International law and hegemony: a reconfiguration

Instead of appearing as a stable set of normative demands opposed to international politics, international law is better understood as an aspect of hegemonic contestation, a technique of articulating political claims in terms of legal rights and duties. The controversies in the law concerning the use of force, the law of peace, human rights, trade and globalisation reflect strategies through which political actors seek to make their preferences appear to be universal ones. But the legal idiom also contains a utopian aspect: it distances political actors from their idiosyncratic preferences and thus creates the international world as a legal community in the act of invoking it.     

Finding peace in a world of hegemony and terrorism

Although acknowledging the importance of power, Immanuel Kantsuggested that republican constitutions, economic interdependence,and international law and organizations can form the basis fora dramatically more peaceful world. Statistical analyses ofthe behavior of pairs of states, 1885–1992, confirm thisliberal vision. Using methods common to medical epidemiology,we find that the Kantian elements substantially reduce the likelihoodthat states will become involved in a fatal militarized dispute.Indeed, two democracies linked by extensive trade and a densenetwork of international organizations are 95% less likely tofight than states that do not share these characteristics. Ouranalyses have important implications for the United States andChina, two countries destined to shape the twenty-first century.Engaging China in trade and integrating it into the major internationalorganizations over the last three decades has, with some liberalizationof its government, substantially reduced the risk of militaryconflict.     

Neutrality Regimes

Abstract

I analyze a model of war expansion in the shadow of international law, where neutrality regimes emerge as equilibria in which only aggressive states are expected to violate the law. By sorting belligerents according to their ambitions (restrained or aggressive), neutrality regimes can help resolve third-party uncertainty over the desirability of balancing. Punishment for violations of the law emerges in equilibrium from self-interested power calculations absent any principled legal commitment. The model shows that (a) neutrality regimes can be effective not despite but because of inconsistent compliance; (b) strong third parties are uniquely prone to failures to balance under neutrality regimes; and (c) ratification of neutrality regimes can be facilitated by mutual and severe mistrust. Neutrality regimes need not be epiphenomenal to power politics; rather, they can support balance-of-power systems.     

Nuclear Terrorism and International Prevention Regimes

The term ＂nuclear terrorism＂ refers to terrorists who are engaged in nuclear proliferation activities for terrorist attacks. At present, nuclear terrorism poses a growing threat to international security. It is, therefore, a pressing need for the world community to make utmost effort to prevent and eliminate this threat.     

非正式国际机制与全球福利

本文结合精确性程度、合作深度和授权性程度等国际机制的构成要素,对非正式国际机制的有效性进行了讨论。并分析了在集体谈判修订和大国单方面行为引发的事实修正两种情况下,非正式国际机制的修正对全球福利的影响。如果大国在其他方面的利益需求大于在有效地解决全球公共问题方面的利益需求,大国对非正式国际机制发起的事实修正就会损害全球福利。本文以美印核协议对核供应国集团准则的事实修正为案例说明了这一可能情形。     

Popular art,the image,the subject and subverting hegemony

ABSTRACT

One of the most disturbing paradoxes of modern times is that an acute sense of expanding moral responsibility goes hand in hand with a growing inability to bear such responsibility. This article demonstrates how modern technology, in particular information technology, has contributed to both the expansion of moral responsibility and the development of the responsibility gap. In order to deal adequately with the challenges modern technology poses in respect of moral responsibility, it has become necessary to supplement the classical notion of retrospective moral responsibility with the new notion of prospective moral responsibility. In the case of retrospective responsibility some or other negative outcome of the past is ascribed to a particular person or persons. In the case of prospective responsibility, the responsibility of preventing humans and nature from being actively harmed or to realise desirable future conditions by taking the necessary measures in the present, is ascribed to a particular person or persons, or, more likely, to a particular institution or institutions.     

