The Philippines: Another Vietnam?

Abstract

The historic relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines today gives an exceptional importance to the massive economic and strategic legacy of over 70 years of American domination of that nation. Apart from its prime significance to the future of American military power in Asia after the Indochina debacle, the Philippines is the most important example of a sustained U.S. effort to transform a Third World country in its own image. Now, with a martial-law regime's fate very much in doubt and the U.S.'s economic investments and military bases all hanging in the balance, the objective pressures for a potentially open-ended American commitment to preserve its interests and credibility in yet one more Asian nation are again re-emerging in a form substantially more compulsive than those in Indochina before 1965.     

Beyond Orthodoxy: Asserting Latin America's New Strategic Options Toward the United States

This essay explores the possibility that Latin America may deploy new strategic options in its relations with Washington at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. It starts by evaluating what have been the five major foreign policy models of the region with regard to Washington since the end of the Cold War. It proceeds by evaluating the recent dynamics of Latin American insertion into world affairs. Then it introduces three new alternatives for handling U.S. Latin American relations in the coming years. It concludes by pointing out the importance of understanding the scope of the hemispheric challenges for both the region and Washington.     

Transatlantic investor protection as a threat to democracy: the potency and limits of an emotive frame*

Abstract

A campaign by civil society organizations (CSOs) turned a relatively obscure area of international economic law—investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS)—into the focus of opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and later the European Union (EU)–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). This article analyses how CSOs impacted on the EU’s position, while highlighting the limitations of their influence. Combining insights from constructivist International Political Economy literature with scholarship emphasizing the importance of emotions in advocacy framing, I contend that CSOs were able to create a polysemic ‘injustice frame’. The characterization of transatlantic ISDS as a threat to democracy and the rule of law aroused anger, while being ambiguous enough to garner widespread support. The ambiguity of CSOs’ advocacy frame and the concreteness of its target, however, were also the frame’s Achilles heel. These aspects provided space for the European Commission to reform a specific element of the agreement and thereby repair the latter’s overall legitimacy. The Commission’s counter-frame emphasized the reform’s democratic credentials by representing TTIP as an opportunity to move ISDS towards a system of ‘public law’. While this reframing failed to satisfy most opposition, it placated pivotal actors and allowed the Commission to move forward.     

Developmental Change in Adolescent Delinquency: Modeling Time-Varying Effects of a Preventative Intervention and GABRA2 Halpotype Linked to Alcohol Use

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Better integrating human developmental factors in genomic research is part of a set of next steps for testing gene-by-environment interaction hypotheses. This...     

The rise of the Global South,the IMF and the future of Law and Development

Following the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis the world has witnessed a re-accommodation of the global financial system. In the particular case of middle-income countries they have disentangled themselves from the conditionality of the IMF and grown into more assertive actors in international forums, proposing new alternative mechanisms to become more financially independent and for the provision of development assistance. This article critically reviews the new reality by assessing the strategies deployed by developing countries to reduce the IMF’s influence, and explores the potential consequences of the rise of middle-income nations for Law and Development.     

Success in slow motion: The Europeanization of Romanian child protection policy

This paper analyzes the influence of the European Union (EU) through a qualitative case study of child protection policy in Romania. This is a particularly tough case for the growing “Europeanization” literature. Prior research has called attention to several factors that promote Europeanization, including the presence of a pro-reform domestic coalition, the clarity and consistency of the EU’s own legislative targets, a state’s own prior involvement in the setting of European standards, a strong consensus among EU member states backing the European position, and strong non-European support for EU initiatives. According to these propositions, Romanian child protection seemed to provide a worst case scenario for Europeanization, as initially none of these conditions held. And yet the paper shows that substantial Europeanization occurred anyway. We argue that the EU experienced a very slow start with Romania but that it cultivated an opposition that responded to EU initiatives when that opposition took power. Moreover, the EU found three “workarounds” to the obstacles just noted: it asserted legislative targets it did not possess itself, invented new policy tools, and drew protection for its most controversial policy from another international organization, the ECHR. Our central theoretical claim is that external pressure requires internal accommodation in order to have lasting effects. The claim has important implications for the diffusion and conditionality debates.

New frontiers in delivering public infrastructure

Delivering infrastructure in a timely and efficient manner to provide public value remains challenging despite the theoretical developments that have been made. What do we know that could help to deliver quality and energy-efficient infrastructure, what are current challenges and how could we overcome them? This State-of-the-Art Review article attempts to uncover underlying themes, including the governance of large infrastructure projects, the importance of innovation and contractual arrangements, and social and environmental acceptability. A current review of major Canadian contributions is offered, and promising research avenues are proposed.     

Gender Differences in Posttraumatic Stress and Related Symptoms Among Inner-City Minority Youth Exposed to Community Violence

This study examined gender differences in levels of violence exposure, and in levels of posttraumatic stress (PTS) and related symptomatology in a sample of inner-city predominantly African American youth. Because such youth are at risk for exposure to chronic community violence, they are likely to experience considerable distress and clinical or subclinical levels of posttraumatic stress and related symptoms. Previous research has found that although boys are exposed to violence more frequently than are girls, girls are more likely to express posttraumatic stress and related symptoms as a result of violence exposure. Thus, we examined gender as a moderator of the relation between violence exposure and symptoms. A stronger positive association of anxiety and depression symptoms with extent of community violence exposure for girls than boys was found. It was also found that while girls do not appear to differ in their responses to witnessing violence versus being a victim of violence, boys appear to be more distressed by being a victim of violence than by witnessing violence.