Democracy in Latin America: Issues of Governance in the Southern Cone

This article explores academic debates on transitions and democratic development, and outlines ideas relating to the governance issues considered by the papers in this special section. It presents a discussion of recent debates on democracy and transition in Latin America and concludes on the need to conceptualise the state in the region after the return to democracy. In so doing, it analyses issues of governance and highlights the role of the political class in building a democratic state.     

Education for whom? Engineering multiculturalism and liberal peace in post-conflict Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the changing relationship between the state and its education system at the intersection of diverging visions and agendas of local and international actors in post-war Kosovo in the period 1999–2014. Specifically, it explores why and how externally driven reforms that carry the ideals of an inclusive multi-ethnic polity clashed with domestic actors’ visions of education as a locus of national resistance and independent statehood. To critically inquire into the direction of education reforms in the post-war context, the empirical part of the analysis identifies critical historical junctures through which these competing ideas and relevant actors changed and/or gained traction. Accordingly, the paper focuses mainly on the post-war period, but also considers the pre-war period in order to highlight the predominant vision of local actors on the roles of education, its intertwinement with unfolding conflicts, and its central role in processes of state formation and nation-building, in particular in a post-war context. The analysis is based on genealogical historical narrative, textual analysis of key official documents related to the education sector in Kosovo, and semi-structured interviews conducted in Pristina in November 2013 and October 2016. The analysis demonstrates that the role of education in post-war Kosovo reflects tension between multicultural ideals promoted by international actors, on the one hand, and nationalist, often exclusive concerns of local actors embedded in an unfinished and contested process of state- and nation-building, on the other hand. The paper finds that by over-emphasizing equal collective rights, extensive autonomy for the different communities and ethnic-based decentralized governance, international actors have unwillingly contributed to further education separation along ethnic lines.     

列宁对马克思主义国家治理理论的贡献及其当代启示

列宁在治理世界上第一个社会主义国家的实践中,捍卫并发展了马克思主义的国家治理学说。他将马克思主义国家治理由理论变为现实,并基于俄国现实探索东方社会主义国家治理道路,首创并完善苏维埃社会主义制度。列宁国家治理理论对中国特色社会主义国家治理现代化具有重要启示意义。当代中国应把握国家治理的科学内涵,实事求是地探索国家治理路径...     

Building Neo-liberal Markets and Other Agendas: The Politics of Risk Management at AusAID

Abstract

This article analyses emerging approaches by donors to risk management, focusing on the case of the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). It suggests that AusAID's understanding and management of risk are expressions of particular political and social interests and, subsequently, that its approach to risk management is inherently political in nature. While AusAID's policies and guidelines on risk management identify a wide range of risks as being relevant to the agency's work – including risks to poverty reduction and sustainable development – in practice it has focused on managing risks to the building of neo-liberal markets, both within Australia and in developing countries, and the Australian government's foreign policy objectives. To illustrate these points, we present an analysis of AusAID's approach to risk management in a major economic governance project, the Philippines-Australia Partnership for Economic Governance Reforms. We conclude by indicating ways in which donor approaches to risk management can be revised to give greater attention to the needs of the poor and civil society, while acknowledging that such revisions may be contingent upon prior changes in the structure of power and interest and/or institutional characteristics of aid policy-making processes in donor countries.     

How important is participatory constitution-making? Lessons from Timor-Leste and Bougainville

How can fragmented or divided post-conflict societies best be accommodated and adjust to state structures in order to achieve sustainable peace? Reflecting on the contrary experiences of Timor-Leste and Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea, this article argues the answer to this question rests partly on the role that participatory constitution-making can play in state-building, nation-building and peace-building. Constitution-making can play a central role in state-building, because constitutions provide the operating system that establishes state institutions and regulates state power. It can also play a nation-building role by defining the political bond between the people, and a peace-building role by encouraging reconciliation and embedding state institutions in society. This article draws on liberal political theory to argue that public participation in constitution-making can enhance the likelihood that the constitution produces legitimate and effective state institutions, generates a unifying sense of national identity and establishes sustainable peace. It finds that extensive public participation in Bougainville played a positive role by creating a sense of common identity, reconciling many of the most severe societal divisions and creating institutions that are relatively legitimate and effective. In contrast, minimal public participation in Timor-Leste meant that the constitution-making process did not play a positive role; it did not create a unifying national identity, left certain societal divisions unreconciled and exacerbated others, and created institutions that were largely illegitimate and ineffective.     

