Mongolia's evolving security strategy: omni-enmeshment and balance of influence

Abstract

With the publication of its 2010 National Security Concept and its 2011 Foreign Policy Concept, Ulaanbaatar has formalised a shift in foreign policy that has been readily apparent since 2000. Whereas Mongolia's foreign policy for the 1990s was formulated around an omni-enmeshment strategy, its foreign policy from 2000 onward is best conceptualised as an amalgam of omni-enmeshment and balance of influence. Ulaanbaatar's new foreign policy strategy implicitly identifies China as the country's largest security concern. This sense of a China ‘challenge’ is mirrored in Ulaanbaatar's post-2000 foreign policy relations.     

Great powers,ASEAN, and security: reason for optimism?

Abstract

The positive role that external powers can play in the creation and maintenance of security in regions has long been ignored; external interference is generally perceived as detrimental to the ability of a group of states to function as a community. However, this paper argues that in the case of ASEAN, the presence of external actors allows the group to function as a community that also provides and ensures security. This paper furthers the debate regarding ASEAN's security functions. With international attention focused on the Asia-Pacific, there is a need to understand the context in which security is maintained in Southeast Asia.     

Divided but united: explaining nested public support for European integration

Academic and general interest in public support for European Integration is on the rise. Theoretically, the utilitarian, identity, reference, cue-taking and signalling models have been developed to explain this perplexing phenomenon. While these models have been tested, there is no comprehensive up-to-date account of how well they perform separately, relative to each other and across levels. Empirically, this study utilises a data set with 110,873 respondents from the European Social Survey. Methodologically, a multilevel model is used to address causal heterogeneity between levels. The study shows that ‘attitudes towards multiculturalism’ at the individual level and ‘corruption’ at the country level are the strongest predictors. When interacting levels within models, it is demonstrated that individual trust in the national political establishment is being moderated by the level of corruption in a country in influencing support for European integration. On this basis, two models are proposed, named the ‘saviour model’ and the ‘anti-establishment model’.     

Eastward Enlargement of the European Union and the Identity of Europe

The constitution of a European demos with a collective identity is one of the preconditions for adjusting the legitimacy problem of the European Union (EU). The analysis attempts to clarify empirically whether there is sufficient commonality regarding Europeans' political value orientations to substantiate a collective identity. Particularly in view of the European Union's eastward enlargement, the question arises whether widespread cultural heterogeneity in Europe allows the formation of a European demos at all. In Europe we can identify a West-East axis of political value orientations. Democratic attitudes decrease the further to the East while at the same time there is an increase in etatist orientations. Thresholds can be observed which distinguish Western European countries on the one hand and Central and Eastern European countries on the other. Within the group of Central and Eastern Europe a further distinction can be made between the three Slavic republics of the former Soviet Union and the rest of the countries. These findings support Huntington's theory of civilisations.     

Saints,scholars and the idealized past in Philippine Muslim separatism

Philippine Muslim nationalism appeals to two distinct but related imagined pasts: the traditional territorial past of the precolonial southern Philippines and the newly-emphasized moral past of the Sunna; the sacred traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in the earliest days of Islam. Problems arise when the imagined moral past, embodied in the present by a sharp increase in the influence of Middle East-educated Islamic clerics and their calls for the purification of local Islamic practice, comes into direct conflict with the authority of the traditional aristocracy and locally-cherished cultural practices. The Muslim separatist movement that began in 1968 had dual goals. It was primarily an ethno-nationalist endeavour that had as its primary goal the creation of a Philippine Muslim nation - a nation-state governed by Philippine Muslims and modelled on the sultanates of the precolonial period. The second goal of the Muslim separatist movement was to reform local religious and cultural practices under the leadership of a new set of religious leaders. To understand the place of atavism and puritanism in the Philippine Muslim separatist movement I review the largely local tradition of saints and the more universal Muslim institution of religious scholars as they have interacted in the contemporary Muslim Philippines. I consider the contradictions between revanchist and reformatist goals of the movement by interpreting the narratives of Sultan Muhammad Adil, a prominent supporter of Muslim separatism in the Philippines.     

Japan and Asian-Pacific security: regionalization,entrenched bilateralism and incipient multilateralism

This paper traces the formal and informal aspects of Japan's robust bilateralism on issues of external and internal security and discusses a variety of embryonic multilateral arrangements that have sprung up in the 1990s. Asian-Pacific multilateralism is not yet a strong and unquestioned collectively held norm in either Tokyo or any of the major capitals in the Asia-Pacific. What matters instead are political practices shaped by a strong tradition of bilateralism and, only very recently, by an incipient multilateralism.     

宗教认同与民族认同的互动——以延边朝鲜族基督信仰为例

宗教认同与民族认同均是表示一种与自身文化相契合的亲近感,前者的主体主要是宗教信徒,后者主体则是民族成员,二者分别对宗教信仰与民族文化保持不同程度的亲近。在朝鲜族社会发展历程中,基督教从传入至今已经一个多世纪,对朝鲜族传统文化与风俗习惯等各个方面进行了不同程度的渗透、交融与改变。将存在于朝鲜族社会的宗教认同和民族认同与延边朝鲜族基督信仰状况相结合进行互动分析,有利于深化宗教认同与民族认同的相关研究。     

Democracy and Troubled Autonomy: Sectarian Politics and Civil Society in Japan

Civil society organizations (CSOs) exist in overlapping fields of influence, often within contentious relationships. Although the autonomy of a CSO is generally considered critical, currently available conceptualizations of civil society tend to focus on its relation to the state and minimize the role of political parties and social movement organizations. Drawing on the case study of the Women's Democratic Club (WDC), a women's organization in Japan established in the period immediately after World War II, this article examines the ways in which CSOs' embeddedness in their socio-political contexts problematizes organizational autonomy. As a non-partisan organization with democratic values, the WDC promoted egalitarianism and embraced heterogeneous membership within the organization. However, its embeddedness in the political left and its members’ divided and conflicting loyalties challenged its autonomy as an organization. This article seeks to contribute to the inclusion of non-governmental organizations in theoretical and empirical considerations of autonomy of civil society.     

武装冲突法视野下的中国大国责任

中国大国责任的担当是全方位多领域的,从武装冲突法看主要有：依法使用武力,捍卫本国安全和领土完整;他国间（内）利益争端引发武装冲突时,不介入不干涉;联合国采取或授权军事行动时,积极支持或参加;局部战争严重威胁地区安全时,援助正义方;其他情势严重危害人类生存时,采取多种手段介入。     

“5·12”地震后羌族婚姻习惯法变迁

羌族是一个人口众多、传统悠久的民族．现在主要居住在四川省阿坝藏族羌族自治州的汶川、理县、茂县以及绵阳市的北川县、平武县等地。据2005年的官方统计,户籍登记为羌族的人口约为32．65万。在2008年“5·12”特大地震灾难中,羌族人口损失将近10％。羌族地区至今仍保留着以原始宗教,万物有灵,多种信仰的灵物案拜为核心的民事习惯,婚姻习惯是其非常重要的内容之一。“5·12”地震后,羌族人的婚姻习惯法有了较大程度的变化,从形式到实质都更加符合国家法的理念与要求,这无疑是羌族社会文明发展的重大进步。