越南外国投资优惠法律政策研究

越南是我国企业进军东盟的必由之路.自越南改革开放以来,越南的外商投资的法律不断得以完善,投资程序日趋简化,投资环境日益宽松,投资优惠政策也增多.外资在越南投资前景广阔.     

The political strategy of external aid

When creating a process of international aid, the definition of a political strategy is critically important. In theory, a government able to deliver services and goods to its population and to guarantee participation in decision-making might not need the presence of international aid. International aid should bridge an existing gap between a government and its own population by adopting a relevant political strategy. This viewpoint proposes a reference framework for international cooperation actors to define their basic political strategy and provides a comprehensive framework for situating different political strategies into a wider approach.     

Investing in multi-stakeholder dialogue to address natural resource competition and conflict

How can multi-stakeholder dialogue help assess and address the roots of environmental resource competition and conflict? This article summarises the outcomes and lessons from action research in large lake systems in Uganda, Zambia, and Cambodia. Dialogues linking community groups, NGOs and government agencies have reduced local conflict, produced agreements with private investors, and influenced government priorities in ways that respond to the needs of marginalised fishing communities. The article details policy guidance in four areas: building stakeholder commitment, understanding the institutional and governance context, involving local groups in the policy reform process, and embracing adaptability in programme implementation.     

Reflections on mentoring experiences for evidence-informed decision-making in South Africa and Malawi

This article is based on the consensus that the availability and utilisation of research enhances policy discussions. The article reflects on the experiences within one approach: capacity building through mentoring. The UJ-BCURE programme aimed to increase the capacity of decision-makers to use evidence in decision-making via mentoring models. Mentoring is described as an interactive, facilitated process that promotes learning. The features of the models that have contributed to the programme’s success are orientation workshops with mentees combined with participatory, needs-led, and flexible approaches. UJ-BCURE experiences are relevant to the field of evidence-informed decision-making in an African government context.     

The Malian fertiliser value chain post-subsidy: an analysis of its structure and performance

This article examines the structure of the Malian fertiliser value chain and its performance in the context of the national subsidy programme, drawing on a review of the literature, farm household survey, and interviews with fertiliser suppliers. It finds that participants in the subsidy programme use more fertiliser and have significantly higher yields. The number of wholesalers and retailers has risen, but procurement remains concentrated. Poor fertiliser quality is a recurrent problem. The high cost of the programme raises questions regarding its sustainability. Mixed performance reflects the need for better monitoring and evaluation, and transparency in the programme.     

Transatlantic cooperation on terrorism and Islamist radicalisation in Africa: the Franco-American axis

Transatlantic cooperation on security has a long history. In Africa, transatlantic cooperation on security is basically between France and the United States. This paper asks why the two former competitors in Africa started to cooperate and also why they are so willing to engage militarily. The central argument in this paper poses that France and the US cooperate because it is indispensable to both parties. To France, the cooperation is indispensable because the US is the only power with sufficient financial means and with sufficient air-lift capacity to transport French and African troops into conflict-ridden countries. To Washington, cooperation with Paris is indispensable because the French authorities have unique access to intelligence and knowledge about large parts of Africa. By applying a foreign policy analysis framework, the paper analyses how perceptions of decision-makers, the role of personality and leadership, the role of government institutions and political systems have impacted the relevant decisions. It is emphasised that the two different decision-making systems – the French “state dominated” and the American “society dominated” – produce the same result, namely collaboration. It suggests that the perception of a serious threat from terrorism and Islamist radicalisation overrules differences in decision-making systems.     

Does European defence really matter? Fortunes and misfortunes of the Common Security and Defence Policy

This article examines how the defence component of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has been revisited over the last few years. It argues that while the CSDP has grown predominantly as a security – rather than defence – policy, the latest developments that include the creation of a military headquarter, the launching of a Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the new role for the European Commission in defence funding, attest to an evolution towards a more central EU defence policy. In the meantime, the article points to some structural impediments to the materialisation of European defence. The momentum says little about the form and finality of military operations that EU states will have to conduct so as to give a meaning to defence in a European context. Moreover, persisting divergences in the EU member states’ respective strategic cultures and institutional preferences – notably vis-à-vis NATO – are likely to continue to constrain European defence self-assertion.     

