Contesting Women's Rights: Charting the Emergence of a Transnational Conservative Counter-network

In recent years it has been claimed by human rights advocates that an “unholy alliance” has emerged internationally to counter the equality claims of the transnational women's rights movement. Using the literature on transnational social movements and counter-movements, this article assesses the interaction between what are conceived of as state and non-state-based conservative patriarchal actors with the transnational women's movement at a series of UN conferences throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium. It suggests that a transnational counter-network has indeed emerged and outlines the prevailing political opportunity structures that have made its mobilisation possible. It also outlines the alternative frames which the counter-network has used in presenting its arguments. The paper indicates that accounts of domestic-level counter-movements hold some explanatory power for studying the emergence of such a movement at the transnational level, but it also suggests that the literature needs to be supplemented with an analysis of the crucial role played by governments as allies or even as network members in influencing this process.     

越南革新开放以来电力业的发展及相关制度的建立完善

自越共“六大”提出“革新”战略以来，越南的经济社会步入了一个前所未有的快速发展时期①。对电力的需求也El益扩大，但越南电力业的发展相对滞后，电力业的发展成为制约越南经济社会发展的重要因素。21世纪以来，越南把电力业的发展放到了战略性的高度，制定了《电力法》，并把电力发展作为战略性领域纳入越南中长期经济社会发展规划，取得了较大成就，为越南经济社会的发展提供了保障。多年来，中国电力企业积极进入越南电力市场进行投资和贸易。研究越南近年来电力业的发展及其制度，有利于我国企业进一步拓展越南电力市场，促进我国对外投资和贸易。     

The Future of Russian Studies in China

China has made great progress in recent years in contemporary Russian research. However, because of changes in the two countries’national interests there is much more work to be done. The historical significance of Russia’s recent social transition and the implications for China mean that Russia research should be both wide-ranging and profound. Chinese scholars specializing in Russian studies should focus not only on strategic trends in politics,economics and social development,but also on the minute details of the changes Russia has undergone.New angles and new methodologies are required for Russian studies.     

新南非的包容性发展之路——非国大100周年纪念

南非曾经是种族矛盾和冲突最为严重的国家,300多年欧洲殖民者的征服和统治,造成了南非种族间政治、经济、社会的割裂与对抗。1994年南非废除种族隔离,建立了种族平等的民主制度。新南非政治社会变革和转型的进程,避免了很多人担忧的种族仇杀和动乱,关键在于坚持了包容性理念和政策,构建了以宪法为核心的一整套法律体系,以保障国家统一和公民基本权利为基本宗旨,在多元一体国家的建设中,取得了举世公认的社会进步。研究南非在新制度下的包容性发展之路,具有重要的现实意义和理论意义。     

Introduction: the measures of waves

Abstract

The aftershocks of the spring of 2011 in Japan led the nation into a paralysis of futureshock. But as the aftershocks continued and news of more radiation seeped out of the cracks in the tightly sealed industrial-political power generator, it became clear that the idea that the earthquake has brought a new reality to Japan must itself be resisted. Indeed what is now evident is that little has changed, despite renewed urgency to respond.

Although the waves of disaster in Japan unfolding from 11 March caught everyone off guard, in some significant ways Japan was already prepared. Such preparedness can be read into Japan's long history of dealing with disasters, twenty years of economic stagnation and the growing prevalence of mysticism and eschatology in pop culture in the wake of the Kobe earthquake and Aum Shinrikyō attacks on the Tokyo subway. So, rather than a rupture, an anomalous event, the series of catastrophes of the spring 2011 that appeared as if out of the blue could be narrativized in real time through social media and connected to historical and social contingencies and continuities.

Rather than mourning the passing of some Japan that may never have existed or may already have passed away some time in the early 1990s, 11 March should be the occasion for reflection on the past, action in the present and taking stock for the future. Fighting the tendency to be stunned into complacency, this special issue reflects on the past and future amid the aftershocks radiating from Fukushima and post-earthquake Japan.     

