Securing the State: From Zionist Ideology to Israeli Statehood

Between early 1947 and May 1948, the Zionist movement went from being a non-state actor representing the minority population within the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine to establishing the State of Israel, which would be recognised almost instantaneously by the world's two Superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Such a result, however, was never a given. What processes allowed a non-state actor, the Zionist movement, to secure international acceptance for the creation of a Jewish state in highly ambiguous circumstances? This analysis explores the dual-track adopted by the Zionist movement, whereby it worked to create facts on the ground within Palestine whilst securing support for its state-building project at the international level. By establishing state-like institutions in Palestine whilst building international support, the Jewish Agency was able to secure for itself a unique place from which to declare statehood.     

印度社会保障体系概述

本文通过翻译、整理有关印度社会保障的书籍资料和印度官方网站的相关文件,试图对印度社会保障体系的概况做出一个比较详细的介绍,重点关注印度社会保障的几个重要的组成部分——养老保障、医疗保障以及非正规部门劳动者的社会保障等。鉴于印度与中国的社会状况在一定程度上的相似性,笔者还在介绍印度社会保障的某些方面时,对中印两国的社会保障情况做了简单的比较分析。     

Explaining a paradox of mediation

Negotiation Journal -     

后危机时代俄罗斯经济发展悖论探析

由美国次贷危机所引发的世界金融危机对每一个国家的经济都产生了很大的冲击,俄罗斯也未能幸免。但金融危机的影响时效有多长,后危机时代经济发展的推动点何在,是许多国家所共同关注的问题。本文梳理了后危机时代世界经济的发展趋势与特征,对比了俄罗斯经济与世界经济的发展趋势,得出他们之间存在一定的悖论。     

Enacting the rules of global finance: sovereign wealth funds and the promotion of corporate governance reform

In the wake of the financial crises of the last two decades, the promotion of corporate governance reform has emerged as a priority concern of the international financial community. This paper draws attention to the role played by Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in this process. It shows that SWFs’ enactment of a common set of shareholder-oriented corporate governance reforms has not solely been driven from the ‘outside in’—i.e. conforming to prevailing global financial norms and pressures. Indeed, various SWFs are in fact attempting to change financial best practice from the ‘inside out’ by promoting a transformative shareholder-value model of corporate governance throughout the companies they hold in their investment portfolios. To better elucidate the dynamics of this process, this paper looks at the experience of two SWFs in Asia and Europe. More specifically, it will explore the corporate governance agendas of Norway’s Government Pension Fund-Global and Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional Berhad.     

How to lose allies and finance your enemies: the economisation of conflict termination in Afghanistan

Aid-focused approaches to counter-insurgency reflect a belief that large volumes of development assistance may erode insurgent groups' popular support and ability to recruit. In Afghanistan, this ‘economised’ approach to conflict termination, as the author terms it, formed a central component of the international strategy. As insecurity increased, more aid was provided to the most violent areas, creating a series of secondary effects which undermined stability. Firstly and most importantly, aid served to create rather than ameliorate grievances. Poorly conceived programmes, which focused more on volumes of development assistance than the design of interventions, resulted in reduced support among the Afghan citizenry for the international community and nascent state in Kabul. Secondly, ‘economised’ approaches to the insurgency created incentive structures that favoured instability. Thirdly, large aid flows in highly insecure areas led to ‘leakage’ which financed insurgent groups. These findings lend further support to those who increasingly observe that the relationship between security and development is nuanced and that simply proving more aid may in some cases yield less security in conflict-affected contexts.     

Hegemony,Force Posture,and the Provision of Public Goods: The Once and Future Role of Outside Powers in Securing Persian Gulf Oil

International relations theories emphasize the stabilizing role hegemons play in world politics. But little scholarship has examined the link connecting hegemony to its potentially positive returns in the security realm: force posture. We correct this deficit by developing and testing an argument about the consequences of different hegemonic force postures under varying threat conditions. We present a typology of force posture options and probe their effects through over-time analysis of how major powers have worked to provide one particularly important public good since 1945: access to Persian Gulf oil. Drawing on field work, we also explore the implications of our framework for current and future US force posture in the region. We conclude that hegemonic stability is a very real phenomenon in the Gulf, but it does not require the massive forward deployment of US forces that has characterized the past twenty years of US presence there.     

The Japanese consumer finance market and its institutional changes since the 1980s

Abstract

We assert, in this article, that the joint transformation of public perception about households’ over-indebtedness and financial deregulation had important implications on the government decision to reform overall consumer credit between 2005 and 2010. On the one hand, the development of collective actions by groups of lawyers to defend borrowers from moneylenders’ abusive practices represents a source of change in the public opinion about over-indebted individuals in the context of long economic stagnation. A systematic press article analysis from 1977 to 2006 shows that the rising number of these collective actions since the early 1990s may have gradually increased the political salience of social issues related to the unsecure loan market. On the other hand, financial deregulation has been a source of change by allowing banks to enter the consumer finance market since the early 2000s. Banks entry into this market transformed the logic of complementarity among traditional consumer credit actors (Shinpan, credit card companies and sarakin) in a general context of legal consumers’ protection reinforcement. Thus, evolution of Japanese consumer finance's regulation is particularly relevant to illustrate the forces of institutional change and its consequences.     

透视俄罗斯百年财政中的五次“预算困境”

纵观古今中外财政历史,俄罗斯无疑是最具有典型惊心动魄特征的国家之一.本文选择了预算困境这一角度,试图通过回溯俄罗斯百年财政中国家预算在立法机构的五次受困,来展示财政发展的波澜起伏乃致于惊心动魄;同时,更希望挖掘现象背后所隐含的深刻的社会经济政治因素,说明预算夭折或难产情况下所暴露出的财政问题和社会经济政治稳定、发展之间的相关性.     

Introduction: Appeasement: Rethinking the Policy and the Policy-Makers

The “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of 1904/05” constitutes a landmark in United States foreign policy. However, the 1902/03 Venezuela Crisis—in particular, the arbitration process between the South American country and Germany, Great Britain, and Italy that settled the crisis—led to President Theodore Roosevelt's decision to amend the Monroe Doctrine. The arbitrational award was an important impetus for the corollary because its decision appeared to encourage future European interventions in the western hemisphere. The Roosevelt Corollary was needed to prevent a situation similar to the 1902/03 Venezuela Crisis from occurring again. Strategically speaking, Roosevelt felt the corollary was necessary to uphold the Monroe Doctrine under new circumstances.