The transnational protection regime and democratic breakthrough in Taiwan and South Korea

External state pressure is understood to have played a causally significant role in democratic breakthrough in Taiwan and South Korea during the 1980s. This article problematizes the international dimensions of democratization in Taiwan and South Korea by first providing a revisionist account of external agency which involved complex networks of transnational nonstate and substate actors. These included human rights activists, Christian churches and related ecumenical organizations, members of the Taiwanese and Korean diaspora communities in the US, academics and students, foreign journalists, and members of the US Congress. In forming a transnational “protection regime” during the 1970s and 1980s to protect the political opposition from repressive governments, they contributed to the development of effective democratic movements. The case studies provide us with a more comprehensive view of the international dimensions of democratization, speaking to both the country specific and general theoretical literatures on democratization at the same time.     

跨国继承的法律适用问题

随着经济的发展和社会的进步,跨国继承案件必将越来越多。当今世界上各个国家的法律制度千差万别,解决跨国继承中的法律适用问题不仅具有理论上的意义,更有实践上的重大价值。分析了跨国继承法律适用制度的基本结构、同一制和分割制、连结点的选择、跨国继承的国际公约等内容,并指出跨国继承法律适用制度的国际统一需要各个国家的协调与合作。     

The violence work of transnational gangs in Central America

Abstract

According to international relations scholars, an important change taking place in the post-Cold War context concerns the lethality of non-state armed groups (NSAGs). Underlying this observation is the conventional assumption that non-state violence is intrinsically illegitimate. This article shifts the analysis of violence away from the terrain of legitimacy, which tends to moralise the difference between state and non-state forces, and towards the terrain of work, where their violence features as part and not separate from a shared political economy. I propose the notion of violence work as a resourceful analytic into the dialectics of everyday violence and the complex processes of value production in social life. Against the background of the extreme cruelty attributed to transnational gangs in Central America, I argue that their violence work is expressive of prevailing modes of accumulating wealth in the region. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, I show how gang violence work animates a system of economic cooperation that engages a wide array of subjects who traverse state/non-state and legal/illegal divides.     

Globalisation masculinities,empire building and forced prostitution: a critical analysis of the gendered impact of the neoliberal economic agenda in post-invasion/occupation Iraq

Adopting a transnational feminist lens and using a political economy approach, this article addresses both the direct and indirect consequences of the 2003 war in Iraq, specifically the impact on civilian women. Pre-war security and gender relations in Iraq will be compared with the situation post-invasion/occupation. The article examines the globalised processes of capitalism, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism and their impact on the political, social and economic infrastructure in Iraq. Particular attention will be paid to illicit and informal economies: coping, combat and criminal. The 2003 Iraq war was fought using masculinities of empire, post-colonialism and neoliberalism. Using the example of forced prostitution, the article will argue that these globalisation masculinities – specifically the privatisation agenda of the West and its illegal economic occupation – have resulted in women either being forced into the illicit (coping) economy as a means of survival, or trafficked for sexual slavery by profit-seeking criminal networks who exploit the informal economy in a post-invasion/occupation Iraq.     

Commodities and Terrorist Financing: Focus on Diamonds

Commodities, trade, and natural resources have long been part of the political economy of conflict, as soldiers and militants usually employ accessible means and methods to raise funds unless there is a clash with honestly held religious or ideological positions. Reports about the role of commodities in the financing of terrorist groups cover many areas of legal and illicit trade, foremost among these diamonds. A brief background to the diamond industry, with particular attention to vulnerabilities and their exploitation in conflict areas, provides the necessary context for two case studies about al-Qaeda (AQ) and Hezbollah. These utilize primary and secondary data to explore the linkages between diamonds and these particular groups. We found conflicting and weak evidence as well as vague language to describe interfaces between terrorist groups and the diamonds trade. We conclude that while there is cause for concern that this industry can be used to support terrorist activity, deeper factual grounding, meaningful context, and a more nuanced understanding of the diamond industry are necessary to fully inform policy makers and law enforcement about the connections between terrorist finance and the commodities trade.Research on which this paper is based was sponsored by a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant for a study of "Terrorist Finance and the Nexus with Transnational Organized Crime: Commodities Trade and the Social Organization of al Qaeda Groups," grant no. 2003-DT-CX-0001. We would like to thank Christian Dietrich and an anonymous peer reviewer for their very constructive comments.     

