demographic and cultural marginalization of women here has negatively impacted university teaching opportunities and the status of women faculty members. Ethnographic interviews – along with relevant secondary data – reveal that despite various official gender-equity policies announced by the state, female participation issues remain prominent in the university. Our interviewees also report continued difficulty entering higher faculty ranks and leadership positions in university. However, significant numbers of women are still to be found there, and they report a workable compromise between being professional educators and trying to navigate a local culture that is becoming more ‘traditional’.     

日本教育改革如何达成共识

涉及群众利害的事业能否顺利完成，全凭众人是否能够达成共识。日本教育改革的呼声起于20世纪70年代初。20世纪80年代中曾根内阁作为国家任务去抓。设置临时教育审议会确定改革的基本方针。在首先确定议事规则、关键概念的含义后开展具体审议。临教审内部各个分会间，临教审与内阁高层、与社会各界通过各种会议以及征文、发行刊物等方式，收集和扩散各种意见和看法，通过3年审议提出4次报告，内阁以最终报告为基础确定了教育改革大纲。充分的讨论和争辩是达成共识的有效途径，寻求共识虽然费时但保证了决策慎重。在社会共识基础上的决策可以避免朝令夕改、最大限度减少决策失误造成的无可估量的损失。     

“两国集团”构想的历史考察

两国集团这一概念自20世纪70年代在美国的对外关系话语中出现以来就不断重现,迄今为止,已先后出现过美德、美日、美欧和美中四个版本的两国集团论。美国学者在不同时期选择不同的对象国与美国共同分担国际责任,这表明美国战略家对国际体系力量变化的敏感及其在对外政策判断上的开放性。两国集团的四个版本呈现出了巨大的相似性,都出现在美国面临国内外困境而对象国正在蓬勃崛起之际,其实质是美国在以其为中心的国际体系中要求对象国承担更多国际责任,帮助美国以最小的代价维护霸权。     

Did They Read Marx? Marx Reception and Social Democratic Party Members in Imperial Germany, 1890–1914

Did rank‐and‐file members of the German Social Democratic party before 1914 bother to read Marx? A number of studies of borrowing from trade union and other workers' libraries since the 1970s have indicated that workers who read Marx were rare, although this does not mean that workers' reading habits were not influenced by socialist ideas. However, for a broader understanding of the reception of Marx's writings among rank‐and‐file German socialists, it is necessary to consider not only books, but the pamphlet literature produced by the SPD in huge quantities, serialisations and other treatments in the party press, and oral communication. When the full range of sources is considered, the extent of the reception of Marx's writings, albeit often in very simplified forms, can be more fully appreciated.     

Unlikely relations: Israel,Romania and the Egyptian–Israeli peace accord

The history of Israel's turbulent relations with the Eastern bloc nations during the Cold War has one exception, Romania. Unlike other Warsaw Pact members, Romania did not sever relations with Israel following the 1967 war. Central to these relations was Romanian Communist leader Nicolai Ceausescu, who managed to establish himself as an important figure among both Arabs and Israelis. This article will examine Romanian–Israeli relations during the 1970s and especially Ceausescu's role in the Egyptian–Israeli peace negotiations. Recent Israeli and some Romanian documents released from the Israeli State Archive and the Begin Centre reveal much about Israel's attitude towards Romania and Ceausescu's involvement in the Middle East, and serve to shed light on a heretofore neglected aspect of Israeli foreign policy. Some of the main issues to be addressed are Ceausescu's influence on Egyptian and Israeli decision makers, Israel's prime motives in maintaining a close relationship with Romania, the importance of Romanian Jewry's position to Israel's policy vis-à-vis Romania and the extent to which these relations represented a back channel that facilitated some contact with the Kremlin. All these will be examined against the larger backdrop of the Cold War and the Arab–Israeli conflict.     

Democratisation, External Exposure and State Food Distribution in The Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with a 'failed' state, requires regular financial assistance from international funds and remains exposed to external economic pressures. State food distribution in the country, however, adheres to traditional statist policies and institutions that disappeared elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1980s and 1990s. Relevant literature arguably does not anticipate this outcome. This article proposes that political institutions associated with Dominican democratisation since the late 1970s, particularly strong presidentialism, a stable, non-ideological party system and high voter turnout at elections, provide incentives for a status quo, clientelistic policy in this strategic area of social policy.     

CHINA-ISRAEL ARMS TRADE AND CO-OPERATION: HISTORY AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Israel and China have quietly developed a significant arms trade since the 1970s. This article examines the history of the development of the Israel-China arms trade, its ramifications for wider international relations including those between the US and Israel, the US and China, and also foreign policy implications for China and the Middle-East.     

