Laissez-faire versus Strict Control of Political Finance: Hegemonic Parties and Developmental States in Malaysia and Singapore

ABSTRACT

This article compares the financing of political parties and candidates in two Southeast Asian countries. In Malaysia, some political finance regulations exist only on paper, and political financing is for the most part not restrained at all. In contrast, the financing of candidates and parties has always been tightly circumscribed in Singapore. These different strategies, “laissez-faire” versus “strict control,” are the consequence of various factors. In Malaysia, the New Economic Policy has effected a close, often economically unproductive linkage between the state, the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, and business. The rise of businesspeople has resulted in the commercialization of competition within (the United Malays National Organisation. Additionally, increasing competition between the ruling coalition and the opposition has resulted in growing expenditures for electioneering in the form of advertisements and electoral patronage. The laissez-faire style of regulation has been compounded by the difficult-to-control practices in East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak), where vote buying, electoral patronage based on the largesse of oligarchs, and obvious nonobservance of the rules have been typical. In contrast to Malaysia as a whole, the costs for parties and candidates are still relatively low in Singapore. As a cadre party, the PAP (People's Action Party) is relatively autonomous from private business interests, and intraparty competition is not commercialized; the developmentalist state is highly productive, and the ties between the state, the PAP, and business are not characterized by cronyism. Moreover, electioneering is not very commercialized because the opposition is still relatively weak.     

Debating Economic Democracy in South Korea: The Costs of Commensurability

ABSTRACT:

In the 2012 Korean presidential election, both liberal and conservative parties fought their campaigns on the slogan of “economic democratization,” marking a strong departure from past presidential elections and the growth-first policies of the then-incumbent conservative administration. Both parties pledged to tackle growing social polarization and the concentration of economic power by reforming the corporate governance of Korea's large, family-led conglomerates (chaebol), to the degree that chaebol reform itself became synonymous with economic democratization. This focus led to a series of heated exchanges among liberal-left reformers about the vision of economic democratization being promoted, with one camp favoring the creation of a “fair market” through the restructuring of the chaebol and another promoting the protection of the chaebol’s management rights over their affiliates as a desirable strategy for the creation of a Korean welfare state. This essay examines the long-standing tensions between these two liberal-left perspectives and argues that the capital-centric and market-based visions these camps promoted risk confining intellectual debate over the meaning of economic democracy within boundaries that serve dominant political interests.     

The impact of timing and frequency of parental criminal behaviour and risk factors on offspring offending

This paper explores mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of criminal behaviour by investigating specifically the timing and frequency of the parents' criminal behaviour while including risk factors for criminal behaviour. The results demonstrate a dose–response relationship: parents' number of criminal convictions is positively related to offspring's conviction rate. Furthermore, children whose parents had only been convicted before the child's birth have more convictions than those whose parents had never been convicted. Children whose parents had been convicted after the child's birth have more convictions than those whose parents had only been convicted before the child's birth, but this difference can be explained partly by the observation that the latter group had fewer risk factors for crime. When parental convictions at different ages were examined, children whose parents had been convicted between their 7th and 13th birthdays exhibit more criminal behaviour than children whose parents were convicted in other periods, but none of the differences were significant. There does not appear to be a sensitive period for the impact of parental criminal behaviour. The results demonstrate support for static as well as dynamic explanations of intergenerational transmission such as the transmission of a criminogenic environment and/or mediation through risk factors.     

Taiwan and the geopolitics of late development

Abstract

Through a case study of Taiwan, this paper seeks to address recent debates surrounding the transformation of developmental states in East Asia. Whilst a number of authors have cited the Taiwanese state as being both cautious and resilient in the midst of global restructuring, this paper seeks to critically engage with such arguments by highlighting the dynamic and mutually constitutive relations between the forms of social relations that underpin late development and the wider geopolitical system in which such development occurs. Specifically, Taiwanese industrialisation can be viewed as an outcome of the US intervention in the Chinese civil war and subsequent exclusion of China from the regional political economy in the period between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The Kuomintang (KMT)'s retreat to Taiwan established the basis for the autonomous developmental state, and the US underpinned this state through military protection, aid and access to its own domestic market. However, the relative decline of US hegemony and the readmission of China into the international system have posed significant challenges to Taiwan's developmental state. The US sought to redress its trade imbalance with East Asia by placing pressure on Taiwan to liberalise its political economy. Furthermore, the very process of development itself served to undermine the autonomy of the state as it came under pressure from new social forces. Taiwan has more recently been faced with a dilemma of closer integration with the mainland or the maintenance of its de facto economic and political independence at the risk of becoming isolated from the global trading system.     

