Globalisation and the garment industry in Sri Lanka

The objective of this article is to explain how globalisation, the phase-out of MFA and regionalisation affect the development of the garment industry in Sri Lanka. The article starts with a discussion of the key concepts of globalisation and regionalisation, followed by a presentation of the analytical framework, including a theoretical discussion of winners and losers in commodity networks. It is argued that regionalisation may exacerbate the problems that the Sri Lankan garment industry has already experienced in terms of globalisation. In addition to the limited industrial development effects that are the outcome of the functional division of labour, regionalisation makes it even harder to obtain market access. It is likely that Sri Lanka continues to be tied in, both to the European and American trading blocks for the production of some good quality and reasonably priced standardised garments for the middle market. However, to be tied in as a supplier of standardised products for the middle market is a vulnerable position, especially when the market is flat and lead firms and buyers in the network pass down adjustment costs to the suppliers. When manufacturers earn low levels of profits, the prospects of reinvestment in production and sustained industrial upgrading are negligible.     

Shifting Priorities or Business as Usual? Continuity and Change in the post-2011 IMF and World Bank Engagement with Tunisia,Morocco and Egypt

Following the popular uprisings that erupted across North Africa in 2010 and 2011, international financial institutions have embarked on a significant re-engagement with governments in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. New lending arrangements and project initiatives by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in particular, have emphasised a supposed turn towards pro-poor policies, social inclusion and public engagement with economic decision-making. This article analyses the content and logic of IMF and World Bank lending to these three countries, examining whether this re-engagement represents a substantive shift away from the neoliberal policies that characterised pre-2011 IFI relationships with the region.     

From Reform to Resistance: Universities and Student Mobilisation in Egypt and Morocco before and after the Arab Uprisings

University students played a pivotal role in the Arab uprisings in 2011. This article explores the link between reform policies and social mobilisation through a comparison of university reforms and student protests in Egypt and Morocco. It argues that both—the fabrication of social policies and the formation of protest—are rooted in the specific political configuration of authoritarian regimes. Egypt and Morocco have both embarked on internationalising higher education, but the monarchy was more successful in embracing change through a more pluralistic type of governance. Hence, Morocco was able to escape the disruptive dynamics of the uprising, unlike Egypt, which was more reluctant to establish a new type of governance.     

Democracy,Civil Liberties and the Role of Religion after the Arab Awakening: Constitutional Reforms in Tunisia and Morocco

The electoral results following the Arab Awakening have rewarded Islamist parties in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Their arrival in power sparked once more intense scholarly and policy debates related to the relationship between Islamism, democracy and individual rights. This article examines that relationship in the context of the constitutional debates in Morocco and Tunisia, which have seen the prominent role of Islamist parties in attempting to shape the new constitutional charters. What emerges from this analysis is that, in the parties examined, pragmatism plays a greater role than fixed ideological positions.     

Hydrogen: Fueling EU-Morocco Energy Cooperation?

The war in Ukraine and the looming threat of climate change are driving the strategic need to diversify sources of energy, including renewables. Therefore, the European Union aims to develop energy relations with non-EU member states, and Morocco has become a key priority. Both Brussels and Rabat are pursuing ambitious green policies and cooperation initiatives, including on hydrogen. Drawing on theories of international institutions and political economy, this article analyzes hydrogen-related relationship patterns and explains demand and supply factors as drivers of institutionalized energy cooperation. We examine the EU's hydrogen approach and development, its relations with Morocco, and the political interests of both sides. Our analysis shows that the complex interdependencies in the evolving EU-Morocco hydrogen relations indicate that demand can be met by supply. However, challenges remain, including the need to deepen the partnership and prepare the market for commercial hydrogen production.     

