Beyond Rainforests: Urbanisation and Emigration among Lowland Indigenous Societies in Latin America

Indigenous societies across lowland Latin America have recently made impressive political and territorial gains by emphasising their stewardship of and attachment to particular rural landscapes. But surprising new censal and microdemographic evidence shows that these groups have simultaneously been developing a presence in domestic and foreign metropolises. Cities offer employment and advanced education opportunities as well as escape from rural conflicts. We suggest that the dynamics and outcomes of these migrations are distinct from those of other rural Latin Americans. By outlining specific areas in which migration, politics, and territory appear to be interlinked, we seek to stimulate research that engages with these processes and their implications for indigenous advocacy and migration theory.     

ENTER THE DRAGON: INSIDE CHINESE HUMAN SMUGGLING ORGANIZATIONS*

This paper examines the inner workings of Chinese human smuggling organizations. Contrary to widely held conceptions about Chinese organized crime, most alien smugglers are otherwise ordinary citizens whose familial networks and fortuitous social contacts have enabled them to pool resources to transport human cargoes around the world. They come from diverse backgrounds and form temporary alliances to carry out smuggling operations. With the exception of a shared commitment to making money, little holds them together. The smuggling organizations mostly resemble ad hoc task forces and are assembled for specific operations. These organizations have clear divisions of labor with limited hierarchical structures. We discuss the theoretical implications of their unique organizational characteristics.     

预防跨国腐败犯罪对策研究论要

在预防跨国腐败犯罪的具体制度建设层面各国有所不同。结合本国国情进行预防跨国腐败犯罪制度研究,必须重视两方面的制度建设:一是完善本国立法,二是借鉴别国经验。     

‘A Pioneer in the Struggle for Social Justice’: Manuel Larraín and Transnational Catholic Activism in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s

This article explores the development of inter-American Catholicism during the 1950s and 1960s. It analyses the role of the Chilean Catholic bishop Manuel Larraín (1900–1966) in his efforts to disseminate his diagnosis of underdevelopment in Latin America and to establish links with the Catholic world in the United States. Based on a review of his writings, the American press and documentation from Catholic organisations, it is suggested that the Chilean bishop advocated the implementation of social reforms and American collaboration to prevent the advance of communism and strengthen Catholicism on the continent.     

Constructing and contesting legitimacy and accountability in polycentric regulatory regimes

The legitimacy and accountability of polycentric regulatory regimes, particularly at the transnational level, has been severely criticized, and the search is on to find ways in which they can be enhanced. This paper argues that before developing even more proposals, we need to pay far greater attention to the dynamics of accountability and legitimacy relationships, and to how those in regulatory regimes respond to them. The article thus first seeks to develop a closer analysis of three key elements of legitimacy and accountability relationships which it suggests are central to these dynamics: The role of the institutional environment in the construction of legitimacy, the dialectical nature of accountability relationships, and the communicative structures through which accountability occurs and legitimacy is constructed. Second, the article explores how organizations in regulatory regimes respond, or are likely to respond, to multiple legitimacy and accountability claims, and how they themselves seek to build legitimacy in complex and dynamic situations. The arguments developed here are not normative: There is no “grand solution” proposed to the normative questions of when regulators should be considered legitimate or how to make them so. Rather, the article seeks to analyse the dynamics of legitimacy and accountability relationships as they occur in an attempt to build a more realistic foundation on which grander “how to” proposals can be built. For until we understand these dynamics, the grander, normative arguments risk being simply pipe dreams – diverting, but in the end making little difference.     

