The National Wages Council of Singapore: Issues for consideration

There are important regional dimensions to Australia's globalisation. This article focuses on Australia's developing relations with Southeast Asia and argues that the increasing interdependence between the two regions is weakening Australia's liberal democracy while at the same time highlighting the fundamental differences in legitimacy that exist between Australia and its Southeast Asian neighbours. In this context, this article considers important aspects of Australia's military and foreign relations with the region, the state's role in weakening civil society, and the emerging pattern of conflict with Southeast Asia.     

Putin and the Public Chamber

In 2004, Putin created a Public Chamber to enhance state-society dialogue and civilian oversight of the state system. Drawing on interviews with individuals active in Russian civil society or the foreign donor community, this article investigates the Public Chamber's role in legitimating Putin's regime. It examines the vision of state and civil society in the doctrine of "sovereign democracy"; Kremlin strategies for enforcing the narrow parameters this vision gives the public sphere; the model of civil society the Chamber provides, and its actual workings. The Public Chamber's ability to legitimate the regime is considered in the context of civil society's status in Russia.     

Wildlife policy matters: inclusion and exclusion by means of organisational and discursive boundaries

As a result of shifting wildlife policy, approximately one-sixth of South Africa's total land has been ‘game-fenced’ and converted for wildlife-based production during the last three decades. The wildlife industry has thereby become a multibillion rand industry with an increasingly vocal political arena. Seeing nature and its production as an organised political project, this article sets out to give insight into the shifting power relations between wildlife utilisers, government officials and civil society in South Africa. It does so by examining the production of dominant narratives on wildlife in the emerging organisational field of wildlife policy. This article studies the Wildlife Forum, an important national discursive space in which government engages with non-governmental parties about wildlife policy. The article argues that by means of organisational and discursive restructuring, government and industry actors have promoted a discourse alliance that endorses both government's conservation interests and industry's development interests, while excluding dissenting voices.     

NGO networks in Central Asia and global civil society: potentials and limitations

Based on research carried out by INTRAC (International NGO Training & Research Centre) in 2006–2007 in four countries of Central Asia for Oxfam–Novib, the article investigates NGO networks and their international links in the context of current theory on civil society and global civil society. Three case studies of NGOs working in service delivery, community development and free media are examined to show the diversity of aims and the potential and challenges of networking in the region. Civil society advocacy at national and international levels is analysed with a fourth case study on the campaign conducted in Kyrgyzstan against joining the World Bank's Highly Indebted Poor Countries programme. This example shows a more radical, alternative mode of civil society activism. The article emphasizes the importance of national- and regional-level networking and poses the question of whether NGOs in Central Asia can shift from their current positions on the periphery of global movements and debates.     

‘The Importance of being Civil Society’: Student Politics and the Reformist Movement in Khatami's Iran

Through a non-conventional understanding of civil society activism, the article provides an explanation of the relationship between the student movement and Khatami's governments in Iran. This study approaches ‘civil society’ as a space where we may observe the dynamics and exercise of power. The case study of the interactions between the Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat and Khatami's governments illustrates how civil society is not a fixed concept, but a contested one. By analysing the conflicts and interactions between these two actors, the article examines the continuous negotiations that reinvent the meaning of civil society and produce political inclusion or exclusion.     

Re‐evaluating Australia's “Cooperative Security” in Cambodia

Australia's role in resolving the conflict in Cambodia has been described as a triumph of cooperative security that achieved a balance between principles and pragmatism. The pursuit of cooperative security is a familiar theme in discussions of Australian diplomacy during the 1990s, yet there has been little scholarly consideration of whether this accurately captures the nature of Australian foreign policy at the time. This article explains Australia's conflict resolution role in Cambodia using an alternative, neoclassical realist framework. Specifically I demonstrate that expectations of reciprocity meant that Australia, when negotiating for peace in Cambodia, preferred bilateral over multilateral diplomacy. Secondly, Australia actively sought to lead the Cambodian peace‐keeping operation to enhance its regional security credentials. Finally, building closer ties with Vietnam was an important, often overlooked policy outcome.     

Great powers,civil society and authoritarian diffusion in Central Asia

ABSTRACT

This article draws on the authoritarian promotion literature to assess contending pressures for democratization and authoritarianism in Central Asia. Domestic actors ultimately determine receptivity to democracy promotion, but external pressures for democratic transformation or authoritarian persistence exist in Central Asia. A brief overview of authoritarian trends in Central Asia is followed by the theoretical arguments for authoritarian persistence, with special attention to the civil society dimension in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Western programmes supporting liberal democracy and civil society have encountered resistance from authoritarian leaders in Central Asia, though the evidence for direct influence from authoritarian external actors is limited. A process of indirect authoritarian diffusion, in combination with the region’s illiberal societies and Western democracy promotion fatigue, undermines the development of civil society and makes authoritarian persistence in Central Asia likely.     