司法警察类院校开设警务技战术课程刍议

警察警务技战术教学与研究是现代警务教学与研究的重要内容之一。警务技战术课程应包括：体能训练、警察防卫与控制技术、射击、警务战术四个部分。提高监狱人民警察警务技战术能力,在司法警察类院校开设警务技战术课程十分必要。     

African Renaissance: The need for gender-inclusive developmental states

ABSTRACT

This article was developed from a paper presented at a seminar at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria in 2006 while the author was an Archie Mafeje Fellow. It argues the urgent need for the construction and consolidation of gender-inclusive democratic developmental states as central to grounding the concept of an African Renaissance, for an effective transformation of the human condition, and for ensuring that this renaissance does not become romanticised and meaningless. While the notion of developmental states has gained currency in recent years, very little, if at all, has been said about gender in relation to these debates – despite the United Nations warning that ‘without engendering development, development itself is endangered.’ In other words, formulating and implementing development policies with gender lenses are crucial for development.     

Alessandro Orsini. Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists

ABSTRACT

Those who study terrorism are familiar with the claim that suicide attacks are the most lethal form of terrorism today. Suicide attacks kill more people on average than non-suicide attacks, thereby justifying why terrorist organizations use this costly method of attack and explaining in part why suicide tactics have proliferated. However, extant empirical support for this claim is largely insufficient, focusing only on macro-level analysis of lethality data. Using data from the Global Terrorism Database, this study examines variation in lethality among suicide and non-suicide attacks based on geographic location, attack type, and target/victim type. It also introduces a new metric—the lethality ratio—to measure costs and benefits of attacks in terms of lives lost. It finds that, although suicide tactics are generally more lethal than non-suicide tactics, they also come at greater costs to the organization. This analysis also finds behavior that is inconsistent with the premise that terrorist groups are focused on maximizing lethality while reducing costs in all cases; that despite certain advantages, suicide attacks may remain a suboptimal tactic from the perspective of the terrorist group; and that additional criteria may help explain why suicide tactics are used.     

香港“武力使用教官训练课程”对公安院校警务技战术教学的启示

香港警察被誉为亚洲"最优秀的警队",其高质量的警务实战训练在国际警坛上享有盛誉。为保持训练效果,香港警务处枪械训练科设置了为期42天的"武力使用教官课程班",目的在于培养素质高超的警务实战教官,为实战训练服务。与香港警方的武力使用训练课程相比较,内地公安院校的警务技战术教学仍存在较多需要改进的地方。应借鉴香港武力使用教官课程训练内容,提升公安院校警务技战术教学水平。     

Psychological Aspects of Property and Ownership

Although property lawyers and theorists were always interested in the legal doctrinal construction of property rights and in political, moral, or economic justifications of property rights through the course of history, they very rarely looked into possible psychological roots of property rights and the powers they entail. Similarly, psychologists (whether with a focus on individual or social psychology) provide models for the explanation of a person’s behaviour and the social interactions of humans, but they rarely touch upon property rights at all, and if so, only in brief passing comments. The one extensive study on the social psychology of property appeared 75 years ago. This paper looks into modern research of individual and social psychology and assesses whether some of the findings can be used to explain a psychological basis for the existence and importance of property rights. That may also be a starting point for a modern interdisciplinary study in this area.

信息化战争中我军舆论战战法的构建

信息化战争按时间可划分为扼制战争阶段、战前准备阶段、战争实施阶段、战争结束阶段。科学构建信息化战争中我军舆论战战法,需要将信息化战争各阶段舆论战的“重心”细化为各种具体任务,针对每个任务提出相关战法。