International Studies In the USSR Under Perestroika

The years of perestroika that unleashed a real outburst of previously slumbering political consciousness have brought many new aspects to all areas of social life in the USSR. The new outlook has conquered a complexity of problems of social being, from purely material to socio‐political. The process of critical revaluation of soviet history, of the role the USSR plays in the modem world, impetuous and at the same time tormenting, is under way. Along with social thought, the reappraisal of foreign policy has started. In order to appreciate the scale of ongoing processes, it is first necessary to look back into history.     

From contention to social bargaining: labour unions and democratic consolidation in Spain

The main objective of this article is to examine how the links between trade unions and affiliated political parties of the left influenced the strategies of labour during the transition and the early years of democracy in Spain. It argues that political partisanship is a key factor for understanding the unions' strategies. After a period of intense labour conflict during the transition to democracy, labour mobilization decreased and Spain's unions and other social actors initiated distinctive processes of social bargaining, starting in 1979. The central argument is that the relationship of unions and political parties in the authoritarian and transition periods was a major factor in conditioning strategies in the post-authoritarian period. In the end, the consolidation of Spanish democracy has led to the strengthening of the main trade unions. Contrary to what happened in other historical periods they used this power to contribute to governability and the consolidation of the new democratic regime.     

The social factory of democracy in underdeveloped Spain

This article aims to analyse the contribution made by Christian movements towards constructing a democratic citizenship in an authoritarian context in the backward province of Albacete. Our study attempts to analyse the efforts made by grassroots Catholic sectors to foster democratic enclaves free from the interference of the Francoist state in 1960s and 1970s Spain. These alternative social spaces enabled new habits of civil resistance that confronted the socio-cultural hegemony of authoritarian values. As a result, throughout these years, various social groups started to challenge the sense of the regime's impregnable unity. This grassroots experience with the “power of the powerless” laid the foundations for negotiations among the political elites during the transition to democracy in Spain.     

States as laboratories: The politics of social welfare policies in India

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of India’s states in shaping the implementation and framing of social policy within India’s federal system. Since the 2000s, the central government has overseen a substantial expansion of social welfare policies partly through a new push toward rights-based social provision. Yet, it is India’s states that are both responsible for an increasing proportion of total public expenditure on social welfare provision as well as determining the nature and effectiveness of that provision across space. Drawing on a comparative research program across pairs of Indian states, three critical factors explaining how state-level political environments shape social policy are identified: the role of policy legacies in shaping policy frames; the role of social coalitions underpinning political party competition; and the role of political leaders in strengthening state capacity to achieve program goals.     

Political participation of youth. Young Germans in the European context

Impatience with politics, weariness with political commitment, and individualisation are labels frequently used to characterise the political involvement of young people. Empirical analyses show a rather more complex picture. A basic willingness to become politically involved and to express one’s political opinion is apparent: Indeed, many young people use numerous and varied opportunities to express themselves politically; however, this usually covers only occasional activities. Not surprisingly, participation in some traditional associations has become lower. On the other hand, affinity and commitment to new social movements remain fairly consistent. Participation patterns differ according to gender, education level, and the youth’s place of origin (federal states of the former Federal Republic, or former GDR). These are some of the key results of the follow-up youth surveys carried out by the German Youth Institute. If the comparison between eastern and western Germans is seen in a European perspective, the complex interconnections between the institutionalised political cultures of nations and the participation patterns of young people become apparent. In what kind of institutions and to what extent do young people between 16 and 29 years show political engagement in Germany? What kind of differences can be seen between the new and the old Federal states? Is it possible to identify typical trends of development? Do gender, educational level, value orientations or social background conditions such as unemployment play a role in this regard? In the following, we will endeavour to answer these questions on the basis of empirical research. For this reason, in the following tables and analyses we will particularly focus on the differences between East and West Germany and the temporal development of discrepancies. The question of how specific and changing social institutions influence human attitudes and behaviour can be analysed using the quasi-experiment of 40 years of German division as an example. However, additional aspects reveal themselves and new questions arise by comparing young people across the different European Member States. Hence, we will discuss this additional comparative perspective.     

