The Right to Have Rights as a Right to Enter: Addressing a Lacuna in the International Refugee Protection Regime

This paper draws upon Hannah Arendt's idea of the 'right to have rights' to critique the current protection gap faced by refugees today. While refugees are protected from refoulement once they make it to the jurisdiction or territory of a state, they face an ever-increasing array of non-entrée policies designed to stymie access to state territory. Without being able to enter a state capable of securing their claims to safety and dignity, refugees cannot achieve the rights which ought to be afforded to them under international law. Drawing upon both legal theory and political philosophy, this paper argues that refugees today, just as the stateless in Arendt’s time, must be afforded the ‘right to have rights’, understood as a right to enter state territory.     

Signaling Alliance Commitments: Hand‐Tying and Sunk Costs in Extended Nuclear Deterrence

How can states signal their alliance commitments? Although scholars have developed sophisticated theoretical models of costly signaling in international relations, we know little about which specific policies leaders can implement to signal their commitments. This article addresses this question with respect to the extended deterrent effects of nuclear weapons. Can nuclear states deter attacks against their friends by simply announcing their defense commitments? Or must they deploy nuclear weapons on a protégé's territory before an alliance is seen as credible? Using a new dataset on foreign nuclear deployments from 1950 to 2000, our analysis reveals two main findings. First, formal alliances with nuclear states appear to carry significant deterrence benefits. Second, however, stationing nuclear weapons on a protégé's territory does not bolster these effects. The analysis yields new insights about the dynamics of “hand‐tying” and “sunk cost” signals in international politics.     

Interpreting national security and intelligence in geographic exploration: Explorers and geographers in America's early republic

‘Intelligence’ connotes the collection of information in furtherance of policy and strategic security objectives. Intelligence practitioners tend to look primarily to the histories of battlefield reconnaissance and court intrigue for their profession's discursive precedents. For the Western state, the mastery of territory has also been an important security objective since the Age of Exploration. Specifically, in the American case, territorial expansion and the subduing of new territory long lay at the heart of America's viability as a state. Thus, the intelligence field ought also to recognize geographical exploration as deeply implicated in Western national security discourse and as sharing an epistemological similarity with intelligence gathering. Both intelligence gathering and geographical exploration rely upon ‘Humint’, that is, informants penetrating distant and hidden places and reporting on the features found therein. America's early Republic period offers key examples of this fundamental similarity.     

Contested Asia's ‘New’ multilateralism and regional order*

Multilateralism has become an increasingly significant part of Asia's international relations. This paper critiques the premise that there are two phases of regional multilateralism, pre- and post-global financial crisis and instead argues that there has been one long 25-year expansion phase. Initially, this was prompted by the risks and opportunities of globalization but was adapted as a strategy to manage a changing regional order. More recently, regional multilateralism has taken on competitive characteristics reflecting Asia's more contested dynamics. The US and its allies are trying to use multilateralism as part of their broader strategy to sustain the prevailing regional order. China is also attempting to use multilateralism as a part of its efforts to change the region to one more in line with its interests and values. Multilateralism has become a sublimated form of contestation over the form and function of Asia's international order. A key consequence of this will be to weaken the policy impact of existing institutional efforts and to promote zero-sum approaches to international policy among many Asian states.     

The Council for the Australian Federation: A New Structure of Australian Federalism

In October 2006, state premiers and territory chief ministers gathered in Melbourne for the first meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation (CAF). This little‐heralded event marked the beginning of the first formalised structure for state and territory only collaboration since Federation. This article describes the genesis and creation of this new structural response to ongoing state concerns about the trend to an increasingly centralised pattern of Commonwealth‐state relations. It identifies the intended functions of the Council, which include: acting as a mechanism for coordinating approaches to negotiations with the Commonwealth; operating as a clearing house for policy ideas in Australia and internationally; harmonising regulatory frameworks; and developing improvements to service delivery in areas of state responsibility. Informed by interviews with key players involved with its establishment and documentary sources, this article assesses CAF's performance during its first 18 months of operation. It explores the hopes and aspirations of key CAF stakeholders, and some of the issues that have confronted the fledgling organisation. Personnel changes among the cohort of state and territory leaders, and the election of a federal Labor government in November 2007 have altered the dynamics of CAF. The article argues that CAF's emergence is an attempt by sub‐national governments to develop new capacity and leverage to address the asymmetries that characterise contemporary Australian federalism. However, there are questions about CAF's future, particularly about state and territory governments' capacity to pursue collaborative agendas given the pace and scope of Kevin Rudd's ‘new federalism’ reforms and the demands it is placing on their policy and administrative systems.     

