The semiotic limbo of the pacific

Deleuze's study of his friend Michel Toumier's first novel Vendredi has widely been seen as a pivotal point in the development of his thought; Alphonso Lingis even sees it as the final articulation of the concept of the ‘elemental sign’. Contrary to this view, this paper argues that Deleuze's postface anticipates in important ways the semiotics of Mille Plateaux, but that Deleuze's reading has been so influential as to obscure Tournier's own? which may be shown to be much more concerned with the immediate politics of the French presence in the Pacific.     

Fear's Anger: Virginia Woolf's Psychology and Deliberative Democracy

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf implicitly addresses the necessary conditions for equal participation in deliberative democracy. Woolf's analysis indicates that proponents of deliberative democracy must be attentive to the angry, unconscious resistance that is part of reasoning in a deliberative system—especially when political deliberation results in a challenge to a person's identity. Woolf's solution for women writers, the material security represented by a room of one's own, can be applied to the larger problem of political deliberation as well. This leads to an expansion of the conception of substantive equality required for a deliberative democracy. Further, Woolf's insight challenges deliberative democrats to de-center capitalist economic relations. As a way of protecting the individual from the psychological dynamic Woolf describes in A Room of One's Own, deliberative democrats should advocate a non-competitive economic space for those threatened by the powerful psychological reactions to deliberation.     

Zionist historiography and its critics: a case of mythtaken identity?

Since the 1980s, several Israeli scholars, who have come to be known as the 'new historians', have been engaged in the reappraisal of the events surrounding the Zionist state's foundation. They have been highly critical, at the same time, of mainstream Israeli historiography. In his book, Fabricating Israeli History, Karsh launches a vigorous counter-attack against the 'new historians', focusing on shlaim's discussion of Zionist-Transjordan relations during the 1948 war and on Morris's account of the factors that precipitated the flight, in that war, of two-thirds of the Palestinian Arab population. The article reviews the main findings of the 'new history' by referece to Karsh's critique. It identifies the principal points of divergence between the 'old' and 'new' interpretations and provides an assessment of their respective claims.     

How to read Michelle Obama

ABSTRACT

Michelle Obama's role as the first African American First Lady is more than merely symbolic. Her self-representation as a professional woman, mother and spouse is directed towards a wider representativeness that is new in American political discourse. As a descendant of slaves and slave owners whose American ancestry can be traced back to the 1850s, she can lay claim to an African American legacy that the President lacks. As a result, some of her more controversial statements during the presidential campaign about the black family, class mobility and national pride need to be read in the context of an African American literature and historiography that challenges the American creed of equality, liberty and unconditional love of one's country. Michelle Obama's family history, her Princeton undergraduate thesis and her own words in interviews are analysed here in the discursive context of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave-girl, as well as the historiography of the civil rights movement. Such a reading reveals how Michelle Obama's background weaves the legacy of slavery into the American fabric, and shows that a redemptive construction of American history—in which the success of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the Obama presidency are taken as fulfilment of the American creed (and of Martin Luther King's dream)—must be refused if a new national self-definition with African America at its heart is to take its place.     

Setting the record straight: A note on sophisticated voting under Borda's method

The purpose of this note is to correct some inaccuracies in the literature regarding sophisticated voting under Borda's method. It is shown that if a single candidate must be elected and voters vote sophisticatedly under Borda's method, then: (1) Contrary to both Black's (1976) and Ludwin's (1978) claims, a voter's undominated voting strategy may require him not to give top ranking to his most preferred candidate; (2) Contrary to Black's (1976) claim, an undominated strategy may be such that all candidates except the most preferred one are ranked last; (3) Whereas a candidate who constitutes the true bottom preference of an absolute majority of the voters will never be elected if voters vote sincerely, this candidate may be elected if voters vote strategically; (4) The election of a candidate who constitutes the true top preference of an absolute majority of the voters is not systematic: ceteris paribus this candidate may be definitely elected when voters vote sincerely but not when they vote strategically, as well as vice versa.     