‘Heart-Beguiling Araby’ on the Frontier of Empire: Early Anglo-Arab Relations in Transjordan

In 1920 the British government of Palestine sent six officers to establish a British presence in Transjordan. Lacking military and financial support, they could not possibly control a country populated by more than 200,000 tribespeople, many of them members of powerful tribal confederacies. The key to explaining why the British chose this unorthodox way to takeover a new territory lies in the special attitude towards Arabia entertained by the British following World War One. British policy derived from an alleged cultural affinity between the British and the ‘Bedouin’, coupled with a colonial tradition of attributing British administrators with a ‘natural’ ability to rule over natives. These two myths gave the British an inflated belief in their ability to rule local society. Drawing on official reports, private papers and local accounts, this article shows that the British grossly misunderstood local conditions and could not deal with the tribal communities that frustrated their attempt to assert British influence.     

Social Struggles in Present Day Argentina

Since the mid 1970s, Argentine society has gone through a period characterised as counterrevolutionary. The conservative social forces, led by the financial oligarchy, seized power and government by means of the coup d'état of 1976, and imposed an economic and social policy towards the working class, based on wage cuts and a lengthening of the working day. When the military governments were replaced by civilian ones, physical coercion was replaced by economic coercion, through market laws with unemployment and wage cuts reaching unprecedented levels. Although the popular forces were weakened by the unfavourable development of social struggles since the mid–1970s, during the 1990s government policies were confronted by the people through different forms of struggle.
This article presents the results of research on the different forms of social struggle carried out by the working class and other popular classes since the end of the 1980s until today. It aims to conceptualise the forms of rebellion (foot riot, riot, strikes and roadblocks), to determine the different moments of social struggle and the likely trends of its development.     

China and Cambodia: In the Mirror of History

In recent years, China has been paying greater attention to Southeast Asia and to Cambodia in particular, says Nayan Chanda, director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. This interest is not new however, but reflects a partial return to the foreign policy followed by the leaders of China since the days of the Ming dynasty. Historically, China had not been interested in active involvement in Indochina, preferring to limit its role to policies that kept its southern neighbors in check and the region free of influence from another challenging power. This tradition of noninterference was broken in the 1970s, amidst increasing tension between the Soviet Union and China, and the beginning of the Sino-American détente in 1971, which changed the international context of China's foreign policy. Chanda points out that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a surge in Chinese aid, private investment, dispatch of labor and support for the growing local ethnic Chinese community in Cambodia.     

China’s view of the war threat and its foreign policy

In analyzing China’s foreign policy since 1949, people tend to take for granted the nature of China’s concern for its national security as the predominant factor in the development of its foreign policy without distinguishing changes in the functions of this factor. The evidence given in this article argues that at least as early as the late 1970s, leaders in Beijing, predominantly Deng Xiaoping, no longer held Mao’s view of the inevitability and imminence of world war, and of the Soviet threat to China’s national security. Therefore I propose that from the beginning of the Deng era in 1978, national status enhancement or muscle building through modernization had replaced national security as the persistent and principal theme in China’s foreign policy. We should not interpret the main reason for China’s increased push for the formation of an international antihegemony united front as its increasing concern about the Soviet threat to its national security. In turn, we may conclude that when China abandoned this united front foreign policy to adopt the Independent Foreign Policy in 1982, it was neither because of a new global reality that was shaping the reorientation of its foreign policy nor because only in 1982 did China rediscover the Soviet threat.     

AFGHAN REFUGEES: THE IMPACT ON PAKISTAN

One of the most important arenas that have been profoundly affected by the security situation in Afghanistan is Pakistan's internal security environment. The instability in Afghanistan has had a negative spill-over effect on Pakistan's domestic security scenario, as the Afghan quagmire poses immense implications on Pakistan's domestic framework. One of the important consequences of the Afghan conflict since the 1970s has been the massive inflow of the Afghan refugee population to the neighbouring Pakistan which in following years has brought about a number of demographic and security challenges to the Pakistani society. Therefore along with a number of factors, at this present juncture, Afghan refugees have also become a principal factor in determining Pakistan's Afghanistan policy.     

On the Electoral Relevance of Education Policy in the German Länder

Education policy in Germany experienced a boom throughout the 2000s. Numerous reforms were implemented, quite far-reaching shifts of party programmes occurred, and the scope of institutions with an educational mandate widened considerably. At the same time, Landtag elections came to be seen as less dominated by federal politics. Yet we still know little about education policy's electoral relevance. The present article, following a most-likely design, analyses those five Landtag elections that were held since the reform of federalism in 2006 for which the importance of education policy ought to have been highest. It turns out that even though education is one of the very few policies which the Länder can decide upon autonomously, and despite the recent upsurge of regional factors in determining the outcomes of such second-order elections, nearly all Landtag elections are won or lost on other battlefields.     

