民族主义、国内政治权力结构变迁与南海争端国对华对冲差异

在国际体系变迁的背景下,东南亚三个主要的南海争端国越南、菲律宾和马来西亚普遍采用对华对冲战略以应对中国崛起带来的不确定性。但是,三国的对华对冲差异何以存在仍是个尚需进一步澄清的理论问题。在政治结构具有较高自主性的情况下,民族主义诉求强度以及国内政治权力结构变迁是影响三国对华对冲差异的主要因素,导致三国分别实施了对抗、均衡与合作三种不同类型的对冲。二者通过执政者的合法化战略影响对冲的实际演化,弱民族主义诉求推动争端国采取合作型对华对冲,但随着民族主义诉求增强且政治权力结构趋于集中化,争端国将采取均衡型对冲;在民族主义诉求增强且政治权力结构趋于分散化的情况下,争端国将采取对抗型对冲。国内政治权力结构的未来演变可能导致南海争端国实施更具对抗性的对华对冲战略,推动南海局势发生于中国不利的变化。     

特朗普政府执政以来全球贸易体系的变局：机遇与挑战

特朗普自执政以来,强力推行"美国优先"的经济政策,冲击着现行的国际秩序,使全球贸易体系出现前所未有之大变局。美国成"变量",单边对决多边,西方阵营分裂,新兴经济体和发展中国家群体崛起明显。变局中,特朗普政府孤立主义、单边主义、保护主义的政治经济学逻辑显现无疑,这给中国的发展既带来了机遇,又造成了新的挑战。因此,中国必须采取稳妥的应对策略,把握战略全局,维护中美关系稳定大局;深化改革开放,打造多边利益共同体;布局主场外交,提升中国的战略能力。     

人工智能发展、全球价值链调整与就业格局变化

人工智能技术快速发展,全球价值链悄然调整。需求状况、生产要素、支持产业、企业同业竞争、政府等与劳动力密切相关的基本要素在中国都发生了前所未有的变化,对我国劳动分工与就业格局产生了极大的影响。研究认为,劳动力的"第三次解绑"导致新的就业特征产生。为更好地应对人工智能技术冲击、全球价值链重构带来的新就业问题,应当多措施并举扩大就业渠道,通过跨区、跨国创业拉动就业,着重培养复合型人才,提升教育质量。     

Epidemiological accountability: philanthropists,global health and the audit of saving lives

Abstract

There have been concerns about the recent private turn and re-emergence of philanthropies in world health, with many worrying about philanthropies’ perceived lack of transparency and accountability. In contrast, I argue that while the private turn might have led to a decline in democratic or public accountability, it did not bring an end to all forms of accountability. Specifically, I suggest that philanthropists’ involvement in global health has led to the spread of another, new form of accountability: epidemiological accountability. The latter is a combination of two regimes of expertise and practices hitherto kept separate: audit and epidemiology. To substantiate this argument, I draw on my research on the Bloomberg Initiative – a global effort to reduce tobacco use spearheaded by the Bloomberg and Gates foundations.     

Middle power identities of Australia and South Korea: comparing the Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard and Lee Myung-bak administrations

This paper explores the middle power identities of Australia and South Korea during the Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard (2007–2013) and Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) administrations. Considering the problems in the existing position, behaviour, impact and identity-based definitions of middle powers, examining how self-identified middle powers have constructed such an identity would offer useful insights into the middle power concept. Relying on a framework that captures an identity's content and contestation, this paper argues that while Australia and South Korea have assumed a middle power identity, their visualisations of this identity are slightly different. Australia has understood its middle power identity in both economic and security terms, whereas South Korea appears to have connected such an identity more with the economic dimension. These differences affect how they envision their respective middle power roles in international affairs.     