Australian Cinema Studies: How the Subject Is Taught in Australian Universities

Since the mid-1970s, the subject Australian Cinema, and its various synonyms and neologisms, has been studied in humanities, social sciences and the arts in Australian higher education, and research in the field has played an important role in informing the critical approaches underpinning curriculum. Yet to date there is limited insight into the types of subjects offered, approaches to curriculum and syllabus, and their alignment with research. This article maps Australian cinema studies in higher education at an undergraduate level, and provides insight into common curriculum and syllabus models. Findings are drawn from an online survey of university course handbooks, content and thematic analysis of study guides and weekly syllabus, and correspondence with coordinators. Twenty-seven universities offered subjects with a dominant Australian cinema focus. Australian cinema studies is firmly embedded in national cinema curriculum, and three common curriculum models include the following: (1) a historical chronology of Australian cinema, (2) a text-dominant approach organised around the weekly study of a key film and (3) an approach predominately structured around Australian cinema discourses and critical theory. Despite the increasing importance of transnational approaches to Australian screen in research, transnationalism rarely functions as a dominant organising logic for curriculum in its own right.     

Governing sustainable palm oil supply: Disconnects,complementarities, and antagonisms between state regulations and private standards

The global palm oil value chain has grown in complexity; stakeholder relationships and linkages are increasingly shaped by new public and private standards that aim to ameliorate social and environmental costs while harnessing economic gains. Regulatory initiatives in the emerging policy regime complex struggle to resolve sector‐wide structural performance issues: pervasive land conflicts, yield differences between companies and smallholders, and carbon emissions arising from deforestation and peatland conversion. Identifying opportunities for more effective governance of the palm oil value chain and supply landscapes, this paper explores disconnects, complementarities, and antagonisms between public regulations and private standards, looking at the global, national, and subnational policy domains shaping chain actors’ conduct. Greater complementarities have emerged among transnational instruments, but state regulation disconnects persist and antagonisms prevail between national state regulations and transnational private standards. Emerging experimental approaches, particularly at subnational level, aim to improve coordination to both enhance complementarities and resolve disconnects.     

Mapping EU agencies as political entrepreneurs

The European Union relies on decentralised agencies to implement important transnational regulations, such as certifying the safety of medicines. However, the authority of these agencies does not have ‘hard’ legal status and crucially depends on disseminating ideas and information effectively: what can be termed ‘political entrepreneurship’. This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the political entrepreneurship of EU agencies by constructing a conceptual typology of entrepreneurial strategies. Drawing conceptually on transnational public administration, a new database is constructed of the ‘entrepreneurship’ of 33 EU agencies in 2014 based on their media communication activities, face‐to‐face networking in workshops and collaborations, and knowledge dissemination and ‘learning’ exercises. This is mapped against the political salience of agencies in the European Parliament and media. The mapping exercise shows four types of entrepreneurial strategies covering the population of EU agencies: technical functional, insulating, network‐seeking and politicised. The typology is validated through semi‐structured interviews in 11 EU agencies, showing the core characteristics of each type of strategy. The article concludes by arguing that this typology provides an important addition to existing categories of EU agencies based on autonomy and accountability, and advocates a future research strategy examining the interaction between agencies’ entrepreneurial strategies and the expectations and reactions of stakeholder audiences.     

Transnational public goods provision: the increasing role of rising powers and the case of South Africa

The paper delineates three debates, which will be conflated. One line of discussion relates to public goods at a transnational level. Here, the referencing of debates regarding the characteristics of ‘a common good’ will be of significance. A second strand addresses the group of countries known as the ‘rising powers’ and the role these countries could play towards a globalised common good. A third discussion thread analyses South Africa as a case study for the main rising power on the African continent. By creating connections between the lines of discussion, this paper drives forward the debates on how the role of rising powers can be conceptually repositioned in the light of a changing global context, and explores how these countries can respond to global challenges.     

The Pyu Ancient Cities World Heritage application: lessons from Myanmar on transnational advocacy networks

The announcement of 22 June 2014 from the World Heritage Committee that Pyu Ancient Cities had been added to the World Heritage List was significant for Myanmar, since it represented the country’s first World Heritage site. The World Heritage listing was the culmination of a process driven by a convergence of forces originating from within and outside of Myanmar. An interpretation of Pyu Ancient Cities as involving a transnational network of supporters echoes the work on transnational advocacy networks, which looks to phenomena involving transnational efforts to advance particular issues on behalf of activists against their government. This study examines Pyu Ancient Cities by producing a model that helps to illuminate the efficacy of its social network to engage in transnational advocacy.