State engagement with non-state justice: how the experience in Kyrgyzstan can reinforce the need for legitimacy in Afghanistan

Currently there is a question of whether and how Afghanistan should engage non-state councils of elders to resolve disputes. In order to harness their benefits (e.g. efficiency), control their abuses (e.g. occasional controversial resolutions), and stabilize the resolution of disputes, some have argued that formal links should be established between the state judicial system and non-state councils of elders in Afghanistan. Others argue that mere informal links between the two systems should be established. Still others suggest that prior models of state engagement in Afghanistan should be revived. In Kyrgyzstan, just 65 miles north of Afghanistan, the Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet administrations have used various methods to engage non-state councils of elders. Despite these vastly different attempts at controlling local dispute resolutions, elders independently resolved disputes outside of Tsarist and Soviet control and continue to resolve disputes outside of post-Soviet state control in Kyrgyzstan. This phenomenon highlights the need for legitimacy in any models of state engagement that are considered for Afghanistan. If, as observed in Kyrgyzstan, people do not use state-sanctioned local councils in Afghanistan, then their purposes may be frustrated. Therefore, in addition to reviewing the experience with state engagement in other parts of the world, policy makers in Afghanistan should also review the historical and contemporary experience with state engagement in Kyrgyzstan. As the need for legitimacy is reconsidered and applied to the design of models for Afghanistan, it may be more likely that those models will be used by more people in Afghanistan and that their purposes will be furthered.     

A third world view of Japan

This article investigates the impact of direct foreign investment (DFI) on the foreign trade of China. It firstly presents a theoretical discussion of the impact of DFI on foreign trade from both macro and micro-economic views, and then provides an empirical study of the role of foreign-invested enterprises in the foreign trade of China. In particular, this article explores transfer pricing by multinational corporations (MNCs), probing their motivations and latitude to practice transfer pricing in the Chinese particular circumstances and examining empirical evidence.     

A critical understanding of good governance and leadership concepts written in the context of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the challenges to contextual discourse on Africa's development paradigms1

ABSTRACT

Good governance is a value-laden concept that is characteristically nebulous; it can mean different things to different people, depending on the context in which it is used. The same applies to leadership. Concepts, as Pauw (1999a, 465) puts it, are ‘tools of thinking’ and contexts are ‘the environments or frameworks in which they [concepts] operate’. Lucidity in the meanings of concepts is fundamentally important for shaping debate and enriching discourses. To maintain their power, concepts must be used in their proper contexts. This necessitates an understanding of the art of contextual discourse. Good governance is used in NEPAD as a principle and emphasised as a sine qua non for sustainable development in Africa. On the other hand, NEPAD premises Africa's re-birth or Renaissance on good governance and leadership, with a vision and commitment to repositioning the continent in global power balances. In this article good governance and leadership are considered as concepts. NEPAD is a textual context within which the two key concepts are used and should, consequently, be engaged. The article attempts a critical review of African scholarship engagement with good governance and leadership within the NEPAD context to determine the extent to which contextual discourse is practised. It further grapples with the immediate historical background to scholarship on Africa's development between the 1960s and early 1990s. The exercise reveals that much of the accumulated body of African scholarship and scholarship on Africa's development reviewed does not suffciently contextualise discourse on good governance and leadership within NEPAD, and its key assessment and monitoring device, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), and offers an alternative framework.     

Globalisation and the state revisited: A view from provincial Vietnam

The article considers the changing nature of the state in an era of globalisation, exploring the impact on the state of changes in cross-border flows and the rise of private and transnational actors. Presenting data from two Vietnamese border provinces, the article paints a picture of a relatively powerful state, which appears to be extending its reach in some areas. Asking how we reconcile this with increased cross-border flows and the rise of private and transnational actors, the article suggests that where sub-national governments are less integrated in global financial architecture, and where domestic private capital has close relations with the state, the impact in terms of precipitating a diminution of state power is likely to be less. Equally, the article argues that there is a tendency in some of the literature to overstate the influence of foreign private capital and transnational institutions on the state in ways which seem inappropriate away from the capital city.     

A house divided: A view of German unification as it has affected organised labour

The role of labour unions in the integration of the new Bundesländer is a key one. For the unions themselves, this process presents a challenge second only to the reconstruction period following the demise of the Nazi regime in 1945. The article takes an extensive look at the union expansion process and the differing organisational and personnel strategies of the DGB and its member unions it generated. Against this background, it discusses the most important economic and social issues facing the German unions in the context of east‐west integration.     

