Addressing Myanmar’s Citizenship Crisis

Among many problematic issues surfacing in reformist Myanmar is a citizenship crisis with four main dimensions. First, in a state with fragile civil liberties, skewed political rights and limited social rights, there is a broad curtailment of citizenship. Second, Rohingya Muslims living mainly in Rakhine State are denied citizenship, and other Muslims throughout the country are increasingly affected by this denial. Third, designated ethnic minorities clustered in peripheral areas face targeted restrictions of citizenship. Fourth, the dominant Bamar majority concentrated in the national heartland tends to arrogate or appropriate citizenship. The result is growing social tension that threatens to undermine the wider reform process. To examine this crisis, the article sets Myanmar in a comparative context. In particular, it considers how multicultural states in the developed world have sought to manage a political switch from racial or ethnic hierarchy to democratic citizenship. Drawing on global experience with multiculturalism and enabling civic integration, it advances a series of policy options focused on rights, duties and identity. It argues for domestic political leadership, backed by global political support, to address Myanmar’s citizenship crisis.     

Institutional Design and Corruption Prevention in Hong Kong

In recent years, the Hong Kong government has sought to supplement its highly successful, rule-based anti-corruption strategy with value-based elements which stress the importance of ensuring personal integrity and avoiding conflicts of interest. The introduction of these elements raises issues about the relationship between rules and values within public organizations seeking to enhance their integrity management systems. In the Hong Kong case, it is argued, the predominance of the rule-based system means that value issues, such as potential conflicts of interests, tend to be pushed up through the hierarchy for resolution at higher levels in the organization. In addition, the development of informal rules relating to value issues limits the extent to which public officials can exercise personal discretion. The article is based on a survey of Ethics Officers and Assistant Ethics Officers in the Hong Kong government in June 2010 and on follow-up interviews conducted between October and December 2010.     

Japan and its impact on South‐east Asia

J.E. Dreifort, Myopic Grandeur: The Ambivalence of French Foreign Policy in the Far East, 1919–45 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1992). Pp.xiv + 334. £31.50. ISBN 0–87338–441–5.

R.J. Aldrich, The Key to the South: Britain, the United States, and Thailand during the Approach of the Pacific War, 1929–42 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993). Pp.xxiii + 416. £25.00. ISBN 0–19–588612–7.

A. Gilchrist, Malaya, 1941: The Fall of a Fighting Empire (London: Robert Hale, 1992). Pp.185. Price unstated. ISBN 0–7090–4684–7.

P. Elphick and M. Smith, Odd Man Out: The Story of the Singapore Traitor (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993). Pp.xv + 265. £17.99. ISBN 0–340–58762–8.

P. Bates, Japan and the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, 1946–52 (London: Brassey's, 1993). Pp.xviii + 270. £29.95. ISBN 1–85753–000–4.     

The political economy of China and Japan's relationship with Africa: a comparative perspective

China and Japan's policies towards Africa in the 1990s have converged, ostensibly around enhanced economic interaction with the continent based on the premise of integrating the continent into the global economy. At the same time, both countries view Africa as a useful buttress to their respective political and diplomatic goals in the international system. Connected to this and in order to garner support for their agendas, both countries promote themselves as possessing specific pro-South identities. This identity is premised around the notions of ‘non-Westernness’ and, in the case of China, in resistance to the North's hegemony. Yet paradoxically, by pursuing their respective policies in Africa, both states act to further deepen the penetration of the West into Africa. The inherent contradictions in Chinese and Japanese policies towards Africa raises questions as to the long-term viability of the current agendas being pursued by the two countries in Africa.     

Audience,Purpose, and Civic Engagement: A Reassessment of Writing Instruction in Political Science

In the present study I examine meaning-making as an integral aspect of successful writing assignments in political science. Results of a semester-long quasi-experimental pilot study show that meaning-making writing tasks help students in Introduction to American Politics courses become more politically engaged through the inculcation of civic skills.     

Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?

Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do ‘green grabs’ constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?     

The ‘private plot’ in Soviet agriculture

The paper examines the main components of Mexican agrarian populism, and the attractions of the populist position in the light of the current crisis within the Mexican agricultural sector. It is suggested that the ‘campesinistas’ (agrarian populists) have incorporated various aspects of marxist analysis, but have nevertheless emphasised ways in which their approach pans company with that of most marxists in Latin America. According to writers like Gustavo Esteva, perhaps the leading ‘campesinista’, the peasant economy in the process of developing can co‐exist with capitalism for a protracted period, and considerable doubt exists as to whether the peasant economy is ‘ultimately’ inconsistent with capitalist development. The agrarian populists look to the peasantry in Mexico as a vehicle for rural development, believing that a better understanding of the internal logic of peasant production might facilitate an alternative series of policy measures. The weaknesses of the ‘campesinista’ position are explored, and doubts expressed about the viability of the populist stance as long as Mexico has the option of importing basic foodcrops.     

Party politics and the north Indian peasantry: The rise of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh

In the last 20 years politics in the rural areas of north India has been transformed by the emergence of non‐Congress parties with strong support among the prosperous strata of the peasantry. Studies of these developments have placed different emphases on the importance of class and caste factors, as well as drawing attention to the existence of blocs of potential support previously alienated from the Congress. In Uttar Pradesh (UP) the defection from the Congress of peasant leader Charan Singh and the formation of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) in the late 1960s, has been seen as one of the most important examples of these changes in rural politics. The purpose of this article is to examine the formation and initial electoral fortunes of the BKD in one locality, and, at the same time, to assess the applicability, to a local setting, of general explanations of the emergence and success of the party.