地区秩序及其治理机制

地区一体化的发展必然要求建立与之相适应的地区秩序。地区秩序具有主体的自愿自主性、目标指向的明确性、建构方式的多样性和秩序的可建设性等特征,它的建立、维持和变迁与地区一体化过程紧密相联,两者相互促进。地区秩序的形成是一个治理过程,治理机制在其中发挥着重要作用。     

The Common Security and Defence Policy as an act of American hegemony

Abstract

The financial crisis endangers the security of NATO's members and partners. As such, NATO has a formal obligation to mobilize its resources to aid members in overcoming current economic challenges. NATO can play a valuable role on three levels. First, NATO can aid members in rationalizing their military procurement and manpower systems, thus reducing the fiscal burden of maintaining adequate defenses. Second, NATO can press the ECB and the EU to modify arrangements governing the Euro so as to minimize the risk that EMU will collapse. Finally, NATO has a “soft power” role in vigorously defending the liberal economic order and democratic political institutions of the Western Alliance from the ideological attacks that inevitably follow financial crises.     

拉美国家汇率制度的选择及其对中国的启示

自 1 999年 1月阿根廷宣布将认真考虑美元化问题之后 ,拉美国家的美元化愈演愈烈。厄瓜多尔于 2 0 0 0年 1月正式推行美元化 ,萨尔瓦多于 2 0 0 1年 1月宣布以美元为官方货币 ,加上 1 90 4年以后已实现美元化的巴拿马 ,已有 3个拉美国家实现了完全的美元化。另外 ,秘鲁、玻利维亚和危地马拉亦先后立法 ,允许美元与其本国货币同时流通 ,即实现了部分美元化。除以上已实现完全或部分美元化的国家以外 ,阿根廷、尼加拉瓜、洪都拉斯和哥斯达黎加等拉美国家的政府也在考虑本国的美元化问题。可以说 ,美元化不仅在拉美小国中受到广泛支持和重视 ,…     

Essence and Prospect of International Export Control Regimes

International export control regimes are referring to the regimes and systems concerning limitation of export and transference of military-use and dual-use items and related parts as well as technologies. In the past couple of years, the control regimes have shown a strengthening posture. In addition, a new global export control regime is brewing. Hence export control has caught the attention of the international community, and particularly of the circles of armament control and commerce. The author would like to make some analyses of the posture and then try to predict the trend of international export control regimes.     

Terrorist Assassination and Institutional Change in Repressive Regimes

ABSTRACT

Missing from the political violence literature is an in-depth and systematic examination of the effects of terrorist assassination on state political institutions in repressive regimes. By broadening the scope and depth of empirical research into terrorist assassinations, the potential exists to enhance our understanding of the outcomes of assassination by terrorist actors as well as our overall understanding of political violence in repressive regimes. Utilizing survival analysis and data from the Global Terrorism Database, the Polity IV Project, and the Political Terror Scale, this project focuses on the post-terrorist assassination institutional outcomes in repressive regimes. While the effects are long-term, the most repressive regimes are the most likely to experience political institutional shifts in the wake of terrorist assassinations. The direction of the institutional shifts is mixed, but results indicate that the level of state repression in existence prior to a terrorist assassination matters to post-terrorist assassination outcomes.     

Party matters: the institutional origins of competitive hegemony in Tanzania

Electoral authoritarianism has emerged as a primary mode of authoritarian rule in the post-Cold War era. It is also a notably heterogeneous phenomenon, in terms of both its impact upon incumbents and the quality of contestation. This article investigates a specific type of electoral authoritarian outcome, a competitive hegemony. In competitive hegemonies regimes are able to dominate elections by large vote margins, but with comparatively much lower levels of electoral fraud and coercion. Using a case study of Tanzania and its ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), this article argues that distinct investments made under single-party rule into party institutionalization and the incorporation of subsistence-based peasants provided CCM with additional sources of elite cohesion, strong mobilization capacity, and therefore greater stability. The article shows how during multiparty elections elite defection has in fact been minimal, and voting patterns largely coincide with infrastructural investments made as part of Tanzania's socialist development programme, ujamaa. Moreover, while Tanzania's opposition parties have made important strides in recent years in terms of institutionalization, they are still precluded from competing effectively in large portions of the country where demand for new parties is low.     