China’s vietnam policy: The road to normalization and prospects for the Sino-Vietnamese relationship

Americans have both underestimated and exaggerated China’s ability to influence developments in Asia. Many saw the normalization of relations between China and Vietnam in 1991 as a sign of China’s growing regional dominance. This article reexamines the process of normalization against the background of historical twentieth-century relations in order to present a more balanced perspective of China’s Vietnam policy. The author examines China’s role at the 1954 Geneva Conference, in 1973 at the Paris Peace Talks, during the deterioration of relations in the 1970s that culminated in the Sino-Vietnamese border war of 1979, and finally, along the road to normalization. Understanding that Sino-Vietnamese cooperation depends less on China’s leverage over Vietnam than on the convergence of interests between the two countries, the author then explores the major issues in Sino-Vietnamese relations in the 1990s.     

Reviews

In recent years, urban community studies in China have been taking a closer look at neighbourhood space. Many researchers have examined neighbourhood using a state-society approach. This article argues that the fragmented state structure and the diversified society have led to calls for a different view of state and society. Based on the empirical studies in Shanghai, this article attempts to uncover the limitations of the state-society paradigm in exploring the transformation of urban grassroots, and suggests understanding the increasingly fragmented grassroots from examining different actors who are embedded in a specific neighbourhood space and vary in their interests and goals.     

论日内瓦会议后美国与柬埔寨关系的演变(1954-1960)

本文详细考察了1954-1960年间美国与东南亚小国柬埔寨之间的关系演变历程。独立后的柬埔寨,一度对美国怀有好感,希望通过获得美国的经济、军事援助来发展本国经济、维护国家的安全与独立。美国虽愿意对柬埔寨进行援助,但是其根本目的却是要将柬埔寨融入到美国在东南亚编织的反共体系中。随着时间的推移,双方在美援根本目标上的分歧与矛盾逐渐显露并激化。美国无法容忍柬埔寨独立、自主的中立路线,试图通过削减美援、甚至策划政变的方式改变柬埔寨的外交政策。然而,美国并未达到目标,相反使一度对美国怀有好感的柬埔寨走向自己的对立面。美柬关系的演变对研究这一时期美国与其他新兴独立的中小国家间的关系具有重要的参考和启发意义。     

Economic Statecraft,Structural Power,and Structural Violence in Sino-Kyrgyz Relations

Abstract

This article employs the concepts of structural power and structural violence to a undertake critical study of China’s use of economic statecraft toward Kyrgyzstan. The article argues that China’s reliance on economic exchange to secure its strategic ends in Kyrgyzstan has resulted in asymmetric economic exchange between the two states. Through this asymmetric exchange, China has gained influence over Kyrgyzstan’s domestic structures. Chinese structural power, in turn, contributes to violence across Kyrgyzstan’s structures of economy, environment, and society and within the country’s state-society relations. Structural violence within Kyrgyzstan also results in periphery instability and domestic insecurity for China. As such, the article argues that China’s use of economic statecraft to achieve its strategic aims in Kyrgyzstan is self-defeating.     

Sovereign risk: Gulf sovereign wealth funds as engines of growth and political resource

ABSTRACT

The economic reform agenda moving across the Gulf Cooperation Council states precipitated by the end of a decade-long run of high oil prices, high population growth rates, and costly demands on the provision of generous state services and subsidies has had some unexpected consequences. The reformulation of state-society relations, especially with regard to ideas of how to create economic growth and how to model a future social contract, challenges the accepted literature and construct of rentierism. This essay focuses on one distinctive site of these shifting relations between rentier states and their citizens: the sovereign wealth fund (SWF). SWFs are based upon the shared rents from oil production, but as they have evolved they are also becoming transformative in new national development strategies. Some SWFs now veer from traditional practices of safeguarding wealth to more experimental and high-risk strategies that claim to be able to diversify national economies from oil dependency, while also promising high returns. The current moment of late rentierism heightens questions of ownership and of the state’s role as guardian or steward of society’s wealth. Using SWFs to examine state-society relations and rentierism across the Gulf, this article focuses on the Saudi case.     

China’s Indochina policy

China has made virtually all the gains it can expect from the war in Cambodia. These include its regional influence, its relations with Thailand and the superpowers, and its punishment of Vietnam. Continued support for the universally condemned Khmer Rouge risks undermining China’s regional standing for no certain gain. It could forestall new possibilities for China in Phnom Penh and even in Hanoi. Thus, China will probably dump the Khmer Rouge when the time is ripe. Acceptance by China of the relities of Hun Sen’s Cambodia—provided it survivies—may be a not-too-distant prospect.     

