Uneven development,inequality and concentration of power: a critique of Thailand 4.0

This article provides a critique of the Thailand 4.0 strategy to push the country out of the middle-income trap through innovation-driven, inclusive and sustainable growth. First, it argues that the policies have insufficiently analysed the persistence of structural hierarchy and uneven development in the global political economy, which will constrain Thailand’s catch-up success in the future. Second, based on writings about progressive mission-led industrial strategies, it is argued that Thailand 4.0 ought to embed a progressive social and environmental agenda more clearly in its industrial strategy. Third, it is argued that Thailand 4.0 neglects to address the high concentration of political and economic power in the country, and also continues to allow unequal access to the policymaking process that has led to socio-environmental problems. Overall, this article argues that Thailand 4.0 will increasingly aggravate the two-tier fragmented nature of the political economic system of Thailand, where few can reap the biggest shares of the surplus and participate in more advanced sectors of the economy. It also calls for a more progressive industrial strategy and an alternative developmental path.     

Unforeseen and Unaccounted: the European Union,the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland,peacebuilding, and accountability

This article examines the case of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland's (CFNI) experience as a primary recipient of peacebuilding aid from the European Union (EU) under the Special EU Programmes Body Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (SEUPB-EUSSPPR). The case serves as a lens into the tensions that such efforts create for community-based organizations as they seek both to honor their funder's accountability claims and their own needs to ensure legitimacy and efficacy with those with whom they interact so as to secure space and discretion to seek to catalyze social experimentation and learning. This paper argues the Foundation's experience and frustrations with EU accountability claims point up a difficulty with the SEUPB's comprehensive conceptualization of peacebuilding: It tends in practice to favor Union-prescribed aims and objectives over those its ‘partners’ derive from their daily efforts.     

When Liberal Peacebuilding Fails: Paradoxes of Implementing Ownership and Accountability in the Integrated Approach

As a consequence of the popularity of integrated and nationally owned peace processes, aligning external actors to a national peacebuilding strategy has become part of the recipe for success. Using the case of Sierra Leone, this article engages with the question of what constructing such unified peacebuilding agenda in fragile states means politically. Contrasting the purpose of peacebuilding with the practices through which it is carried out, the article argues that the implementation of a unified peacebuilding agenda to a large extent undermines the liberal pretences of peacebuilding. While the integration of government, civil society and donors works to portray a more ordered society in countries where the lack of such order has been a manifest security problem, it also works to undermine the crucial autonomy of and accountability between them.     

Economic Aid: The End of Phase II and the Impact on Sustainable Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland

Abstract

Economic aid has been a critical component of the peace process in Northern Ireland allowing for community-based interventions, employment, social inclusion and regional stability. With the second round of funding coming to a close this essay explores the thoughts and perceptions of civil servants, fund administrators and community group leaders in Derry, Belfast and the Border Area to consider peoples reflections on the outcome of funding, concerns for the future once funding ends, what vital work is still needed and what strategies exist to continue the work of peace after the cessation of Phase II.     

Predicting School Sense of Community: Students’ Perceptions at Two Catholic Universities

Understanding the factors that predict sense of community (SOC) among college students has important implications for higher education policy and practice. The present study determined whether perceptions of inclusion and religious pluralism across 2,199 university students' (1,442 women, 757 men; M age = 23.42, SD =7.84) at two Catholic universities predicted levels of school sense of community (SSOC). As expected, results indicated that perceptions of both inclusion and religious pluralism significantly predicted SSOC. However, mixed results were found regarding the interaction of university setting with inclusion and religious pluralism. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed.     

Assessing the impact of EU governmentality in post-conflict countries: pacification or reconciliation?

European Union (EU) interventions in conflict countries tend to focus on governance reforms of political and economic frameworks instead of the geopolitical context or the underlying power asymmetries that fuel conflict. They follow a liberal pattern often associated with northern donors and the UN system more generally. The EU's approach diverges from prevalent governance paradigms mainly in its engagement with social, identity and socio-economic exclusion. This article examines the EU's ‘peace-as-governance’ model in Cyprus, Georgia, Palestine and Bosnia and Herzegovina. These cases indicate that a tense and contradictory strategic situation may arise from an insufficient redress of underlying conflict issues.     

包容性发展维度下的公共政策建构

包容性发展是当前我国发展理念的新成果,也是我国发展方式的新转变.包容性发展价值理念为我国公共政策的设计、建构和完善提供了价值参考和行为导向.在改革进入攻坚期与深水区的当下,我国公共政策的制定必须坚持包容性发展的价值理念,走包容性公共政策建构之路,从而化解利益矛盾与冲突.     

Co-operation,Contestation and Complexity in Post-Conflict Security Sector Reform

ABSTRACT

Security Sector Reform (SSR) remains a key feature of peacebuilding interventions and is usually undertaken by a state alongside national and international partners. External actors engaged in SSR tend to follow a normative agenda that often has little regard for the context in post-conflict societies. Despite recurrent criticism, SSR practices of international organisations and bilateral donors often remain focused on state institutions, and often do not sufficiently attend to alternative providers of security or existing normative frameworks of security. This article provides a critical overview of existing research and introduces the special issue on ‘Co-operation, Contestation and Complexity in Post-Conflict Security Sector Reform’. We explore three aspects that add an important piece to the puzzle of what constitutes effective SSR. First, the variation of norm adoption, norm contestation and norm imposition in post-conflict countries that might explain the mixed results in terms of peacebuilding. Second, the multitude of different security actors within and beyond the state which often leads to multiple patterns of co-operation and contestation within reform programmes. And third, how both the multiplicity of and tension between norms and actors further complicate efforts to build peace or, as complexity theory would posit, influence the complex and non-linear social system that is the conflict-affected environment.     

Gender and Defence Sector Reform: Problematising the Place of Women in Conflict-Affected Environments

ABSTRACT

While gender-responsive Security Sector Reform (SSR) is increasingly recognised as being key to successful SSR programmes, women continue to be marginalised in post-conflict SSR programmes, particularly defence sector reform. By focussing on developments in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kosovo and Colombia, this article explores the paradox of women’s marginalisation in defence sector reform and post-reform defence structures in places where women were active combatants during the preceding conflict. This article refers to examples of women’s engagement in combat to challenge some of the reasons given for women’s marginalisation, including reference to women’s skillset, aptitude and interests. The article adopts a feminist institutionalist approach to show how SSR helps security sector institutions construct and reconstruct gender power relations, reinforce gendered dynamics of exclusion, and determine gendered outcomes. It concludes by drawing attention to the transformational potential of SSR to alter gender power relations, and thereby enhance the security of women and the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts.