东盟-海合会经贸合作关系：现状、基础及特点

东盟与海合会之间从早期的零散经济接触发展到深入的以＂粮食换石油＂为核心内容框架、多类商品贸易为基础的经贸合作领域;在此过程之中,东盟和海合会内部分别建立了自由贸易区和共同市场,并且建立东盟-海合会自由贸易区开始成为双方的共识,新加坡-海合会自由贸易区的建立以及随之而来马来西亚的诉求可以视作渐进式推进东盟与海合会关系发展的具体步骤。不仅如此,东盟与海合会之间的制度建设也取得重大进展,双方部长级会议已经成型,互派大使也将实现。所有这些对于进一步保障东盟和海合会的安全利益有着切实的积极意义。东盟-海合会自由贸易区未来的建立将会成为全球诸多自由贸易区之间相互连接的重要一环。     

海合会一体化中的优势与困境

海合会是中东地区乃至其他发展中国家和地区运行最为成功、结合最为紧密的区域性组织。在中东众多区域性组织日渐衰弱或瓦解的情况下,海合会身处恶劣的中东安全环境,却一直保持着旺盛的生命力,独树一帜,成功地推动海湾地区一体化进程,探索出一个适合中东区域特点的地区主义发展模式,在地区和国际事务中发挥举足轻重的作用。海合会区域发展的优势突出,取得了一些成功经验;同时面临许多困难和挑战。研究海合会的发展经验与教训,对中东乃至其他发展中国家和地区区域性组织的发展具有重要借鉴意义。     

Between caution and controversy: lessons from the Gulf Arab states as (re-)emerging donors

The history of Gulf donorship, its trajectory and underlying motivations, continues to be an understudied aspect of foreign aid. While the Gulf Arab states are not new donors, their manner of regional coordination, branding, and aid management are distinct. Often helping fellow countries of the South, particularly Arab and Muslim countries, these countries have moved towards stronger private sector involvement and into social spending programmes. Owing to their oil wealth, Gulf Arab states' are increasingly generous and yet they are also cautious after 9/11 about how and by whom their aid is channelled. Nevertheless, with oscillations in oil prices, continued controversy over rising Islamism post-Arab-Spring, the future of Gulf aid remains a valuable subject of study.     

The Arab Spring and the European Response

Europeans enthusiastically embraced the Arab Spring. However, the EU and its member states have lacked significant influence in a neighbouring region in turmoil. The EU has not devised new and more appropriate approaches towards the region, but rather relied on its traditional tools and frameworks. The Eurozone’s financial crisis and threat perceptions have quickly underminded the readiness of EU member states to contribute meaningfully to Arab transformations with money, market access and mobility. In addition, European support has not been equally welcomed across the region, and delays in terms of building empowered governments have prevented a quick impact. Moreover, the violent power struggles triggered by the Arab Spring have revealed the EU’s weakness with regard to effective conflict prevention and timely crisis management – and thus created an environment averse to democratic transformation and regional stabilisation.     

Transatlantic Democracy Promotion and the Arab Spring

The Arab Awakening can be seen as a symptom of failure of US and EU democracy promotion policies in the region. By identifying democracy with ‘liberal democracy’ – a discursively powerful political move – the contingent character of democracy has been lost. The US and the EU, the main promoters of a neoliberal understanding of democracy, have sided with the wrong side of history. And because they have failed to deeply revise the philosophical underpinnings of their policies, even after 2011, they risk another, even bigger, policy failure.     

The Arab Spring and the Saudi-Led Counterrevolution

The author contends that the Arab Spring has provided an opening for the Gulf Cooperation Council as a group and for Saudi Arabia as a long-time aspiring leader of the Arab world to try to expand their regional influence and global profile. An already weakened Arab state system, he argues, has been once again weakened by the sweeping wave of rebellion.     

