Historical Memories and Security Legislation: Japan's Security Policy under the Abe Administration

In Japan, two political issues came to the forefront in the year marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. While usually dealt with separately, the Statement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, issued on August 14, 2015, and the security legislation based on the concept of a “Proactive Contribution to Peace” both relate to the question of how we view Japan's place in international society. This article examines how both these issues support Japan's commitment to maintaining its identity as a peace-loving nation and its responsibility to contribute to international peace and prosperity.     

日本安倍政府对东盟的现实主义外交刍议

日本安倍政府“巧妙”利用与东盟建立友好合作关系40周年的重要节点,通过频繁的政治互动与密集的经济合作,深化了日本与东盟在地区政治、经济、安全等各个维度上的政策拟合度。不仅如此,迫于现实与战略层面的利益考虑,安倍政府试图借助政治拉拢与经济控制,把东盟塑造成“遏制中国发展”的潜在战略盟友。但由于存在过分强调主观意志、工具主义与利益至上等严重的局限性,日本安倍政府对东盟的外交战略注定无法达到预期效果,也难以在现实层面拉拢东盟构筑对华包围圈。     

Moving Beyond 100 Years: The “WA Approach” to National Party Survival

Since its formation in 1913, the Western Australian branch of the National Party has faced many challenges to its survival. Electoral reform removing rural malapportionment in 2005 prompted changes in strategic direction, including abandoning coalition with the Liberal Party and creating a discrete image, branding and policy approach. Holding the balance of power after the 2008 election, the party adopted a post‐election bargaining strategy to secure ministries and funding for its “Royalties for Regions” policy. This “WA approach” is distinctive from amalgamation and coalition arrangements embraced elsewhere in Australia. This article updates progress of the strategy following state and federal elections in 2013 and finds that it has been a success measured by increased votes, seats and policy influence and expansion into regional Western Australia to displace Labor. However, its applicability to other branches of the National Party is likely to be limited.     

论安倍内阁中东派兵的决策、突破与目标

在美伊两国关系对立及中东地区局势紧张的背景下,2020年初,日本海上自卫队部队前往中东地区进行情报收集。此次中东派兵,其决策过程完全是在安倍首相主导下完成的,且基于中东平衡外交的立场而决定日本"独自派兵"。它既体现了冷战后日本海外派兵的延续性,又在法律依据、日美同盟、政策路径等领域取得了新突破。通过中东派兵,安倍内阁试图实现多重战略目标,派兵本身所蕴含的象征性意义远大于其具体实效。     

Poverty and Its Possible Cures: Abe Isoo and Kawakami Hajime

This article explores the views of two eminent Meiji intellectuals, Abe Isoo (1865–1949) and Kawakami Hajime (1879–1946), regarding poverty and its possible cures. Both men addressed this subject at a time which saw the rapid development of monopoly capitalism in Japan. Politically, this period was typified by the social and political oppression that followed the Public Order Police Law (1900) and the High Treason Incident (1910). The latter marked the beginning of the “winter” of the socialist movement in Japan. Abe, the father of Japanese socialism, and the younger Kawakami, a bourgeois economist and later a Marxist, were two of the more prominent intellectuals concerned with poverty. This article outlines their thoughts on poverty and its possible cures in the period between 1903 and 1916 as expressed in their most representative works on the issue, Abe’s Saikin no shakai mondai (Current Social Problems), (1915) and Kawakami’s Bimbô monogatari (The Tale of Poverty), (1916).     

The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations

The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations. By Benjamin Gregg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). pp.viii + 283. US$59.95 (hb).     

Beyond 'Dragon in the Bush': The Study of China Africa Relations

In the wake of China's Year of Africa in 2006, China–Africarelations are currently the subject of unprecedented attention.However, although those relations are widely covered they arealso under-researched. This article offers an introduction toChina–Africa relations, covering background to the historyand politics of Chinese involvement in the continent and identifyingareas of further research. It concludes by calling for the studyof China–Africa relations to develop a culture of seriousresearch beyond current ‘dragon in the bush’ preoccupationsand so engage a complex subject that is about to become a mainstreamissue in African politics. The author is grateful to Nina Sylvanus, Ricardo Soares de Oliveira,Chris Alden, and especially Nai Rui Chng and Deborah Brautigamfor helpful comments on an earlier version.     

