Leadership Traits and Ghana’s Foreign Policy: The Case of Jerry Rawlings’ Foreign Economic Policy of the 1980s

This article examines Ghana’s foreign policy-making with reference to internal and external determinants (structural/systemic). Besides these determinants, political actors (primarily, presidents/heads of state) have shaped the country’s foreign policy outcomes, but this field of enquiry (i.e. the individual-level analysis) has not, received much attention in the literature. To enhance the understanding of leadership and personality traits in foreign policy-making, this study draws on the theory of Leadership Trait Analysis to examine Jerry John Rawlings and Ghana’s foreign economic policy in the early 1980s. It argues that the leadership traits of Rawlings to some extent shaped Ghana’s foreign economic policy decisions in the early 1980s.     

Foreign Policy “On the Cheap”: Latvia’s Foreign Policy Experience from the Economic Crisis

This article assesses whether the reduction of budgetary allocations to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia in 2008–2012 led to more modest foreign policy in the sense of both objectives and execution. After assessing four goals of Latvian foreign policy since 2008 – regional cooperation, bilateral development cooperation, facilitation of Latvia’s economic interests abroad, and relations with the Latvian diaspora – the authors conclude that the decrease in funding for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had little impact on Latvia’s ability to achieve foreign policy objectives.     

China’s New Foreign Policy under Xi Jinping

Since taking power, the new Chinese President Xi Jinping has talked of “striving for achievements,” signaling a new theme in Chinese diplomacy. This article first examines the changes in Beijing’s foreign policy structure before moving on to examine the three major schools of thought on China’s immediate relations with its neighbors, implying that the policy focus will lie with the “advance westward” school. Moreover, this article highlights how China is maximizing its influence through economic interaction, whilst noting that economics is also being used to punish hostile countries. Furthermore, it notes that China’s next step is to influence change using the multilateral frameworks of the international system, remolding global rules to China’s benefit. The article concludes by examining Beijing’s leadership role, particularly its commitment to non-alliance, and whether Beijing and Washington can rebuild a more suitable model to reflect both country’s ambitions on the world stage.     

The New Geo-Economics of a “Rising” India: State Transformation and the Recasting of Foreign Policy

With a focus on India, and drawing on critical scholarship on geo-politics and geo-economics and “relational” state theories, this article examines the ways in which ideational and material processes of state transformation have shaped India’s international engagement in different periods. Prior to 1991, geo-political social forms linked to a national developmentalist state project shaped India’s engagement with global and regional multilateralism and the nature of this engagement fluctuated according to shifts in the legitimacy and viability of this state project. The erosion of the developmentalist state project from the 1970s laid the path for a deeper shift in the national social order in the 1990s with the recasting of statehood wherein India’s future was thought to be best secured through policies of economic openness, growth and competitiveness. This shift in India’s state project has given rise to new forms of global and regional engagement that are distinct to older forms of international engagement and reflect and further processes of state transformation in India. This is illustrated through a case study on energy policy.     

Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper: Deconstruction and Critique

The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper identifies major themes and recommends preferred strategies in Australia’s engagement with the world. These themes and strategies relate to geopolitics, economics and the ‘new international agenda’; there is also a more specific focus on Australia’s Pacific island neighbours and Timor-Leste. There is a strong emphasis on perceived Australian national interests throughout the document. The geopolitical discussion is primarily ‘realist’; economically the document is pro-globalisation; the discussion of the ‘new international agenda’ involves an Australian-oriented pragmatism; there is an assertion of Australian leadership in the South Pacific. With some minor criticism, Labor has accepted the general direction advocated in the White Paper. The document is thus indicative of the likely future direction of Australian foreign policy. Lack of US response indicates declining US engagement with Australia and the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific region. China, as the other major power highly significant for Australia, has been low-key in its criticisms.     

Conceptualizing Japan’s Foreign Policy Trajectory Through Social Identity Theory

East Asia - Regional security studies of the Asia-Pacific commonly center upon China’s rise, leaving other actors underresearched. Among these is Japan, whose ongoing reinterpretation of its...     

