Security architecture in Asia: the interplay of regional and global levels

I argue that there is a distinct and longstanding regional structure in East Asia that is of at least equal importance to the global level in shaping the region's security dynamics. Without considering this regional level neither ‘unipolar’ nor ‘multipolar’ designations can explain East Asian international security. To make this case, I deploy regional security complex theory both to characterize and explain developments in East Asia since the end of the Cold War. The shift from bipolarity to unipolarity is well understood in thinking about how the ending of the Cold War impacted on East Asia. Less written about in Western security literature are the parallel developments at the regional level. Prominent among these are the relative empowerment of China in relation to its neighbours, and the effect of this, as well as of the growth of regional institutions, and the attachment of security significance to East Asian economic developments, in merging the security dynamics of Northeast and Southeast Asia. How China relates to its East Asian region, and how the US and China relate to each other, are deeply intertwined issues which centrally affect not only the future of East Asian, but also global, security. With the notable exception of some crisis between China and Taiwan, this whole pattern looks mainly dependent on internal developments within China and the US. Also significant is whether the basic dynamic of interstate relations in East Asia is more defined by the Westphalian principle of balancing, or by the bandwagoning imperative more characteristic of suzerain-vassal relationships. The main probability is for more of the same, with East Asian security staying within a fairly narrow band between mild conflict formation and a rather odd and weak sort of security regime in which an outside power, the US, plays the key role.     

The Grass is Greener,But Why? Evidence of Employees’ Perceived Sector Mismatch from the US,New Zealand,and Taiwan

ABSTRACT

To answer the question of who wants to work for the government, scholars have relied on a few approaches, including sector preference, sector-based comparison of work motives, and sector-switching patterns of job mobility. The present study offers a related but distinct approach: perceived sector mismatch. The attractiveness of public sector jobs differs greatly across countries; thus, in order to present a more comprehensive study, we examine data from the U.S., New Zealand, and Taiwan, where attitudes towards public sector jobs differ significantly as a result of different public service laws and traditions. Across all three samples, we find that, among private sector employees, the preference for a public service job is related to socio-economic disadvantage. Among public sector workers, reasons for perceived sector mismatch vary, but often suggesting job dissatisfaction in current public sector jobs, rather than perceived advantages of the private sector (including compensation). These findings are followed by theoretical and practical implications from this comparative study.     

The moral hazards of neo-liberalism: lessons from the private insurance industry

The key tenets of neo-liberalism regarding risk, governance, and responsibility are critically evaluated through an empirical study of the private insurance industry. Recent tendencies in this industry towards increasing segmentation of consumers regarding risk, and towards an expansion of private policing of insurance fraud, are analysed. The definition of moral hazard is broadened to include all parties in the insurance relationship, not just the insured. Moral hazards embedded in the social organization of private insurance lead to various kinds of immoral risky behaviour by insureds, insurance companies, and their employees, and to intensified efforts to regulate this behaviour. The analysis concludes with some critical observations about the neo-liberal emphasis on minimal state, market fundamentalism, risk-taking, individual responsibility, and acceptance of inequality.     

Liberalism,neo-liberalism and governmentality: introduction

This paper concerns the emergence of a specifically 'economic' way of governing poverty at the start of this century, an event which is to be accounted for, though by no means exhaustively, by the discovery of 'unemployment'. The latter will make it possible to relate the nineteenth-century 'problem of the unemployed' to an object domain that is primarily economic, rather than cultural or moral. A new object of regulation will emerge from this economic problematization of the 'social question': the labour market. The paper pays particular attention to the national labour exchange system, the political technology that will visibilize the labour market in new ways. Together with unemployment insurance, it will suggest new ways of governing poverty and a new course for social policy.     

Going South: capitalist crisis,systemic crisis,civilisational crisis

This article argues that the current protracted and severe financial and economic crisis is only one aspect of a larger multidimensional set of simultaneous and interacting crises on a global scale. The article constructs an overarching framework of analysis of this unique conjecture of global crises. The three principal crisis aspects are: an economic crisis of (over) accumulation of capital; a world systemic crisis (which includes a global centre-shift in the locus of production, growth and capital accumulation), and a hegemonic transition (which implies long term changes in global governance structures and institutions); and a worldwide civilisational crisis, situated in the sociohistorical structure itself, encompassing a comprehensive environmental crisis and the consequences of a lack of correspondence and coherence in the material and ideational structures of world order. In these ways, the global system is now `going south'. All three main aspects of the global crisis provoke and require commensurate radical social and political responses and self-protective measures, not only to restore systemic stability but to transform the world system.     

Joint boards for police in the Metropolitan areas: A preliminary assessment

Local Government, The Law and the Constitution, Martin Loughlin, Local Government Legal Society Trust, March 1983, pp. 143, £3.50.

Financing Regional Government: International Practices and their Relevance to the Third World, K.J. Davey, John Wiley, 1983, pp. 193, £12.95.

Housing Law, A. Arden and M. Partington, Sweet and Maxwell, 1983, pp. 1184, £55 (hardback).

The Government of Scotland: Patterns of Influence In Public Policy Making, Michael Keating and Arthur Midwinter, Mainstream Publishing, 1983, pp. 214, £9.95.

From Policy to Practice, Martin Rein, Macmillan, 1983, pp. xv + 250, £18.00 hardback, £6.95 paperback.

Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in Europe and America, 2nd ed., A.J. Heidenheimer, H. Heclo and C. T. Adams, Macmillan, 1983, pp. 367, £15.00 hardback, £5.95 paperback.

Policy and Politics in France: Living with Uncertainty, Douglas E. Ashford, Temple University Press, 1982, pp. 345, $29.95 hardback, $12.95 paperback.

Policy Advice and Organizational Survival, Michael J. Prince, Gower, 1983, pp. 256, £13.50.