Russia’s economic policy in 2015–2016: the imperative of structural reform

In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, we have seen uneven development in the leading advanced and emerging economies, new models of economic growth that vary from country to country, uncertain prospects for globalization and challenges of “regional globalization,” looming currency re-configurations, as well as shifting energy price dynamics and their influence on political and economic prospects of particular states. This paper discusses current challenges for social and economic policy in the context of the history of the past 30 years. With reference to Russia, it focuses on a new growth model, structural transformation (including import-substitution issues), economic dynamics, fiscal and monetary concerns, and social issues. It concludes by addressing the priorities of economic policy.     

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Abstract

A maxim of Chinese development policy is that the educational system serves to further economic growth. With each modification of economic strategy over the past 30 years the structure of education has been adjusted so that the process and output of the schools reflect the change in economic policy. The current modernization campaign is no exception; at its center is the training of high-level technical personnel to staff the modern enterprises emphasized by the “Four Modernizations.” Such training had been significantly downgraded for a decade.     

Gillard,Rudd and Labor Tradition*

Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as prime minister and Labor leader in June 2010. She describes her government as being firmly in the “tradition of Labor”. To locate it in the broad ideological continuum of Labor governments, and to test the suggestion that she is travelling a reform path set largely by the Hawke and Keating governments, I analyse the positions taken by Rudd and Gillard on a range of issues, beginning with economic policy. On social issues Gillard has been even more cautious than Rudd and this reflects her analysis of the electoral impact of Howard's Culture Wars. Her focus on educational opportunity suggests she is the logical successor to Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. As Labor leaders, Rudd and Gillard each embraced market‐reliant policy positions. Rudd even claimed to be an “fiscal conservative”. However, with Rudd venturing a critique of neo‐liberalism, it is Gillard whose stance is closer to Hawke and Keating's “economic rationalism”. Indeed Gillard's insistence upon the centrality of markets leaves Labor with a dilemma: if there are no significant problems with relying on markets then why does Australia need a social democratic party?     

Lao Wisdom as “Buffer State” in an Emerging Mekong Regional Economy – How a Small Country Behaves among Big Countries –

Lao PDR, located in a geopolitically strategic area of the Mekong region, has served as a “buffer state” without being placed under any one country's influence, contributing to the status quo of regional power balance. The skillful balanced diplomacy of Lao PDR has enabled it to keep this position. Yet, in face of growing Chinese presence, how long will that be the case? With an emerging regional economy across borders in the Mekong region as the background, Lao PDR, a small, land-locked country, has achieved relatively high economic growth rates and has started to attract foreign direct investment in recent years. In this process, Japanese companies have started to invest in manufacturing there, and Japan-Laos business partnership has been taking off. Looking for further development, Lao PDR has been consolidating its position as the “battery of the Mekong,” a net exporter of electricity. By improving its connectivity with neighboring countries, Lao PDR has also been making untiring efforts to become a “land-linked” country, aiming to serve as a “logistic hub” for the region, taking advantage of its geopolitical advantage, Yet, many challenges exist before this goal is achieved.     

After neoliberal globalization

This article traces the “securitization” of U.S. foreign economic policy in the administration of George W. Bush. It does so with reference to U.S. economic policy in East and Southeast Asia. It argues that in the context of U.S. economic and military preponderance in the world order, the United States has been unable to resist the temptation to link foreign economic and security policy. While there was evidence of the securitization of economic globalization in U.S. policy from day one of the Bush administration, it was 9/11 that firmed up this trend. For the key members of the Bush foreign policy team, globalization is now seen not simply in neoliberal economic terms, but also through the lenses of the national security agenda of the United States. Economic globalization is now not only a benefit but also a “security problem.” The attacks on 9/11 offered the opportunity for what we might call the “unilateralist-idealists” in the Bush administration, to set in train their project for a post-sovereign approach to U.S. foreign policy.     