Partisan effects in morality policy making

Current comparative policy research gives no clear answer to the question of whether partisan politics in general or the partisan composition of governments in particular matter for different morality policy outputs across countries and over time. This article addresses this desideratum by employing a new encompassing dataset that captures the regulatory permissiveness in six morality policies that are homosexuality, same‐sex partnership, prostitution, pornography, abortion and euthanasia in 16 European countries over five decades from 1960 to 2010. Given the prevalent scepticism about a role for political parties for morality policies in existing research, this is a ‘hard’ test case for the ‘parties do matter’ argument. Starting from the basic theoretical assumption that different party families, if represented in national governments to varying degrees, ought to leave differing imprints on morality policy making, this research demonstrates that parties matter when accounting for the variation in morality policy outputs. This general statement needs to be qualified in three important ways. First, the nature of morality policy implies that party positions or preferences cannot be fully understood by merely focusing on one single cleavage alone. Instead, morality policy is located at the interface of different cleavages, including not only left‐right and secular‐religious dimensions, but also the conflicts between materialism and postmaterialism, green‐alternative‐libertarian and traditional‐authoritarian‐nationalist (GAL‐TAN) parties, and integration and demarcation. Second, it is argued in this article that the relevance of different cleavages for morality issues varies over time. Third, partisan effects can be found only if individual cabinets, rather than country‐years, are used as the unit of analysis in the research design. In particular, party families that tend to prioritise individual freedom over collective interests (i.e., left and liberal parties) are associated with significantly more liberal morality policies than party families that stress societal values and order (i.e., conservative/right and religious parties). While the latter are unlikely to overturn previous moves towards permissiveness, these results suggest that they might preserve the status quo at least. Curiously, no systematic effects of green parties are found, which may be because they have been represented in European governments at later periods when morality policy outputs were already quite permissive.     

Clarity of responsibility and foreign policy performance voting

Do voters’ assessments of the government's foreign policy performance influence their vote intentions? Does the ‘clarity of responsibility’ in government moderate this relationship? Existing research on the United States demonstrates that the electorate's foreign policy evaluations influence voting behaviour. Whether a similar relationship exists across the advanced democracies in Europe remains understudied, as does the role of domestic political institutions that might generate responsibility diffusion and dampen the effect of foreign policy evaluations on vote choice. Using the attitudinal measures of performance from the 2011 Transatlantic Trends survey collected across 13 European countries, these questions are answered in this study through testing on incumbent vote the diffusion‐inducing effects of five key domestic factors frequently used in the foreign policy analysis literature. Multilevel regression analyses conclude that the electorate's ability to assign punishment decreases at higher levels of responsibility diffusion, allowing policy makers to circumvent the electoral costs of unpopular foreign policy. Specifically, coalition governments, semi‐presidential systems, ideological dispersion among the governing parties and the diverse allocation of the prime ministerial and foreign policy portfolios generate diffusion, dampening the negative effects of foreign policy disapproval on vote choice. This article contributes not only to the debate on the role of foreign policy in electoral politics, but also illustrates the consequential effects of domestic institutions on this relationship.     

To revise or not to revise: the ‘peace constitution’, pro-revision movement,and Japan's national identity

Why do conservative nationalists in Japan continuously seek to revise the constitution despite the past failures, and what is the likelihood of successful revision and its impact on Japan's norm of pacifism and its use of force? The article offers an analytical framework for the issue based on national pride and national security, and argues that the ‘revisionists’ seek to create a new national identity, one that infuses a greater sense of national pride among the public and enables the exercise of collective self-defense, thereby removing Japan's postwar psychological and institutional limitations on nationalism and military activities. The LDP's 2012 draft is most explicit and ambitious in this regard, with the current revision attempt under Abe having the highest chance of success since the 1950s. Successful revision would significantly expand Japan's security activities, particularly within the framework of the US–Japan Security Alliance, and entail the end of Japan's unique postwar institutionalized pacifism, although the norm of pacifism will linger on as a constitutional principle. For a smoother return to the international military scene, the Japanese government must distance itself from historical revisionism and utilize its enhanced military role to promote regional public goods rather than merely protecting its narrow national interests.