Beyond the Ode to Joy? The Politics of the European Anthem

Anthems are conventionally viewed as helping to unify and mobilise populations by generating a sense of shared identity. Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which currently serves as the European anthem, occupies a more equivocal place in the European Union's symbolic armoury. Whether performed with or without Schiller's original text, the piece raises important questions regarding the nature of the European Union and the purpose of Beethoven's music within contemporary European politics. Nevertheless, given that any practical alternatives also raise significant difficulties, Beethoven's Ode to Joy can be regarded as a useful prompt for reasoned discussions regarding the future of the European Union, especially if reunited with the text of Schiller's An die Freude.     

Australia's difficult defence balance

Australia's latest White Paper on defence sets out how Australia's strategic vision is changing in response to evolving regional dynamics. However, the government's finances may not be sufficient to support its strategic ambitions.     

Making the difference: Deleuze's difference and Derrida's différance

This paper seeks to explore the differences between Derrida's différance and Deleuze's difference. Derrida ‘s différance can be seen as based on a phenomenological theory of time, whereby the future is ‘prior’ to the past, and on a Hegelian theory of negation (but without final term or synthesis). Deleuze's, by contrast, relies on a Bergsonian theory of time as the actualization of virtualities, along with a positive and qualitative notion of difference derived from Nietzsche, Leibniz and Spinoza. The paper suggests some implications of these differences for Derrida's and Deleuze's approaches to criticism.     

Towards naval normalcy: 'open seas protection' and Sino-US maritime relations

On May 26th, 2015, China published its 10th Defense White Paper which integrated 'open seas protection', along with 'offshore waters defense', into its naval strategy. This shift in naval strategy, albeit largely anticipated, raises a series of important questions about China's maritime ambitions. This article seeks to analyze the causes, nature and challenges of China's latest shift in naval strategy, and its implications for Sino-US maritime relations. The article argues that China's latest shift in naval strategy is a logical corollary of the tension between China's expanding global interests and its asymmetric approach to sea power, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) provides the necessary stimulus and justification for such a shift. China's new naval strategy, the paper contends, denotes that it will develop a Mahanian blue-water navy and a basic network of overseas bases in the years ahead. Those two developments are expected to pose a series of significant challenges for China's foreign policy. The article argues that China's new naval strategy presents both challenges and opportunities for China and the world. To accomplish 'open seas protection', China will probably have to modify its policies on a range of issues, and moderate its competitive stance in the near seas. Although China's new naval strategy need not be interpreted in a competitive framework, it does present China with a stark choice: either it pursues more friendly attitudes towards its maritime ambitions by modifying its current policy, or it will be increasingly confronted by a coalition of hostile states.     

Iceland's Economic Crash and Integration Takeoff: An End to European Union Scepticism?

Iceland's application for European Union (EU) membership in summer 2009 suggests that the country's political parties had reconsidered their longstanding scepticism towards European integration and opted for closer engagement with the EU after the financial crisis. Applying Moravcsik's liberal theory of preference formation, this article investigates the European policies of Iceland's political parties from 2007 to 2010, focusing on four related European issues which have been prominent in the Icelandic EU debate: an application to join the EU with no reservations; the unilateral adoption of the euro; the inclusion of a clause in the constitution allowing a transfer of sovereignty; and the holding of a referendum on an EU application. It analyses whether the economic crash actually led to a change in the political parties' economic preferences and to a subsequent reformulation and adaptation of their long‐term European policy goals and, if not, then how Iceland's decision to apply for EU membership is to be understood. The article concludes that the parties' European policies have remained remarkably stable despite the EU application. This indicates that Iceland's EU membership application can only be understood through a thorough examination of domestic politics, to which liberal intergovernmentalism pays insufficient attention.     

Urban Regeneration and Public Space: The Story of an Urban Park

This paper uses case-study material from a local urban park in Glasgow, Scotland, to reflect on some aspects of the wider politics of culture led urban regeneration in relation to community involvement and participation and its relationship with public space. Using case-study material from before, during and after the park's development, it highlights how the initial discursive and policy practices utilised by the city and the park's designer served to create an illusion of collaboration and inclusive public space and that the park's development in the long term was starkly revealed to be primarily focused on improving Glasgow's wider image and improving Glasgow's attractiveness to potential inward investors. It will be shown, then, that the inclusive language surrounding culture-led regeneration as regards this urban public space was obfuscatory and that the underlying social context and local public space needs were undermined by wider economic goals.     

