How oil autocracies learn to stop worrying: Central Eurasia in 2008 global financial crisis

Autocracies in developing countries are more likely to collapse during economic crises. Some influential works and popular media extend this argument to oil-rich autocracies, but cross-national empirical studies find little evidence to support this view. Yet, while the causes of their stability during boom periods are well understood, how oil-rich autocratic regimes remain stable during busts is underexplored. This article advances an explanation that refines and complements existing accounts. I argue that we need to take into account three interrelated factors that currently are likely to stabilize oil-rich autocracies: considerable savings, policy learning, and sustenance of coercive capacity. Leveraging evidence drawn from 40 original interviews, documents, news media, and academic literature, I investigate the role of these factors through a comparative case study of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan during the 2008 global economic turmoil. The findings highlight the ruling elites’ ability to amass sizeable savings that later provide safety cushions, to update their know-how through drawing lessons within and beyond fiscal policy, and to sustain coercive capacity without resorting to overt repression. Through economic crises, they may learn to not escape the “resource curse,” but to escape despite the “resource curse.”     

Global justice and education for global citizenship: considerations for education policy-planning process

Global citizenship education GCED) has been attracting all sectors of education with the focus on universal human rights and global issues. While all sectors are involved, the mainstream of instructional delivery is taking place in the informal education sector in Korea. The curriculum typically covers moral, values, and ethics with civics and citizenship education. Justice in relations to global issues, however, are often assumed, ignored or overlooked. Based on the changing educational demand in a rapidly changing world, there is a need for teachers with competency in addressing issues of globalization, diversity, and social justice. This paper identifies the crucial gaps along with missing context as to how justice fits into the larger picture in relation to grounds for recognizing the pathway for domesticating global issues through social justice.     

金砖国家粮食安全合作评析

粮食安全与否,对人、国家和国际体系的安全都意义重大。它所产生的威胁具有高度跨国性、扩散性、嬗变性、多层面性和多向度性,是典型的非传统安全。实现粮食安全,要超越以国家为中心的传统安全观念和手段,建立以共同、综合、合作、可持续的新安全观为基础的粮食安全治理体系,构建多层次和大规模的非传统安全共同体。金砖国家粮食安全合作,有利于提升各成员国的粮食安全水平,促进金砖国家落实《2030年可持续发展议程》,提高金砖国家参与全球粮食安全治理能力,推动全球粮食安全治理改革,构建金砖国家命运共同体。作为金砖国家非传统安全合作的重要组成部分,金砖国家粮食安全合作基本确立了合作架构,初步搭建农业科技信息平台,金砖农业实力不断壮大,全球粮食安全治理中实现有限合作,具有了金砖国家非传统安全共同体的雏形。但其仍然面临着合作动力减弱、合作机制不完善和合作领域亟待深化的挑战。只有金砖国家真正树立并践行新安全观,才能聚合各方诉求,加强合作动力,深化气候、科技创新、农业贸易投资便利化、信息交流与共享等领域的合作,完善政府、科研、企业三位一体的合作机制,推动全球粮食安全治理体系向更加有利于发展中国家的方向发展。     

Fair trade: global problems and individual responsibilities

The topic of global trade has become central to debates on global justice and on duties to the global poor, two important concerns of contemporary political theory. However, the leading approaches fail to directly address the participants in trade and provide them with normative guidance for making choices in non-ideal circumstances. This paper contributes an account of individuals’ responsibilities for global problems in general, an account of individuals’ responsibilities as market actors, and an explanation of how these responsibilities coexist. The argument is developed through an extended case study of a consumer’s choice between conventional and fair trade coffee. My argument is that the coffee consumer’s choice requires consideration of two distinct responsibilities. First, she has responsibilities to help meet foreigners’ claims for assistance. Second, she has moral responsibilities to ensure that trades, such as between herself and a coffee farmer, are fair rather than exploitative.     

China's economic slowdown: implications for Beijing's institutional power and global governance role

China's spectacular economic growth over the past decades has given rise to a more confident and proactive China in global governance. China is now an institution-builder, with new Chinese-led institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank designed to cement Beijing's central role in global economic governance. What, then, are the potential implications of a slowing economy for China's institutional power and global governance role? This article locates China's economic growth and slowdown in broader discussions about China's global position and questions about responsibility, order and governance. It argues that China's economic slowdown will not result in a drastic impact on Beijing's institutional power as there are key material, historical and ideational drivers at play here. Unless China is confronted with the prospect of an economic collapse, it will continue to pursue an active institutional role, speak the rhetoric of South–South solidarity with emerging economies and seek a leadership role in reforming global economic governance, even with a slowing economy, because this is intrinsically tied to its identity and how China now positions itself in an evolving global order.     

