Targeted Sanctions in a World of Global Finance

This is the golden age of economic statecraft—and the study of economic statecraft. This is in large part due to the evolution of economic coercion from trade embargoes to targeted financial sanctions. Targeted financial sanctions are attractive because they can generate economic costs similar to those of more comprehensive sanctions, with fewer negative externalities. Over time, however, the intersection of economic sanctions with globalized capital markets will provoke three interesting research questions. First, do financial sanctions spare a target country’s population from negative humanitarian and human rights outcomes? Second, to what extent are financial sanctions an exercise in learning by both targets and senders? Third, will the United States’ use of financial sanctions trigger blowback against US primacy in the international financial system? These last two questions offer the prospect to linking research on economic statecraft with larger questions of international security and global political economy.     

Compensating the Losers: An Examination of Congressional Votes on Trade Adjustment Assistance

Globalization intensifies political conflict between citizens whose circumstances improve from foreign trade and those whose lives deteriorate as a result of trade. To pacify these rival interests, governments may assist citizens who become unemployed due to trade. When and under what conditions will legislators fund such assistance programs? The current study addresses this question by examining Congressional roll call votes in the United States during a period of rapid economic integration (1980–2004). The analysis reveals that protrade legislators who represent relatively more exporters are more likely to vote for increased spending on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs. Exporters and their elected representatives arguably support such expenditures to broaden the protrade coalition.     

The revival and decline of rank and file movements in Britain during the 1930s

The economic and political crisis of 1931 provoked the reappearance of rank and file movements in Britain. This article examines the unofficial organisations that developed in building, engineering, passenger transport and the railways – as well as more ephemeral bodies. It critically synthesises the existing historiography and replenishes it with new material from the Russian archives. The progress of rank and filism to 1939 is surveyed and the largely forgotten project of a new Communist-led rank and file organisation, a Trade Union Militant League, which would supersede the National Minority Movement, is recuperated. The article stresses the role of Comintern policy in harnessing and moulding grass-roots rebellion. It validates that strand in the literature which argues that Moscow’s subsequent turn to the popular front and aspirations to alliances with labour movement leaders predominated over, and legitimated, indigenous influences, enhanced existing adaptation to trade unionism, and encouraged subordination of oppositional movements to activity in official structures. By 1939, the Communists had abandoned the idea of a national rank and file movement they had pursued since 1923. Little survived of the revolutionary enterprise launched in 1931. Rank and filism endured only as a handful of sectional, party-sponsored, trade union ginger groups.     

Legitimising liberal militarism: politics,law and war in the Arms Trade Treaty

Post-cold war efforts to knit together human rights and international humanitarian law in pursuit of tougher arms transfer control reached their apogee in the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). In contrast to dominant accounts based on human security norms, I argue that a key effect of the ATT is to legitimise liberal forms of militarism. During negotiations the US and UK governments justified their arms export practices in terms of morality, responsibility and legitimacy. More broadly their arms transfer practices are explained away by reference to national regulatory regimes that exceed the standards set out in the ATT. Arms transfers to Egypt and intra-Western transfers illustrate the way these justifications and regimes serve to shield US–UK weapons transfers and use from scrutiny and accountability. Rather than signalling the victory of human security, the ATT is better understood as facilitating the mobilisation of legitimacy for contemporary liberal forms of war fighting and war preparation.     

Unethical power Europe? Something fishy about EU trade and development policies

This article analyses the impact of European Union (EU) policies in the field of fisheries on development in Africa. It contests the premise that the EU promotes local economies, and argues that it often contributes to depleting fish stocks, distorting African economic policies and harming fishers’ communities. In so doing, the EU is violating its basic duty to avoid harm to other states. However, it is now committed to sustainable development. This article offers suggestions on policies which would enable the EU to take on both its negative and positive duties.     

When ‘Anxious Scrutiny’ of Arms Exports Facilitates Humanitarian Disaster

How is it that the UK government continues to export weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in the war in Yemen, despite an explicit commitment to international humanitarian law (IHL)? And how is it that the High Court recently dismissed a case of judicial review, confirming that the government was ‘rationally entitled to conclude’ that arms exports pose no clear risk to IHL in Yemen? In what follows, I explain how a flexible interpretation of risk, reliance on secret information, and deference of the Court to the executive serve to facilitate rather than restrict arms exports. The judges’ decision provides a stamp of approval to an arms export policy that has directly contributed to the deaths of thousands of civilians in Yemen. Attention to the Saudi/Yemen case shows the political and legal manoeuvring that goes into managing the contradictions in government arms export policy.     

Citizens,consumers, workers,and activists: civil society during and after water privatization struggles

Water privatization battles and their aftermath in seven Latin American, African, and Asian countries feature diverse and often complementary forms of action by unions, popular movements, neighbourhood associations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs cooperate with popular movements for water rights more than the literature would suggest, and after mobilizations against privatization, activists have had some success maintaining pressure for better service to poor neighbourhoods through advocacy and local self-provision arrangements. Public employees’ unions play important roles in water policy coalitions, often practising a distinctive form of social movement unionism. These experiences argue for a more flexible understanding of categories and organizational forms in civil society.     

政府的职责定位与农民工组织化中社会资本的整合 —— 基于南昌市“散工劳务超市工会”的调查

近年来,社区农民工工会成为各个地方创新农民工社会管理的典型代表,并以此作为政府社会管理创新的亮点。本文对这种环境下组建的散工劳务超市工会展开调查,分析该类工会社会资本的生成和运行困境,反思政府在完善农民工劳动关系中的定位,认为政府在改善农民工劳动关系中存在定位不准的问题。     

试论新形势下的工会工作

党的十八大报告高屋建瓴,提出了一系列新思想、新观点和新论断,这些新思想、新观点和新论断是进一步推动中国特色社会主义建设事业的重要指导方针,也是推动工会工作的重要指导方针。在新的形势下,工会必须求真务实地开展工作,必须与时俱进、不断创新,必须发动职工群众,依靠职工群众,坚持党的群众路线。     

深刻领会中国工会十六大精神推动工会工作创新发展

中国工会第十六次全国代表大会,是在我国进入全面建成小康社会决定性阶段召开的一次十分重要的会议.深刻理解和把握中央领导同志系列讲话精神和大会报告精神,对于更好地用党中央关于工人阶级和工会工作的新思想、新观点、新论断武装头脑、指导实践,更好地按照全总的统一部署推进工会工作创新发展,团结带领广大职工群众为实现中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦而奋斗具有重要意义.