Leadership Traits and Ghana’s Foreign Policy: The Case of Jerry Rawlings’ Foreign Economic Policy of the 1980s

This article examines Ghana’s foreign policy-making with reference to internal and external determinants (structural/systemic). Besides these determinants, political actors (primarily, presidents/heads of state) have shaped the country’s foreign policy outcomes, but this field of enquiry (i.e. the individual-level analysis) has not, received much attention in the literature. To enhance the understanding of leadership and personality traits in foreign policy-making, this study draws on the theory of Leadership Trait Analysis to examine Jerry John Rawlings and Ghana’s foreign economic policy in the early 1980s. It argues that the leadership traits of Rawlings to some extent shaped Ghana’s foreign economic policy decisions in the early 1980s.     

The Super Confederacy: The Military in Fiji’s Politics

Abstract

The military has dominated Fijian politics for more than two and a half decades. After independence Fijian democracy was built on the façade of chiefly elite rule, the legacy of a colonial past. Since the passing of the Sukuna/Mara era, the patron–client relationship between the ruling elite and the military elite has been inverted. The military has since redefined national politics, with Maj. Gen. Rabuka then Rear Admiral Bainimarama becoming prime ministers, Fijian style, after leading successful coups. In the 2014 elections 10 military officers were elected to parliament under a newly decreed constitution. This paper analyses how the military elite once subservient to civilian rule has expanded its role as the major actor in Fiji’s politics.     

Inequality,Wealth and Thailand’s Politics

ABSTRACT

Acemoglu and associates argue that resistance to democratisation will be stronger where inequality is high. Piketty shows that shifts at the upper end of the distribution may be historically more significant than overall measures of inequality. In Thailand, the high level of income inequality has eased slightly since 2000, but there is a “1% problem” as peak incomes are growing faster than the average. Newly available data show that inequality of wealth is very high. At the top of the wealth pyramid, family holdings of commercial capital are growing. A significant proportion of top entrepreneurs have emerged within the past generation. A second tier of the wealth elite has developed over the past generation from rising property values, financial investments and professional incomes. Although their individual wealth is much less than the corporate elite, their numbers are much greater. The existence of the prospering “1%” and the emergence of the second-tier wealthy may corroborate Acemoglu’s proposition, but there are tensions within the wealth elite which may favour democracy.     

Facebook,Contestation and Poor People’s Politics: Spanning the Urban–Rural Divide in Cambodia?

Rural internet use, although still limited, is growing, raising the question of how rural people are using social media politically. As a vehicle of communication that permits the rapid transmission of information, images and text across space and connections between dispersed networks of individuals, does technological advance in rural areas presage significant political transformations? This article investigates this question in the light of a poor result for the Cambodian People’s Party in the 2013 elections, and the subsequent banning of the main opposition party, before the 2018 elections. Expanding internet use in rural areas has linked relatively quiescent rural Cambodians for the first time to networks of information about militant urban movements of the poor. Rural Cambodians are responding to this opportunity through strategies of quiet encroachment in cyberspace. This has had real effects on the nature of the relationship between the dominant party and the rural population and suggests the declining utility of the election-winning strategy used by the party since 1993. However, the extent of this virtual information revolution is limited, since neither the urban nor rural poor are mapping out new online political strategies, agendas or identities that can push Cambodia’s sclerotic politics in new directions.     

The Impact of International Perception on China’s Approach to Human Rights

East Asia - Given the tremendous amount of money that China has poured into events such as the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo and establishing Confucius Institutes throughout the...     

The Trump-Kim Summit,Future Scenarios,and Japan’s Policy toward the Korean Peninsula

On June 12, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (hereafter DPRK or North Korea) leader Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, met in Singapore for the first time. The two men signed a joint declaration and pledged to work toward denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and improving bilateral relations. These developments raise several questions. What impact will this summit meeting between the two leaders have on regional security? What sorts of opportunities and risks will that impact produce for Japan? How should Japan deal with this fluid regional situation?     

