The Age of Geoeconomics, China’s Global Role, and Prospects of Cross-Strait Integration

After noting the rise of geoeconomics in the post-Cold War era, the paper ascertains how the age of geoeconomics re-defines power and the rules of the balance of power game. Of particular significance is that a nation’s economic security eclipses its military security (or traditional national defense). In this context, I examine the meanings of the rise of a re-ascendant China for world politics in general and for Taiwan’s future in particular. Considering Taiwan’s heavy dependence on imported natural resources and its isolation and exclusion from vital international economic groupings, such as FTA’s. ASEAN, ASEM, and the 16-nation Asian super economic bloc in the marking. Finally, I take a prospective look at the prospect of a future cross-Strait integration between Taiwan and mainland China under the impact of the dictate of geoeconomics.

The Historical Roots of ‘Neo’-Conservativism

Analysis of recovery from internal conflict has neglected difficult, but evident, problems of regime resistance to refurbishment of state institutions. How widespread is such resistance, what are its causes and how might it be remedied? Frequently the problem is attributed to ‘lack of political will’ but that generality raises more questions than answers. This article investigates manifestations of regime resistance to institutional refurbishment, how they buttress the pursuit of private interest to the detriment of collective need, and the difficult challenges confronting reform processes whether driven by internal political demand or forms of external assistance. The thesis advanced is that institutional refurbishment within states recovering from internal conflict is critically dependent on intermediate relationships that evolve between ruling authorities and their publics. Here the organization and management of public grievances is critical.     

The Role and Logic of Nontraditional Security in China’s Engagement in Global Governance Mechanisms under Xi Jinping’s Regime

Journal of Chinese Political Science - With the emergence of a series of global security incidents, scholars and observers have placed increasing importance on nontraditional security (NTS). Since...     

The successes and limitations of Russia’s economic strategy

The Kremlin’s basic economic strategy is to trade efficiency and growth for political control and a tight rein on Russia’s strategic sectors. Russia’s economy has faced substantial difficulties since 2013, although it is once again performing reasonably well and there is no basis for believing that sanctions will force a change in Moscow’s foreign policy. However, slow GDP growth and fiscal rectitude complicate the task of reversing a fall in living standards that could (unchecked) threaten political stability.     

The Sisyphus’s Rock of Prosperity and Disparity in the Global Economy: Giovanni Arrighi and Apple Inc’s Tax Avoidance Strategies from Obama to Trump

The global value chain (GVC) perspective assumes that business firms’ occupation of high value-added nodes in the global production network can promote their countries’ socio-economic development. However, I argue that society-wide benefits that may follow from firms’ profit-maximizing activities are often ephemeral. Over time the middle class can shrink, and economic inequality can increase even when firms continue to move up to higher value-added niches and garner huge profit. I illustrate this disjunction between business activities and societal development with Apple’s strategies of tax avoidance and reduction from the Obama to the Trump administration. I then draw on the theoretical framework that Giovanni Arrighi sets out in The Long Twentieth Century and ideas from The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus to analyze the Apple case. As my analysis makes clear, the flawed assumption of the GVC perspective reveals its practitioners’ failure to recognize that within global capitalism, permanent and sustained societal affluence is unlikely, and what exists instead is a constant alternation between prosperity and disparity.     

Everything for Sale? Neoliberalism and the Limits of Michael Sandel’s Philosophical Critique of Markets

Contesting the central tenets of mainstream economic theory, Michael Sandel’s work on markets argues that the marketization of certain goods risks corrupting the value of those goods, and that a reinvigorated public discourse is needed to establish the appropriate use of markets. This article assesses Sandel’s work on markets, arguing that although it provides a convincing critique of liberal defenses of the market, it does not do enough to challenge marketization itself. To illuminate the flaws of Sandel’s argument, the article contrasts it with Marxist critiques of neoliberalism, arguing that the latter oppose the expansion of markets and market thinking in more comprehensive and productive ways. Specifically, it is argued that Sandel ignores the one market that underpins all other markets, namely the labor market; erroneously suggests that marketization is caused by the dominance of market thinking; and fails to appreciate the class interests that are served by growing marketization.     

The Naturalistic Side of Hegel’s Pragmatism

Abstract

This paper contrasts the Hegelianism of contemporary neo-pragmatism (Brandom) and the Hegelianism of classical pragmatism as it has been reassessed in contemporary Deweyan scholarship. Drawing on Dewey’s interpretation of Hegel, this paper argues that Hegel’s theory of the spirit is in many aspects more akin to Dewey’s pragmatism than Brandom’s. The first part compares Dewey’s pragmatism with Hegel’s conceptions of experience and the theory/practice relation. The second part compares Dewey’s naturalism with Hegel’s theory of the relation between nature and spirit.     

