Cambodia's uncertain future

Japanese government interests in Southeast Asia continue to expand. Official speeches refer to the growth of a ‘community that acts together’, while institutional linkages have been strengthened with the creation of the ASEAN Plus Three process and by a proliferation of bilateral arrangements. These developing networks raise questions about Japan’s future orientation towards its wider region. This article assesses recent developments, by challenging some of the fundamental assumptions about Japan’s regional behaviour. First, it examines how a tendency to render mutually exclusive bilateral and multilateral forms of behaviour serves to obfuscate a focus on the fundamental processes of regional engagement. Second, this article delineates Japan’s changing orientation towards the region as part of a process of ‘complex regional multilateralism’, in which a range of often ad hoc engagements have resulted in a loose framework for interaction. In so doing, it suggests that Japan’s current policy-making approach towards Southeast Asia may be regarded as a continuation of policy that is, nevertheless, being buffeted by a range of – primarily regional – external influences. The resulting set of perceived strategies demonstrates not an either/or approach to regional engagement but, rather, shows how the Japanese government manages changing circumstances to carve out a new role for itself in Southeast Asia.     

Mediterranean regionalism from territory to trains: spatial politics and planning of macro-regions and transport networks in Spain

The contested planning of European macro-regions and Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) exemplifies the complexities of spatial politics, territorial and relational. What stratagems – discursive and cartographic – may regional actors employ in the process, and what can we learn from them? In context of European Union integration policies, we explore Spanish regional politics – discursive and cartographic – surrounding planning of cross-border regions and a TEN-T “Mediterranean Corridor” (and its alternatives). The contested remapping of macro-regions and transport networks reveals the role of spatial planning in the vertebració (structuration in Catalan) of European territory in distinct ways, as Mediterranean regionalism shifts from territoriality to trains.     

Contextualising NEPAD: regionalism,plurilateralism and multilateralism

There is a dearth of literature on the nature and scope of the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (AU/NEPAD) in relation to trends in the international trade system. Available literature concentrates on the neoliberal character of the programme and views it as exposing the uncompetitive African economies to the hostile international economic environment. Contrary to this view, this article argues that AU/NEPAD, because of its three-part approach within contemporary trade trends, could be a viable strategy to promote economic development in the continent. Firstly, AU/NEPAD promotes reformed developmental regionalism, since it combines collective self-reliance of member states with ‘strategic linking’ into the global market. Secondly, it connects strategic linking to new partnerships through plurilateralism, as depicted by the G8 Africa Action Plan. Finally, AU/NEPAD promotes multilateralism through engagements with the World Trade Organisation, the UN and the World Bank.     

Introduction: Regional powers in contest and engagement: making sense of international relations in a globalised world

Over the last couple of years, ‘African ownership’ has become a buzzword in many fields. Economic development initiatives like the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) are based on it, partnership agreements like the Joint AU–EU Africa Strategy are built around it and its central concept of Africanisation guides virtually all external relations of the continent. African leaders (rightly) insist on it, international organisations (rightly) preach it and many non-African actors are (unsurprisingly) hiding behind it. The concept of African ownership is so omnipresent today that it is more than surprising that the simple question of who actually owns it has not yet been asked. It is the declared purpose of this paper to disentangle rhetoric from reality and identify the owner as well as the limits of African ownership in the sphere of peace and security.     

Regionalism,personalism, ethnicity,and violence: parties and voter preference in the 2010 parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan

On the basis of interviews, census data, and precinct-level electoral results from the October 2010 parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan, this paper examines the influences on the party vote in Kyrgyzstan. Instead of traditional socioeconomic variables, this study finds that regionalism (North vs. South), ethnicity, personalism, and violence offered the most compelling explanations of party preference in Central Asia's most competitive election. The paper also examines the contextual factors that constructed and filtered voter demand, from Kyrgyzstan's political and economic conjuncture in 2010 to its unusual party system and electoral rules.     

