An “Assertive” China? Insights from Interviews

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a more assertive China. What happened to China's “peaceful rise” and “charm offensive”? What explains the changes in China's foreign policy? According to interviews with Beijing and Shanghai-based analysts, China's assertiveness between 2008 and 2010 can be divided into two waves, each triggered by a different cause. The first wave seems triggered by a sense in Beijing that Washington, DC was more differential to China's interests, and less committed to East Asia. The second wave seems best explained as China's response to what it perceived as a far more assertive and threatening United States. Both waves were amplified by two domestic challenges: Chinese leaders’ hypersensitivity to popular nationalism and poor bureaucratic coordination among an expanding number of foreign policy actors.     

Selling Eastern Europe's social housing stock: Proceed with caution

Abstract

As the countries of Eastern Europe begin to reorient their housing sectors toward the private market, many quarters are advocating selling the units in the social sector—typically about one‐fourth of the housing stock—to the tenants. Whether purchasing their units is attractive to tenants depends on the sales price, current and expected rent levels, availability and terms of financing, and the strength of tenant rights of occupancy. Drawing lessons from the experiences of three countries—China, Hungary, and the United Kingdom—in selling social sector rental units, this paper concludes that too much emphasis has been placed on lowering the sales price compared with changing other conditions. This practice results in a substantial loss of revenue to government and a questionable distribution of the nation's wealth.     

Leader heuristics,political knowledge and voting in Britain's AV referendum

This paper uses data gathered in the British Election Study's 2011 AV Referendum Survey to investigate the impact of party leader images on referendum voting. The emphasis on leader images accords well with research showing that leader heuristics have sizable effects on voting in major referendums and general elections in Britain and other mature democracies. Reacting to these findings, some analysts have argued that the effects of leader images are heterogeneous, being stronger for voters with lower levels of political knowledge. In contrast, consistent with recent research in experimental economics and political psychology, it can be hypothesized that more knowledgeable voters rely more heavily on leader heuristics than do less knowledgeable individuals. Using multivariate statistical techniques developed for interpreting interaction effects in nonlinear models, analyses indicate that a political knowledge index focusing on the electoral system does not have statistically significant effects on referendum voting. However, voters' knowledge of leaders' positions on AV does interact with leader images. The analyses show that voters with higher levels of political knowledge are influenced more strongly by leader heuristics than are those who are less knowledgeable.     

Valence politics and electoral choice in a new democracy: The case of Taiwan

After two peaceful alternations of political power in a single decade, Taiwan is a democratic success story, demonstrating levels of party competition, turnout rates and patterns of civic engagement similar to those in mature Western democracies. What factors drive electoral choice in Taiwan's new democracy? This paper addresses this question by testing rival models of voting behavior using the Taiwan Elections and Democratization Study (TEDS) 2008 presidential election survey data and the 2010 mayoral election survey data. Analyses show that, similar to their counterparts in mature democracies, Taiwanese voters place more emphasis on the performance of political parties and their leaders in delivering policies designed to address valence issues concerning broadly shared policy goals than on position issues or more general ideological stances that divide the electorate. Findings demonstrating the strength of the valence politics model of electoral choice in Taiwan closely resemble the results of analyses of competing models of voting behavior in Western countries such as Great Britain and the United States.     

Hard choices in hard times: Valence voting in Germany (2009)

Recent studies of voting behavior in Anglo-American elections have demonstrated the clear superiority of the valence model over its rivals for explaining how people cast their ballots. In this paper we test the portability of the valence model in a particularly challenging setting the 2009 German Parliamentary elections. Although there are reasons to think that a spatial model might outperform the valence model, we find that the valence model outperforms it with results similar to previous findings in other political settings.     

THE LAW AND ECONOMICS OF REGULATING RATINGS FIRMS

Consumers and producers frequently rely on product ratings,such as college rankings, restaurant reviews, and bond ratings.While much has been written about the structure of ratings inparticular industries, little has been written on the generalstructure of different ratings industries and whether governmentintervention is typically needed. This paper begins that inquiryby examining the market structure of different ratings industries,and considering the circumstances under which firms that provideratings should be regulated. We find that most ratings firmsoperate in highly concentrated markets. We also find that mostratings firms determine their own testing standards and methods,although some industries have self-governing oversight bodiesthat offer their own accreditation standards. Despite the findingthat many ratings industries are concentrated, our analysissuggests that market forces generally appear to be an effectivemechanism for providing consumers and producers with usefulratings.     

Coercion and patient satisfaction on psychiatric acute wards

Legal-, perceived- and objective coercion were examined both separately and together as a measure of accumulated coercion, to determine how coercion affected patient satisfaction in patients admitted for acute psychiatric care. Accumulated coercive events significantly reduced both overall satisfaction, and satisfaction in four of five subscales evaluating different aspects of treatment. Neither legal status nor perceived coercion affected patient satisfaction, while objective coercion had a significant negative effect on overall satisfaction when these measures were analysed separately. Overall patient satisfaction reported at discharge was low, while satisfaction with different aspects of treatment showed considerable variation. The observation that perceived coercion in the admission process did not affect satisfaction significantly underlines the need to further explore the interaction between subjective and objective measures for coercion. It appears that multiple measures for coercion should be used in future studies.     

Corruption,bribery and patriarchy in Tanzania

This is an ethnography of the political culture of Tanzania as compared to the political culture of the United States. Endemic and harmful corruption among the political leadership of Tanzania and the United States alike stems from widespread popular equation of order with patriarchy, made worse by extending the logic of patriarchy to belief that social order and welfare rest on the strength of the nation state. The Tanzanian war on corruption and ensuing shutdown of the University of Dar es Salaam during the first half of 1990 affirm the radical feminist premise that the models of legitimacy we apply in the privacy of our families are identical to and inseparable from the models of legitimacy employeed domestically and internationally by our political leaders. Corruption and other violence are more directly expressed in Tanzania and more indirectly expressed by Americans who as a consequence are more enslaved to corruption and violence than Tanzanians. The contrast in Tanzanian and U.S. political cultures and the nature of patriarchy itself leads to a set of paradoxes about achieving freedom from corruption through exercise of patriarchal state power—as that children who are the ultimate victims of corruption are at once most blamed by adults, more responsive to change than adults, and unable to change as long as they remain the subjects of patriarchal discipline. Bribery is not necessarily a part of the problem of corruption but is a part of the solution. Freedom from corruption basically requires democratic accountability. Tanzanians and Americans are linked symbiotically: neither people can free themselves from corruption without before the other. There is no logical starting point for a patriarchal approach to freeing people from corruption. On the other hand radically effective emancipation from corruption is occurring across Tanzania and the United States.