Transnational advocacy networks in global supply chains: a study of civil society organizations’ sugar movements in Cambodia

As a contribution to the growing literature on transnational advocacy networks (TANs) in the global production networks, this article examines how civil society organizations (CSOs), which have adopted the TAN approach, influence the sugar industry in Cambodia. Due to ineffective domestic influencing strategies, the CSOs adopted the TAN approach and escalated to an international supply chain movement approach (ISCMA) aiming to influence international stakeholders at each stage of the sugar supply chain in order to leverage boomerang pressure on the sugar producing companies and the Government of Cambodia. Despite its resourceful networking strategies, the ISCMA failed to leverage significant influence on the sugar companies and the government to achieve its demands. The failure was not due to weak networks, but was in part due to the political nexus between the government and the sugar companies. This article suggests that to ensure the effectiveness of CSOs’ actions within the TAN framework in the global production networks, one should take into account the power of the government in relation to local politico-commercial elites.     

Assessing the High Representative’s Role in Egypt during the Arab Spring

The 2009 Lisbon Treaty institutionalised an intergovernmental constitution for managing policies traditionally a matter of national sovereignty, such as foreign and defence policies. However, important innovations were introduced in the foreign policymaking structure to limit its intergovernmental logic, in particular, with regard to the role of the High Representative (HR). It was generally assumed that those innovations would have made development of a coherent EU foreign policy possible. Yet, in one of the most significant tests for the EU’s foreign and defence policies in the post-Lisbon era, namely the Egyptian crisis (2011-14), those reforms did not work as expected. Notwithstanding the innovations, the HR’s role was diminished by the European Council’s strict control over foreign policy toward Egypt. The lack of clear policy guidelines towards the issue of democratisation in the Arab world in the 2003 European Security Strategy, although partially mitigated by the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Barcelona Process/Union for the Mediterranean, made it even more difficult for the HR to bring a European perspective into the largely intergovernmental setting.     

Obama's Legacy The Foreign Policy of the Late-Term Obama Administration

The year 2014 was a tipping point for the Barack Obama Administration-that was the year when it strove to forge a legacy of the Obama era but came up against challenges arising from major changes that were taking place internationally and domestically.The Administration was then focused on maintaining a fragile balance between creating this legacy and responding to these challenges.Obama stuck to his fundamental principles when dealing with overseas affairs,but he also came up with new responses.The dynamic balance struck between these two formed the basis of the global strategy of the late-term Obama Administration.The Administration's focus at this time highlights the dilemma it faced in forging a legacy.Further,the foreign policy of Obama and Trump are actually not so different;they both supported some degree of isolationism with a focus on domestic issues.     

金砖国家非传统安全合作的理论与实践路径

围绕金砖国家合作,不少人持有"褪色论"或"金砖分化"的悲观态度,主要论据是金砖国家之间并不存在很强的禀赋互补性,因而难以促成合作。然而,从合作理论和非传统安全问题的治理实践出发,金砖国家合作都是可行的。从理论维度出发,合作包括交换型合作与协作型合作。交换型合作认为,禀赋的互补性缺失,合作就难以形成。这也是当前学界对于金砖合作的争论焦点。然而,合作还包括协作型合作,达成共同利益,并不依赖禀赋的互补性就能塑造相互依赖的合作关系。再回到金砖国家在非传统安全问题领域内合作实践的维度,随着安全的内涵、议程和治理路径发生转变,国与国之间的共同利益越来越多。因为全球化时代安全议程空前复杂、具有非传统性,进而超越了一国之能力予以治理。具体到金砖合作的治理实践之中,塑造后天共同利益的操作路径包括:塑造"行动焦点"、把饼做大;培育信任、塑造伙伴关系等。此外,金砖国家合作强调包容性规范,持开放的姿态,重视与其他平台以及世界各国的合作。     

Sexual violence issues in eastern DRC: processes of global and local co-constitution

According to Séverine Autesserre, there is a dominant culture within the field of international peacebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo that excludes any action at the local level. This dichotomy between the local and the global is also noticeable in terms of women's rights, where international human rights law and local customs are opposed. But in order to grasp the complexity of the emancipation movements of the female victims of violence in North Kivu, we must consider the multiplicity of the semi-autonomous social fields that regulate the lives of individuals on the local and global spheres, as well as the social actors’ interactions within these spaces. Using the results of an ethnography study carried out in North Kivu between 2011 and 2012, we will see that these actors not only construct law, but they also inhabit normative systems built and maintained by them.