The Strategic Situation in Northeast Asia and China

Northeast Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the world as regards economic development, and is a major hub parallel with North America and Western Europe. Its position and role in world poli...     

Triangulation of Salient Studies to Date on Trust-Building in Mediation

Many studies have empirically demonstrated the importance of trust-building between mediators and parties to a dispute. We wrote this article in response to a call by Stephen Goldberg and Margaret Shaw for studies conducted in North America to be triangulated in other countries where mediation is taking off as an alternative tool in the resolution of disputes. Our objective was to test theories on the factors that increase trust-building in mediation. With this in mind, the study conducted by Jean Poitras in Montreal (Canada) was triangulated in the Balearic Islands (Spain) and an analysis was made of the similarities and differences between both studies using different methods.     

Security Identities and ‘No More,No Less’ Operations: On Making NATO's Involvement in Darfur Possible

This article explores NATO's support mission to the African Union's peacekeeping operation in Darfur, Sudan between 2005 and 2007. NATO policies are commonly presented as functional responses to events, but how did a conflict on the African continent become the Atlantic Alliance's business? In this essay, a poststructuralist practice-oriented approach is used to understand the way in which discursive practices progressively establish a policy option as ‘natural' in a given situation. It is argued that the normalization of NATO's support mission to the African Union in Darfur and the integration of this operation in NATO's security identity were the result of complex and conflict-ridden social interactions between different discursive practices supported by different actors.     

论中日韩安全合作

中日韩安全合作可分为传统安全与非传统安全领域,各类非传统安全问题催生了中日韩合作,传统安全合作也迈出了可喜的步伐,中日韩领导人会议在扭转地区安全范式上有了初步成果。三国的实质性合作存在结构性机会,即非传统安全合作稳步推进的同时,以危机管理作为传统安全合作的突破口,非传统安全合作能够对其产生溢出效应。目前虽然无法从根本上改变相关国家之间的安全困境,但能够通过高层沟通增加互信,向＂协治安全＂前景发展。     

Mandatory accounting disclosure by small private companies

This article analyzes how mandatory accounting disclosure is grounded on different rationales for private and public companies. It also explores technological changes, such as computerised databases and the Internet, which have recently made disclosure of company accounts by small companies potentially less costly and more valuable, thanks to electronic filing and universal online access to credit information systems. These recent developments favour policies that would expand the scope of mandatory publication for small companies in countries where it is voluntary. They also encourage policies to reduce the costs and enhance the value of disclosure through administrative reforms of filing, archive and retrieval systems. Survey and registry evidence on how the information in the accounts is valued and used by companies is consistent with these claims about the evolution of the tradeoff of costs and benefits that should guide policy in this area.     

Philosophers,Activists, and Radicals: A Story of Human Rights and Other Scandals

Paradoxically, the political success of human rights is often taken to be its philosophical failing. From US interventions to International NGOs to indigenous movements, human rights have found a place in diverse political spaces, while being applied to disparate goals and expressed in a range of practices. This heteronomy is vital to the global appeal of human rights, but for traditional moral and political philosophy it is something of a scandal. This paper is an attempt to understand and theorize human rights on the terrain of the social actors who put them to use, particularly radical activists that have a more critical relationship to human rights. Attempting to avoid the philosophical pathology of demanding that the world reflect our conception of it, we base our reflection on the ambiguous, and potentially un-patterned, texture of human rights practice—taking seriously the idea that human rights express a relationship of power, importantly concerned with its legitimate arrangement and limitation. In both the philosophical literature and human rights activism, there seems to be a consensus on basic rights as undeniable moral principles of political legitimacy. This use of human rights is contrasted with radical social movements that reject this conception of rights as ideological and illegitimate, making specific reference to the Zapatista movement (Chiapas, Mexico) and the Landless Peasant Movement of Brazil (MST, from the Portuguese Movimento dos trabalhadores rurais Sem Terra), which are critical of the human rights discourse, but also make strategic use of the idea and offer alternative articulations of political legitimacy.     

日本在缅甸的平衡外交:特点与困境

冷战时期,日本与缅甸建立了特殊的历史友好关系,但在1988年以后双边关系较为冷淡。尽管日本之后一再努力,希望恢复昔日对缅影响与特殊的邦交,但收效甚微。日本在对缅关系上,一方面利用援助制裁实行有限的压力政策,另一方面又保持对缅接触,实行制裁和接触政策之间的中间路线。日本在缅甸问题上表现出的两面性,是其在国内各界分歧、日美基轴外交与亚洲独立外交、国家利益与价值观外交之间相互平衡的结果。     

“欧元乐园”的迷失与重建——兼论对东亚区域货币合作的启示

希腊主权债务危机引发的欧元危机是对欧洲区域经济与货币一体化的一次重大考验,深刻反映了欧洲经货联盟成立以来所出现的两大问题:成员国之间经济的不平衡发展以及联盟合作机制的缺陷。欧元危机给东亚区域货币与金融合作的启示是,在以欧盟货币合作为样板的同时,应着重加强区域内信息共享与政策合作,以清迈倡议(CMI)和清迈倡议多边机制(CMIM)为基础加快东亚货币合作机制建设,完善区域监管体系;同时加强区域内各国汇率合作和资本账户自由化,稳步推进区域金融市场一体化进程,逐步缩小各国之间汇率波动的幅度,以此推进东亚区域经济合作向纵深发展。