Vietnam–Japan Relations in the Context of Building an East Asian Community

As the regionalism in East Asia has largely been characterized by networks of bilateral relations, the linkages between regional factors and bilateral relations in East Asia were clearly witnessed in the Cold War and the post-Cold War period. As a new period of regional cooperation has been ushered in under the so-called “East Asian Community” framework, it is essential to note that such interplay continues to be one of the most prominent characteristics in East Asia. The case study analysis of bilateral relations between Vietnam, a developing member in the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Japan, the region's leading economic power in Northeast Asia, provides an insightful look at the positive relationship between the regional conditions and bilateral relations in the new East Asia context. More importantly, bilateral relations can make significant contribution to shaping the regional setting, instead of being passively affected as in the past.     

A mob for hire? Unpacking older women’s political activism in Kyrgyzstan

This article explores the politics of older women in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, who have emerged as informal leaders in urban neighbourhoods to ‘speak for the poor’ to the state. Their mediating role is crucial for understanding community micro-politics, women’s political agency and more broadly state–society relations in the post-Soviet context. Drawing on in-depth interviews with older female informal leaders, the paper examines their political legitimacy and modes of mediation with the state and elites. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of political capital and ‘double dealings’, the paper argues that older women are important informal mediators, whose representational practices involve communal leadership, protest activism, bargaining and vote mobilization. Their multitasking roles are necessitated by their legitimation struggles and elites’ strategies of state capture. The article challenges the dominant media representation of older women activists as ‘a mob for hire’ and offers a more nuanced account of older women’s politics, addressing a blind spot in the literature on politics in Central Asia.     

Gramsci,Counter-hegemony and Labour Union–Civil Society Organisation Coalitions in Malaysia

The dramatic outcome of the Malaysian 2008 elections has been interpreted within a Gramscian framework. It has, for example, been suggested that the hegemony created by the Malaysian ruling class is being contested, leading to a weakening of its legitimacy, and that an active class of organic intellectuals is emerging and helping to develop potential bases for counter-hegemonic participation. We employ an alternative Gramscian approach, restoring relevant aspects of Gramsci's theories to the centre of analysis. We, therefore, focus on mutual perceptions in coalitions between civil society organisations and trade unions as a key indicator of the strength of counter-hegemonic forces. We conclude that accounts that claim that “counter-hegemony” is developing are questionable at best. Fundamental differences exist between these central institutional actors which sit uneasily with claims that the construction of counter-hegemony is under way.     

The economic development of Vietnam,Laos, and Cambodia

The three states of Indochina are engaged in the most radical economic transformation of any of the nations in Southeast Asia. Of the three countries, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with a population of 70 million, is the most important to the market economies of Asia and the West. Although their individual situations vary greatly, the systemic reforms of all three countries emphasize decentralization and privatization, and permit market forces considerable scope in determining economic activity. They remain several decades behind most of their counterparts in the rest of Southeast Asia with respect to the standards of living of their populations and the overall development of their economies. With the end of the Cold War, they have had to redirect their external political relationships and must contemplate internal political reforms occasioned by influences accompanying a new economic orientation. In Vietnam and Laos, the Communist party is in command of the society’s fundamental decisions; it is determined to retain political control. In Cambodia, pluralism and a form of democracy are mandated by the United Nations and by the new Cambodian constitution. Over the near term, full membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be important to all three countries once their economies become compatible with the other ASEANs.     

Peril and promise: a survey of India's strategic relationship with Central Asia

This article outlines the growing importance of India's relations with the Central Asian region. In particular, it explores security, economic, and cultural dimensions of the relationship. Important considerations for India in dealing with Central Asia include terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, energy security, and new export markets. Of equal gravity, however, is the nature of great power competition in the heart of Asia. The argument presented here is that India's relations with Central Asia are calculated to gain strategic depth in the region. However, relationships with Pakistan, the United States, and the Asian great powers tend to constrain these ambitions. The future direction of India's strategic relationships with Central Asia remains fluid.     

Toward China's “Hub and Spokes” in Southeast Asia? – Diplomacy during the Hu Jintao and First Xi Jinping Administrations

This article reviews China's diplomacy toward Southeast Asia and ASEAN chronologically from the 1990s to 2015, focusing on the changes that occurred during the second half of the Hu Jintao Administration and the further policy adjustments made during the first Xi Jinping Administration. While there are still many uncertainties regarding the policies, and many aspects are still in progress, this study provides an outline of the current period of change in China's relations with Southeast Asia and China's more active engagement in relations with ASEAN from the late 1990s through the early 21st century.