U.K. Needs Clear Choice on China Relations

正CHINA and Britain have potentially one of the world’s most fruitful international economic relationships.Not only do they account for 16 percent of world GDP,but their two economies are mutually complementary rather than competitive.China is now the world’s largest industrial producer,     

Negotiating democracy with authoritarian regimes. EU democracy promotion in North Africa

ABSTRACT

In order to better understand the dynamics of international cooperation on democracy promotion with authoritarian regimes, this article looks into the processes and results of negotiations on democracy (promotion) between the European Union (EU) and two of its North African neighbours (Morocco, Tunisia) in the decade leading up to the Arab uprisings. Asking if, how, and to what effect the EU and its Mediterranean partners have negotiated issues related to democracy promotion, it analyses official documents issued on the occasion of their respective association council meetings in 2000-2010. It shows that partners have indeed addressed these issues since the early 2000s, however, without engaging in substantive exchanges. Most of the time, conflicts have been neither directly addressed nor resolved. Where there are traces of actual negotiations leading to an agreement, these are clearly based on a logic of bargaining rather than arguing. These findings challenge the picture of harmony and cooperation between the EU and Morocco. Furthermore, they point to the low quality of these exchanges which reinforces the dilemma of international democracy promotion in cooperation with authoritarian regimes.     

Conceptualising Party-State Governance and Rule in Laos

ABSTRACT

This article develops a framework for conceptualising authoritarian governance and rule in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. After introducing the national and academic context, which go a significant way towards understanding the paucity of comparative political work on Laos, we propose an approach to studying post-socialist authoritarian and single-party rule that highlights the key political-institutional, cultural-historical and spatial-environmental sources of party-state power and authority. In adopting this approach, we seek to redirect attention to the centralising structures of rule under the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, illustrating how authoritarian institutions of the “party-state” operate in and through multiple scales, from the central to the local level. At a time when the country is garnering greater attention than at any time since the Vietnam War, we argue that this examination of critical transitions in Laos under conditions of resource-intensive development, intensifying regional and global integration, and durable one-party authoritarian rule, establishes a framework for future research on the party-state system in Laos, and for understanding and contextualising the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party regime in regional comparative perspective.     

The authoritarian logic of regulatory pluralism: Understanding China's new environmental actors

Over the last decade, Chinese citizens, judges, and prosecutors have started to take action against industrial pollution, pluralizing a regulatory landscape originally occupied by administrative agencies. Regulatory pluralism here has an authoritarian logic, occurring without the retreat of party‐state control. Under such logic, the party‐state both needs and fears new actors for their positive and negative roles in controlling risk and maintaining stability. Consequently, the regime's relation to regulatory pluralism is ambivalent, shifting between support and restriction. This prevents a development of a regulatory society that could bypass the regulatory state. Theoretically, this special edition argues for a subjective definition of regulation in a context of pluralism. Moreover, it finds that regulatory pluralism need not coincide with a decentring of regulation. Finally, it highlights how entry onto the regulatory landscape affects the non‐regulatory roles of new actors, creating unintended consequences for regulatory pluralism.     

浅论构建能源竞争性市场的法律路径

中国能源市场面临的首要问题就是需要构建能源竞争性市场,以期为未来实现能源发展的最终目标铺平道路。竞争意味着存在合格的产业组织和多元的产权主体,因此,国有企业需要改革升级,民营企业应当被大力引进能源市场。在政治和经济的博弈中,能源法律制度为这个竞争性市场提供了一把保护伞。     

Modern weddings in Uzbekistan: ritual change from ‘above’ and from ‘below’

Under the new conditions of independence, wedding ceremonies in Uzbekistan have increasingly diversified along growing social and economic divides. Recent state measures to curb ritual expenditures follow the furrow of a long tradition of criticism against ritual prodigality which, however, falls short of its self-set target of enforcing more ‘rational’ rituals. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Ferghana Valley, this paper sheds a new light on the controversy around ‘excessive ritual expenditures’ by discussing tensions in local practices arising from changing livelihoods and consumption patterns, on the one hand, and, on the other, from an ambivalent state policy that aims at containing ritual expenditures and social polarization, while also promoting an ideal of modern wedding that undermines the very aim of the policy.     

Rural economies and leadership change in Central Asia

ABSTRACT

This article applies a political economy approach to questions of presidential succession in Central Asia. Using the cases of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, it examines how institutions governing rural economies generate, channel and distribute rents within these authoritarian regimes. In some, these institutions concentrate rents under long-standing rulers; in others they diffuse rents away from rulers. The article then specifies obstacles to leadership change that arise from these rural economies, and the crises those obstacles may pose for authoritarian regimes in the region.     

Authoritarian legitimation: assessing discourses of legitimacy in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT

What are the sources of authoritarian persistence in Central Asia? This study explores the argument that authoritarian regimes persist through effective authoritarian legitimation. Drawing on the theory and analysis of discourse, it develops an approach to authoritarian legitimation and examines discursive appeals to legitimacy by the Kazakh and Uzbek presidents. The study also assesses the effectiveness of the presidential discourses of legitimacy for public perception of the governing regimes in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This research shows that by defining what constitutes legitimate power and presenting political rule as consistent with this definition, authoritarian governments can foster certain modes of reasoning and evaluation among citizens, and create possibilities for their acceptance of the regime as ‘right’ or ‘proper’.     

The political economy of Russian higher education: why does Putin support research universities?

This article argues that Vladimir Putin's regime launched support programs for the leading Russian universities in 2005 because of a perceived threat of the political mobilization of youth, similar to the one that triggered “color revolutions” in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. The support programs created cleavages in the university community, covered an attack on university autonomy, and made the containment of possible anti-regime student mobilization a part of an implicit agreement between the regime and the universities. The historical coincidence of the “demographic hole,” which caused a shrinkage of the higher education market, and high oil prices, which provided the necessary resources for the regime, made this implicit agreement possible. The article contributes to the research on authoritarianism, youth mobilization, authoritarian backlash after the color revolutions, and the development of research universities in Russia.     

Resurgent authoritarianism: the case of Russia's new NGO legislation

Following the protest demonstrations of the 2011–2012 electoral cycle, tensions between the limited modernization efforts of Medvedev and the resurgent authoritarianism of Putin have become increasingly manifest. These are seen not only in the relationship between society and the state, but also in the “para-constitutional” institutions of the dual state. This article argues that whereas Medvedev created an arena for liberalization within these para-constitutional structures, Putin has firmly rejected these policies, among other things by revising the 1995 law on NGOs amended in 2006. Using the perspective of the dual state, the article argues that with the introduction of the Law on Foreign Agents (2012), the original law draft On Public Control (2014), a key element in Medvedev's modernization program, was delayed and substantially altered. Together, these amendments create precarious conditions for NGOs, pressuring their independence by threats of dissolution and reducing the quality of civil control over state organs.