The Rescaling of the Chinese State and Sino-North Korean Relations: Beyond State-Centrism

While Beijing has repeatedly signed up to multilateral sanctions against North Korea, it is widely regarded as having failed to enforce them. Indeed, China’s deepening economic engagement with the country has led observers to debate the causes of this seemingly duplicitous approach. Constructivist and realist approaches have relied on state-centric frameworks that serve to reduce Sino-North Korean relations to the high politics of Beijing-Pyongyang diplomacy in the context of broader geopolitical dynamics. This article argues that such approaches pay insufficient attention to the profound rescaling of the Chinese state in recent years and the implications this process has for bilateral relations. This article sheds light on how Sino-North Korean relations are being driven by actors at multiple scales and by a multitude of objectives as a result of decentralisation and marketisation alongside increasing geographical unevenness within China and new challenges to continued capital accumulation. North Korea has come to play an increasingly important role in efforts to facilitate economic recovery in the northeastern border regions through serving as spatial fix for Chinese manufacturing capital. These new cross-border flows of capital and labour suggest an emerging pattern of Sino-North Korean relations that is by no means static but in considerable flux.     

大国战争之后:权力生产方式的历史演变

文章遵循历史脉络,从国际政治经济学的视角定义权力及其生产方式,将战争理解为权力博弈的一种手段,并考察随着权力及其生产方式的变化,大国获取权力和财富的渠道更为多元,战争的“投入—产出”比下降。文章认为,当政治权力意味着引领构建传统和非传统安全共同体,经济权力意味着领导全球经济治理和解决发展问题,多边制度体系及其信誉与融资成为新的权力生产方式,战争就不再作为大国博弈的必要选项,多边制度框架下的博弈成为大国战争之外的新主题。遵循制度逻辑、维护制度信誉是大国获得发展融资和治理融资,进而保持权力可持续生产的理性更优选项。     

The Second-Term Obama Administration and Japan

The controversy in the Unites States on how to deal with the “fiscal cliff” revealed not just a deep ideological difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party but also a new sign of a possible crack of the conservative Republican ranks between those Republicans close to the Tea Party and those who favored the tax hike for the wealthy in order to save the tax cut for the rest of the people.

The planned deep cuts in the defense expenditure will have important implications for national security of Japan, which recently experiences increasing tension with China over the Senkaku Islands. The Obama Administration adopted a tough stance with China over the territorial issues in the South China Sea in July 2010. Rebalance to Asia could be understood, at least in part, to be a response to the rise of China, in a financial situation with fewer resources available for the national defense in the US.

The logical conclusion for Japan and the US would be for both of them to deepen security cooperation. Shinzo Abe, the new Prime Minister of Japan, should further clarify his foreign and national security policy priority and concentrate his efforts on strengthening the alliance with the US and building up the capabilities to defend Japan's territory, while exerting caution in jumping into “history” issues with China and South Korea so that Japan's message on the Senkaku Islands issue is crystal clear and focused: that it is against the established international norm to try to change the status quo by force or intimidation; this message should have universal appeal to a wider international community.     

Beyond German Politics: Comparing European Polities Explicitly

The reluctance of British political science to continue an earlier comparative politics tradition did not deter Gordon Smith from steering a path between a predominant false particularisation and a minority push towards false universalism. A comparison of the first and fifth editions of Politics in Western Europe shows the continuing thrust of a political sociology approach, with political and social structures and forces having priority over constitutional and institutional provisions. Unapologetically 'old-fashioned' in eschewing law-like generalisations, comparison's prime purpose is to improve our understanding of individual countries: in Gordon Smith's case, it started and finished with Germany.