Bridging between Myanmar and international society – Japan's self-identity and kakehashi policy

Abstract

Numerous academic works have critiqued Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme for being mercantilist and failing to promote democratization and human rights (Orr 1990; Rix 1993; Arase 1995, 2005). Such accounts assess Japan's ODA policy from Western theoretical perspectives that advocate Western approaches, such as military and economic interventions to contain repressive states. While receptive to these criticisms, Japanese policy-makers have perceived their country's international role in ‘bridging’ (kakehashi) terms and structured their ODA accordingly, as this paper details in the case of Japan's ODA policy towards Myanmar. ¹ 1. Myanmar is used throughout this paper in place of Burma in line with the preference of the Japanese government. Burma is employed when referring to events prior to 1989. The rationale behind Japan's kakehashi approach lies in the construction of Japan's self-identity as a state able to reenter international society after World War II through focusing on economic development rather than military and coercive action. Proponents of the kakehashi approach construct Japan both as a model of successful democratization through development which other states can learn from, as well as the means through ODA to ‘bridge’ the divide between repressive regimes and liberal democratic capitalism. This critical approach examines Japan's kakehashi or bridging strategy in terms of Japan's response to the anti-government protests in September 2007, Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, and in the build up to parliamentary elections in November 2010 in Myanmar to demonstrate the permanence of this approach in spite of a change of government in Japan. In so doing, the kakehashi approach reveals opportunities to engage with, rather than contain, repressive regimes, thereby raising the possibility of enticing such states back into international society though economic incentives.     

Circular Migration: A View from Destination Households in Two Urban Informal Settlements in South Africa

This article analyses dual household membership and the return intentions of migrants, using data collected from migrants living in two informal settlements in South Africa. While dual household membership is very common among the migrants we surveyed, less than half of these migrants wanted to return to their other household in the future. We explore the correlates of dual household membership and intended return migration and we consider the implications of our findings for measures of circular individual migration using existing cross-sectional datasets.     

The Making and Remaking of Agro-Industries in Africa

This article introduces the special section on the making and remaking of agro-industries in Africa. It examines what the contributions tell us about how agro-industries work, but also why national industries work the way they do, how they came to be that way and what factors and forces drive or hinder their dynamism.     

Information‐Theoretical Assessment of the Performance of Likelihood Ratio Computation Methods

Performance of likelihood ratio (LR) methods for evidence evaluation has been represented in the past using, for example, Tippett plots. We propose empirical cross‐entropy (ECE) plots as a metric of accuracy based on the statistical theory of proper scoring rules, interpretable as information given by the evidence according to information theory, which quantify calibration of LR values. We present results with a case example using a glass database from real casework, comparing performance with both Tippett and ECE plots. We conclude that ECE plots allow clearer comparisons of LR methods than previous metrics, allowing a theoretical criterion to determine whether a given method should be used for evidence evaluation or not, which is an improvement over Tippett plots. A set of recommendations for the use of the proposed methodology by practitioners is also given.     

Efficiency in the provision of pure public goods by private citizens

This paper raises an old question and proposes a new answer. The question is, “Must public goods be produced by governments?” The consensus answer is “Yes,” on the grounds that transaction costs related to group size prevent all potential consumers of a public good from entering into voluntary arrangements to produce efficient levels of that good. Government intervention thus is required to achieve efficiency. Yet many obvious examples of public goods are not financed or even subsidized by government. Conspicuous examples of this phenomenon include the development of important innovations in technique in fields such as music (Bach and Beethoven), literature (Defoe, Dickens and Shakespeare, not excepting Homer or Adam Smith), and the visual arts (Cezanne), not to mention many crucial scientific discoveries. Indeed, the obvious public-good aspects of scientific knowledge induced many private societies to offer prizes for particular innovations. Two questions are raised by the private, voluntary provision of nonrival outputs or inputs: (1) what conditions contribute to this phenomenon, and (2) can voluntary provision come “close” to efficient provision? We suggest in this paper that, under certain conditions, the gains from many public goods whose benefits reach nationwide populations are largely realized at group sizes far smaller than even county or municipal jurisdictions.     

Change in European Societies since the 1970s

Sociology lags considerably behind political science in its comparative research on European societies, but enough material now exists to enable us to talk broadly about the major changes that have taken place since the 1970s across western Europe, and also to some extent central and eastern Europe too. Attention is here concentrated on those social trends that seem particularly salient for the study of politics, with occupational structure as the starting point. Although this dominant theme of classical sociology has tended to be neglected by much recent research in favour of such areas as deviance, gender and the formation of identities, working life remains fundamental to social organisation and in particular to politics. In fact, the theme of gender is easily accessed through consideration of changes in occupations, and considerable attention will be devoted to it here. This leads in turn to consideration of the family, then on to other aspects of demography including immigration and cultural diversity. This relates clearly to the final theme that will be discussed: the state of religion in Europe. In the conclusions some of the political implications of these changes are brought together.     