Japan’s Political Economy and Koizumi’s Structural Reform: A Rise and Fall of Neoclassical Economic Reform in Japan

For five years of his premiership, Jun’ichiro Koizumi bravely fought against politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups to promote his structural economic reform. Fortunately, by the time he retired, Japanese economy got out of the depression. But the tide changed. In the July 2007 Upper House elections, the public was opposed to structural reform that Koizumi and Abe had advocated. Now it is not clear where Japanese political economy is likely to go. This paper will take a long-term view on the evolution of Japan’s political economy, and try to understand Jun’ichiro Koizumi’s structural reform in that long-term context.

A Balancing Pretence: The Johnson Administration’s Policy towards Jordan, 1964–1967

King Hussein of Jordan was often at odds with his less conciliatory counterparts in the Arab world. He was one of the few Arab leaders who engaged and communicated with Israel. The administration of US President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to ensure the continuation of Hussein’s moderate line towards Israel and sold weapons to Jordan. However, providing military support to an Arab state when the vast majority of Americans favoured Israel involved significant political costs. As the Johnson administration saw it, openly favouring only Israel would negatively affect the USA’s position and interests in the Arab world. Therefore, Johnson pursued a policy of seemingly balancing Israeli and Jordanian interests. This article argues that the USA supported Jordan primarily to ensure Israel’s security, but ultimately, the Johnson administration lacked the will and understanding to properly address Jordan’s concerns and failed to prevent King Hussein from joining the Arab side of the 1967 War against Israel.     

The meanings of oriental masquerade in T.E. Lawrence’s Arabian ventures

This article explores the changing trajectory of T.E. Lawrence’s interaction with the Arab East on the eve of modernity. It traces his pre-First World War scholarly interest in Levantine antiquities (his archaeological expeditions in Syria), through to his subsequent military engagement in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918). An analysis of Lawrence’s adoption of various forms of Middle-Eastern attire provides a narrative of the events that led to his metamorphosis from a passive scholar into an active soldier. The article examines the homoerotic strands in Lawrence’s assumption of Oriental disguise and highlights its metaphorical significance vis-à-vis the political marriage of British imperial interests and Arab nationalist ambitions in the Arab campaign. The article finally draws on the implications of the Anglo–Arab alliance and its impact on changing the region and altering the image of the ‘Unchanging East’.     

The Bank of Japan’s Monetary Policy Lacks a Strong Driving Force for Building Inflation Expectations

The Bank of Japan has been failing to create the 2% inflation expectations. This article presents the author’s views about why the Bank of Japan’s monetary easing measures have not led to achievement of the inflation target of 2%, as well as on measures required to achieve the 2% inflation (and base wage increases of over 3% which is the flip side of a 2% inflation). The major points of this article are outlined below.

First, while many Japanese economists pay little attention to importance of mild inflation, the achievement of mild inflation of 2% is vital in ensuring a stable macroeconomic environment. Its achievement would enable lowering of real interest rates (i.e., reducing the real interest rate to minus 2% as against the 0% nominal interest rate) in the situation where the nominal interest rates are drifting at the lower limit against a backdrop of various economic shocks. It would also facilitate reduction in real wages against the downwardly rigid nominal wages, thereby helping companies revive their businesses, and also facilitating adjustments in the overall economy.

Second, the reasons why the current Bank of Japan’s monetary easing measures have been unsuccessful in attaining the inflation target of 2% are as follows: 1) most of the Japanese do not understand the importance of mild inflation and so the specific content of the inflation target (achieving 2% inflation and base wage increases of over 3%) is not clearly shared; 2) on top of the fact that deflation/zero inflation has become rooted in Japan’s economy over the past two decades, Japan has never adopted a monetary policy that would anchor a mild inflation expectation of 2% (until 1990, the Bank of Japan’s primary task was to be mindful of curbing the accelerating cost-push inflation associated with wage growth); and 3) the current Bank of Japan’s monetary policy lacks a strong driving force for building inflation expectations to induce a change in people’s behavior.