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.     

Theorizing Islamism and democracy: Jamaat-e-Islami in India

Liberal reading often posits Islamism as obverse of modernity and reason. Phil Briscoe's statement that Hitler's Mein Kampf might be kept in libraries but not the books by authors like Jamaat-e-Islami's founder's (Maududi) amply illustrates it. This article calls such an understanding into question. On the basis of my historical-ethnographic fieldwork on India's Jamaat-e-Islami and its offshoot, Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), I examine the interrelationships between Islamism and democracy showing Jamaat-e-Islami's moderation and SIMI's radicalization. It is my contention that Islamism and democracy are not antithetical to each other; they cohere in complex ways. When democracy is responsive to the traditions and aspirations of its Muslim citizens, Muslims relate to pluralism and democracy. But when democracy becomes majoritarian and a theater of entertainment and violence against Muslims, Islamists turn radical. I also suggest that radicalization such as SIMI's symbolizes a complex dynamic of democratization and demonopolization of religious authority. By foregrounding the salient transformation of Indian Islamism, this article aims to advance a nuanced, fresh understanding of both Islamism and democracy.     

Signaling through Obstruction

Obstruction is a time‐honored tradition in legislative politics. In many cases, obstruction can be foreseen to be ultimately unsuccessful, and in some of these cases, purely costly even to the obstructor. In this article, I construct a model of obstruction in which the individual obstruction of a fait accompli policy proposal is potentially informative precisely and ironically because it is inefficient. The theory, based on the legislators' reelection motivations, offers comparative static predictions about the frequency and length of obstruction as a function of the individual characteristics of the legislator and his or her electoral setting, including the legislator's value for reelection, the appeal of the legislator's challenger, the legislator's individual‐specific seniority, competence, and/or valence, and the visibility of the legislator's obstruction efforts to the voter. Finally, the theory illustrates the potential for transparency of legislators' individual actions to be strictly welfare reducing, even in the absence of pandering.     

Reappraising the debate and practice of US strategic ambiguity/clarity in cross-strait relations

Abstract

China's influence in the South Pacific appears to be growing rapidly. Some analysts are concerned that China is on its way to replacing the West as the dominant power and China's rise in the region poses a major threat to the West. However, there is no clear evidence to suggest that China's deepening involvement in the South Pacific is a calculated strategic move for its military security. The move can be strategic mainly in the sense that it has strong implications for China's reunification strategy and it serves China's long-term development strategy. The strategic value of the South Pacific to China's national security is limited at present and will remain so in the foreseeable future. China also lacks the military capability to challenge the US-led West in the region in the years to come. Chinese influence in the region is not deep-rooted and is largely based on its ‘no-strings-attached’ aid and its increasing economic interactions with the region. China has serious image problems in the region and these problems are unlikely to be resolved in the near future. China thus has neither the hard power nor the soft power to become a genuine hegemon in the region.     

Lacan et la philosophie

This review article examines certain of the assumptions that inform Juranville's philosophical reading of Lacan and demonstrates that, whilst his foregrounding of phenomenology is an important contribution to Lacanian studies in that it suggests that Lacan's reference to linguistics may have been overstated and that it is more productive to read his work as a more general reflection on language and signification, it depends ultimately upon the unfounded assumption that Lacan's discourse is a system to be read purely in terms of its self-development or synchrony. It is further argued that Lacan's relationship with philosophy is more ambiguous than the author suggests and that Juranville's vision of the philosophical field requires a certain problematization     