The Role of “Parallel Institutions” in China’s Growing Participation in Global Economic Governance

China is creating or co-creating new international economic institutions in areas such as trade, development finance, currency settlement and credit rating that parallel those that arose out of the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 or are tied to the interests of rich, developed countries. What are its reasons for doing this? What are the characteristics of the new institutions? How do the new institutions relate to the old institutions? Will China’s initiatives lead to better global economic governance? This paper attempts to answer these questions. Its main conclusions are that China is trying to create a new international economic order in which its political power is more commensurate with its economic power, its creation of new international institutions is an important part of this strategy, the institutions that China is creating are meant to be open and inclusive and to introduce “better practices”, and it is possible – though not necessarily probable – that China can make a major contribution to global economic governance provided it can overcome operational challenges, skepticism about its intentions and too narrow a view of its national interest.     

Killing the Messenger: Mark Lilla’s “End of Identity Liberalism” and its Critics

Decades of mind-numbing political correctness on the academic far-left robbed the humanities and social sciences of their legitimacy, generated the alt-right as its very own dialectial alter-ego, and provided an essential catalyzing ingredient in Donald Trump's electoral victory—understood as the clearest expression of a weary nation's revulsion at p. c.'s intolerable moralizing. The illiberal, antisemitic, white nationalist alt-right and the illiberal, antisemitic, anti-American alt-left mirror one another perfectly! Faced with competing totalitarianisms at both extremes, the liberal center should defend itself first of all by forthrightly reclaiming the univeristy as a space for education and not indoctrination. Yet the politically correct professoriate do not want to hear this—and their over-the-top hostile overreactions to the news that they are to blame for what they hate most prove that it's so. Time to repeal and replace political correctness.     

The Priming Effect of Corruption and Bureaucracy Bashing on Citizens’ Perceptions of an Agency’s Performance

Priming theories suggest that negative stories or events can affect how citizens feel about public organizations. However, research concerning the priming impact of both corruption and bureaucracy bashing—two relevant topics today—on how citizens perceive the performance of agencies is lacking. To close this lacuna in the literature, an experimental survey was conducted where respondents in the United States were randomly assigned to one of five performance vignettes. The results demonstrate that when participants were assigned to the vignettes containing the corruption and bureaucracy bashing cues, perceptions of performance were lower. This finding is consistent with priming theories. Moreover, differences within the corruption and bureaucracy bashing vignettes as well as between the corruption and bureaucracy bashing vignettes were not found. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the article.     

The composition and interests of Russia’s business lobbies: testing Olson’s hypothesis of the “encompassing organization”

Why are some business lobbies less benign in their external effects than others? In The rise and decline of nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), Mancur Olson proposed that less-encompassing groups—i.e., those whose constituents collectively represent a relatively narrow range of interests—have a greater interest in seeking the types of subsidies, tariffs, tax loopholes, and competition-limiting regulations that, while benefiting their members, impose costs on the rest of society. By drawing on a unique pair of surveys—one targeted to managers of Russian regional lobbies, and the other addressed to managers of Russian industrial enterprises—we provide what we believe to be the most direct test of this hypothesis to date. The pattern of responses is striking. Managers of both the less encompassing lobbies and the enterprises belonging to those types of organizations display stronger preferences for narrowly targeted policy interventions. Our results, that is, strongly support Olson’s hypothesis.     

China’s Political Stability: Global Comparisons

Throughout most of the 20th Century, China had suffered tremendous economic and human losses due to political instability. It is in the most recent decades that the Chinese people have managed to live with political stability. The economic benefits of political stability can hardly be overstated. Yet, China’s political stability is by no means assured. Is China stable or unstable? Is the Chinese regime strong or fragile? To answer these questions, this study has selected a total of 12 sets of publically available indices to measure political instability and placed China on a global scale of comparisons with all the others, both advanced and developing, in the world. It also makes specific comparisons between China and the other four countries of the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The findings of our global comparisons give China no reasons for celebration. However, China has no reasons for paranoia either. China has indeed faced many threats or challenges to political stability, but, as our study demonstrates, China is no more politically unstable or fragile than many others. Ignoring or underestimating the ripple effect of any destabilizing world event will do China no good, but overreactions also serve China’s interests poorly as fear or paranoia can be highly contagious.     

Trump’s Impact: The End of Sameness

In his startling run for president, Donald Trump dared to question the official orthodoxy that all races and ethic groups are the same. He is correct in that most seriously poor, many immigrants, and the radicals we face overeas all come from outside the West. Thus, according to world cultures research, they are much less individualist and more conformist than most Americans. This cultural difference goes far to explain the major challenges the United States faces both at home and abroad. But Trump’s bold challenge offers no easy solutions.