Mass Mobilization and Elite Exchange: Democratization Episodes in Italy and Spain

At its dawn, democracy was a social movement, but little attention has been given to social movements in recent (mainly American) theorizations of democratization.1 The reason for this seems to be the division of labour in the social sciences as well as the bad press that movements gained between the two world wars and in the cold war years. As a result, most theorists have emphasized the role of elites in transitional cycles and largely ignored the role of social movements. Since the 1960s, advances in social movement theory and research both in Europe and North America allow a fresh look at the role of movements in transitional cycles. In this article, three aspects coming from this tradition ‐ the structure of political opportunity, the relations of elites and citizens, and the problem of organization ‐ are applied to three episodes of democratization: the failed transition to democracy in Italy after the First World War, the successful transition in Spain in the mid‐1970s and the incomplete transition in East‐Central Europe since 1989. The article closes with a brief reflection on the role of learning from past transitions in democratization cycles.     

Access to information law and the stalled ‘winds of change’ in Zambia

Zambia, like a few other African countries, has been grappling with the adoption of the Access to Information (ATI) law over the past 25 years. This article argues that the Zambian approach towards easing access to public information has been faulty, because it is narrowly focused and this has resulted in the process stalling. The argument is made here, that the ATI law is part of a global social movement towards greater transparency. Furthermore, the article focuses on Zambia's approach to the law (whose push is dominated by executive control) and how that approach has impacted on good governance. The article also discusses how some countries have dealt with similar laws, before concluding that unless Zambia's move towards this law is broadened, whatever may be enacted in the future could be faulty.     

Burnt into the Brain: Towards a Redefinition of Political Culture

The current US administration has made the promotion of ‘political and economic freedom’ overseas a cornerstone of its foreign policy doctrine. The underlying notion that human beings all over the world can be chiefly motivated by a desire for personal liberty seems a noble but hardly realistic ideal. Such motivation is fostered by processes of social modernization and individualization. These changes are linked not only to structural transformations and the spread of new values and ideas, but also to the gradual rewiring of the brains of individuals involved in them. New findings in neuroscience point to clear parallels between changes in social and personality structures (individualization, self-discipline, sense of agency, time orientation, trust, and the like), and modified patterns of brain wiring in individuals. The cultural changes sometimes seen as a precondition for democratization and democratic consolidation are therefore likely to be slow and to escape deliberate political orchestration. Moreover, diffuse processes of brain rewiring conducive to democratic political development, which can be seen as creating favourable neurocultural preconditions for democracy, may be hampered by the rapid spread of the market economy over new regions and areas of life in both developing and Western countries. These processes can be studied by the new sub-field of political science called neuropolitics, to be consolidated over the next few years.     

老挝:2013 年发展回顾与 2014 年展望

2013年，老挝政局平稳，被欧洲旅游和贸易委员会评为“2013年世界最佳旅游目的地国”：“七五”计划第三年经济增长8％，GDP首次突破百亿关元，社会文教卫生等各项事业有新发展，但经济社会面临的困难与挑战增多；外交多元务实，建交国增至136个，外国官方援助增多。     

俄罗斯远东生活资料供给市场未来走势

近几年来,俄罗斯远东市场发生了重大变化,消费品供应形势明显好转,但是市场的繁荣在很大程度上是靠大量进口消费品带动的。今后远东发展的重点仍是原材料和能源工业,这是由现有产业结构的“超稳定性”所决定的。因此,远东农业、食品工业和轻工业发展滞后的局面难以根本改观,市场地产商品可供量与社会有支付能力的消费需求之间的矛盾不能得到缓解。俄罗斯在今后几年内将加入世界贸易组织。入世将使俄罗斯降低市场准入门槛,市场竞争更加激烈,同时也为中国消费品出口带来机遇和挑战。     

Too Bad for the Women or Does It Have to Be? Gender and Negotiation Research over the Past Twenty‐Five Years

One overriding question that scholars have addressed over the past twenty‐five years is: are women the same or different from men when it comes to negotiating and what might explain these differences? The inquiry has shifted and has become more nuanced over time, but in its essence the issue of individual difference still dominates much of our thinking and research on the topic. The purpose of this article is to provide a structured overview of this considerable literature on gender and negotiation as it has evolved over the past twenty‐five years. In doing this, the article highlights how the social construction of gender has generally changed the discourse from essentialist concepts of differences between men and women to seeing gender as a more complex and shifting dimension of individual identity that is shaped by the contexts in which negotiation occurs. The second purpose of this article is to consider how recent feminist perspectives on gender, which have shifted from viewing gender as a property of individuals to considering the role of institutionalized social practices that sustain gender differences and inequities, can be incorporated into our understanding of gender relations in negotiation theory, practice, and research.     