Repression and Monarchical Resilience in the Arab Gulf States

Why the uprisings that broke out across the Middle East and North Africa in 2010-11 ousted the leaders of republics but left monarchies largely intact remains puzzling. One promising explanation for the resilience of monarchical regimes argues that monarchs exercise repression in a comparatively restrained and largely effective fashion. Proponents of this theory tend to conflate two crucial causal factors: the level of state coercion exercised against opposition activists and the degree of indiscriminateness with which coercion is deployed. By treating these variables as analytically distinct, a more compelling explanation for monarchical resilience can be advanced. The advantages of the revised argument are illustrated by revisiting the divergent trajectories of the uprisings in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.     

Arab Spring constitution-making: polarization,exclusion, and constraints

What determines the balance that democratizing constitutions strike between majority empowerment and individual rights? Some constitutions deliberately handicap state power to forestall threats to liberty, while others try to empower the government to hold the country together. We answer this question in the context of post-Arab Spring constitution-making, hypothesizing a U-shaped relationship between polarization among politically significant factions and net majority-empowering provisions in constitutions of new democracies, a relationship mediated by breadth of inclusion in the constitutional drafting process. We test the hypothesis through a controlled case comparison of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, the three Arab-majority countries in which protestors successfully toppled authoritarian regimes.     

中国与沙特阿拉伯的石油合作

石油价格高涨及国际石油市场形势的动荡,对产油国和石油消费国经济的发展有重要影响,中国随着石油需求的增加,寻求石油来源的稳定和安全日益重要。中东地区局势的不稳定性,油价、美元走势等世界经济运行中的不确定因素直接影响着沙特的石油生产,使其积极地寻求稳定的出口市场。中国与沙特具有以有益的合作方式开发利用这一利于两国经济发展的市场以实现共赢的基础。在了解发达国家在海湾及沙特石油领域的活动和沙特石油产业现状的前提下,中国在与沙特石油合作方面进行了有益的尝试。     

A Changing Mediterranean: Regional Organisations and North Africa during the Arab Spring

This article discusses the role played by the European Union, African Union and Arab League in the recent revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. It focuses in particular on the use and impact of political and economic conditionality, the decision-making processes within each organisation and the inter-regional forums created to deal with the crisis. The analysis acknowledges the increasingly active and vocal role played by regional organisations in the so-called ‘Arab spring’, but it highlights not just that they had few legal powers to intervene in these crises, but also that they seemed very reluctant to use any form of political or economic conditionality. It also reveals that the main purpose of inter-regional forums was arguably not to generate consensus internationally but rather to manage dissent. As such, the article encourages a reflection on the specific challenges and opportunities that North Africa and the Mediterranean region pose to regional conflict management.     

Yemen and the Arab Spring: Elite Struggles,State Collapse and Regional Security

Yemen, the poorest and most populous country on the Arabian Peninsula, has long been a prime candidate to join the failed state club. After the wave of uprisings sweeping through the Middle East reached the country in early 2011, the already high levels of instability and violence reached new heights and threatened to accelerate a steady march towards collapse. Even though a variety of scenarios can be identified for the future of Yemen, the most likely paths all imply a period of prolonged instability. This will carry significant consequences for regional and international security, in particular, by providing al Qaeda's local franchise with an attractive safe haven from which to plan and launch operations.     

目标与现实之间:论俄罗斯与亚太经合组织的经济合作

21世纪初期,俄罗斯积极致力于发展与亚太经合组织的经济合作并取得了一系列积极成果。俄罗斯的战略目标在于,通过"搭乘亚太地区经济快速发展的列车"来推进本国远东地区的发展和国家经济的现代化,维护并增进俄罗斯在亚太地区的经济利益,实现俄罗斯对外经济联系的多元性与平衡性,提高俄罗斯在亚太地区和全球的大国地位。然而,在俄罗斯与亚太经合组织的经济合作中存在一系列无法回避的严重问题和制约因素,这使俄罗斯面对的客观现实与希望达成的目标之间存在巨大"鸿沟"。