Exchange Rate Regime,Central Bank Independence,and Political Business Cycles in Brazil

This article examines policy consequences of electoral cycles and exchange rate regime choices in Brazil. The literature on opportunistic political business cycles maintains that governments adopt expansionary economic policies before elections to mobilize voters’ support. However, research findings in Latin America based on the theory has been inconclusive. I argue that the lack of conclusive evidence in Latin America stems from measurement errors common in the use of cross-national aggregate data. Using Brazil’s monthly data from 1985 to 2006, this article shows that there are electorally induced fiscal cycles under fixed and crawling peg exchange rate regimes and electorally induced monetary cycles under floating exchange rates only when the nation’s central bank is not independent. Indeed, accounting for Brazil’s unique economic contingencies and longitudinal variations in the de facto central bank independence, its public policy behavior remarkably resembles that of the more affluent, economically stable OECD countries.

国际金融危机冲击下中东欧国家经济走势分析

2000-2007年,中东欧国家的经济总体上呈平稳快速发展的趋势,2007年国际金融危机爆发后,中东欧转轨国家经济形势迅速恶化.国际金融危机对中东欧国家经济的冲击和影响与这些国家转型后形成的制度基础和经济发展模式有关.本文就国际金融危机对这些国家经济的冲击,从多个侧面分析相关原因,并对未来发展趋势进行了预测.     

中亚市场一体化模式及功效比较

本文认为中亚市场一体化是经济现代化的主要因素.作者首先确定降低国家间交易成本障碍的潜在的渠道("一体化模式").其次考察这些渠道的形成并指出两种困惑:单个国家集权化的成功相对于它们之间国际合作的失败,公司和贸易网络非正式合作的成功相对于政府协调行动的缺失.最后探究致力于权力平衡的中亚市场一体化模式的相对成功及其影响.     

Strategies of legitimation in Central Asia: regime durability in Turkmenistan

Located in current debates on one party dictatorships and regime durability, this article explores continuity and disruptions within the Turkmen political elite in their transition from presidents Saparmurat Niyazov (1991–2006) to Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov (2007-). We are particularly interested in how the change from an idiosyncratic system, based mainly on president Niyazov's personality cult and visible repression of potential opponents, evolved into a more refined system under his successor, Berdymuhamedov. We will thus look at regime efforts to re-brand Turkmenistan without substantially changing the domestic political structures and dynamics. These include the manufacture of ‘opposition parties’ and holding of formal elections every five years while retaining absolute control over the most important political aspects of the country. We suggest the existence of a two-fold strategy to maintain the status quo based on authoritarian tendencies and learning. Whilst the shift from the first to the second president has brought significant changes, it also demonstrates essential continuities that helped the formation of an official domestic and international narrative proclaiming commitment to a number of international standards and national values; and strict control of most, if not all, aspects of national political life.     

Prosecuting high-level corruption in Eastern Europe

Do Eastern European courts effectively constrain politicians and uphold the rule of law? Criminal prosecution of grand (high-level) corruption can further the central principle of equal responsibility under the law by demonstrating that even powerful political actors have to submit to the laws of the land. This article introduces the Eastern European Corruption Prosecution Database, which contains entries for all cabinet ministers (927 in total) who served in a government that held office in one of seven post-Communist Eastern European countries since the late 1990s. The systematic data collection reveals that Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia consistently indict more ministers than Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Poland; Slovakia has barely indicted anyone. We aim to start a research agenda by formulating hypotheses about which countries will see more corruption prosecutions and which ministers' characteristics would make them more likely to face the court. We use the database to begin testing these hypotheses and find some evidence for several associations. We find no strong evidence that EU conditionality or membership raises the profile of the grand corruption issue or leads to more indictments. Party politics seems to affect the frequency of corruption indictments more than the structure and behavior of legal institutions. Indictment rates are lower when a former Communist party controls the government and individual ministers from junior coalition partners are more vulnerable to indictment than other ministers. The existence of a specialized anti-corruption prosecution or a more independent judiciary do not seem to lead to the indictment of more ministers on corruption charges. Finally, we discuss avenues of future research that our database opens, both for the analysis of country-level and individual-level variation.     

