Our Friend or Foe? Exploring CommonGrounds for China-Africa Relations

China’s presence in Africa has a long history of cordial interaction spanning from ancient to contemporary times.The history of China-Africa relations is held in high esteem by the two sides,as both share a history of foreign invasions and of solidarity for a common destiny.However,new narratives promoted by antagonists of China’s presence in Africa are constructed to portray China in a negative light without recourse to history.Arguably,the Chinese exploration of Africa can be said to have started many centuries before the arrival of Europeans on the continent.     

Reinforcing or Breaking Party Systems? Internet Communication Technologies and Party Competition in Comparative Context

Many scholars speculate about the political implications of Internet proliferation. The Internet might, for example, open new channels of communication, which should benefit ideologically extreme and electorally small parties. On the other hand, the Internet might push party systems toward normalization, ultimately reinforcing the extant dominance of incumbent parties. We draw on data from 205 small and extreme parties in 35 countries and focus on both party- and system-level outcomes to investigate some of the most pressing research questions from this debate. We find that where party systems were previously concentrated or restrictive, Internet proliferation has no effect on votes for small and extreme parties. By contrast, in more permissive settings, Internet proliferation has had the small—but measurable—effect of driving up votes for these parties. At the level of the party system as a whole, however, we find little evidence that Internet proliferation increases either polarization or fragmentation.     

Is the Enemy of My Enemy My Friend?

The terrorist organizations that have posed the greatest threat to international security are those with allies. Terrorist groups at the core of alliance networks, particularly the Islamic State and al Qaeda, define the threat today, as they are able to accrue and disperse the benefits of their alliances—including greater lethality, longevity, and resilience—to their partners. While the consequences of these alliances are clear, their causes remain poorly understood, especially with respect to why terrorist alliances cluster around a small number of organizations. I propose that groups ally with the organization at the core of a network to address organizational deficits. In addition, the prospective partners must have both complementary needs and the ability to link their ideologies and frames to build a shared identity. Finally, groups must overcome their inherent suspicions and build trust to ally. These three mechanisms lead to alliance formation, but they also offer numerous avenues for disruption.     

China and the Changing World

A time comparison is necessary for analyzing the changes that have taken place in international relations. The September11 attacks took place in 2001, hence the need for a comparison of the situation before and after the events. Here we mean the time star…     

Changing the world of development research? An insight into theory and practice

Development research has been through many stages over the past few decades and during this time has experienced fluctuating appreciation by development practice. There is an increasing gap between different ways of doing development research. For some, the purpose of development research is primarily to influence policies, and in order to do this development research has to reframe its whole approach, language, and methodology. Others maintain that development research needs to distance itself, maintain an analytical and even critical approach towards development practice, and become an academic discipline in its own right.     

When Do Countries Recentralize? Ideology and Party Politics in the Age of Austerity

The Spanish executive centralized political power to manage the politics of austerity better in the aftermath of the Great Recession. This article analyzes the reinforcement of the power of the central government and argues that three explanatory variables—economic crisis, ideology, and party politics—account for recentralization, which is defined as fiscal consolidation, concentration of competences, bureaucratic rationalization, and ideological convergence. The debate about the motives and nature of recentralization (de jure vs. de facto) further polarized the center-periphery cleavage. Regional prosovereignty parties interpreted the reversal of decentralization as another sign that accommodation within Spain was not possible and that contestation was the way forward.     

Following the Party in Time of War? The Implications of Elite Consensus

Prominent perspectives in the study of conflict point to two factors that exert substantial influence on public opinion about foreign intervention: (1) news about casualties and (2) signals from partisan elites. Past work is limited, however, in what it can say about how these two factors interact. We present an experiment designed to understand the surprisingly common scenario where elites send competing messages about whether the public should support war or oppose it—and these messages do not coincide with party divisions. We find that partisans are generally insensitive to news about casualties, but they become noticeably more sensitive when they perceive within-party disputes over support for the war. Independents, however, respond to news of casualties irrespective of what messages elites send. These findings shed light on when and how the public responds to competing and unclear cues and speak to the role of public opinion in determining conflict outcomes and democratic foreign policy-making more broadly.     