Third, in order to build mild inflation expectations of 2% under such circumstances, it is important that the parties concerned with employer’s associations and labor unions become fully aware of this target so that the 2% inflation and base wage increases of over 3% becomes a code of conduct. On that basis, the government and Bank of Japan need to clearly demand substantial base wage increases with concrete numerical targets combined with the achievement of mild inflation towards the goal of building inflation expectations.

Fourth, I propose as the first step that, along with the economic measures recently taken, the government and the central bank either mediate or participate in a specific attempt to build a consensus between the employer’s associations and labor unions on achieving, in a neutral manner, inflation of 2% and base wage increases of (at least) 2%. The aim is to establish an inflation of 2% and base wage increases of over 3% as a new code of conduct shared by employer’s associations and labor unions through continued labor-management agreement.

It is desirable that mild inflation is attained gradually by stimulating aggregate demand continuously, if time and cost permit and if the international environment tolerates weak yen. However, the current economic environment would not allow it and the leeway to ease monetary policy has also been limited. It is also difficult to continue to boost aggregate demand through fiscal policy in a sustained manner against a backdrop of a low birthrate and aging population. Although successful achievement of mild inflation is not a panacea for all economic problems, unless we first achieve mild inflation and restore the function of monetary policy, we will not be able to implement the subsequent structural reforms of the labor markets, etc. or fiscal consolidation, which are both painful. And thus, the long-term economic outlook of Japan is dismal. The author strongly hopes that the Abe Cabinet and Bank of Japan under the leadership of Governor Kuroda implements a drastic regime change similar to the one launched by the Roosevelt administration, overcome deflation and achieve mild inflation, restore the function of monetary policy at the earliest possible time, and get on the path to a true revitalization of the Japanese economy.     

The International Humanitarian Regime and its Discontents: India’s Challenge

Abstract

In recent years, concerns over whether the humanitarian regime as we know it will survive a many-pronged challenge have spurred humanitarian organisations to embark on processes of soul-searching and innovation. With a steadily increasing aid budget and its more active and vocal role in development and humanitarian politics—and in global politics more generally—India has acquired the label of ‘emerging’ humanitarian actor. This article, however, shows that in many ways India has been a humanitarian pioneer, and connects the norms and values of the international humanitarian regime with India’s own philosophical, religious and democratic traditions. It also discusses how Indian policy-makers have critiqued the current United Nations-led international humanitarian regime and investigates how the government of an increasingly powerful and influential Commonwealth country from the South interacts with an international regime created in Europe. For many Indian policy-makers, current humanitarian practices are tainted by what they see as North American and European interventionist and highly political agendas in the South. The article concludes that while there is still a lot to be said for a global, multilateral humanitarian regime led by the United Nations, it need not be Western-biased, either in theory or in practice.     

Coming of age in peace,prosperity, and connectivity: Cambodia’s young electorate and its impact on the ruling party’s political strategies

Cambodia’s youthful population is significantly responsible for a recent unexpected decline in the popularity of the Cambodian People’s Party, which has governed since the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. This increasingly young electorate has lived through an era of peace and openness with regular multi-party elections and impressive economic growth resulting in rapid structural change in the economy. Compared to their parents’ generation, this younger generation is better educated, highly mobile, aspires to salaried employment, and is well connected to new sources of information and technology. Because of this, their expectations, aspirations, opportunities, as well as challenges they face are remarkably different from those of older generations. However, Cambodia’s institutions of governance, dominated by personalized and patron–client networks that have been propped up by the ruling elite, has effectively marginalized this emerging youth population. This marginalization from political and economic resources has produced alienation and discontent, which represents a significant political problem for the ruling party’s political strategies.