Japan and the Kyoto Protocol: reconstructing ‘proactive’ identity through environmental multilateralism

The aim of this article is to interpret Tokyo's pivotal role in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations as a practice of reconstructing Japan's identity of an ‘international’ and ‘independent’ country. The text bases this argument in poststructural national identity scholarship, which believes that discursive differentiation to international forces (‘others’) plays a decisive role in formulating state's identity. For most parts of the post-war history, United States served as the most significant other for Japan's self construction. Japan narrated itself as a ‘weak’ and ‘subservient’ country dominated by the ‘dominant’ West. This narrative, however, has been significantly altered after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Japan's identity entrepreneurs began describing Japan as an ‘independent’ or ‘normal’ country, one that proactively contributes to world affairs. Tokyo's legitimization of the Kyoto Protocol was in line with this identity reconstruction. The image of a proactive environmental leader created a symbol of Kyoto that overshadowed the opponents of the Protocol, and lead Japan to ratify it albeit the United States chose to withdraw from it. Once the ratification was over, however, the practical implementation failed to comply with Japan's symbolic commitment.     

Sino‐American relations post‐Tiananmen

This essay analyses some of the political, economic and social challenges of East Timor's transition to independence. It scrutinizes the ethical dimensions of building peace in a territory devastated by the combined effect of Indonesia's colonial occupation and the violent militia attacks of September 1999. The most difficult task ahead does not lie in the physical rebuilding of the territory - gargantuan as it may be - but in the more intricate and long-term rehabilitation of a traumatized society. The latter involves competing Timorese factions as well as a range of international actors, including the United Nations Transitional Authority, foreign governments, business institutions and various multilateral and bilateral donors, each having their own organizational leitmotifs and policy priorities. If not managed carefully, the reconstruction process could further exacerbate existing societal tensions and complicate the search for peace and reconciliation. The essay identifies a number of crucial components necessary to counter such risks, including the need to promote popular participation in the rebuilding process. Without the legitimacy created by strong community involvement and grassroots participation in decision making, the task of national reconstruction may well become overwhelmed by conflict.     

Redefining Humanitarian Intervention: The Historical Challenge of R2P

Through analyzing the various factors in R2P's genesis and expansion as an international norm, this article contends that the office of the UN Secretary-General has provided steady backing of R2P, allowing for its ongoing consideration within the UN bureaucracy and among member states. In this respect, R2P has been able to assert itself in a meaningful way, with member states compelled to revisit the central tenets of the norm within the General Assembly and special dialogues. The office of the Secretary-General has clearly interpreted R2P as a strong and effective reinforcement of Article 1 of the UN Charter and the overall UN mandate, using the norm to more strongly anchor existing UN principles and values.     

Gradual institutional change and media influence: The case of Petrobras in Brazil

The media as a social actor emits discourses that reflect in the institutional context, influencing the process of institutionalization of existing practices. One view about the media in organizational studies is that it is a mechanism of organizational complexity reduction, and in this way, it is the focus of the managers' attention to certain aspects of the environment, which has implications for the way that everyday tasks are accomplished in organizations. In this sense, an interest has emerged to understand how the dissemination of information about the acquisition of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, by Petrobras was the embryo of an international corruption scandal that compromised the organization's image but was also responsible for the emergence of new organizational practices. The data and information used are from secondary sources: the newspapers and magazines with the largest national circulations. The findings reveal that the media sought to influence individuals by elaborating its understanding of the context without being consistently coherent over time. We propose an analytical model of how the media can act in the gradual change of organizational and actors' practices.     

A comparative view of indigenous citizenship issues

Following the Wik decision it is being suggested that Australia ought now to revisit the translation of special legal norms formulated in international law with respect to the human rights of indigenous citizens. These have previously underpinned developments in both Australia and Scandinavia with respect to indigenous people. Recent Australian developments, particularly the struggle over indigenous property rights, exemplify the argument of O'Neill (1997) in the first volume of Citizenship Studies, which points to the absorption of civic autonomy by market sovereignty. O'Neill is correct to suggest that the dominance of market sovereignty reduces the political participation of those incapable of the competitive struggle for private affluence and that this has a squalid dimension. Central to this is the denial of the notion of community and dominance of the market. This dominance has obscured the significance of the Australian High Court's recognition of aboriginal land rights in Mabo. The decision put the incorrect application of terra nullius—or no man's land—to Australia to rights. It made it possible for the nation to contemplate indigenous sovereignty consequent upon the recognition of native title property rights. Australia's translation of those rights with the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) looked to international law for its rationale. The rights of the Sami people have been developed in Scandinavia largely with reference to the evolution of international law on indigenous peoples. As we approach 2000, Australia cannot continue to ignore the special legal norms in international law relating to citizenship of indigenous peoples. International law informs attempts by indigenous people in modern times to regain some of what they lost in the past.     