Master or Servant? Common Agency and the Political Economy of IMF Lending

What explains the substantial variation in the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) lending policies over time and across cases? Some scholars argue that the IMF is the servant of the United States and other powerful member-states, while others contend that the Fund's professional staff acts independently in pursuit of its own bureaucratic interests. I argue that neither of these perspectives, on its own, fully and accurately explains IMF lending behavior. Rather, I propose a "common agency" theory of IMF policymaking, in which the Fund's largest shareholders—the G5 countries that exercise de facto control over the Executive Board (EB)—act collectively as its political principal. Using this framework, I argue that preference heterogeneity among G5 governments is a key determinant of variation in IMF loan size and conditionality. Under certain conditions, preference heterogeneity leads to either conflict or "logrolling" within the EB among the Fund's largest shareholders, while in others it creates scope for the IMF staff to exploit "agency slack" and increase its autonomy. Statistical analysis of an original data set of 197 nonconcessional IMF loans to 47 countries from 1984 to 2003 yields strong support for this framework and its empirical predictions. In clarifying the politics of IMF lending, the article sheds light on the merits of recent policy proposals to reform the Fund and its decision-making rules. More broadly, it furthers our understanding of delegation, agency, and the dynamics of policymaking within international organizations.     

Changing Owners,Changing Content: Does Who Owns the News Matter for the News?

The press is essential for creating an informed citizenry, but its existence depends on attracting and maintaining an audience. It is unclear whether supply-side effects—including those dictated by the owners of the media—influence how the media cover politics, yet this question is essential given their abilities to set the agenda and frame issues that are covered. We examine how ownership influences media behavior by investigating the impact of Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in August 2007. We collect data on every front-page story and editorial for 27 months, and we compare the difference in political coverage between the New York Times (NYT) and WSJ using a difference-in-differences design. We show that the amount of political content in the opinion pages of the two papers were unchanged by the sale, but the WSJ’s front-page coverage of politics increased markedly relative to the NYT. Similar patterns emerge when comparing the WSJ’s content to USA Today and the Washington Post. Our finding highlights potential limits to journalists’ ability to fulfill their supposed watchdog role in democracies without interference from owners in the boardroom.     

Changing the Face of Advocacy? Explaining Interest Organizations’ Use of Social Media Strategies

Social media have increasingly been recognized as an important and effective tool for advocacy. A growing body of research examines the use of social media in grassroots and social movements as well as issues related to civic engagement, social capital, and voter turnout. The extent to which organized interest groups have adopted social media as an advocacy tool, however, has been relatively ignored. This article examines the determinants of the use of social media tools by a broad range of interest organizations. We argue that social media use needs to be understood as part of an interest organization’s larger set of news media lobbying strategies. We explain social media use as a function of two factors: first, the importance organizations place on trying to shape lobbying debates through the news media; second, the importance they place on shaping their public image via the news media. We test this argument using a unique data set of interest group advocacy in the European Union. Controlling for a host of competing explanations, regression results provide evidence supporting our central argument.     

Out of the shadows or into the dark? Economic openness,IMF programs,and the growth of shadow economies

The existence of shadow economies is an important, yet understudied, issue for international political economy and development. This study examines how two distinct types of international economic engagement—economic openness and participation in International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs—affect the growth of shadow (informal) sectors. We theorize that increased economic openness will reduce the size of countries’ shadow sectors. More specifically, we posit that eliminating market-distorting trade barriers will decrease the incentives for shadow sector activities such as smuggling. Additionally, we posit that increased participation in global production and supply chains is likely to lead to a positive, “climb to the top” effect on states’ regulatory and labor policies that enhance the prospective benefits associated with formal sectors. Conversely, we argue that participation in IMF structural adjustment programs can lead to great shadow sector activity as IMF-imposed structural conditions might cause significant near-term economic hardship and degrade states’ regulatory capacity. The results from a panel of 145 countries from 1971 to 2012 indicate that economic openness reduces the size of the shadow economy, while participation in IMF programs is significantly related to a larger shadow economy. These findings have important implications for understanding how the divergent forms of international economic engagement might affect shadow economies.     