The normalizing role of rationalist assumptions in the institutional embedding of neoliberalism

The political economy of Britain over the past three decades provides an interesting example of the consolidation, normalization and institutionalization of a new economic paradigm – neoliberalism. As such, it serves as a potentially instructive focus for debate both about the conditions under which economic paradigms are replaced and consolidated and the evolution of such paradigms through the process of institutionalization. In this paper I suggest that the institutionalization of this new economic paradigm has been associated with the shift from a normative to a normalized and necessitarian neoliberalism. I examine the role played by rationalist assumptions in this extended process of normalization-institutionalization. After presenting a stylized account of the evolution of British neoliberalism, I show how New Labour's monetary policy regime is the heir to the legacy of monetarism and its agenda of labour-market reform is the heir to Thatcherism's supply-side economics. I suggest that the time-inconsistency thesis and the business school globalization thesis have played an equivalent role, for New Labour, to that played for the new right by monetarism and supply-side economics in legitimating neoliberalism. In this way neoliberalism has been normalized. In the final sections of the paper I reflect on the implications of the normalized and necessitarian character of neoliberalism in Britain for its contestability and for democratic economic governance more broadly.     

Shareholder value and Financialization: consultancy promises,management moves

In the pages of the daily financial press, 'shareholder value' is a loose rhetoric. For business consultants who sell financial metrics and implementation, shareholder value is also a product and a promise that purposive management action will be rewarded. This paper begins by considering the consultant's promise and the more guarded academic responses. It then presents empirics on micro performance and the meso limits to shareholder value and argues that most corporate managements cannot easily deliver what consultants promise and the capital markets demand. The paper ends by taking a broader view of value-based management as part of a process of financialization. If the results are contradictory and disappointing, a persistent gap between expectations and outcomes can nevertheless drive management behaviours, which change the world.     

How the United States justified its war on terrorism: prime morality and the construction of a ‘just war’

Just war theory has a long established reputation in the social sciences for evaluating the morality of the military actions of states. However, this analysis has rested upon assumptions of territorial sovereignty and the equal rights of states. The actions of hegemonic powers violate these twin assumptions through their expression of extra‐territorial reach. To avoid charges of immoral behaviour hegemonic powers must use the just war rhetoric of territoriality to justify their extra‐territorial acts. A world‐systems theory conceptualisation of hegemony allows for an interpretation of hegemonic military actions as the defence of a universal prime modernity. Prime modernity refers to an ideal organization of society projected by the hegemonic power as a form of integrative power. For the hegemonic power, threat is perceived as a rejection of the prime modernity anywhere rather than the language of border violations that dominates the foundations of just war theory. Using the language embedded in government and non‐government documents justifying the War on Terrorism, the manner in which a hegemonic power constructed military extra‐territoriality in a system of sovereign states as just is examined. The development of a ‘prime morality’ allowed the hegemonic power to claim that it was operating at the scales of the individual and ‘humankind’ rather than inter‐state power politics. The analysis challenges the implicit geographic assumptions of just war theory and extends our understanding of the imperatives underlying the hegemonic power's construction of its military actions as morally right.     

DEVOLUTION,GOVERNANCE AND THE PEACE PROCESS

Devolution and the associated mechanisms of governance—a power-sharing Executive, elected assembly, cross-border bodies, a reformed system of public administration and civic engagement —are a part of the wider mosaic of peace-building. Their implementation is an attempt to institutionalize stability and copper-fasten a political settlement. This article outlines the changing governmental arrangements existing within Northern Ireland, as it has shifted tentatively away from direct rule. It maps the wider public sector in Northern Ireland, including civil administration (chiefly the Northern Ireland Civil Service), an extended mosaic of nondepartmental public bodies (NDPBs) and other public agencies that, together with local government, form a complex, multi-layered, subregional governance. Our contention is that the manner in which the administration of Northern Ireland has been conducted yields fruitful insights into issues of territorial management in other areas afflicted by intractable constitutional wrangles and attendant violence. In short, an agreed system of governance is integral to the transition from conflict to peace (or at least stability) and, in the case of Northern Ireland, was central to the substance of the Belfast Agreement, characterized by a power-sharing Executive.