从应对贸易摩擦到预防经济脱钩:2019年中国经济外交形势分析

2019年,中国经济外交在严峻的国际经济环境中负重前行,取得了一系列进展。首先,以建设性姿态与美国展开经贸谈判,最终在年底达成中美第一阶段贸易协议,避免了中美经贸关系的进一步恶化。其次,积极加大对欧洲、日本、俄罗斯以及东南亚等主要经济体的经济外交,推动国际经济合作,力促RCEP完成谈判。这些努力在一定程度上化解了中美贸易战带来的负面影响。第三,中国的"带路"外交进入机制化建设的新阶段,尤其是新建立的"一带一路"新闻与智库交流机制得到各方积极响应。展望2020年,中美经贸关系依然错综复杂,WTO改革压力重重,欧洲和日本等主要经济体对中国的疑虑可能会进一步发酵,中国经济外交依旧充满挑战。     

Power elites,war and postwar reconstruction in Africa: Continuities,discontinuities and paradoxes

This article interrogates the manner in which the composition, character, regeneration, and accumulation strategies of power elites and the organisation of their hegemony is being affected or unaffected by recent developments, most especially, civil wars and their corollary, postwar reconstruction, in Africa. By seeking to understand how conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction alter or transform the character, recruitment and role of power elites, and the operational context (the nature of the state) in Africa, this article draws attention to the prospects of transforming the nature of leadership in Africa. I contend that the capacity for violence and terror by individuals (especially young combatants who were previously marginalised) and armed groups has become a new marker of elitism and a leverage on peace agreements. Moreover, post-Cold War conflicts in Africa have accentuated the emergence of war-making power elites as ‘executors’ and ‘trustees’ of peace treaties, or ‘peace celebrities’ with considerable leverage on the course and outcomes of postwar reconstruction. The instability in post-1989 Liberia is used as a case study to reflect this claim. I also cite examples of members and leaders of armed groups in countries such as Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo where the capacity for violence translated into political rewards and gains in peace agreements.     

Good Inflation, Bad Inflation: The Housing Boom, Economic Growth and the Disaggregation of Inflationary Preferences in the UK and Ireland

This article presents a comparative analysis of the determinants, sustenance and broader macroeconomic consequences of the ultimately unsustainable housing boom in Ireland and the UK in recent years. It examines, in particular, the role played by ostensibly depoliticised monetary policy in both contexts in the development of a house price bubble that has served to fuel consumer-led growth. It assesses the viability, sustainability and reproducibility of the private debt-financed consumer boom that house price inflation has generated. In the process it draws attention to the increasingly differentiated character of both government inflationary preferences and counter-inflationary performance—with the shift to official measures of inflation that exclude mortgage interest repayments and, in the UK at least, to the covert re-politicisation of monetary policy. It concludes by suggesting that governments may well not have time-inconsistent inflationary preferences so much as sectorally specific inflationary preferences. This might be summarised in terms of the aphorism: 'retail price inflation bad, house price inflation good'.     

“痕迹主义”的衍生逻辑及治理路径——基于政府绩效管理视角分析

“痕迹主义”是痕迹管理的异化衍生,是以痕迹代替政绩,过于看重留痕而不注重实际效果的一种工作作风,其本质是形式主义和官僚主义的新型表现形式。缺乏系统科学的绩效目标、绩效考核指标设计不科学、绩效任务执行过于频繁化、绩效考核方式缺乏差异性、绩效考核结果运用不当,共同促成了“痕迹主义”的产生。结合绩效管理理论,应从绩效目标设置...     

中国特色社会主义国家治理的优势认同与入径选择

中国特色社会主义的国家治理优势是具有集成性、高效性、吸纳性和自主性特性的结构性优势。增强中国特色社会主义国家治理的优势认同,对进一步发挥中国特色社会主义国家的治理优势意义重大,必须增强国家治理优势主体内容的认同,消除国家治理优势理解上的认同偏颇。增强中国特色社会主义国家治理优势的认同自觉,为中国特色社会主义国家的治理优势认同奠定实践基础,深化在具体体制机制、运行环节和方式方法上的改革创新,强化斗争意识、增强斗争本领,是增强中国特色社会主义国家治理优势认同的入径选择。