Social Protection in India: A Welfare State Sans Public Goods?

Of the two principal components of social welfare policy—basic public services and social protection—India has focused disproportionately on the latter in the last two decades, expanding existing social protection programs and creating new ones. By contrast, the country’s basic public services, such as primary education, public health, and water and sanitation have languished. What explains this uneven focus? Why has India prioritized social protection over public services? This article considers explanations suggested by the existing literature on welfare states and concludes that they do not account adequately for the Indian case. Instead, it argues, the prioritization of social protection in India results from a combination of political, ideational, and institutional factors rooted in India’s political economy.     

From Kosovo to Syria: the transformation of NATO Secretaries General's discourse on military humanitarian intervention

The civil war in Syria began approximately four years ago and has resulted in the murder of thousands by the Assad regime and the flight of millions to neighbouring countries. The international community's reluctance to intervene to halt the ongoing massive human rights violations has been explained in geopolitical, military-strategic, diplomatic, and legal terms. Yet, what does this imply normatively? And does the weakening of the military humanitarian intervention (MHI) norm support arguments regarding the poverty of constructivist security studies? This article examines these two questions and demonstrates the weakness of the MHI norm, especially in light of the new interpretations and meanings which authoritative agents ascribe to its key conceptual components in changing strategic, social and political contexts. Yet, the article employs constructivist tools to explore the endogenous challenges to the MHI norm while proving the added value of constructivist security research, not only for explaining “norm evolution” but also “norm decline”. Taking discourse as a reflection of social norms and an arena for encouraging new intersubjective interpretations of concepts, it examines the above assertions by analysing the discourse of NATO Secretaries General from 1999 (Kosovo crisis) to today.     

Cambodia's broadcast TV: promotion of consumerist desires

Broadcast television in Cambodia has historically been left out of scholarship, be it that of economics, politics, or mass communication. That, however, does not mean the study of Cambodia's broadcast TV has only academic significance. Indeed, the entire mass communication industry has experienced a sea of change since the introduction of the UN-backed democracy project in 1991, followed by the call for a “free market” economy and its accompanied globalized and liberal discourses. That wholesale political and economic shift has led, and continues to lead, to the transformation of not only the macro aspects of the state, such as the imposed structural adjustments as the pre-condition for international funding, but also the micro, private aspects of the society's members, those ranging from religious practices, gender relations, social and familial values, and the like. While that shift in the early 1990s is now a thing of the past, its social consequences are now more apparent than ever with such issues as gap of inequality and conflicts in social relations and values being strongly felt. Cambodia's television is indeed at the forefront of representing and acting in these social changes, which demands of academics, development workers, and policy makers interested in the country that they attentively examine the country's broadcast TV. Thus, this paper takes the chance to primarily draw a landscape of Cambodia's broadcast television as it is at present, while at the same time juxtaposing the industry against its current societal context. In doing that, I first put into perspective a brief historical development of broadcast television in relation to the country's political and economic shift. I then proceed to introduce an overall picture of Cambodia's broadcast TV, describing its current state of ownership, technological and regulatory framework, market, and programming. Eventually, I turn to provide a critical argument about the industry as a promoter of the surging consumerist desire—“freedom of choice”—for the last several years. Towards the end of the paper, I move toward a speculation over the future of Cambodia's broadcast TV by taking into account current institutional aspects of the country's politics and economy, as well as discursive aspects of technology, free market, and regulations.     

俄罗斯新版国家安全战略评析

2021年7月2日,俄出台新版《俄罗斯联邦国家安全战略》,其中有许多新变化值得关注.俄认为,当前国际形势动荡不安,地缘政治紧张局势日益加剧,武力仍是解决国家间冲突矛盾的重要手段.俄当前国家安全面临的主要威胁是美西方针对其进行的"混合战争",具体包括军事威胁、经济制裁和政治施压.为此,新战略提出的基本战略目标是维护国内、...