A strategic view of South African trade policy in relation to the future global trading environment

This paper puts forward a strategic view of what South African trade policy should be doing in relation to the future global trading environment. The future is uncertain, but if the past is prologue, South African trade policy needs to be positioned for a continuation of the commodity cycle, and to exploit markets in emerging economies, including Africa, more fully. Simultaneously, it needs policies to spur labour-intensive services and manufacturing exports, both because these will be needed if commodity markets are less robust and because of their employment-creating potential. South Africa's current strategy, however, is inflexible, heavily focused on domestic concerns and is in danger of placing South African exporters at a disadvantage in accessing the growing emerging economies. It also gives rise to an inherent tension between the interests of South Africa and the African region in trade negotiations. Having as the central tenet of trade policy a commitment to deal with tariffs on a case-by-case basis will not serve South Africa well in the global economy that is likely to emerge over the next 15 years. A simpler tariff structure would facilitate the conclusion of free trade agreements and actually make industrial policy more effective.     

The origins of the Vietnamese revolution: Taking the long view

Abstract

Americans knew little about Vietnam when they assumed command of the Indochina War in 1954. There were no American scholars who devoted their careers to its study, and, with the exception of Virginia Thompson's French Indochina and a few other works, there was no American body of work on the subject. And so, to better understand the political and social forces confronting them, Americans took possession of the entire French work on Vietnam as part of their legacy of war. Thus, as the first American scholars began to study the Vietnamese revolution, they built on the foundation laid by decades of French scholarly effort.     

日本护理产业发展的制度环境、现状及问题

日本《护理保险法》(2000年)实施十多年来,在人口老龄化背景下,以老年人为对象的护理产业迅猛发展,在很多产业市场规模缩小的时候,护理产业却成为为数不多的增长产业。文章主要以护理保险制度实施后的护理产业发展作为切入点,对护理产业发展的制度环境、发展现状、市场规模及经济效益进行了深入分析,从中提炼出发展中存在的问题。全面了解日本护理产业发展状况,借鉴其发展经验,对促进中国护理产业的发展具有现实意义。     

What Indians say about Mestizos: A critical view of a cultural archetype of Mexican nationalism

Abstract — This article seeks to analyse the views held by indigenous people of one of the main symbols of national identity in Mexico: the mestizo. While great importance has been attached to the archetype of the mestizo , the opinions of indian peoples with regard to its appropriateness as a formula for integration have not been explored. The views collected and analysed in this article were provided by members of ethnic groups who have received a modern education. The article seeks to explore these responses in the context of the different theoretical approaches of modernisation and ethnicity as components in the contruction of nationhood.     

China’s view of the war threat and its foreign policy

In analyzing China’s foreign policy since 1949, people tend to take for granted the nature of China’s concern for its national security as the predominant factor in the development of its foreign policy without distinguishing changes in the functions of this factor. The evidence given in this article argues that at least as early as the late 1970s, leaders in Beijing, predominantly Deng Xiaoping, no longer held Mao’s view of the inevitability and imminence of world war, and of the Soviet threat to China’s national security. Therefore I propose that from the beginning of the Deng era in 1978, national status enhancement or muscle building through modernization had replaced national security as the persistent and principal theme in China’s foreign policy. We should not interpret the main reason for China’s increased push for the formation of an international antihegemony united front as its increasing concern about the Soviet threat to its national security. In turn, we may conclude that when China abandoned this united front foreign policy to adopt the Independent Foreign Policy in 1982, it was neither because of a new global reality that was shaping the reorientation of its foreign policy nor because only in 1982 did China rediscover the Soviet threat.     

Reassessment of the state role in the development of high-tech industry: A case study of Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park

This article reassesses the state role in the development of high-tech industries through a case study of one of the earliest science parks in Asia, Hsinchu Science Park. Taking a historical and public policy approach to this issue, the article argues that the state did play a positive role in the growth of hightech industries in Taiwan. However, not all positive outcomes were derived from rational political elites and state bureaucracy. There existed many unintended and path-dependent consequences. In addition, many planned goals have not been achieved and there were many side effects and negative outcomes neglected by previous studies, which give significant implications for the evaluation, of state's capability and limitation in pursuing economic development.     

Festival and revolution in the highlands of Vietnam: A Vietnamese artist shows how the revolution came to a mountain people in Central Vietnam

Abstract

Spring Festival on the High Plateaus (figure 1) is the name given by Vietnamese artist Tran Huu Chat to an engraved, painted, and lacquered wooden panel executed in 1962 and acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi. As so often in Vietnamese art of recent decades, this large (120 × 96 cm), elaborate, and richly populated composition is socially and politically charged, but it is also of exceptional ethnographic significance. The theme of solidarity in revolutionary struggle between ethnic minorities and the Vietnamese majority is that of much Vietnamese art of the U.S. war period, especially poster art. Moreover, this homage to Vietnamese “primitives” is in the spirit of President Ho Chi Minh's own repudiation of racism; his 1945 Declaration of Independence avoids any equivalent of the term “merciless Indian savages” contained in its model, the U.S. Declaration of Independence.