Taiwan's Expansion of International Space: opportunities and challenges

While much is to be celebrated since Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's inauguration in 2008, cross-Strait relations are not without challenges. One such crucial test is Ma's call for Chinese leaders to stop isolating Taipei in the world community and give Taiwan adequate ‘international space’. Because the issue strikes at the heart of the fundamental differences between Taipei's and Beijing's positions regarding the island's sovereignty, it needs to be handled carefully by both governments for better cross-Strait relations. This study analyzes the approaches adopted by both Beijing and Taipei regarding Taiwan's status in the international community. Utilizing discussion with Chinese scholars and government officials and the analysis of several waves of survey data conducted in Taiwan, it argues that Beijing's flexibility in its application of the ‘one China’ principle and the Ma administration's practicality in making its requests are critical to the realization of Taipei's demand for international space and hence cross-Strait stability.     

One talk, two tables: A study of the 1998 Koo-Wang meeting across the Taiwan Strait

From October 14 to October 19, 1998, Koo Chen-fu, Chairman of the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), met his mainland counterpart, Wang Daohan, Chairman of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS). This paper uses the Koo-Wang meeting to examine the question of how two divergent parties either come to terms or fail to reach agreement and what factors may be involved in their calculations. How significant are those “shadow participants”—domestic constituencies—during the push and pull process at the international negotiations? In this case study, domestic factors claimed more weight than international factors because domestic constituencies had set up strict conditions for each delegation team before the meeting. The result was more of an appearance of dialogue than an effort at sincere problem solving.     

Public Protests, Private Lawsuits, and the Market: The Investor Response to the McLibel Case

The tendency of English libel law to protect reputation at the expense of freedom of expression makes the United Kingdom a potentially attractive forum for retaliatory lawsuits against individuals and organizations who lobby or campaign against the interests of large companies. The most prominent recent example of such a lawsuit was the so-called 'McLibel' case, in which McDonald's Corporation sued protesters who had distributed anti-McDonald's leaflets outside some of the company's restaurants. The case is often cited as evidence that the risk of unfavourable publicity generated by retaliatory libel actions is a strong deterrent to using the libel laws to silence public opposition to corporate activities. This article uses a technique widely employed in financial economics research, the 'event study' method, to investigate whether the unanticipated bad publicity attracted by the McLibel case had a negative financial impact on McDonald's, such that future retaliatory lawsuits might be deterred.     

The ROK＇s Perception of China＇s Role Interviews with the ROK General Public

North-East Asia is of strategic significance to major world powers such as the United States, China, Japan and Russia. It is a region full ofproblems, such as the North Korean nuclear crisis ano me uni...     

Sex and Race: Are Black Candidates More Likely to be Disadvantaged by Sex Scandals?

A growing body of work suggests that exposure to subtle racial cues prompts white voters to penalize black candidates, and that the effects of these cues may influence outcomes indirectly via perceptions of candidate ideology. We test hypotheses related to these ideas using two experiments based on national samples. In one experiment, we manipulated the race of a candidate (Barack Obama vs. John Edwards) accused of sexual impropriety. We found that while both candidates suffered from the accusation, the scandal led respondents to view Obama as more liberal than Edwards, especially among resentful and engaged whites. Second, overall evaluations of Obama declined more sharply than for Edwards. In the other experiment, we manipulated the explicitness of the scandal, and found that implicit cues were more damaging for Obama than explicit ones.     

Financial derivatives and the rise of circulation

The analysis argues that the outsourcing of production from the metropole generated problems of monetary connectivity that motivated the banking sector to develop and market a new species of derivative: the financial derivative. Virtually non-existent until 1973, such derivatives would soon become a 100 trillion dollar market. Making a market for these derivatives opened the door for speculative capital just as the attempt by this market to capture the risks embodied in local monetized relations led to emergence of a notion of abstract risk. The notion of abstract risk, embodied in the derivative and propelled by a self-expanding speculative capital, is globally significant because abstract risk functions as a social mediation, creating a new form of interdependence in the sphere of circulation even as circulation itself grows increasingly autonomous from production. We show that what makes the emergent culture of financial circulation historically new is that it is defined and determined through the objectification of abstract risk.     

Strangled at birth: the One Nation ideology of Theresa May

ABSTRACT

Contemporary and retrospective evaluation of Theresa May’s premiership inevitably focuses on the division, drift and indecision which characterized it. However, this article argues that although such narratives have considerable validity, they miss an important aspect of the May ‘project’, namely, its attempt to shift the contemporary Conservative Party’s ideology in a ‘One Nation’ direction in rhetoric if not necessarily in deed. The article begins with a conceptual and historical analysis of One Nation Conservatism and then places May within this tradition, principally through consideration of key statements she made as Prime Minister. It, therefore, adds an original perspective both on May’s government and on the ideological analysis of One Nation Conservatism, building on the existing literature.