Sovereign nations and global markets: modern British Conservatism and hyperglobalism

In this article we seek to trace through the major stands of British Euroscepticism and concentrate, in particular, on the importance of a powerful 'hyperglobalist' Eurosceptical strand within British Conservatism. We investigate the British Conservatives' recent divisions over European integration, against the background of the party's increasingly marginal status in British party politics. The piece also draws on findings from two recent surveys of the attitudes of British parliamentarians to European integration, carried out by the Members of Parliament Project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We explore how Conservative divisions of opinion are related in part to particular understandings of globalisation and regionalisation and attempt to show how globalist ideology has unexpectedly re–emphasised and bolstered the traditional nationalism of the Tory party and caused an increasingly hostile attitude amongst many British Conservatives towards the European project as it is presently constituted. We also examine recent attempts to map British Conservative Euroscepticism on to continental varieties using a mixture of ideological positioning and party system (Taggart 1998), arguing that this ignores the extent to which British Eurosceptics advance unique (in EU member state terms) hyperglobalist (rather than isolationist or protectionist) arguments in objecting to further European integration.     

The ‘Arab Uprising’, Islamists and Democratization

This article surveys political activities of selected Islamists in three Arab countries in the Mediterranean region: Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Each is notable for recent growth in Islamist political activity in the context of democratization (Tunisia, Egypt) and political liberalization (Morocco). Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco are undergoing political changes consequent to the recent ‘Arab uprising’. The ‘Arab uprising’ involved country-specific yet variable outbursts of popular political anger, although not necessarily with a clear and consistent democratizing focus. Generally, protests focused on interrelated political and socio-economic demands, including: greater ‘freedoms’, improved human rights, better social justice and economic progress, especially more jobs for millions of unemployed youths. The aim of the article is to explain recent developments in relation to the ‘Arab uprising’ in three Mediterranean Arab countries – Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. The purpose is to complement the individual foci on these countries in subsequent papers in this special issue by providing a thematic overview and to locate the activities of Islamist entities in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco in comparative context.     

Conflict Stalemate in Morocco and Western Sahara: Natural Resources,Legitimacy and Political Recognition

This article addresses the role of natural resources in the protracted conflict between Morocco and Western Sahara. Drawing from literatures of political ecology and political science, the article argues that natural resources have been deeply implicated in the conflict over time, with resource-related developments lending legitimacy to each party in different ways. The complex political economy of resource exploitation and the associated geopolitical enjeux have led to the de facto recognition of Morocco's occupation, and the symbolic aspects of natural resources have lent the Sahrawi cause legitimacy and an important node around which allies can be mobilised. That sovereignty is contested has facilitated a discourse in a different, more powerful way than when it is not in question, particularly in the Sahrawi's capacity to invoke international law to support their case. Drawing on the cases of South Sudan and Indonesia, the article ends with a brief discussion of the potential of the region's high-value resources for peace-making activities.     

Ethnicity and capital: Changing relations between China and Southeast Asia

This article seeks to debunk the persistent myth of an ethnically-based Chinese capitalism and the culturalist view of an “economic miracle” created by Asians of Chinese descent. This myth claims that Chinese entrepreneurs constitute a closed category with homogenous ethnic attributes and cultural values that have enabled them to achieve economic success. This article disputes such primordialist views and proposes an alternative analysis of the cultural economy of regionalisation and constructions of Chineseness. It deconstructs the politics of culture and identity, and argues for the need to analyse Southeast Asian Chinese entrepreneurship within specific historical, geographical, economic, political and socio-cultural contexts.     

Between a rock and many Hard Places: The PDS and government participation in the eastern German Länder1

It is now widely recognised that unification has led to an increased regionalisation of party politics in the Federal Republic. On the one hand a significant number of decision-making competencies within parties remain decentralised. On the other, regional party systems have become ever more differentiated both from each other and from that which exists at the national level. This article assesses to what extent there is any empirical evidence supporting such ideas by comparing four PDS Landesverbände. The article illustrates that ideological differences, personality clashes and different strategic agendas ensure that each the of the four Landesverbände has a different profile and can behave in strikingly different ways – highlighting that parties have much more room to manoeuvre at the Land level than is traditionally believed.     