The Australian Right in the “Asian Century”: Inequality and Implications for Social Democracy

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the policy discourse of Australian right-wing governments, exploring how such governments have combined neo-liberal economic policies with social conservatism, populism, cultural nationalism and forms of authoritarianism. It also examines the resulting response of social democratic political parties. As a predominantly Western country situated in the Asia-Pacific region, Australian experience offers interesting insights into the domestic politics of right-wing governments facing the changing geo-political and geo-economic imperatives of the “Asian Century.” Conservative Australian governments have reasserted traditional Anglo-centric national identity and used competition from key Asian countries to further justify market-driven policies, reduced welfare benefits and reduced industrial relations standards. The social democratic Australian Labor Party has responded to right-wing government policy by placing an increased emphasis on challenging social and economic inequality. However, Labor’s own plans for equitable economic growth potentially underestimate the challenges posed by the intermeshing of the Australian and Asian economies and provide insights into the dilemmas that a changing geo-economics poses for Western social democracy more broadly. Meanwhile Australian conservatism is facing not just challenges from its social democratic opponent but also from far-right populist forces critical of globalisation.     

Place and Policy Preferences – Spatial Divides in Attitudes towards Social Policies in Germany

The rise of the knowledge economy has led to a bifurcation between prosperous, often urban, areas and “left-behind” regions. While the literature has started to analyse the political implications of these developments for electoral behaviour and socio-cultural attitudes, the structuring of social policy preferences by place remains unclear. Distinguishing between an economic (booming-declining) and a geographic (urban–rural) dimension, I argue that differences in material self-interest and ideological predispositions explain spatial divides in support for different types of social policies. Combining original survey data on voters' preferences with municipal-level data in Germany, I show that general support for social policy is higher in declining than in booming regions. However, social investments (e.g., active labour market policies) are preferred over consumption policies (e.g., unemployment benefits) in booming and, to a smaller degree, in urban than in declining and rural regions. These findings contribute to a bigger discussion on compensating “left-behind” regions.     

E-Commerce and Industrial Upgrading in the Chinese Apparel Value Chain

The economic and social gains from electronic commerce (e-commerce) that promote innovation, industry upgrading and economic growth have been widely discussed. China’s successful experience with e-commerce has had a positive effect in transforming consumer-goods sectors of the economy and motivating economic reform. This article looks at how e-commerce reduces barriers to entry and enables firms to move up the value chain by using the global value chain framework to analyse the impact of e-commerce on the upgrading trajectories and governance structures of China’s apparel industry. For large Chinese brands, e-commerce has enabled end-market diversification. For small- and medium-sized enterprises, e-commerce has facilitated entry with functional upgrading as well as end-market upgrading. In the “two-sided markets” created by platform companies, the “engaged consumers” are the demand side of this market, and “e-commerce focused apparel firms” are the supply side of the new market. Consumers and platforms are more directly involved in value creation within this emerging internet-based structure.     

My Business Pays Me: Labourers and Entrepreneurs Among the Self–Employed Poor in Latin America

Are the independent economic activities of poor people “petty commodity production”—an informal way to earn a subsistence wage? Or are they “microentrepreneurship”, a launching point for capital accumulation and growth? This paper draws on fieldwork in Bolivia, Peru and Guatemala, focusing specifically on the poorest businesses. In–depth interviews indicate that even the smallest–scale producers, merchants and service providers have goals of “improving” their business and “growing” their capital, not unlike their capitalist counterparts. Yet, while growth is desirable, maintaining one's business as a steady source of income is a sufficient achievement for many. Poor self–employed people are both “labourers” and “entrepreneurs”; the key macro–level question becomes, not “Do petty–commodity producers have different goals than capitalist entrepreneurs”, but “What resources are lacking, and what obstacles exist, that keep many microentrepreneurs in low–yield activities, with little opportunity to grow their resources?”     

