Singapore and the US: security partners,not allies

As US Vice President Joe Biden told journalists when he visited Singapore in late July, his country and the city-state not only enjoy mutually beneficial economic ties, but also important, wide-ranging defence and security cooperation.     

An assessment of the 2000 US presidential election: a set of political marketing guidelines

This paper comprises a set of marketing guidelines using the 2000 presidential election as an example, and analysing the image building of the two candidates, Al Gore and George W. Bush. It is not hard to understand, with hindsight, why Bush was the winner. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Markets vs. polls as election predictors: An historical assessment

Prediction markets have drawn considerable attention in recent years as a tool for forecasting elections. But how accurate are they? Do they outperform the polls, as some scholars argue? Do prices in election markets carry information beyond the horserace in the latest polls? This paper assesses the accuracy of US presidential election betting markets in years before and after opinion polling was introduced. Our results are provocative. First, we find that market prices are far better predictors in the period without polls than when polls were available. Second, we find that market prices of the pre-poll era predicted elections almost on par with polls following the introduction of scientific polling. Finally, when we have both market prices and polls, prices add nothing to election prediction beyond polls. To be sure, early election markets were (surprisingly) good at extracting campaign information without scientific polling to guide them. For more recent markets, candidate prices largely follow the polls.     

Unfree labour and adverse incorporation in the global economy: comparative perspectives on Brazil and India

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of unfree labour in the contemporary global economy, the processes by which it is generated, and its connections with poverty and vulnerability. I challenge dominant ‘residual’ views of unfree labour as either external to global economic activity or occurring solely within small-scale, localized or non-market contexts. Instead, I contend that unfree labour needs to be understood in ‘relational’ terms as a particular form of ‘adverse incorporation’ in the global economy. This form of adverse incorporation is constituted through the circular interaction between, on the one hand, the functioning of the global productive economy and associated labour markets, and, on the other, the social relations of poverty which give rise to vulnerability and to unfree labour. I draw throughout on original empirical research conducted on ‘slave labour’ in Brazilian agriculture and child labour in the Delhi garments sector.     

An evaluation of the quality of impact assessment in the European Union with lessons for the US and the EU

Governments throughout the world are requiring greater use of economic analysis as a way of informing policy decisions. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of impact assessment in the European Union, using US assessments as a benchmark. We find that recent EU impact assessments include more economic information than they did in the past, although important items are still missing. We also provide evidence that the quality of EU impact assessment increases with the expected cost of a proposal. Furthermore, we find that the quality of EU assessments that report high total costs is similar to that of US assessments.     

Committee characteristics and re-election margins: An empirical investigation of the US House

Models of legislative organization frequently begin with the premise that the committee system serves the re-election interests of incumbent legislators. Attempts to substantiate this notion empirically have been unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the notion lives on, nourished by a stylized characterization of the committee system. In the standard model committees have jurisdictional monopolies over specialized policy areas and legislators gravitate toward those committees that deal most closely with the policy concerns of their constituents. Contrary to this simplifying characterization, the degree of monopoly control and policy specialization varies across standing committees in the us congress. Some committees have wide jurisdictions and attract members with diverse policy preferences. Jurisdictional overlap and resulting turf battles are common aspects of congressional sessions. We suggest here that these realities warrant a re-opening of the empirical investigation into the link between electoral success and committee characteristics. Our findings indicate that assignment to a committee with a relatively high degree of monopoly control increases a member's vote share, and that assignment to a narrowly focused (specialized) committee does not.     

Tanzania's expert-led planning: An assessment

In common with most other African nations, a combination of expanding aid inflows and critical manpower shortages in Tanzania has enabled foreign planning experts to exert a growing strategic influence over the design of regional and rural development. Despite certain undoubted benefits attributable to the work of these experts, this broader assessment concludes that their contribution is often ineffective in the shorter term, and frequently damaging and distorting in the longer term. Widespread procedural problems ranging from time and logistic constraints and relative ignorance, together with the difficulties arising from the role of outside experts vis-à-vis the local planning bureaucracy, including elitism, poor communication and excessive demands, partly explain this. More fundamental distortions are the result of their tendency to displace rather than supplement local capacity, the perpetuation of dependence mentality, their removal from the implementation process and unfortunate demonstration effects consequent upon their privileged working and personal lifestyles. The negative outcome of Tanzania's continuing expertise dependence is discussed, and doubt is cast on the transferability of planning expertise from rich to poor nations.     

Multinationals as global institution: Power,authority and relative autonomy

This article aims to inform the long‐standing and unresolved debate between voluntary corporate social responsibility and initiatives to impose binding legal obligations on multinational enterprises. The two approaches share a common feature: neither can fully specify its own scope conditions, that is, how much of the people and planet agenda either can expect to deliver. The reason they share this feature is also the same: neither is based on a foundational political analysis of the multinational enterprise in the context of global governance. Such an analysis is essential for providing background to and perspective on what either approach can hope to achieve, and how. This article begins to bridge the gap by illustrating aspects of the political power, authority, and relative autonomy of the contemporary multinational enterprise. The conclusion spells out some implications for the debate itself, and for further research.     