A Matter of Timing? A Study of Regional Election Campaigns in Germany

Unlike national elections, subnational levels of politics have rarely been the subject of research. The small number of investigations stem from the field of psephology. While these have supported the assumption that the national level exerts a time-dependent impact on regional voting behaviour, election campaigning's time-dependency has yet to be investigated. Against this backdrop, this article offers a unique longitudinal and quantitative investigation of election campaigns in Germany's federal states. Using campaign managers' perceptions as a basis, it discusses time-relevant effects on electoral campaigning with regard to the degree of regionalisation, emotionalisation, and personalisation.     

Rituals of Power and Political Parties in Morocco: Limited Elections as Positional Strategies

The article argues that the monarchy's religious authority and its use of rituals of power limit the ability of political parties to contest the monarchy's legitimacy. It goes beyond most institutionalist accounts of authoritarian persistence by exploring the micro-dynamics of symbolic power and the extent to which the regime's ritualization of power creates a political culture conducive to the monarchy's supremacy in the socio-political realm, thus promoting regime stability in Morocco. These rituals have been institutionalized in the political system and have become part of the political discourse in Morocco. The monarchy's religious authority and its use of rituals of power impede the ability political parties to mobilize and to penetrate Moroccan society, and force them to adopt positional strategies in limited elections.     

Neoliberalism and Academia in Morocco

This article analyses the impact of international aid flows and the process of global market integration in Morocco on the role of academia—meaning research, teaching and intellectual debate conducted largely, but not solely, through publications and conferences—in social and political change. Drawing upon interviews and analysis of secondary sources, the article suggests that international development agencies working in Morocco and national policy strategies to further globalisation have had consequences for academic research and outputs as well as on intellectual debate in general. The first effect is to support the cultivation of an academic elite in the social sciences and humanities whose research agenda is often connected to national and international policy agendas and, likewise, to limit the evolution of a broader-based national or regional academic debate based on independent research. The second is to raise the importance of private higher education, which is focused for the most part on teaching and not on independent research. The impact of both has been to undermine the status of the academic profession and the role of higher education in pushing forward public debate on critical issues beyond programmatic concerns, for instance illiteracy or migration; and to address more fundamental questions, such as adherence to neoliberal policies or the pervasiveness of political and social alienation in Morocco. More importantly, the decline of public higher education has symbolic significance in that it reflects disassociation of the state from supporting a connection between craft, identity and citizenship. Taking into account the consequences of the impoverishment of higher education for training, research and critical analysis, the article ends by calling on aid agencies to regard academic research and public universities as means to reinvigorate public debate and new thinking around national and local development issues.     

The Structural Limits of Depoliticisation in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

Sri Lanka’s institutional reform project has gathered momentum with the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Amendment restored the Constitutional Council, which is mandated to recommend and approve appointments to key ‘independent’ institutions and offices. This article asks what it means to be meaningfully ‘depoliticised’, and explores the dynamics and parameters of the current institutional reform project in Sri Lanka. It argues that the entrenchment of Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism within Sri Lanka’s institutional structures has led to ‘institutional decay’. Given such decay, the article points to serious limitations in legalistic approaches that are preoccupied with improving appointment procedures. Since institutions in Sri Lanka are structurally incentivized to appease a majoritarian agenda, relying on legal-textual and institutional reform alone is inadequate. Institutional reform is ultimately constrained by the structural limits of Sri Lanka’s current constitutional framework. The article concludes that meaningful constitutional transformation requires a long-term project that aims to transform the majoritarian socio-political and cultural norms that underpin Sri Lanka’s constitutional order.     

Change and Continuity after the Arab Uprising: The Consequences of State Formation in Arab North African States

This article provides a comparative macro-level overview of political development in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. It examines their evolution from the colonial period through several distinct phases, showing how differences in their origins were followed over time by a certain convergence towards a common post-populist form of authoritarianism, albeit still distinguished according to monarchic and republican legitimacy principles. On this basis, it assesses how past state formation trajectories made the republics more vulnerable to the Arab uprising but also what differences they make for the prospects of post-uprising democratisation. While in Morocco the monarch's legitimacy allows it to continue divide-and-rule politics, in Egypt the army's historic central role in politics has been restored, while in Tunisia the trade union movement has facilitated a greater democratic transition.     