缅甸华文教育产生的背景与发展态势

缅甸华文教育曾经有过蓬勃发展的黄金时期。上个世纪60年代中,缅甸政府将华文学校收归国有,从此华文教育转向非正规教育,即中文补习班。但华人对华文教育需求的热情从未减弱。70年代后以孔教和佛经教育方式出现,大小规模不同的华文教育,又逐渐多起来,而且其他族裔的人也参与学习华文,这和近年在世界各地掀起的华文学习热潮息息相关。由于受1979年中国实行改革开放以来,经济、文化和科学技术获得空前发展及全球经济一体化趋势的影响,华文在世界上的作用和地位受到重视。近年来,缅甸政府鼓励开办电脑班,因此华文学校开始放弃佛教的色彩,纷纷向电脑进军。此外,原先亲台湾的学校也放弃政治分歧,坚持“一个中国”的原则,致力于弘扬中华文化,把华文教育办得有声有色。     

How Japan Can Contribute to a Peaceful World

This article discusses Japan's contribution to world peace both in the past and in the future. Japan's domestic, historical, and strategic circumstances shaped its concept of comprehensive security focused on international economic cooperation since the 1970s. Three decades of constructive relations with neighbors, including reconciliation with Southeast Asia built a strong foundation for Japan's new security role, one driven by new domestic and external imperatives. The article also documents the evolution of Japan's security policy and role in international peacekeeping, and concludes by arguing that Japan–ASEAN partnership is a key component of Japan's new security role, including permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council. In developing this new role, it is critically important that Japan engages its neighbors in ASEAN (and elsewhere) to gain their support for this new role.     

Like Mother,Like Daughters? Campaigns for Tribal Peoples’ Rights in the Commonwealth

Abstract

Intent on stealing land and plundering resources, the British Empire labelled its tribal subjects as ‘backward’ and used the excuse of bringing them ‘civilisation’ to appropriate their land and resources. This study examines the development of campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights in various Commonwealth countries since independence. It shows how methods of campaigning have been largely consistent since the birth of the indigenous rights movements, involving the public in letter-writing, demonstrations and vigils, and using publications and the press to raise awareness of rights violations and abuses. It illustrates how many Commonwealth governments today, like the former imperial rulers, believe in the ‘backwardness’ of their tribal citizens, but today it is ‘development’ not ‘civilisation’ that lies behind the theft of their lands and resources.     

Social democracy and globalisation: the limits of social democracy in historical perspective

This article argues that social democratic governments throughout the 20^th century faced internal and international constraints arising from the operation of capitalist economies and that the evidence for a qualitative deepening of such constraints since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system is far from unequivocal. Financial markets were already big enough and fast enough to deter such governments from the pursuit of egalitarian policies in the interwar years or to destabilise them if they ignored the warning signs. This article also shows that the efficacy of Keynesian macroeconomic policy in the Golden Age has been exaggerated and that the problem of short–term movements of speculative capital persisted throughout this era in a country such as Britain. Keynesianism never worked in the face of mass unemployment and it is misleading to suggest that its breakdown in the 1970s somehow robbed social democracy of the policy tools that had maintained full employment in the 1950s and 1960s. A host of additional problems have indeed beset social democratic governments since 1973, but the analysis of such problems is hindered rather than helped by much of the literature which invokes economic globalisation. Globalisation theory is in need of further specification before it can be useful and arguments about the economic consequences of globalisation since 1973 need to distinguish its effects from those of the many conjunctural problems of the period as well as the policies that important agencies have pursued in search of solutions to them.     

End of an Era? The Landtagswahl in Bavaria,September 2008

The biotechnology and venture capital sectors have flourished in Germany during the 1990s, a surprising development that finds its roots in the policies of the federal government. Years before the private sector became engaged, the federal government had identified biotechnology and venture capital as important for job creation and Germany's world‐wide status as a technological leader. Its success in leading a renaissance in these sectors sits uneasily with dominant understandings of the German state as ‘semi‐sovereign’ (Katzenstein) or ‘enabling’ (Streeck) ‐ as institutionally incapable of defining policy against or without the active participation of societal actors. This article uses a history of the biotechnology and venture capital sectors since the 1970s to re‐examine the relationship between the central state and lower governments as well as organised interests in Germany. The evidence demonstrates the federal government's autonomy in formulating policy priorities as well as its ability to enhance the capabilities of lower level governments and private sector actors to achieve the objectives it defined.