The internal and external constraints on foreign policy in India: exploring culture and ethnic sensitivities

The main argument of this contribution is that the distinction between internal and external is at best blurred and in reality does not make much sense in the case of India’s foreign policy. It may start and end at the border and be determined by negotiations, diplomacy or brute force but there is no conclusive evidence in the literature to decide what determines what. There are important dynamics and interplays across the thin line between the domestic and international spheres, especially in terms of understanding the reciprocal challenges related to how factors of culture and ethnicity relate with the legitimacy of the state. The aim of the paper is to serve four purposes. To unpack and give a critical overview of the debates concerned with the internal and external aspects of India’s foreign policy; to situate the literature dealing more specifically with domestic issues related to culture and ethnicity and outline the main approaches involved; to give an overview of how external factors impact foreign policy conduct and relate to India’s role in defining international norms and regulations; and, finally, to give some theoretical markers, suggestions and concluding remarks.     

The R&D performance of the South African manufacturing sector, 1970–1993

In this article we undertake a detailed exploration of the research and development activities in one particular middle-income country. We explore what the data from R&D surveys can tell us about the levels, the determinants and the effectiveness of R&D in the manufacturing sector. We point to some of the broader factors that may have influenced South Africa’s drive to improve the technological capacity of its manufacturing sector, but we mostly focus on those issues associated directly with R&D. We show that the degree of interaction between the different domains of R&D activity, business, government and the tertiary sector has been weak, and that the possibility of positive spill-overs between these domains has not been fully exploited. In addition, little or no policy intervention designed to stimulate R&D activity by industry has been deployed in South Africa. We find that South African R&D activity has mainly been reactive in character and suggest that this lies at the heart of South Africa’s mixed R&D performance in relation to other developing countries.     

Explaining differences in sub-national patterns of clean technology transfer to China and India

The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has the capacity to incentivize the international transfer of environmentally sound technologies. Given that both countries are expected to have similar incentives when managing the distribution of technology transfer within the country, why do sub-national patterns in the allocation of projects with technology transfer differ? Using comparable political–economic data compiled for China and India, we offer an explanation for these differences. In China, where the government regards the CDM as a tool for achieving sustainable development, technology transfer is concentrated in provinces that need it the most and that are most conducive to receiving transfers (i.e., economically less developed, yet heavily industrialized provinces). In India, where the government takes on a “laissez-faire” approach to the CDM, neither level of economic development nor that of industrialization affects clean technology transfer. In this regard, although the incentives are similar, the capacity to pursue them is not comparable. We test these hypotheses using data on CDM technology transfer across Chinese provinces and Indian states during the 6-year period from 2004 to 2010.     

Immundefiziente Labortiere im System des Tierschutzrechts

Natur und Recht - Zucht und Haltung immundefizienter Labortiere wurden bislang nicht als Tierversuch gewertet, soweit die Tiere mit an Sicherheit grenzender Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht aufgrund des...     

Economic Elites and Support for Housing Affordability Policy: How a Housing-Health Belief Matters

Political Behavior - To investigate economic elites’ housing policy preferences and test the attitudinal, contextual, political, and economic conditions that drive support for affordable...