Perilous presidentialism in Southeast Asia?

ABSTRACT

Regional patterns have long been crucial to debates about presidentialism starting with the Latin American cases in which presidential systems were seen to have contributed to political instability. This special issue examines four cases of presidentialism in Southeast Asia. Both the ‘first’ wave of the presidentialism literature which focuses on ‘pure’ cases of presidentialism, and the ‘second’ wave, which concentrates on a complex mixture of presidentialism and other institutions, are relevant to Southeast Asia. Among ‘pure’ presidential systems, the Philippines appears to provide support to ‘the perils of presidentialism’ thesis given the collapse of democracy there several decades ago and periodic instability since then. But Indonesia, despite ostensibly having the additional institutional perils of multipartism, has proved stable. Among the hybrid cases of presidentialism, both Myanmar and Timor Leste have forged elite accommodation through creating presidential-style institutions, including one considered particularly unpromising for achieving political stability in the literature. Because presidentialism has been associated both with elite accommodation and stability as well as political conflict and instability, the Southeast Asia cases do not clearly demonstrate the dangers of presidentialism. They point instead to the relative lack of explanatory power of this institutional arrangement in understanding political stability.     

A better budget rule

Debt limits, interest coverage ratios, one‐off balanced budget requirements, pay‐as‐you‐go rules, and tax and expenditure limits are among the most important fiscal rules for constraining intertemporal transfers. There is considerable evidence that the least costly and most effective of such rules are those that focus directly on the rate of spending growth, even with their seemingly ad hoc nature and possibilities for circumvention. In this paper, we use optimal control theory and martingale methods to justify a transparent, nonarbitrary rule governing maximum sustainable rate of spending growth, treating the revenue structure of a jurisdiction as a given continuous‐time stochastic process. Our results can be used to determine whether a proposed rate of spending growth is sustainable or not. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Capitalism,Technology and Work: Interrogating the Tipping Point Thesis

Post-work politics, with a focus on universal basic income, rather than an agenda of saving jobs and improving the quality of work, has been a growth area on the left. This article challenges the views of proponents that their claims are ‘on trend' with developments in markets and technology. It does so by examining two supposed ‘tipping points' concerning crises in the production of value in capitalism and in the availability of and attachment to work. Through a rigorous examination of available evidence, the article demonstrates that the stories contained in post-work discourses about business models, technologies, labour markets and workers are not empirically sustainable. Suggestions are then made about what more credible accounts of actually existing capital, technology and labour might look like, and what the direction of alternative, progressive policy agendas might be.     

System architecture practices to facilitate Department of Defense technology transfer

This paper explores the possibilities of combining DOD technology transfer mechanisms to systems architecture techniques as a means to shorten program acquisition timelines while still providing high technology, robust tools to the women and men serving in the United States military. A literature search demonstrates that few articles have been published on the relationship between systems architecture and technology transfer. However, any DOD laboratory that employs more than 200 scientists and engineers is required by law to have a full time Office of technology transfer, so why has so little research been performed on the synergies between the two DOD disciplines? This paper will describe the ways that the systems architecture tools and practices, and technology transfer transactional mechanisms available to all DOD laboratories, can be utilized to increase knowledge sharing with small business and industry partners to shorten acquisition cycles.

     

Addressing avoidable vision impairment in Mozambique and the Africa region

The Mozambique Eyecare Project was an international partnership to implement and research eye health education in Mozambique and the Africa region. An optometry degree was developed at Universidade Lúrio, Mozambique. In addition, existing eye health workers were upskilled with training. Researchers from various disciplines evaluated the project and its potential for impact on eye health in the region. The body of evidence generated from the research provides useful lessons for development programmes in general, as well as specific lessons for delivering eye health education and service delivery models for low-income settings.     

A Strategic Left? Starmerism,Pluralism and the Soft Left

This article places the Labour Party’s present post‐Corbyn renewal in the context of previous periods of renewal in the party’s recent history, associating with the new leadership of Keir Starmer a potential to rediscover the strategic project of the pluralist soft left as an alternative to the programmatic character of the hard left. After assessing the Corbynist hegemony established in the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019, it considers the current absence of any clearly defined set of principles or values underpinning ‘Starmerism’. It then looks back to the Kinnockite ascendency in the 1980s, and the Blairite ascendency in the 1990s, as possible templates for how the party reassesses its positioning with reference to changing electoral, social and economic circumstances. A critique of Corbynism’s left populism culminates in a consideration of the possible grounds for a new pluralist agenda attuned to the policy and electoral challenges Labour faces today.