‘The battlefield is in Brussels’: Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four in its global context

ABSTRACT

A common popular and scholarly opinion of Islamophobia in the so-called ‘Visegrád Four’ or ‘V4’ (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) sees it as caused by circumstances unique to Eastern Europe. Specifically to blame, it is alleged, is a distinctive local history of intolerance, especially antisemitism, and the fact that under socialism these countries were exempt from the post-war soul-searching that took place in Western Europe. Kalmar’s paper, instead, decentres Islamophobia in the V4 by considering it less as a limited regional phenomenon, and more in terms of how it is linked to Islamophobia in other European Union member states and the United States. As elsewhere, foremost among the conditions that encourage Islamophobia in the V4 is the alienation of certain publics on the periphery, which is an effect of global neoliberal policies. These have generated, along with Islamism and Islamophobia, a reinvented, essentializing discourse of difference between Eastern and Western Europe. In spite of that alleged difference, however, Islamophobic populism in the V4 is not just a regional threat to liberal democracy, but targets all of the European Union and the world.     

美元霸权与欧洲金融安全

美元霸权对于美国国家利益和国际地位至关重要,使美国能够享有"嚣张的特权"。欧元诞生后成为美元"唯一的竞争者",也成为美国警惕和遏制的对象。2008年金融危机后,美国为继续维系货币霸权,利用国际货币体系这一机制向欧元区转嫁风险,具体做法包括金融机构在市场做空欧元、评级机构打压欧洲债务国、舆论唱衰欧元前景、政府拒绝国际金融监管改革要求等。受此影响,欧洲金融安全受到严重冲击,银行业坏账大幅上升,欧元国际地位下滑,经济陷入"双底衰退",欧元区甚至一度面临解体风险。为保障金融安全,欧洲采取了多项措施:通过建立欧洲稳定机制、银行联盟等手段加快弥补单一货币区的机制缺陷;执行严格的紧缩政策,提升经济竞争力;欧洲央行政策弹性增加,更多承担"最后贷款人角色";严格规范评级市场,尤其警告美国评级霸权。通过对欧洲政策的分析可以看出,由于难以形成与美国抗衡的"国家意志"、整体战略资源有限、在安全问题上难以摆脱对美依赖等因素,欧元区维系金融安全的主要思路是"自我修复",针对美国的应对措施和能力有限。这意味着,美元霸权将继续是影响欧洲金融安全的外部因素。     

Lawyers and Hong Kong’s democracy movement: from electoral politics to civil disobedience

Research on Hong Kong lawyers has so far focused on their internal differences and the rise of cause lawyering. Not much has been done on their role in promoting political liberalism. This paper fills a gap by reviewing the history of lawyers’ political activism before and after Hong Kong’s sovereignty shifted from a liberal-colonial to an authoritarian regime in 1997. It argues, first, that Hong Kong’s post-colonial constitutionalized politics and prolonged democratic deficit have given the legal complex—which includes lawyers and also increasingly legal academics—a key role in its pro-democracy movement, and second, critical political junctures have driven activist lawyers to use various means, from electoral politics to civil disobedience, to defend the rule of law and Hong Kong’s tortuous democratization.     

Depolitization of Bureaucracy: The Case of Central and Eastern European Countries

Political parties worldwide seek to work with bureaucrats who are close to their programs, willing to cooperate, and concerted. On the other hand, there is a huge body of literature which argues that bureaucracy should be separate from politics and that it has to consist of public servants who are technically knowledgeable, expert, and also politically neutral. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe suffered from highly politicized public administrations under one-party regimes, and have struggled to separate their bureaucracies from politics since early 1990s. In view of the relation between politics and bureaucracy from the perspective of (de)politization, this paper looks into the changes that Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) have gone through after the institutionalization of multi-party regimes and tries to provide some generalizations.     

维护党中央权威和集中统一领导的探索——基于党的六届二中全会的分析

党的六届二中全会是中国共产党从大革命失败后的涣散状态,逐步走入正轨进程中的一次重要会议。这次会议对党内存在的各种错误倾向和面临问题进行了全面分析,并着力从坚持党的民主集中制、健全党内生活、严肃党的纪律、巩固党的组织、加强党内巡视、开展党内宣传教育等方面,对扭转党内涣散局面,恢复和维护党中央权威和集中统一领导作出了有益探索。这些探索对于在新时代如何维护党中央权威和集中统一领导仍具有一定的历史借鉴意义。