Powerhouses or pretenders? Debating China's and India's emergence as technological powers

Abstract

Are China and India emerging as innovative technological powerhouses in the twenty-first century? This essay reviews the interdisciplinary debate that has been inspired by this question in recent years. It begins by considering recent studies that are relatively impressed with China's and India's recent accomplishments and potential in this regard. Next, it reviews works that are less impressed with their track records and prospects. It then considers a series of more equivocal studies that remain more or less undecided about China's and India's technological trajectories. The final section evaluates the debate as a whole and proposes new directions for scholarship in this field.     

Guerrillas,drugs and peasants: The rational peasant and the war on drugs in Peru

Coca eradication programmes in Peru are undermined by the interaction of cocaine economics and insurgent politics. Coca cultivators can earn far more from the illegal market in coca than from any legal crop and government efforts to eradicate coca production create a political space in which Sendero Luminoso guerrillas can cultivate popular support by protecting coca cultivators from law‐enforcement agents and Colombian traffickers. We use a model of peasant decision‐making to assess the impact of crop eradication, crop substitution and drug interdiction strategies on the economic behaviour and political loyalties of Peruvian coca cultivators. We use the model to assess the likelihood that even successful anti‐drug programmes may destabilize the Peruvian government by generating popular support for Sendero Luminoso.     

Saving grace

Howard S. Cohen and Michael Feldberg, Power and Restraint: The Moral Dimension of Police Work, New York Praeger, 1991; xvii + 166 pp.