Learning from your comrade’s mistakes: the impact of the Soviet past on China’s future

While the Soviet Union imploded in the midst of its attempt to reform itself, more than a decade later China stands as a testament to the resilience of Communist rule. I suggest that one reason China has been able to stave off a regime collapse is that Chinese leaders have sought to learn from the collapse of the Soviet Union and are seeking to adjust their policies to buttress their political power. I present evidence in support of this position including statements of political leaders and party insiders, internal government documents, and Chinese scholarship on the Soviet collapse.     

Distributive Politics and Regional Development: Assessing the Territorial Distribution of Turkey’s Public Investment

Turkey is often perceived as a country with low bureaucratic capacity and prone to political manipulation and ‘pork-barrel’. This article tests whether this is the case, by analysing the extent to which politics, rather than equity and efficiency criteria, have determined the geographical allocation of public investment across the 81 provinces of Turkey between 2005 and 2012. The results show that although the Turkish government has indeed channelled public expenditures to reward its core constituencies, socioeconomic factors remained the most relevant predictors of investment. Moreover, in contrast to official regional development policy principles, we uncover the concentration of public investment in areas with comparatively higher levels of development. We interpret this as the state bureaucracy’s intentional strategy of focussing on efficiency by concentrating resources on ‘the better off among the most in need’.     

The Effects of Ethnic Chinese Minority on Vietnam’s Regional Economic Development in the Post-Vietnam War Period

This paper examines the impact of the Hoa, an ethnically Chinese, economically dominant minority, on regional economic development in Vietnam. To address the endogeneity of the geographical distribution of the Hoa, we use an important historical episode: the rapid deterioration in Sino-Vietnamese diplomatic relationship that led many ethnic Chinese to flee abroad, particularly to the refugee camps in the Guangxi province of China, in 1979. We find that the effects of proximity to the refugee camps on the share of ethnic Chinese in 1989 were more pronounced for provinces that had a larger presence of the ethnic Chinese population in 1979. We also find strong correlations between the 1989 share of ethnic Chinese (instrumented) and contemporary indicators of economic performance. The results suggest that the ethnic Chinese minority had positive economic impacts on Vietnam’s regional economies and that the post-Vietnam War exodus of ethnic Chinese was likely to have had long-term negative economic impacts.     

Clash of Realities: Gazprom’s Reasoning on the EU Gas Trade

Abstract

Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian energy company, has major export markets in the European Union, but these are changing, challenging the established trading principles of Russian gas. The EU promotes switching to hub-based pricing, whereas Gazprom, despite adapting to some degree, has continued to highlight the advantages of long-term contracts. This article analyses the reasoning of selected Gazprom actors from an institutional-cultural perspective. Apart from conflicts of interest between Russia and the EU, it finds deep-seated differences in worldviews and perceptions of appropriate behaviour in trade relations. Such factors may play a larger role in decision-making than is generally acknowledged.     

Passing on the history of ‘comfort women’: the experiences of a women’s museum in Japan

This article explores the activities and experiences of a women’s peace museum in Japan which especially tries to pass on the history of Japan’s military sexual slavery, or the ‘comfort women’ issue. The system of Japan’s military sexual slavery had not been written as a part of history until courageous survivors testified and documentary evidence was unearthed in the 1990s. With few material exhibits of sexual violence, testimonies play a significant role in the exhibitions. Panels displaying the testimony of both survivors and former soldiers try to represent the person as a whole, situating sexual enslavement or crimes as part of their overall life, rather than extracting the harsh experience in an isolated way. The concrete and detailed activities of this privately run museum show the challenges faced by museums dealing with the dark history of their own country.     

Debt Politics and the Free Trade ‘Package’: the case of the Caribbean

While much has been written on how powerful institutions have used debt crises to foist free trade agreements on poorer states, this paper explores how the foisting of free trade agreements on poorer states has resulted in debt crises. Part one critiques the common-sense understanding of ‘free trade’ as a mere technical or policy issue, arguing that it is an intricate political, economic and ideological ‘package’ rooted in complex social, historical and cultural forces. Part two explores the role of debt in the free trade package by examining the impact of free trade agreements on the Caribbean over the past decade, during which time the region has experienced growing public and personal debt crises, further fuelled by an aid packages that included millions of dollars of concessional loans. It is argued that the contradictions of ‘free trade’ are mitigated through a ‘debt for trade’ paradigm, which Caribbean states are beginning to subvert through new preferential South–South partnerships.     