Regionalizing Multilateralism: Estimating the Power of Potential Regional Voting Blocs in the IMF

This paper explores the voting power of hypothetical regional voting blocs in the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund. We first discuss the prospect of regionally defined groups becoming more significant in the Fund’s decision-making process. After briefly outlining the IMF’s formal decision procedures, including its weighted voting system, use of special majorities, and the function of voting groups in the Fund’s Executive Board we define three indices of a priori voting power — the Banzhaf, Johnston, and Shapley-Shubik indices — which are then applied to existing voting groups. Following this we simulate several regionally defined a priori coalitions and their potential to influence outcomes in passing resolutions in the Fund using a simple majority. The coalitions we specify are based on the assumption that members of the IMF will form into voting blocs based on regionally-defined preferences. The procedures employed use existing voting weights to project the relative strengths of alternative regional blocs that could emerge within the IMF. Our results indicate that the United States would have the greatest voting power in almost all scenarios. A voting bloc comprised of European countries, however, would be able to dominate the United States unless the U.S. formed an Asia-Pacific bloc. Japan, the PRC, and other Asian countries appear to be unable to form voting blocs that would provide them with more voting power than the United States.     

台湾南部的社会政治环境与民进党的政治版图——兼对“南方政治”定义的探讨

台湾的政治版图已出现所渭"北蓝南绿"的格局,台湾学界有人将南部稳定支持绿营政党的情形命名为"南方政治"。实际上民进党在南部的政治版图从1990年代中期就已经显形,台湾南部由于本省人占多数的"省籍-族群"分布、具有更厚重本土味的性格与社会经济状况等的耦合,再加上绿营耕耘多年,引导和激发了较浓厚的"本土"价值,目前民进党在南部的政治版图虽收缩,但这种社会政治环境使其仍有一定的根基。不过,研究者多数从民进党或泛绿在南部的得票率和政治版图等来分析"南方政治",这种定义是狭义性的,就"南方政治"与南部的社会政治环境相关性,从广义上其更应定义为地域意识或地方性在政治上的表现,它虽与民进党的关联颇深,但在蓝营方面也会有所体现。     

权利穷竭原则探究--兼论平行进口问题

权利穷竭原则 ,是知识产权法上的一个重要原则。这一原则是基于私人利益与社会利益的平衡而产生的 ,其直接理论依据就是经济利益回报。它在传统知识产权领域得到广泛认可 ,并被用来分析国际贸易中的平行进口问题。它与知识产权的地域性特征相结合 ,产生了权利国内穷竭和国际穷竭两种学说 ,国际穷竭说是用来支持平行进口的。尽管权利穷竭说与平行进口关系密切 ,但它并不能完全用来评判平行进口是否侵权     

Playing for and against the nation: football in interwar Romania

The article explores the development of football in interwar Romania, stressing its role in the dissemination and grounding of Romanian nationalism. I show how, due to its modular form, the game of football was deeply involved in the efforts of centralizing, territorializing and naturalizing the Romanian nation-state of the interwar period. The founding of the leading Romanian sports club at the University of Cluj and the selection of the national representative for the Paris Olympics of 1924, in conjunction with the institutional infrastructure developed to nationally regulate and control the game, are used to present the acute tensions between local/regional and national aspirations and projects, with a strong ethnic component, that have shaped the history of the game in Romania. I argue that the increasing calls for the full Romanianization of football in the 1930s have their immediate roots in these tensions and frictions.     

The Shifting Tides of Pacific Regionalism

Abstract

The current state of Pacific regionalism is faced with a range of external and internal factors that are acting to reshape the region and which call for a rethinking of Pacific regionalism. Within this context a range of new and in some cases reinvigorated groupings of political actors have emerged, seeking to influence and shape the region. Interpretations of this plurality of political groupings differ, with some authors seeing it as a direct challenge to the previously existing regional order, while others argue it signals a return to a foundational Pacific voice in regional politics. This article suggests that the present plurality is more than resituating a ‘Pacific voice’ and is not necessarily a challenge to the existing order. Rather, the Pacific’s experience mirrors global trends in the evolution of regionalism as a practice, in which network diplomacy or coalition-building across the plethora of actors will become a predominant feature of new regionalism. Further, the authors argue that the Framework for Pacific Regionalism provides the platform for effectively navigating this new context through facilitating the politics of networks and coalitions to drive the shared interests of the region, and presents a shared platform to test paradigm-shifting ideas.