新发展阶段实施文化产业数字化战略探究

党的十九届五中全会提出了加快数字化发展的新要求。文化产业数字化有助于扩大内需,满足人民对美好生活的需求;有助于转变经济发展方式,扩大就业;有助于提高文化竞争力,增强文化软实力。转变观念,树立“互联网+”思维;充分发挥市场经济的作用,加强文化体制改革;加强科学规划,完善政策体系;制定并完善适应文化产业数字化发展的法律法规;重视对新型文化业态中的人才培养,为新发展阶段文化产业数字化战略实施的有效路径。     

Russia's “turn to the east”: a study in policy making

Russia's recent reorientation “to the East” has gained increased urgency given events in Ukraine. Here the policymaking process surrounding the “turn to the East” is examined. The focus is on the economic dimension – the economic development of the Russian Far East and engagement with the Asia-Pacific region – rather than geostrategic and security issues. Policymaking is evaluated in terms of general approach and process, with the implications of the evaluation for Russian policymaking more generally then being explored. “Turn to the East” policymaking exhibits a strong commitment to strategic planning that is characteristic of Putin, and which in this case struggles not only with process issues but also with contradictions within the strategy and the challenging realities of the region. Regarding process, a far more institutionalized policy process than the currently dominant personalist view would lead us to expect is found, with relevant bureaucratic and non-state actors well represented in an elaborate and relatively formal process. However a considerable weakening of sign-off procedures is noted, which has lead to policy inconsistency and indeed “policy irresponsibility” among participants. The author attributes the weakening of sign-off procedures to Putin's frustration with the gridlock tendencies of strict sign-off regimes, rather than a desire to create a personalist regime of hands-on management. This suggests that improvement of the Russian policy process requires structural and procedural change, rather than simply leadership change.     

The Future of the Chinese Economy: Four Perspectives

ABSTRACT

This article studies the future prospect of the Chinese economy using four different perspectives: neo-classical, Marxian, world-system and climate stabilisation. While the neo-classical perspective suggests that China can maintain a relatively decent pace of economic growth for decades to come, the Marxian analysis finds that the Chinese economy will confront a major crisis in the coming years due to internal contradictions of capitalist accumulation. The world-system analysis suggests that there has been a “ceiling of development” that historically has limited the scope of development for the great majority of the world population and China will hit this “ceiling of development” within about a decade. Moreover, if China were to fulfil its climate stabilisation obligations, it may prove to be impossible for the current system to maintain economic and political stability.     

The antipolitics of good governance

This article sets out to understand the relationship between the complex process of structural change and the proliferating political strategies and programs implemented to manage the process of political and social change. More particularly the authors examine how in the wake of the Asian economic crisis international financial institutions advocated a new global policy through programs such as Social Investment Funds. The thread that runs through the global social policy is a distinctly political project that uses the liberal language of participation and empowerment as a strategy of “antipolitics” that marginalizes political contestation. The authors argue, however, that the antipolitics of technocratic social policy gave way to a more populist form of antipolitics of a new government led by Thaksin Shinawatra. This article examines the nature of governance projects and seeks to explain the shift between them. This new populism may be a precursor to a new “authoritarian statist” mode of political regulation that could come to dominate Southeast Asia, buttressed by the requirements imposed by the “war on terrorism.”     

Rising giants: Development in China and India

Can economic growth turn overpopulation from a liability to an asset? China and India tantalize investors as the “last frontiers” of emerging consumer markets; together, they hold 37 percent of the world's 5.7 billion people. Despite their many contrasts, China and India face similiar, immense development hurdles. Mired in economic stagnation and poverty, both countries undertook economic reforms that gained momentum in the 1980s. In this comparative study, IIPS Senior Research Fellow Eimon Ueda analyzes their ongoing economic liberalization efforts and prospects. Ueda comes to IIPS from the Ministry of Finance and has served at the Japanese Embassy in India.     