Speech by Aleksandar Vu?i?, President of the Republic of Serbia and the Serbian Kadima Party at the Thematic Forum on People-to-People Connectivity of the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation

正I am very pleased to be invited by the International Department, Central Committee of CPC to participate in the Sub-forum on Peopleto-People Connectivity. An important purpose of my current visit to China is to strengthen the economic, social and cultural exchanges with friends from all countries, promote nongovernmental exchanges, and enhance people-to-people connectivity. Non-governmental     

Predicting Peril or the Peril of Prediction? Assessing the Risk of CBRN Terrorism

Since the mid-1990s, academic and policy communities have debated the risk posed by terrorist use of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons. Three major schools of thought in the debate have emerged: the optimists, the pessimists, and the pragmatists. Although these three schools of thought draw on the same limited universe of data on CBRN terrorism, they arrive at strikingly different conclusions. Given the highly subjective process of CBRN terrorism risk assessment, this article analyzes the influence of mental shortcuts (called heuristics) and the systemic errors they create (called biases) on the risk assessment process. This article identifies and provides illustrative examples of a range of heuristics and biases that lead to the underestimation of risks, the overestimation of risks and, most importantly, those that degrade the quality of the debate about the level of risk. While these types of biases are commonly seen as affecting the public's perception of risk, such biases can also be found in risk assessments by experts. The article concludes with recommendations for improving the CBRN risk assessment process.     

What's in a Name? The Nature of the Individual in Refugee Studies

The category of refugee has been problematic for both practitionersand social scientists because it is difficult to define an objectivecategory that satisfactorily brings the real world, ethics,and theory into harmony. In recent years many critiques havebeen made of the assumptions built into the legal refugee frameworkand efforts have been made to refine the concept from multipledisciplinary perspectives. This paper examines several underlyingassumptions of these discussions, including the category offorced migration, through a discussion of the example of Salvadoransin the United States in the 1980s. One assumption has been notedbut insufficiently theorized: the centrality of the individual.The person assumed by both the refugee and human rights regimesof the United Nations is a culturally-specific construct definingthe relationship between the individual and society in a waythat precludes an adequate understanding of refugees.     

China and the Changing World——Summary of the International Seminar in Commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the CICIR(Part Ⅱ)

China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR)hosted an international symposium on China and the Changing World on September 4-5, 2010 to commemorate its 30th anniversary. Four panel discussions were held on China-U.S. relations, the emerging powers,China-Europe relations and Asia-Pacific cooperation. A summary of the discussions and the concluding speech by CICIR President Cui Liru are as follows.     

China and the Changing World——Summary of the International Seminar in Commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the CICIR(Part Ⅰ)

To celebrate its 30th anniversary,the China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations hosted a two-day seminar titledThe Changing world and Chinaon September 4-5 in Beijing.The fast-day seminar was held in the Shangri-la Hotel.Mr.Zhang Zhijun,Chinese Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs gave the keynote speech.Over seventy scholars from the United States,Russia,France,Romania,Japan,Korea,Australia,Singapore,Turkey,Pakistan,India,South Africa and China attended.     

The Communist Party of China and the Liberation of the Chinese Women——Speech at Sino-German Seminar on the Women''''s Status and Roles in the New Era

Deardistinguishedguests熏Ladiesandgentlemen熏Friends熏Today熏thefemalestatesperson熏expertsandscholarsofChinaandGermanyhappilygatherheretoex鄄changeviewsindepthonwomen'srights熏women'sparticipationindeliberationandadministrationofstateaffairs熏women'sstatusandroleintheeconom鄄icandsocialdevelopment熏women'sliberation熏women'semployment熏protectionofwomen'srightsandinterestsandcooperationbetweenthewomenofChinaandGermanetc.Thisisofimmediatesignifi鄄canceforthepromotionofthefriendshipandfriendl…     

″New Particles″ of the Changing World Situation

Theworldsituationasalwayscomplicatedandvolatilehasseensome″newparticles″afterthewaronIraq.Thisisaspecialwarthathasaffectedthewholeworld.ThecourseandconsequencesofthewarhaveexemplifiedthefeverpitchoftheU.S.u-nilateralismandtheheavycostthuspaidbytheU.S.Theyhavealsoresultedinthechangesofrela-tionsbetweenmajorpowersdeepeningthecontra-dictionsbetweenEuropeandtheU.S.inparticular.Furthermorethewaytodealwithotherregionalhotspotshasalsobeenaffectedandthestruggleforen-ergyhasbecomeevenfiercer.I.Th…     

“New Particles” of the Changing World Situation

The world situation, as always complicated and volatile, has seen some “new particles” after the war on Iraq. This is a special war that has affected the whole world. The course and consequences of the war have exemplified the fever pitch of the U.S. unilateralism and the heavy cost thus paid by the U.S. They have also resulted in the changes of relations between major powers,