Critical Observations on Neo-liberalism and India’s New Economic Policy

Abstract

Neo-liberalism is capitalism without leftist illusions (i.e. illusions that there can be such a thing as humane capitalism on a long-term basis). The article makes a series of critical comments on India’s neo-liberalism expressed in the form of the so-called New Economic Policy. It argues, New Economic Policy is more than a governmental policy. It is rather a policy of capital, mediated and implemented by the state. Neo-liberalism is a social-spatial project. Neo-liberalism in rural areas (agrarian neo-liberalism) is particularly ruthless. Neo-liberalism is implemented through, and entails, the transformation of space, and thus produces enormous spatial unevenness. Neo-liberalism is also a part of the imperialist project. Given New Economic Policy’s adverse impacts, it has inspired massive resistance from below. Interestingly, in spite of offering some opposition, the left has been, overall, a conduit through which New Economic Policy has worked. The article shows how a critical discussion on neo-liberalism has implications for understanding macro-structural changes in societies such as that of India, which have suffered not only from economic backwardness but also incomplete revolutions. A dialectical view of neo-liberalism and the New Economic Policy connects them both to the democratic and agrarian questions, the national question, and the question of socialism itself.     

Political Neo-Malthusianism and the Progression of India’s Green Revolution

Academic literature on India’s economic history often portrays the nation’s Green Revolution as a single package of technocratic reforms that eventually led to sustained growth in India’s total agricultural production – the quintessential triumph of science over political resistance. This account, though, is a dramatic oversimplification, which has led both social and natural scientists to criticise the Green Revolution’s normative consequences without fully addressing the political and economic forces that led to its varied results. To date, India’s Green Revolution lacks the established historical periodisation necessary to begin putting these accounts in dialogue. To remedy these issues, this article introduces the adapted concept of political neo-Malthusianism, which deconstructs the relationship between agricultural production, dependence on foreign aid, and the period’s political battles. Understanding this nexus allows not only for a deeper understanding of the politics that shaped various Green Revolution policies’ implementation, but also moves towards an understanding of its larger place in Indian economic history.     

Reading the Trump Administration’s China Policy

The policy toward China under the Trump Administration is a rare combination of the toughest part of that of the Democratic Party, which is trade, and of the Republican Party, which is national security. The National Security Strategy by the Trump Administration defined China and Russia as competitors. It is the first time for the US Government to be harsh against both China and Russia (the Soviet Union included) since the late 1960s. Though trade is by far the most salient aspect of President Trump’s confrontational China policy, it is in fact a whole-of-the-government approach or pushback that the US government is taking with China, which means that not just the White House but various Departments and the Congress are tough with China, dealing with many issues from trade to human rights to national security. The President might actually be the softest link, almost exclusively focusing on trade. This might be a historic turnaround in US policy toward China.     

Making sense of Italy’s constitutional referendum

This article seeks to explain the rejection of the reforms proposed in the 2016 Constitutional Referendum in Italy. We contend that Renzi's promise to resign if he were to lose the referendum did not significantly affect the final result. While highly partisan voting patterns may lead to speculation that this so-called personalization strategy caused the rejection, we argue that voters probably would have followed party cues anyway. Instead, we argue that the fundamental explanation for the results was voter ambivalence towards the reforms themselves, based on insufficient information about the complex package and its broad coalition of opponents.     

The Making of Nakasone Yasuhiro’s Diplomacy

The upbringing and early life experiences of a political leader strongly influence development of the policy framework implemented when in office. In the case of Nakasone Yasuhiro, his experiences during the Pacific War would later be reflected in both domestic policy and international affairs. In terms of international relations, Nakasone formed relationships of trust with international leaders in both East and West that engendered respect and that contributed to his exceptional leadership in Japan’s diplomacy.     

Democracy Promotion and Civilian Power: The Example of Germany's ‘Value-Oriented’ Foreign Policy

While Germany is generally considered one of the most important democracy promoters, there is still limited work on the German approach to promoting democracy. There is a general understanding that Germany – as a civilian power – should be guided by democratic values in its external affairs, but it is neither theoretically nor empirically very clear what this means for the actual practice of democracy promotion. The present paper contributes to filling this gap by (1) locating democracy promotion as a foreign policy aim and instrument in the role conception of civilian power, (2) summarising the fragmented state of the art on German democracy promotion, (3) presenting results of a qualitative content analysis in order to reconstruct the main features of the official outline of German democracy promotion, and (4) confronting these programmatic findings with a brief comparative view on the practice of German democracy promotion towards Bolivia, Turkey and Russia.