Not Centralisation but Decentralised Integration through Australia's National Mental Health Policy

This article challenges dominant perceptions of Commonwealth centralisation in Australia's federal system. While recognising the Commonwealth has entered a range of policy fields not anticipated by federal founders, it argues this does not equate to a generalised unidirectional and hierarchical orchestration of state/territory functions. The crucial case of mental health policy is presented as an alternative scenario in Australia's federal experience. Theoretically key challenges from the multi‐level governance literature are proffered against the centralisation thesis. These include queries about the origins of Commonwealth directives and assumptions of zero‐sum notions of state/territory autonomy. Brief empirical analysis highlights the role of the Commonwealth as a conduit of horizontal and vertical flows of knowledge through the national mental health policy agenda. Given disconnect and diversity between national ambitions and their realisation at state/territory level, it is argued better proceduralisation through bottom‐up peer dialogue and feedback present alternative routes towards decentralised integration.     

Coast guards and maritime piracy: sailing past the impediments to cooperation in Asia

Abstract

Despite the efforts of the past decade, maritime piracy remains of international concern today. Countries need to cooperate actively at both the regional and international levels to eradicate the problem effectively. In particular, the nature of the threat in the Asia-Pacific region suggests that coastal states – countries that possess sovereignty over the pirate-infested waters but lack the law-enforcement resources – have to turn to resource-rich extra-regional powers for assistance. Unfortunately, cooperation between such disparate countries has traditionally been impeded by sovereignty sensitivities, as best exemplified by Malaysia's and Indonesia's hostile responses to the United States' Regional Maritime Security Initiative in 2003. Faced with this apparent dilemma, a new phenomenon has emerged. National coast guard agencies, instead of their military naval counterparts, have become attractive alternatives for promoting international cooperation against non-traditional security threats, such as maritime piracy. Spearheaded by the Japanese Coast Guard (JCG), coast guards from various countries have imparted training expertise, conducted joint exercises, hosted low-publicity multilateral meetings, and even transferred security equipment across international borders. Together they have succeeded in promoting cooperation without arousing the sovereignty sensitivities often associated with such cooperation. This article analyzes the evolution of coast guard cooperation in Asia, highlighting in particular the Japanese Coast Guard's success in this endeavor. With the general alignment of regional and global power interests in Southeast Asia, coast guard agencies hold promise for extra-regional powers wishing to help eradicate maritime piracy in the region.     

Neo-liberalism,big business and the evolution of interest group activity in Latin America

In the 1980s and 1990s, the confluence of the third wave of democracy, neo-liberal economic reforms and economic crises in Latin America, produced several significant consequences for the region's underdeveloped interest group systems. By using an international political economy approach, this article examines these developments and particularly how neo-liberal policies affected the political fortunes of big business plus the broader political fall-out from neo-liberal policies. In essence, we make the argument that, for three reasons, the consequences of the confluence of these three developments for Latin America's emerging interest group system are mixed in terms of a more pluralist, open-access system. First, the influence of big business persists and in many ways has been enhanced as the economically and politically privileged position of large private companies since the 1980s has given way to economic concentration, transnationalization and the rise of multilatinas (Latin American multinational companies, which primarily operate across the region). Second, political opportunities have been opened for a range of interests, many from the left, that likely would not otherwise have emerged so early in the region. Third, the election of leaders opposed to neo-liberal policies may transform Latin America's political economy and aid in the democratization of its interest group system. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NGOs and the policy‐making process in Russia: The case of child welfare reform

This article explores the issue of the major reform of the child welfare sector that has been carried out in Russia in recent years. Focusing on deinstitutionalization and a child's right to a family, this reform moves Russia in the direction of international trends in this area and represents a break with previous state‐ and institution‐dominated approach to “problem families.” The article explores how and why this process has come about in a traditionally top‐down hybrid regime and applies the Multiple Streams Framework first developed by Kingdon to argue that Russian child welfare nongovernmental organizations have acted in concert with government officials to act as policy entrepreneurs in framing the policy problem and presenting solutions to it in a way that has influenced national priorities in this area. At the same time, the article acknowledges that major challenges remain in terms of implementing the reform at the regional level of government in Russia.     

Southeast Asia in the study of international relations: The rise and decline of a region

Three features stand out from the literature on Southeast Asia's international relations, written over the last fifty years: the dominance of extra‐regional scholarship; an overwhelming emphasis on regional security, and a related preponderance of realist perspectives; and the appearance, consolidation, and ebbing of the perceived utility of Southeast Asia as a useful analytical region. During the 1990s, there has been a questioning of the realist assumptions which have underlain international relations writing on the region, and there has been increased emphasis on economic issues. Southeast Asians are making an increasingly important contribution to the study of their own region's international relations, though mainly in terms of policy‐oriented research. The most important recent development has been the questioning of Southeast Asia's usefulness as an analytical region, in view of the growing intensity of economic and security relations between Northeast and Southeast Asia.     