China's domestic strategic debate and confusion over the South China Sea issue

The article looks at China's strategic debate and confusion over the South China Sea (SCS) issue and explores why it has occurred. This article recognizes that China has not yet decided whether the SCS issue should be included among China's core national interests. Additionally, China has not quite figured out whether the priorities should be placed on the SCS claims or the Sino-US relationship. In addition, China has not worked out exactly what the Nine-Dash Line (NDL) means. It contends that identity is a key factor in informing a state's strategic concerns and policy objectives regarding the SCS. This article argues that China's dual identities force China to strike a middle ground, which causes domestic strategic debate and confusion. In the final analysis, this article tries to determine what salient implications a prevailing identity of China as a rising power would yield for its SCS policies.     

Global equality of opportunity and self-determination in the context of immigration

David Miller’s political philosophy of immigration employs two complementary argumentative strategies to challenge open border theories. The first strategy is to defeat the principled case for open borders, such as the global equality of opportunity argument for more lax immigration control. The second strategy is to establish the democratic community’s prima facie right to determine the shape of its future, including membership and the right to exclude. First, I argue that Miller’s conception of global equality of opportunity is overly narrow and that his objections to the principle, to the metric and to what counts as feasible political action misfire against other, more plausible, accounts. Second, I argue that his democratic interpretation of collective self-determination does not solve the pressing question concerning the morally justified scope and content of self-determination and the moral limits of the right to exclude. I conclude by questioning Miller’s general strategy: whether theories of immigration should be engaged in an exercise of shifting the burden of proof between open and closed borders. By contrast, I argue that a more desirable task for the political philosophy of immigration is to find ways in which the joint requirement of global equality of opportunity and collective self-determination can be coherently upheld.     

Fairness to non-participants: a case for a practice-independent egalitarian baseline

Proponents of practice-dependent egalitarianism argue that egalitarian duties and entitlements only apply among participants in morally relevant practices. In this paper, I argue that these views are implausible because they allow for objectionable treatment of non-participants. I show that it is impossible, on the basis of practice-internal considerations alone, to determine the extent to which the pursuit of practices can permissibly limit the opportunities of non-participants. There are opportunities beyond the current holdings of practices to which no one has a privileged claim (such as unowned natural resources), and the distribution of which is a matter of justice. A just distribution of such unowned distributive goods, though, requires a practice-independent distributive baseline. I further show that such a baseline can only be egalitarian because all alternative baselines face serious objections. From this I conclude that any plausible theory of distributive justice must accept some form of equal practice-independent distributive entitlements.     

Overlapping publics and the negotiation of legitimacy in South African and Namibian sexual politics

ABSTRACT

This article explores how and why social movement organizations negotiate their presence in, and demands on, multiple public spheres. We analyse the strategies of two social movement organizations, Free Gender in Cape Town, South Africa, and Sister Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia. Free Gender elected to withdraw participation from a governmental task team convened to address the issue of homophobic violence, despite the opportunity this offered the organization to participate in national politics. Sister Namibia, by contrast, decided to maintain its public presence despite experiencing political homophobia from the ruling party, the South West African People’s Organisation. We contribute to the literature on public spheres and social movements by demonstrating the need to consider the overlapping nature of public spheres in South Africa and Namibia at the local, national, and transnational levels to account for activists’ strategic decisions.     

Citizen journalism as a contestant in the history of journalism

This article looks at citizen journalism as a contestant in the history of journalism. It reports on a study that employed a qualitative research approach through a qualitative questionnaire and a focus group discussion (FGD). Through purposive sampling, the participants in the study were drawn from the citizen journalists contributing news content to the citizen journalism websites Sahara Reporters and Iindaba Ziyafika from a Nigerian and a South African perspective, respectively. For diversity purposes, other participants were drawn from the Global Voices online, which is popular for engaging citizen journalists from different parts of the African continent: Tanzania, Cameroon, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya, to mention a few. The questionnaire was distributed through the technical teams of the websites for self-completion by the citizen journalists. The FGD participants were drawn from those who contributed news content to Iindaba Ziyafika in South Africa where the researchers are based. The questionnaire and the FGD were addressed in English. The study findings showed that mainstream journalism acknowledges the importance of the phenomenon of citizen journalism and the people involved, but it still stands firm that objectivity is a precondition of journalism. The study aimed to cultivate an appreciation of the relationship between traditional and citizen journalism as the field of journalism endures major transformations.