Forlorn daughters? The role of social motherhood in transnational African Methodist Episcopal missionary women networks, 1900–1940s

Abstract

This paper examines the transnational networks formed between women who were part of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) within the United States (US) and its South African missionary societies during the early twentieth century. From the outset, these networks enabled South African women to gain tertiary education in the US, but were nonetheless entrenched in unequal power dynamics. US-based women considered themselves metaphorical mothers to the female South African members, portraying the African women as daughters in need of social and financial support. US AME women were complex role models for Black African women who could not reasonably maintain the lifestyle enjoyed by many AME missionary women. Often, however, South African women appear to have utilized these unequal power dynamics, embracing the rhetoric of being “forlorn daughters” of Africa to maintain the AME’s support. Nevertheless, these networks helped sustain both US and South African women’s participation within the AME Church.     

No solid ground: Max Aub’s roots and routes

While Max Aub’s unique and prolific body of work has been the subject of numerous studies and monographs, his work remains undervalued in transnational contexts. An analysis of two of his plays, San Juan (1943) and El rapto de Europa (1946), and a collection of poems, Diario de Djelfa (1944), makes it possible to rethink the ways in which aesthetic projects, produced either during World War II or shortly afterwards, reveal a geography of the war’s forced displacements, in which the Spanish Civil War, European colonialism in North Africa, and its enduring postcolonial remainders become the most important landmarks. While the present analysis centers on Aub’s routes between Spain, France, Algeria, and, finally, Mexico, a persistent yearning for roots, for a sense of belonging, or, to use one of his characters’ words, for “solid ground” haunts his writing. The interplay between roots and routes therefore makes it possible to consider Aub’s work in a postcolonial context and within a transnational memory.     

联合国1990年关于自动资料档案中个人资料的指南评析

信息社会使个人资料被歪曲、滥用的危险明显加大,为加强个人资料的保护,各国纷纷制定了有关个人资料保护的国内法。但由于个人资料跨国流通势不可挡,不统一的国内法并不能为个人资料当事人提供充分保护,因网络环境下个人资料国际保护的需要,联合国于1990年通过了《关于自动资料档案中个人资料的指南》。     

Searching for Sanctuary: Government Power and the Location of Maritime Piracy

Recent systematic work on the incidence of maritime piracy shows the importance of various political, economic, and geographic correlates at the country level. Yet these correlates tell us little about the determinants of piracy location off states’ coasts, despite the fact that piracy is well known to cluster locally. Conceptualizing pirates as strategic actors who consider the risk of detection and capture, this article argues that states’ ability to project power over distance affects pirates’ decisions on where to organize and operate. As state capacity increases, piracy will locate farther away from government power centers, whereas piracy can flourish closer to state capitals in weak states that struggle to extend control over space. Using geocoded data from the International Maritime Bureau for the 1996–2013 period, results show that increases in state capacity are associated with greater median capital--piracy distances. These findings are robust to several changes in model specification. Our results have important implications for the study of piracy and crime.     

跨国公司来华投资新趋向及我国应对政策与法律原则探析

进入九十年代以来,跨国公司来华投资较前发生了重大变化,并表现出鲜明的特点。跨国公司作为推动经济全球化的重要力量,对我国引进外资和社会经济发展的作用越来越大,本文从跨国公司来华投资的新趋向入手,在分析我国应对跨国公司的政策及法律原则的理论与现实基础上,进一步提出从积极引进、加强引导、合理限制与严密监督四个方面构建我国对待跨国公司来华投资的政策及法律原则。