Perceptions,identities and interests in South–South cooperation: the cases of Chile,Venezuela and Brazil

The relevance acquired in recent years by South–South cooperation seems to be connected with deeper structural transformations occurring in the international system. However, the variety of cooperation models promoted by new providers in the South requires the identification of complementary factors to help explain current patterns. A set of socio-cognitive elements, related to each country’s perceptions, identities and interests, can yield greater understanding of the variety of South–South cooperation models. Such an approach is here applied to the cases of Chile, Venezuela and Brazil – three important providers from the South – in order to explore their different cooperation models.     

Governance in Developing Countries: Sri Lanka and South Africa Compared

In this article, we investigate the main features of the governance model in two developing democracies, Sri Lanka and South Africa. We believe that these two countries are interesting test cases for a comparative study. Both countries are former British colonies and have inherited a similar administrative system heavily influenced by the British colonial model and have experienced an ethnic conflict to different extents in the past.

This comparison allows us to examine the determining factors for and against the level of effectiveness of governance in both countries. The findings suggest that the socio-political system within which they operate is dynamic and is an important influence for integrated governance. The study concludes that the outcomes of governance in both countries are better explained by taking into account the features described in an integrated governance model. This provides a better understanding of the dynamics of governance in developing countries.     

Policy Relations and Policy Subsystems: Financial Policy in Hong Kong and Singapore

Existing studies of Hong Kong’s and Singapore’s success as leading Asian international financial centers (IFCs) have largely focused on economic structural factors at the neglect of political economic contextual variables. Taking a policy subsystems approach and based on extensive field research, this article attempts to address this shortcoming by conceptualizing the “policy relations” that exist between state, industry, and other non-state actors in the two IFCs and delineating the “division of policy roles” among these actors. In the process, this article contributes toward the existing IFC literature and conceptualizes the sociopolitical relations that exist among financial sector actors.     

The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation: China's Initiative in Regional Institutional Building

China's initiative in establishing and promoting the development of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) is an interesting case study of China's attempt at regional institution building. China's increasing interest in Central Asia coincided with its gradual acceptance and rising enthusiasm regarding participation in regional organisations. The “Shanghai Five” mechanism and the SCO were seen as appropriate mechanisms for pursuing China's multiple interests in the region; their development was also in line with the improvement in Sino-Russian relations. Chinese leaders have skilfully developed the SCO's institutional framework, and they seem intent on getting good value for the resources spent. The leaders have also demonstrated considerable patience when the SCO's development encountered setbacks.     

The Terminal Crisis of the “Participatory Government” and the Election of Lee Myung Bak

This paper examines the election of Lee Myung Bak through the terminal crisis of the Roh Moo Hyun government that preceded it. I start with an analysis of the election of Lee Myung Bak and the electoral strategies of the liberal-progressive bloc in the December 2007 election and then move on to detail how these strategies shed light on tensions within Korean progressive politics since the transition to democracy in 1987. These tensions inform what I shall call the “terminal crisis” of Roh's “participatory government.” I argue that this crisis involves a problem of articulation within progressive politics between a politics of reunification and one grounded in egalitarian economic reform, including the lack of an alternative to the different forms of neo-liberalism embraced by both the Roh government and the conservative government of Lee Myung Bak. My hope is that thorough examination of these tensions that have informed the liberal-progressive bloc during the long decade since 1987 can spur reflection on the role of social movements in Korean democratisation and the dilemmas they face in crafting strategies for political and economic reform.     

从保护主体与传承主体看韩国非遗保护的经验——以韩国“韩山夏布织造”为例

非物质文化遗产能否真正地得到保护和传承,与作为保护主体的政府部门以及作为传承主体的传承人对各自义务的履行态度和程度有着密切关系。本文以韩国的国家级非物质文化遗产——"韩山夏布织造"为例,分别从评审公正性以及经济利益侧重性的角度出发,对保护主体与传承主体中存在的、可能影响到非遗保护和传承的问题进行分析,尝试提出建立一个相对公正、透明的监督与审核机制来保障非遗的保护和传承。同时,希望韩国的非遗经验与教训能给中国非遗制度的完善提供一个良好的借鉴。     

韩国公共外交的主要途径及制约因素

为提高韩国国家形象和国际地位,适应国际外交环境的变化,李明博政府确立了文化外交向公共外交转换的发展战略,并通过各种途径,积极开展公共外交的实践活动,其中有许多值得我们借鉴的经验。但是,近些年韩国与中国民间关系龃龉丛生的现实,却折射了韩国公共外交进一步发展的深层障碍。如何超越障碍是韩国公共外交面临的重要课题。     

Looking from South Africa to the World: A Story of Identity for our Times

The article is a consideration of the question of identity in South Africa, and also in a global context. Just as South Africa has looked to the world in order to understand its place, so too the world might look to South Africa to illuminate patterns less immediately visible elsewhere. Far from being unrepresentative in the apartheid period, South Africa was the ‘state of exception’ that incarnated and concentrated global realities; equally in the current era the reciprocal relations between the South African and the global evoke haunting concerns. The article begins with a consideration of the ‘classic’ generation of anti-apartheid activists, including figures such as Nelson Mandela and Bram Fischer, as they fashioned a new sense of South African identity. Yet it goes on to consider what happens when the classic period is over, and older definitions and oppositions are no longer available. Here the navigations of fiction, both in South Africa and elsewhere, become significant, and the article examines the work of writers from Gordimer, Coetzee and Ndebele, to Caryl Phillips and W. G. Sebald. It ends with a contemplation of the current period, nearly twenty years after the democratic transition in South Africa. In the era of the Marikana massacre and other pressing developments, both music and fiction open up some of the ambiguities and obligations. Drawing on Agamben, I suggest the intrinsic mutuality of the ‘home’ and the ‘foreign’ in establishing a more promising—and challenging—sense of belonging and identity both in South Africa and the world.     

Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut and the Dialectics of Race in South Africa: Interrogating Images of Whiteness and Blackness in Black Literature and Culture

The public outcry against President Jacob Zuma’s labeling of black ownership of pet dogs as fundamentally “unAfrican” in 2012 and the academic debates around Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s proposal in 2011 for a 1% reparative wealth tax on whites is further evidence of the continued necessity of whiteness studies today, despite South Africa’s independence from a racist Afrikaner regime and its movement towards a nonracist society. Yet, the authority, agency, and normative value of whiteness continue to work covertly within an intellectual critique embedded in standardized interrogations of images and imaginations of race and culture. Kopano Matlwa’s popular debut novel, Coconut, is a necessary, self-reflexive commentary on the interdependent nature of racial inquiry. While critics typically read the novel as resoundingly critical of contemporary blackness, they fail to see its simultaneous evocation of the necessarily porous, performative, and continuously evolving character of race and culture generally. This paper acknowledges Matlwa’s concern with a superficial postapartheid blackness, but also argues that Coconut’s complex invocation of black culture exposes the impossibility of imaging and imagining blackness without imaging and imagining whiteness. In the continued satirical fetishization of whiteness, racial essentialism is destabilized and whiteness is positioned as an inevitable mirror on and of blackness. As such, the paper simultaneously questions the efficacy of “whiteness” studies that suggest the possibility of establishing separate and exclusive studies on race and culture.