State transformation and resource politics: Australia and the regional political economy

Abstract

Although the 1994 Agreed Framework offers a solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis, many problems may prevent its successful implementation. Should the Agreed Framework break down, the United States and South Korea have indicated that they will ask Japan to join them in a trilateral economic sanctions regime.

Japanese participation would include the severance of trade and financial flows, including money sent to North Korea from Japan's ethnic Korean community. In this paper I examine this financial flow, and, finding it a valuable linkage to the North Korean economy, conclude that Japanese participation is vital for a successful sanctions regime against North Korea.

Given this, I examine whether or not Tokyo's cooperation will be forthcoming. Japan would be inclined to participate given that it has a strong interest in eliminating a regional nuclear threat. Furthermore, Japan would also feel pressure from its allies to display diplomatic leadership in the Asia‐Pacific region, as befits a country of its economic importance.

Despite these international reasons for Japanese participation, domestic factors will be likely to prevent Tokyo from joining a sanctions regime: constitutional questions, the possibility of terrorist reprisals, interest in Pyongyang's regime maintenance, concerns for the rights of Japan's ethnic Korean community, and political ties between North Korean and Japanese politicians. I find that these domestic factors will outweigh international pressures for Japanese participation, and thus conclude that in the event of a breakdown in the Agreed Framework, alternatives to a trilateral sanctions strategy against North Korea must be considered.     

Posner,Bentham and the rule of economy

Law and economics is a prominent but understudied discourse of liberal government. This essay examines the work of Richard Posner, with special attention to his rediscovery of Jeremy Bentham as a founder of law and economics. Posner's new reading of Bentham accurately identifies Bentham as a fellow anti-juridical theorist of government and a fellow believer in the rule of economy. But Bentham's economy makes room for a range of disciplinary appropriations, and Posner's does not. Posner's economy is entirely defined and exhausted by a particular economic doctrine. The essay suggests that civil society has been over-emphasized in the literature contrasting classical and contemporary liberalism. Instead, it turns attention to a common understanding of law as a non-autonomous and flexible tactic of economic government and to the role of the various sciences that can inform it.     

Sub-prime mortgage lending: a cultural economy

Abstract

Developing cultural economists’ concerns with the assembly of agency in financial markets, agency in sub-prime mortgage lending in the United States is shown to have been made up through calculative devices of risk. Credit reporting and scoring provided for the targeting, sorting, pricing and governing of customers in terms of risk. The securitization of mortgages into risk-structured financial instruments made possible extended lending. Interest-only adjustable rate mortgage products called up mortgagors who, as leveraged investors, embraced risk in a rising property market. The current sub-prime mortgage crisis is understood in critical terms as a moment when the contradictions of these risk devices and their incapacity to capture the uncertain future have come to the surface, and agency in sub-prime lending has been disassembled. Cultural economy is thus shown to make a distinctive contribution to the politicization of sub-prime that stresses the ambiguous politics of calculation.     

‘A willing Odysseus’: The life and times of Albert O. Hirschman

Abstract

In this review essay of Jeremy Adelman's biography of Albert O. Hirschman, A worldly philosopher, supplemented by references to other secondary works on Hirschman, I take the opportunity to discuss the relationship between the economist's life and his main publications. I argue that in times of crisis more attempts like Hirschman's political economy are needed. I further argue that Hirschman has given us a good idea of what a new moral economy, which really deserves this name, would look like.     

Visualizing the invisible hands: the shadow economy in North Korea

Abstract

The outside world is well aware of the totalitarian side of North Korea. Much less well-known is the shadow economy of the country which has enveloped the everyday lives of ordinary North Koreans for the last fifteen years or so. Based on refugee testimonies, this article aims to shed light on this heretofore unexamined aspect of the country, by visualizing the invisible hands of the ever-growing shadow economy in North Korea. In particular, we will investigate who the main actors are (the agency question), how they obtain their items (the supply mechanism), how they move items from one place to another (the distribution mechanism) and who consumes these items (the consumer question) in contemporary North Korean society.     

The price of everything and the value of nothing? Unravelling the workings of Russia's ‘virtual economy’

The unprecedented reliance on non-monetary exchange (NME) in transactions among industrial enterprises is one of the most remarkable features of Russia's post-Soviet economic transformation. This paper argues that firms engage in NME in order to discount nominal prices which remain well above market-clearing levels. The mechanisms which prevent a convergence between formal and actual transaction values include asset valuation rules, depreciation schedules, tax regulations and an inadequate bankruptcy mechanism. These distortions to the price-formation mechanism effectively operate to sustain a subsidy regime which has hitherto shielded much of Russian industry from the rigours of the market. The analysis concludes with an examination of the 1998 financial collapse, arguing that the crash was rooted in the breakdown of the subsidy system just described, a process which was strikingly similar to the breakdown of the Soviet economic system a decade earlier.     

贵州小城镇发展对农村经济带动作用研究

小城镇发展是贵州实施城镇化带动战略的重要内容。大力发展小城镇可以转移农村人口,提高城镇化水平,拓展城乡市场,发展乡镇企业,优化产业结构,推进社会主义新农村建设。发展小城镇要科学规划、放宽准入、加大投入、强化管理,提升小城镇的品质。     

中国政治体制改革：必要性、方向与路径

政治体制的改革是当下中国面临的最大的一项课题。改革开放30多年来,中国特色社会主义市场经济体系的初步建立和完善,使中国发生了翻天覆地的变化,但是经济体制改革存在着一些潜在的问题和社会矛盾,反过来倒逼政治体制改革。中国现代化的转型不只需要经济体制的改革,更是要在市场经济的时代下进行政治体制的改革。政治体制的改革就是要建设一个成熟的民主和法治的现代化国家。为了实现这一目标,中国政治体制改革应该走一条既要有自上而下的推动,又要有自下而上的探索和实践的改革路径。     

Following the Grain: State Formation and Trans-local Grain-trading Networks in the Philippines

With respect to the major approaches of state-society relations and Chinese business networks in Southeast Asia, two knowledge gaps are identified. First, little is known about how two sets of dualistic conceptual entities may be connected in the often-contentious state formation process between: (1) the ruling minority and ruled majority; and (2) the nationalising state and grain-producing frontiers. Second, very little is known about the role that the Chinese business networks played and how they contributed to the state formation processes. Using a Philippine trans-local grain-trading network as a site of investigation, the paper seeks to fill these knowledge gaps by delineating an integrative approach – designated as rhizomatic political economy – which argues that Southeast Asian state formation may hinge on the instrumentalisation of Chinese business networks and what is identified as their rhizomatic power/knowledge system. They are not just business-brokers in the trans-local grain trade that connects the national capital and grain-producing locales, but also serve as political brokers to implement state measures in regards to food and interior security affairs.