Tools of single party hegemony in Tanzania: evidence from surveys and survey experiments

Political systems dominated by a single party are common in the developing world, including in countries that hold regular elections. Yet we lack knowledge about the strategies by which these regimes maintain political dominance. This article presents evidence from Tanzania, a paradigmatic dominant party regime, to demonstrate how party institutions are used instrumentally to ensure the regime's sustained control. First, I show that the ruling party maintains a large infrastructure of neighbourhood representatives, and that in the presence of these agents, citizens self-censor about their political views. Second, I provide estimates of the frequency with which politicians give goods to voters around elections, demonstrating that such gifts are more common in Tanzania than previous surveys suggest. Third, I use a survey experiment to test respondents’ reaction to information about corruption. Few voters change their preferences upon receipt of this information. Taken together, this article provides a detailed picture of ruling party activities at the micro-level in Tanzania. Citizens conceal opposition sympathies from ten cell leaders, either because they fear punishment or seek benefits. These party agents can monitor citizens’ political views, facilitating clientelist exchange. Finally, citizens’ relative insensitivity to clientelism helps explain why politicians are not punished for these strategies.     

Unpacking Autocracy: Political Regimes and IMF Program Participation

Why do some countries participate in IMF programs while others refuse to do so? We suggest an answer to the question by unpacking one side of the typical democracy–autocracy dichotomy. Specifically, we utilize the growing literature on the varieties of authoritarianism to develop an argument linking the different incentives and constraints that leaders in party-based, personalist, and military regimes face when considering whether to sign agreements with the IMF. Empirically, we demonstrate that distinguishing among autocracies uncovers important variations in the sensitivity of such regimes to the political costs incurred by IMF participation. Party-based autocracies, for instance, respond to both sovereignty costs and the benefits of program participation during severe economic crises. Personalist regimes, however, are not sensitive to the sovereignty costs incurred with IMF participation and thus only participate when doing so provides needed revenue during economic crises. The unique features of military juntas, by contrast, suggests that such regimes are not sensitive to either of these political costs and thus do not respond to economic crises in the same way as their autocratic counterparts.     

Overlapping regionalism and cooperative hegemony: how China and India compete in South and Southeast Asia

This article examines the phenomenon of overlapping regionalism in South and Southeast Asia. Theoretically it rests on Thomas Pedersen’s ‘ideational-institutionalist realism’ approach. We argue that in the two sub-regions under study the proliferation of regional organizations has been greatly stimulated by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic dynamics involving Asia’s largest powers, China and India. We claim that sceptical world views highlighting vulnerability, victimization and national survival are deeply entrenched in the mental maps of the regions’ foreign policy elites. Regional institution building is thus informed by the tenets of realism. We trace how and why China and India seek to establish ‘cooperative hegemonies’ by building regional institutions for incorporating their neighbours into their sphere of influence while keeping rival powers at bay, and also show why smaller states in the region join these regional fora.     

中国对国际机制的参与与国家形象的建构

国际机制的参与与国家形象的建构两者存在辩证统一的关系.对国际机制的积极参与有利于国家形象的提升.良好的国家形象有利于对国际机制的参与,及更好地融入国际社会.中国负责任大国形象的构建,与积极参与国际机制并在其中发挥建设性作用密不可分.     

Dead-Letter Regimes in the Post-Soviet Space: Strategies and Communication

ABSTRACT

This article explores why dead-letter regimes, sets of norms and institutions with low efficiency and few expectations of tangible output, have become an enduring feature of international politics in the post-Soviet space. It focuses on the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, the two regional regimes promoted by Russia. The article analyzes their emergence and evolution, normative frameworks, performance and member states’ expectations. It argues that, while mostly failing as instruments of strategic action, these regimes have become conduits of communicative action and arenas enabling member states to enact specific international roles.     

CBRN Incidents: Political Regimes,Perpetrators, and Targets

This article investigates the relationship between regime characteristics and the likelihood of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorist incidents. Odds ratios establish that democratic ideals—democratic rule, strong rule of law, and honest regimes—are associated with more CBRN incidents. Failed states may be where some terrorist groups form or take refuge, but these states have not been the venue of choice for CBRN incidents. Religious (cults and fundamentalists) and nationalist/separatist groups are not more likely than others to engage in CBRN attacks. To date, indiscriminate CBRN attacks are as likely as discriminate attacks to cause casualties. Transnational terrorist groups are less adept than others in concealing their acquisition of CBRN substances. For some regressions, democratic rule and strong rule of law are positive determinants of CBRN incidents.