三十年河东，三十年河西——读《新亚洲半球》有感

在国际社会热议中印崛起的时候，新加坡国立大学李光耀公共政策学院的吉肖尔·马布巴尼（Kishore Mahbubani）教授出版了《新亚洲半球》（The New Asian Hemisphere）一书。此书共分六个章节，从亚洲国家“去西方化”问题切入，论述了世界重心从欧洲向亚太转移过程中可能会遇到的几种情形，并对中印等亚洲国家能否顺利成为新的“全球领袖”作了理性分析。     

困扰日本政府的巨额国债

最近,日本政府债台高筑问题越来越严重.日本首相小泉因受困于国内的严重财政危机,所以需要在外交上显示其强硬姿态,以转移人们的注意力.但是,问题终究是不会永远掩盖的,其外强中干的困境的解决,客观上要求日本不仅要改善自身的经济状况,也更需要改善其国际关系特别是与周边邻国的关系,通过营造稳定和谐的国内外环境,自身才能度过危险时期,避免引发已隐藏其背后严重的财政风暴,并导致日本政局可能出现的动荡,这样更符合日本的利益乃至地区和世界的利益.     

朝鲜核危机:美国如何应对?

继20世纪90年代的两次核危机之后,2002年 10月以来,朝鲜半岛再度陷入第三次核危机。朝鲜先后承认其拥有提取高浓缩铀计划,宣布解除朝美核框架协议对朝核计划的冻结、退出《不扩散核武器条约》、为电力生产重新启动核设施等等。美国对此反应强烈,停止向朝供应重油,并将朝核问题提交联合国安理会讨论。朝美双方唇枪舌剑、针锋相对,     

Municipal Socialism Then and Now: some lessons for the Global South

Given the large and growing literature opposed to the privatisation of services such as water and electricity, it is peculiar that so little has been written about the experience of ‘municipal socialism’—a set of roughly analogous historical movements that used local governments to challenge private service delivery and advance ‘socialist’ agendas from the late 1800s to the 1940s. Although primarily a European and American phenomenon, and emerging from different contexts than those prevailing today, municipal socialism found widespread support and transformed many public services. Results were mixed, with some experiments being little more than (pre)Keynesian attempts to revitalise capital accumulation in the face of ‘irrational’ private sector services, but the lessons are important as these experiments provided the first intellectually and politically sustained resistance to privatisation and other prototypical forms of what we now call neoliberalism, and demonstrated the possibility of effective service delivery by the public sector. This paper reviews these experiments, focusing on the experience of the United Kingdom and drawing lessons for contemporary efforts to build alternatives to privatisation in cities in the South, where local-level, socialist-oriented reforms have been relatively strong.     

大地震后的日本时局与走向

2011年3月11日日本东北地区发生的大地震、大海啸和核事故,对日本列岛造成战后以来最严重的复合型灾难与系统性破坏。日本前经济企划厅长官娇屋太一称之为继幕府末期、太平洋战争之后,日本历史上的“第三次战败”。     

Democracy's Conundrum: Reforms Take Time to Mature—But Voters Want Results Now

Historically, liberal democracy was born as a means to curb the power of kings and tyrants through mechanisms that would ensure accountability and consent of the governed. A system of checks and balances—two legislative chambers, executive and independent courts—were instituted to ensure power did not become too concentrated. Today's highly diverse, mass consumer societies, however, have presented another set of challenges. Power is so diffused governance is becoming ineffective. The short‐term mentality of voters and the lobbying of special interests undermine the ability of democracies to focus on the long‐term and the common interest. Because there are more checks than balances, gridlock has supplanted consensus. In this section, we compare Chinese and Western systems on their ability to deliver good governance. The editors of the Economist magazine put the debate in historical context.     

The Nation-State: Durability Through Change

The nation?Cstate has recently come under attack as an institution incompatible with liberal democracy, or under ridicule as being a faked representation of a virtual invention, the nation. This study shows the historical reality and durability of the nation?Cstate as adapted to a modern perception of the nation and to the profoundly changed conditions in which it functions. It shows the transformation of the romantic ideology of nationalism of the early nineteenth century to a mere principle of political organization, according to which the nation?Cstate combines the cultural identity and the democratic will of a people. It shows also the resulting changes in the understanding of national identity and belonging for the individual. This study also examines some of the rival theories offered in this connection, such as the preference for the so-called civic nationality over an ethnic one and also the strong case for multiculturalism often voiced. The conclusions from these examinations are that the democratic nation?Cstate with a cultural identity of its own, with equal citizenship for all and extensive recognition of the cultural rights of minorities, has legitimately survived into a new era of globalization, of increasingly mixed populations, of cultures crossing borders and of increased international intervention. As an example of the problems faced by relatively new nation?Cstates, an epilogue presents the case of Israel which demonstrates the centrality and complexity of the minorities?? problem in the process of shaping a modern and normal nation?Cstate.     

日本大地震的政治、经济影响分析

2011年3月11日,日本东北和关东地区发生了里氏9.0级的强烈地震,地震合并海啸,造成灾区哀鸿遍野,满目疮痍,地震海啸又引发了核危机,导致氢气爆炸和核泄漏,     

Pathways of Change: Organizations in Transition

This article discusses and illustrates organizational changes as initiated by ownership transition. It develops and elaborates three different pathways that organizations might follow through the process of transformation from government departments to state‐owned enterprises, and then to privately‐owned companies: the incremental, radical and reductive pathways. The research reported here is based on 11 case studies of New Zealand privatized companies. The pathway approach develops and extends existing models of transitional organizational trajectories, emphasizing the importance of antecedent conditions of organizational development, current environmental patterns and the strategic choices of the government and new owners.