China's aggressive ‘periphery diplomacy’ and South Korean perspectives

In this special section, the present article reviews South Korean perspectives on China's ‘periphery diplomacy’ with a focus on Chinese behaviour with respect to the East China Sea maritime territory and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). By analysing research papers published by various Korean research institutions and academic journals, this article demonstrates that most Korean scholars hold that as long as China's growth goes on, the tensions between the US and China are likely to intensify. The article also shows that one of the primary concerns of South Korean scholars lies in the question of how South Korea should respond to changing regional orders and a rising China. The article argues that South Korea's strategic dilemma is reflected in a regional structure in which competition between two great powers has recently forced the periphery to impose bilateral ties on.     

‘Land grabbing’ or harnessing of development potential in agriculture? East Asia's land-based investments in Africa

Abstract

Large-scale foreign investment in Africa's abundant but largely underutilized arable land has been criticised by international NGOs and social movements as ‘land grabbing’, which limits access of smallholder farmers to land, deprives local people of their livelihoods and threatens local and national food security across the continent. By way of contrast, many host governments and some leading international development agencies regard land-based investments as beneficial for development in terms of providing the necessary capital and technological know-how for modernising the region's neglected agriculture including take-off in agribusiness and agro-industrialisation, which is vital to much needed economic diversification in many African countries. East Asia's participation in the global land rush on Africa is examined from the standpoint of these two different perspectives: while China's growing presence and involvement in trade and investment in mining, energy and infrastructure in Africa is well known, less recognised is its involvement and those of other East Asian countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in agriculture through large-scale land acquisitions. The development consequences and policy implications of these foreign land-based investments are analysed from a political economy perspective, which identifies motives, interests and benefits of the different actors and addresses the question of governance in terms of transparency and appropriate institutional arrangements to safeguard land rights and food security. In the bigger picture, the paper argues that the negative consequences of land grab has to be seen alongside the benefits flowing to Africa from growing economic relations with China and other dynamic East Asian economies and learning from the development experiences of those countries. African countries however need to re-assess the current approach and relationship with foreign land-based investors and decide how best this trend can be used to forward their economic and social agendas.     

Immigration,asylum and citizenship in Germany: The impact of unification and the Berlin republic

In recent years, there has been much debate over whether post‐unification Germany, often termed the ‘Berlin Republic’, represents a substantive change from the ‘Bonn Republic ‘, that is, West Germany. This article analyses Germany's immigration and citizenship policy against this background by examining various dimensions of immigration before and after unification. The article argues that both unification itself and Germany's changed international environment have resulted in far‐reaching changes in policy, which have forced a reappraisal of Germany's traditional self‐image as a ‘non‐immigration country’.     

Power transitions and global trade governance: The impact of a rising China on the export credit regime

The existing liberal international economic order was constructed during the era of American hegemony and has been heavily shaped by US power. How is the rise of China affecting global economic governance? This article analyzes the case of export credit, which has long been considered a highly effective international regulatory regime and an important component of global trade governance. I show that the rise of China is profoundly altering the landscape of export credit and undermining its governance arrangements. State-backed export credit is a key tool of China's development strategy, yet I argue that an explosion in China's use of export credit is eroding the efficacy of existing international rules intended to prevent a competitive spiral of state subsidization via export credit. The case of export credit highlights a fundamental tension between liberal institutions of global governance and the development objectives of emerging powers.     

Role conflict and the limits of state identity: the case of Indonesia in democracy promotion

This paper aims to analyse why Indonesia projects democracy as a state identity by taking on the role of democracy promoter? This paper argues that Indonesia's aspiring role as a democracy promoter is not a manifestation of a firm and coherent democratic political culture, which is more likely to be a permanent feature of states. Thus, rather than seeing it as firmly established state identity, instead, Indonesia's democratic identity should be seen as role conception articulated by foreign policy elites in its quest for international prestige. Its role as a democracy promoter has enabled Indonesia to enhance its other roles conceptions such as a regional leader in Southeast Asia as well as a bridge-builder at the global level. However, this paper further argues that Indonesia's role as a democracy promoter has also been hindered due to the inter-role conflicts arising from its enactment of multiple roles. As a result, Indonesia's enactment of the role as democracy promoter has relatively less impactful towards democratization in the region. To substantiate this argument, the paper examines Indonesia's strategies in promoting democracy and human rights in three case studies, namely Indonesia's role in mainstreaming human rights in ASEAN, Indonesia's democracy promotion through the Bali Democracy Forum, and Indonesia's engagement towards democratization in Myanmar.