German Defence Policy under the Second Merkel Chancellorship

The CDU/CSU/FDP coalition (2009–13) has witnessed the emergence of three important changes in the international security environment: the US ‘Asia Pivot’, the global financial crisis and the fallout from Germany's backseat role in the Libya crisis. This article examines how German defence policy has adapted to this changing context. It explores the reforms which have taken place to the Bundeswehr's structure and military capability procurement process under defence ministers Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Thomas de Mazière. The article also looks at German policy toward defence cooperation through CSDP and NATO. The article finds that while some important changes have been enacted to German defence policy, Germany is failing to properly adapt to the changing strategic environment. The article concludes by examining key defence policy challenges facing the government over the 2013–17 legislative period and the implications of the analysis for theoretical debates on German defence policy.     

Capitalism and Bonded Labour in India: Reinterpreting Recent (Re-) Interpretations

Examined here is the way the link between capitalism and bonded labour has been interpreted and reinterpreted in the debate over the past half century about rural development in India. A number of those who initially equated debt bondage with a pre-capitalist production relation, and dismissed arguments that unfree labour and accumulation were compatible, changed their minds and espoused the interpretation they had previously opposed. Among the resulting errors perpetuated by more recent entrants to this debate is a misinterpretation of Marxist theory about both relational and systemic transition. The ensuing confusion has prevented them from understanding either the genesis of the debate about the role of unfreedom in advanced capitalism, or why – in the form of deproletarianisation – bonded labour currently serves the ends of the agribusiness enterprise.     

Lessons from “Around the world with Oprah”: Neoliberalism,race, and the (geo)politics of beauty

On 6 October 2004, viewers went “Around the world with Oprah” and received a rare glimpse inside the lives of 30-year-old women from 17 different countries. When Oprah turned her gaze (and that of middle-class American housewives) eastward, she highlighted South Korean women's penchart for plastic surgery. Oprah's “trip” to South Korea is emblematic of Western discourse surrounding South Korean Women's plastic surgery consumption, most of which focuses on cosmetic eyelid surgery or the sangapul procedure as it is called in South Korea. Given its widespread popularity, the sangapul procedure has come to signify South Korean women's acquiescence to not only patriarchal oppression but racial oppression as well. This essay goes beyond the psychologization of South Korean women in order to ask what such psychological musings obscure about the very political nature of beauty itself. Using “Around the world with Oprah” as a starting point, then, this essay examines beauty at the intersection of race, technology, and (geo)politics in order to show that, in an era of neoliberalism, plastic surgery is often rationalized as an investment in the self towards a more normal, if not better future. As this essay suggests, such a framing of plastic surgery is contingent on Oprah's production of neoliberal feminism based on liberal notions of choice. Given her global reach, these neoliberal feminist subjects are not produced equally, however, but are discursively constructed along a First World/Third World divide.     

The politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: government action and public response

A decade ago it seemed likely that African governments would be destabilised by the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This article tests some of the presumptions in such forecasting with an examination of the South African case. It begins with an assessment of the effects on the public health system of the South African government’s efforts to cope with the illness. Efforts to implement universal treatment of people who are HIV-positive appear to have strengthened government, while the costs have been affordable. The efforts have extended the embrace of the public health system and prompted the engagement of civil society in policy formation and implementation. Survey evidence suggests that the government has gained public approval and that its health service delivery has become more socially accountable. Civil protest to engender political reforms in the treatment of AIDS patients has enhanced the role of constitutional checks on executive authority.     

The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions

This study examines the relationship between policy interventions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and de jure labor rights. Combining two novel data sets with unprecedented country-year coverage – leximetric data on labor laws and disaggregated data on IMF conditionality – our analysis of up to 70 developing countries from 1980 to 2014 demonstrates that IMF-mandated labor market policy measures significantly reduce both individual and collective labor rights. Once we control for the effect of labor market policy measures, however, we find that collective labor rights increase in the wake of IMF programs. We argue that this result is explained by the impact of union pressure on governments which, in such a context, are imbued with the policy space to respond to domestic interest groups. The study has broader theoretical implications as to when international organizations are effective in constraining governments’ choices.     

Rejoinder

Abstract

Many of Mr. van Walt's criticisms are based solely on fabrications of his own making. For example, I am accused, twice, of referring to myself as a “scholar” and to my article as “scholarly.” I could find no trace of either. I am further accused of considering all Tibetan refugee accounts as “unreliable.” To be sure, I believe that one cannot base the study of historical events solely on refugee accounts, but that does not make all of these stories “unreliable.” After all, Dawa Norbu, a refugee himself, wrote in Red Star Over Tibet, “I never saw or heard of any case of misconduct by a Red soldier.” I would never argue that this statement was unreliable. We are further told that I refer to Tibetans as Chinese when in the second paragraph of my review I wrote, “… Tibetans [are] only one of 56 minority nationalities.” Chinese citizens yes, ethnic Hans no. A final example, although there are many more, is Mr. van Walt's attempt to attribute to me the opinion that

… the only importance to the Western academic world is that the situation in Tibet can teach us how to eliminate a “mystical religion” and that “it gives clues as to how Peking will integrate a capitalist Taiwan into a Communist China in the future”. (emphasis added)     

Old conservatism in ‘new’ clothes

This review article considers two books about development theory and practice informed by what is variously referred to as an ‘impasse'/'post‐impasse'/'post‐Marxist’ framework. The latter, its adherents maintain, is a new approach to development that transcends economic reductionism and instead recognises/celebrates cultural ‘difference’, ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’. By contrast, it is argued here that many of the allegedly ‘new’ claims/arguments advanced by the postmodern ‘impasse’ are those traditionally made not just by populism but also by conservatism.

Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, edited by F.J. Schuurman. London: Zed Books, 1993. Pp.ix + 233. £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85649 2109

Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice, edited by D. Booth. Harlow: Longman Scientific & Technical, 1994. Pp.ix + 319. £19.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 582 234972