Capitalising on the financialisation of agriculture: Cargill’s land investment techniques in the Philippines

This paper has two objectives. First, it aims to analyse how transnational agricultural traders are positioning themselves in, and capitalising on, the financialisation of agriculture. Second, it seeks to position land investments in this process. This is done by situating Cargill – one of the largest agricultural trading companies in the world – into the transformation of agriculture in the world economy and by assessing its strategies of adaption through private equity-driven land investment in the Philippines. The article notes, following Burch and Lawrence, that the transforming position of agriculture is created by reshaping relationships in the agri-food supply chain and is based on the logic of finance capital. An example of this process from the Philippines is provided, where Cargill’s private equity arm – Black River Asset Management– is investing in land through equity acquisitions of a Philippine company, Agrinurture, in a manner that allows the company to adapt to national and local dynamics. The evolving and deepening connection between finance and agriculture is presented first, followed by a discussion of how Cargill fits into this transition in the Philippine context.     

Symmetrical Solutions,Asymmetrical Realities: Beyond the Politics of Paralysis?

The historic significance of the Good Friday Agreement and its role in ending organized political violence is acknowledged at the outset. The article then goes on to probe the roots of the political paralysis built into the architecture of the Agreement that are predicated on a misplaced political and cultural symmetry between the “two communities.” It is suggested that the institutionalized relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. facilitates a cross-party, populist, socio-economic consensus among the nationalist and unionist political parties on the welfare state, taxation and maintaining the massive British subvention to the region. This in turn allows them to concentrate on a divisive culturalist politics, i.e., on antagonistic forms of cultural and identity politics over such issues as flags, parades, and the legacy of the “Troubles” which spills over into gridlock into many areas of regional administration. The article argues for a much broader understanding of culture and identity rooted in the different, if overlapping and interdependent, material realities of both communities while challenging the idea of two cultures/identities as fixed, mutually exclusive, non-negotiable and mutually antagonistic. It then focuses on the importance of Belfast as a key arena which will determine the long-term prospects of an alternative and more constructive form of politics, and enable a fuller recognition of the fundamental asymmetries and inter-dependence between the “two communities.” In the long run, this involves re-defining and reconstructing what is meant by the “Union” and a “United Ireland.”     

‘Everyone Now is Concentrating on the Mining’: Drivers and Implications of Rural Economic Transition in the Eastern Region of Ghana

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is replacing smallholder farming as the principal income source in parts of rural Ghana. Structural adjustment policies have removed support for the country's smallholders, devalued their produce substantially and stiffened competition with large-scale counterparts. Over one million people nationwide are now engaged in ASM. Findings from qualitative research in Ghana's Eastern Region are drawn upon to improve understanding of the factors driving this pattern of rural livelihood diversification. The ASM sector and farming are shown to be complementary, contrary to common depictions in policy and academic literature.     

Under Which Constitutional Arrangement Would You Still Prefer to be Unemployed? Neoliberalism,the Peace Process,and the Politics of Class in Northern Ireland

This article seeks to critically examine the political economy of the Northern Irish “peace process.” When the principal paramilitary organizations in the region declared cease-fires in 1994, it was widely assumed that political progress would be followed by economic prosperity. However, this “peace dividend” has never fully materialized. Those working-class communities that were at the center of the Troubles have derived little economic benefit over the last two decades. Indeed, if anything the already substantial class divisions in the six counties have become more pronounced over the course of the peace process. The article concludes by suggesting that these widening socioeconomic disparities have the potential to undermine the prevailing political settlement in Northern Ireland.     

China’s impact on the landscape of African International Relations: implications for dependency theory

Since China began enhancing its economic relationship with key African oil exporters from the early 1990s, the effect this has had on the International Relations (IR) of Africa has remained largely unknown. This paper delves into African IR theory and finds that, rather than representing an alternative pole for African states to bandwagon with, China’s limited interest in Africa and its international socialisation, along with a possible growth of the middle class in Africa, is likely to give many African states few alternatives than those which have existed thus far in the postcolonial period. More development options are found to lie in sub-regional integration.     

The oecd’s discourse on fragile states: expertise and the normalisation of knowledge production

The concept of legitimacy has been highly influential in policy recommendations concerning state building in ‘fragile states’. Indeed, depending on how ‘legitimacy’ is conceived, the actions and practices of state builders can differ substantially. This article discusses what is at stake in the conceptualisation of ‘legitimacy’ by comparing the academic literature with the normative production of the oecd. Looking at two approaches to legitimacy – the institutionalist or neo-Weberian approach focusing on institutional reconstruction, and the social legitimacy approach emphasising the importance of social cohesion for successful state building – the article shows that both these conceptions are present in most reports, but also that the neo-Weberian approach tends to prevail over the social legitimacy perspective. Through a series of interviews with oecd officials and scholar-practitioners who have participated in the writing process of oecd reports, we hint, finally, at future research avenues on the social conditions of knowledge production and its normalisation.