The Gautrain project in South Africa: a cautionary tale

This article analyses the recently completed Gautrain Rapid Rail Project in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. The Gautrain is the continent's first high-speed rail project, and constitutes an important case in transportation megaproject planning. The article discusses the potential merits and limitations of the project, and ultimately argues that several key problems with the Gautrain should provide readers with a cautionary tale regarding such endeavours. Benefits to the project, such as reduced traffic congestion and job creation, must be weighed against the social and political implications of the project. Thus, the article discusses the following potential problems with the project: it may deepen mobility-related exclusion in the province; it prioritizes wealthy, as opposed to poor, citizens in the allocation of public funds; costs for the project have escalated considerably from initial estimates; and other options for a more effective and integrated transportation plan were not sufficiently considered. This case study conforms to what scholars call the megaprojects paradox in significant ways, and suggests that more rigorous and transparent debate should precede the approval of such projects.     

韩美同盟的现状:以战略同盟构想为中心

本文旨在以李明博政府的韩美战略同盟构想为中心,对韩美同盟的现状进行探讨。李明博政府正力图将现有韩美安保同盟发展为一揽子战略同盟,以此提升国力。由于面临着霸权的现实性局限,深感全球层面的同盟合作变得更加切合实际的美国奥巴马政府正在接受这一构想,但是对于具体的方案,两国的理解并不完全一致。而这一点正是本文的要旨之所在。     

Reassessing the power of regional security providers: the case of Algeria and Morocco

Abstract

The concept of power and the ways to measure it are central to the literature on regional security providers. The predominant model has power rooted in material capabilities. This article recognizes that such capabilities are important but contends that for a state to be become a regional security provider, it must meet certain preconditions, foremost amongst them: possession of necessary material and ideational capacity; judicious employment of such power resources; and regional recognition of its leadership. Obvious as it may sound, effective leadership is also heavily contingent upon the domestic performance of regional powers. In this regard, the choice of Algeria and Morocco provides an interesting comparative case to broaden the traditional determinants of how to categorize regional security providers. Surprisingly, Morocco has been neglected in studies on regional security in the Maghreb and Sahel despite its rising ideational and economic influence in the region. Even Algeria has seen few studies use an integral approach to analyze its roles, orientations and performance as a regional security provider.     

Manufacturing Exotica: Edith Wharton and Tourism in French Morocco, 1917–20

The subject of this article is creation of a set of exotic images used by the early tourist industry to market Morocco. The author argues that Edith Wharton's book, In Morocco, was instrumental in this process. The images conveyed by Wharton are described, explained, and linked to similar images appearing in tourist publications.     

Civil-military relations in Pakistan: a case study of Sino-Pakistani relations and the port of Gwadar

This article analyses how the dynamics of civil-military relations in Pakistan have ensured policy continuity towards China. By looking at the development of the port of Gwadar, which represents the flagship project of Sino-Pakistani cooperation during the last 15 years, this article contends that the continuity in Pakistan’s policies towards China in the post 9/11 period is explained by a broad-based consensus among the Pakistani elites, in which, however, the military plays a dominant role. Civilian control over the military is a concept that was never fully absorbed in Pakistan and, as the analysis ascertains, most of the policies introduced by General Pervez Musharraf have been adopted by the subsequent civilian regimes under indirect control from the military establishment. The ultimate aim of the Pakistani leadership, civilian and military alike, has therefore been to provide a safe ground for the Chinese investments in the country because of the key role that China plays in Pakistan’s strategic posture. Organised around semi-structured interviews conducted in Pakistan in early 2015, the article is grounded in the relevant literature on civil-military relations and assesses the level of civilian control in three key decision-making areas pertaining to the port of Gwadar: economic policy, internal security and foreign policy.