Comparing the legitimacy and effectiveness of global hard and soft law: An analytical framework

The international norms that are developed as tools of global governance can be placed on a continuum from traditional “hard law” treaties to the vaguest and voluntary “soft law.” In this article we develop an analytical framework for comparing norms on different positions along the continuum, thus for comparing international hard and soft law. We root the framework in both the rationalist and the constructivist paradigms of international relations by focusing on two overarching evaluative criteria: effectiveness and legitimacy. These broad concepts are divided into smaller building blocks encompassing mechanisms through which norms can exert influence; for example, by changing material incentives, identities, and building capacity, and by contributing to building source‐based, procedural, and substantive legitimacy. We illustrate the applicability of the framework with three norm processes of varying degrees of “softness” in global climate governance.     

Fifty years of human rights: An emergent global regime

The emergent human rights regime includes three distinct elements; international and domestic laws; government and corporate policies that deny or affirm rights; and norms of behavior that are applied against groups and individuals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its successors were milestones in international law that sprang from the euphoria of victory in World War II. When policies violated these precepts, they came under intense international scrutiny, which produced highly visible, though not universal, improvements; and it was not long before governments and other organizations adopted positive policies that improved access to these rights. Policy scientists can analyze these rights as demands or claims that enjoy various degrees of legitimacy within both the civic and the public order. Behind the laws and policies lies a widespread awareness of the standards of human dignity. This awareness is gradually taking on a life of its own and human rights begin to function as a system of expected behavior that is becoming a global regime that reflects the preferences of nongovernmental players acting under customs and rules of their own making. Behavior that respects essential rights is increasingly taken as an obligation transcending national borders and subtly enriching the decisions and transactions of states, corporations, and special purpose organizations.     

Identifying the causes of road traffic accidents in India: An empirical investigation

This study utilizes data for the period 2006–2015 to estimate the determinants of road fatality rates in the Indian states. We employ baseline regression, where the total traffic fatalities, total traffic injuries, rural road fatalities, and urban road fatalities are the functions of human errors in driving, weather conditions, and some control variables. This paper is exclusively focussed upon different sets of human‐driven factors in influencing the road fatality across the Indian states. Our empirical results show that reckless driving, defective motor conditions, bad weather, and reckless driving by bus, truck, and car drivers are found to cause road accidents. We further find that the increase in motorization rates and rash driving are the primary causes behind the road fatalities, and bad weather play a major role in causing road fatalities and injuries in urban areas. However, road fatalities are increasing; still, cases of under reporting, lack of proper road safety regulation, improper investigation procedures, increasing vehicle usages, and higher urbanization have made the matters quite worse in India.     

Stock prices,inflation, and output in India: An empirical analysis

This study focusses on the negative relationship between inflation and stock returns (the puzzle of fisher hypothesis). Fama hypothesis examined the relationship between macroeconomic variable and stock return and found the strong relationship between the real output and stock prices. This study revisits Fama's hypothesis from the period 1990M1 to 2016M6 for emerging country perspective. The results documented that there is a significant negative relationship between inflation and output whereas positive between stock price and output.     

Governance for human development: the role of external partners

There is a positive correlation between democratic governance and human development. Democratic governance is governance infused with the principles of, inter alia, equity, participation, rule of law, transparency and accountability. Human development is at its very core the expansion of people's choices and their increased participation in decisions that affect their lives. Therefore democratic governance reinforces human development, and human development reinforces democratic governance. External partners—those actors outside of the national development process—can positively contribute to a country's transition to and consolidation of democratic governance (and, thereby, its human development) in a number of ways. External partners act through democratic governance entry points to deliver strategic services and use indicators to measure their relative progress. Indicators can be valuable tools in informing external partners and recipients of assistance of what works, what does not work and why. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Re-conceptualizing China's rise as a global power: a neo-tributary perspective

Two analytical perspectives – conventional wisdom derived from warlordism and European colonialism, and soft-power concepts drawn from post-Cold-War American international relations – are prevalent lenses for analysing China's global rise. However, neither considers the role of the past in shaping China's contemporary diplomacy. This paper fills the gap of this under-researched area by providing an alternative perspective featuring analytic categories rooted in China's tributary tradition. It proposes a neo-tributary framework for systematically interpreting historical Chinese mentalities and strategies embedded in China's contemporary power strategy.     

美国信息安全最新发展综述

美国总统奥巴马执政以来出台了一系列网络安全战略,使之成为美国国家安全战略的一部分。国家层面的战略计划、法律法规也相继出炉,体现了美国将迎来信息安全政策的重大调整。近两年以来美国的信息安全战略部署和信息安全立法动向,为我国的信息安全战略调整提出了几点借鉴的启示,即我国应加快制定信息安全立法规划,加强对国家信息基础设施的保护和明确国家在发生重大安全事件时可以对网络进行管制。