后新冠疫情时代中国开拓印度洋出海大通道的机遇与挑战

出海大通道的建设涉及中国的政治、经济和国家安全,是国家未来发展的关键利益所在.在新冠疫情影响下,国际格局受到二战以来前所未有的冲击,疫情已成为影响当前国家间关系、国际格局以及秩序的最重大因素.疫情带来的冲击短期内难以消除,在后疫情时代,国际形势仍将继续发生巨大转变,尤其是中美战略竞争全面升级给中国发展带来了前所未有的挑战.当前中国开拓和维护印度洋出海大通道的影响因素有增加和复杂化的趋势.此次疫情极大地冲击了各国经济,导致全球经济衰退,后新冠疫情时代促进经济发展将会是各国共同的目标.中国需继续推动"一带一路"建设,助力"一带一路"建设成为全球经济发展的引擎,吸引更多的国家加入.此外,中国应尽快推出"两洋出海"战略,构建新的出海格局,连接太平洋和印度洋的出海通道,形成战略互动.在对接"一带一路"的基础上将云南省打造成为中国印度洋出海通道上的战略支点,成为中国构建西南方向出海的中心和桥梁.在后疫情时代,中国需要清楚认识开拓印度洋出海大通道建设的必要性和紧迫性,抓紧印度洋出海大通道的谋篇布局,促进"一带一路"倡议和"两洋出海"战略的深入发展,保障中国的海洋权益,建设海洋强国.     

ASIA UNDER LATE CAPITALISM

The hubris over the “rise of Asia” obscures the complexities, contradictions, and struggles that actually characterize the region. Given the economic tumult that has enveloped the West, it is not surprising that we find politicians, pundits, and market players enamored with Asia as a source of economic growth. However, this skewed reading of the region, which regularly dovetails neatly with self-interest and resurgent forms of nationalism, belies material realities. On this count, the region remains home to the majority of the world's poor, increasing levels of inequality and vulnerability (even within “the success stories”), social, political, and racial intolerance, and massive environmental degradation. Moreover, Asia's much-vaunted “charm” (often shorthand for the region's cultural, historical, and natural allure) has been seriously threatened by the accumulation at all costs of late capitalism. The author's photographic work over the past decade has attempted to grapple with and communicate some of these realities—a humble intervention to bring down to earth perceptions of the region in which he lives.     

Plantation colonialism,capitalism, and critics

Scholars have variously described the development experience of the Indian state of Kerala as a “model” or a “paradox” or an “enigma” and posited different meanings and significance to its developmental trajectory. Rather than following the usual one-dimensional accounting of Kerala's achievements and shortcomings, we present a historically informed social and political analysis to reveal the meaning and significance of the “Kerala model” of development. This article, thus, critically appraises Kerala's development experience since decolonization to show how the discourse on development and the discursive practices of the dominant actors involved in governance of Kerala diverge in recent years, especially after the second round of economic liberalizations at the national level in 1991, which coincidently corresponds to the beginning of the newest phase of economic globalization. Old lessons are reviewed based on the notion of replicability of the “Kerala model” and new lessons are analyzed within the contexts of sustainability and economic globalization.     

Escaping the resource curse: The case of Indonesia

Abstract

Numerous studies have suggested that natural resource abundance is bad for development. In this context, Indonesia's rapid growth during the 1970s and 1980s seems remarkable. Why was Indonesia able to grow strongly and what are the implications of its experience for other resource abundant countries? I argue that its rapid growth was not simply a matter of policy elites making rational economic policy choices, but rather reflected two more fundamental factors: (i) the political victory of counter-revolutionary social forces over radical nationalist and communist social forces in Indonesia during the 1960s; and (ii) the country's strategic Cold War location and proximity to Japan. Accordingly, the main implication of its experience is that improved economic performance in resource abundant countries requires shifts in structures of power and interest and the emergence of external political and economic conditions that provide opportunities for growth.     

Logics of action and models of capitalism: Explaining bottom‐up non‐liberal change

Recent institutionalist scholarship has theorized the liberalization or “disorganization” of capitalism as the result of shifts in economic actors' “logic of action” towards opportunism. Little attention has been given to the reverse possibility that shifts in economic actors' “logic of action” away from opportunism might contribute to “embedding” or “organizing” capitalism. This paper builds on recent scholarship to theorize this scenario and then demonstrate its empirical validity with an historical institutionalist study of the emergence of such a “non‐liberal” institution in Switzerland in 1961. The theoretical framework links three “logics of action” – opportunism, enlightened self‐interest and strong solidarity – to Höpner's typology of capitalist institutions – organized, coordinated, and liberal. It theorizes the interactions between these logics and the social mechanism – goal signaling – that can explain a shift from one logic of action to another, potentially leading to change from one type of institution to another.