The changing political economy of Taiwan‐Southeast Asia relations

This paper examines the possibility that the United States could ‘capture’ the Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and use it to impose America's economic agenda on the region. It discusses Washington's ability to shape the choices of APEC's East Asian members at APEC negotiations to reflect US interests through employing its military, economic, cultural, and ideological resources as instruments of leverage and influence. While interdependence constrains Washington's use of military and/or economic leverage to influence the choices of APEC's East Asian members, the complex bargaining and consensual decision‐making features of APEC further prevent Washington from imposing its agenda on APEC. On the other hand, Washington's capture of APEC could be facilitated if East Asian policy‐making elites were socialized through the APEC process to accept American norms. This would tend to lead to preference convergence since the values of both the US and East Asia would coincide. The analysis suggests, however, that American norms are unlikely to prevail within APEC in the near to medium term primarily because APEC's East Asian members consider East Asian norms to be superior. American culture and especially ideology are not sufficiently attractive to East Asian elites and are thus unable to be used as instruments of influence. For these reasons, the paper concludes that the United States will find it difficult to impose its economic agenda on the region through APEC.     

Terminating Taiwan's Fourth Nuclear Power Plant under the Chen Shui-bian Administration

This article integrates the termination literature with the Punctuated‐Equilibrium (P‐E) model of policy change into a broader framework of policy termination to examine the Chen Shui‐bian administration's abrupt decision to terminate Taiwan's fourth nuclear power plant (FNPP) as well as to explore the evolution of agenda‐setting for the FNPP's termination over a decade. The termination of the FNPP may be viewed as a result of interactions among the nuclear policy image, the institutional venue, and the political or policy strategy over time, as indicated in the integrated framework. Nevertheless, changing nuclear policy image is not sufficient to automatically change the institutional venue in the process of Taiwan's transition from an authoritarian regime to a pluralist political system. Before venue shopping for policy termination, antinuclear activists had to ally with the Democratic Progressive Party to struggle for opening up Taiwan's political institutions along with Taiwan's democratization. On the other hand, as a consequence of Taiwan's recent democratization, antinuclear activists were unsuccessful in terminating the FNPP in the absence of sufficient political resources, notwithstanding a major venue change from the Kuomintang (KMT) government to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government under President Chen's leadership. Furthermore, besides domestic venues, international institutions also appear to be important to the creation and maintenance of the nuclear policy system, as well as to the dramatic reversal of the Chen administration's termination decision in this case.     

South Korean views on Japan's constitutional reform under the Abe government

In this Special Section, this article reviews South Korean views on Japan's ‘peace’ Constitution and the Abe government's attempts at constitutional reform. It identifies three different understandings among South Korean academics on why Japan is escalating attempts to revise the Constitution under the Abe government. An in-depth analysis demonstrates that all three perspectives pay specific attention to Japan's constitutional reform in relation to security policy changes. However, they differ in assessing the impact of Japan's constitutional reform on South Korea as well as how South Korea should deal with such a change. A minority opinion considers Japan's ‘remilitarisation’ through constitutional revision as conducive to South Korean security interests by increasing deterrence against North Korea, whereas the dominant opinion is that any attempt to revise the Constitution could be in and of itself a potential threat to South Korea's security due to a lack of trust attributed to unresolved historical conflicts between Korea and Japan. However, all three approaches pay hardly any attention to the positive role of Japan's peace Constitution while Japan's peace Constitution might provide a regional peace model in Northeast Asia.     

On the Ideological Foundations of Supreme Court Legitimacy in the American Public

Conventional wisdom says that individuals’ ideological preferences do not influence Supreme Court legitimacy orientations. Most work is based on the assumption that the contemporary Court is objectively conservative in its policymaking, meaning that ideological disagreement should come from liberals and agreement from conservatives. Our nuanced look at the Court's policymaking suggests rational bases for perceiving the Court's contemporary policymaking as conservative, moderate, and even liberal. We argue that subjective ideological disagreement—incongruence between one's ideological preferences and one's perception of the Court's ideological tenor—must be accounted for when explaining legitimacy. Analysis of a national survey shows that subjective ideological disagreement exhibits a potent, deleterious impact on legitimacy. Ideology exhibits sensible connections to legitimacy depending on how people perceive the Court's ideological tenor. Results from a survey experiment support our posited mechanism. Our work has implications for the public's view of the Court as a “political” institution.