Facing the powers that be

Lobbyists, entrenched forces in congress and self-interested friends will try to stymie Clinton's efforts. A look at four key arenas of combat.     

Development assistance: Ruined hopes and great expectations in Africa

This paper highlights the difficulties and complexities of development assistance projects through an analysis of 2 Urban Functions in Rural Development projects conducted by the US Agency for International Development (AID) in Upper Volta and northern Cameroon in 1977-82. The general objectives of the Upper Volta project were to carry out urban function studies, develop a plan for strengthening the contributions of urban centers to rural development, develop a list of investment priorities for facilities and services, and increase the capacities of the Ministry in planning processes and methods. The 2-year project was hindered by a 1-year delay in initiating assistance due to difficulties in locating a contractor. In addition, the contractor and other team members felt there was little justification for studies of spatial organization in a country with so much evident need; rather, they focused on a small rural works program and establishment of effective local government, producing an inconsistency between team activities and the original project agreement. A request by the team to extend the project 1 year beyond its official completion date to compensate for early delays was rejected by USAID. Nonetheless, there was agreement that the project had a small positive impact in Upper Volta. Key lessons from Upper Volta were transferred to the Cameroon project. Although this project was judged to have achieved its objective of preparing a regional plan and of identifying programs for facilities, services, and small-scale enterprises, it was beset by problems of inexperience and technical underqualification of team members, poor communication, inconsistency of USAID guidelines, and methodological confusion. It is suggested that a central challenge for such programs is to create a body of qualified Americans who can work with their local counterparts in meeting the challenges of development. A measure of the success or failure of these projects should be the degree to which learning contributes to improved performance.     

Civil Society,Populism and Liberalism

This paper considers the threats that various kinds of populism might be said to pose to the ideal of a civil society that mediates between ‘private’ and family life and the state. Although it is difficult to generalise about populisms, just about all—whether on left or right—share a hostility to ‘intermediate’ powers. Of course civil society is exactly what could be called a forum for intermediate powers. In contrast, populists often tend to emphasise a vision of immediate power in the sense of the possibility of the direct expression of the people’s will in political institutions. Populists, of whatever pitch, often tend to invoke a partisan state that will be on the side of the people (however defined) rather than a putatively neutral ‘liberal’ state that stands over and against civil society. These factors make most populisms more or less generically hostile to liberalism, understood not in ideological terms but more as a doctrine which emphasises the necessity of mediating power through institutions. Very often, populism is a threat to the idea of civil society understood as a concept integral to liberal political theory, as a means of balancing the state and its wider interlocutors. In this paper, various means, largely inspired by the writings of Tocqueville on the one hand and Paul Hirst on the other, are suggested for addressing aspects of this predicament.

     

Stuck in the Middle: Taiwan's Semiconductor Industry,the U.S.-China Tech Fight,and Cross-Strait Stability

The Trump administration has worked to restrict the People's Republic of China's ability to manufacture and acquire semiconductor chips since 2018. Caught in the crossfire of this burgeoning tech war is Taiwan, which is home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer. With the United States banning companies that use U.S. technology in their chip manufacturing process from doing business with Huawei, TSMC can no longer do business with the Chinese tech company, one of its most important clients. Until the Trump administration announced the license restriction on Huawei, TSMC had managed to walk the fine line of doing business with both China and the United States, without riling either. This article argues that the TSMC example is indicative of how great power competition between the two countries will play out for the foreseeable future. TSMC has announced that it will build a new factory in Arizona as it faces Chinese firms poaching its employees and Chinese actors hacking its systems and code for trade secrets—all actions demonstrating how great power competition will play out for tech dominance. Avoiding direct live-fire conflict, China and the United States will work to restrict the other's actions and development by forcing important tech companies, such as TSMC, into picking a side.     

Book reviews

William C. Green and Theodore Karasik (Eds.), Gorbachev and his Generals: The Reform of Soviet Military Doctrine (Westview Press, 1990, 239pp. ISBN 0–8133–7898–2)

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, On the Law of Nations (Harvard University Press, 1990)

Peter J. Stavrakis, Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944–1949. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London. 1989. ISBN 0–8014–2125–X.

Scalpino, R.A., The Politics of Development: Perspectives on Twentieth‐Century Asia (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989, pp.131)

Sean M. Lynn‐Jones, Steven E. Miller and Stephen van Evera (Eds.), Soviet Military Policy (MIT Press, 1989. £26.95 [cloth]; £13.50 [paperback]).