Climate Change and UK Politics: From Brynle Williams to Sir Nicholas Stern

In 2000 the UK Labour government abandoned annual real fuel duty increases - a policy it had inherited from the preceding Conservative administration - in the face of direct action by farmers and hauliers. A short-term Conservative lead in the polls opened up. In 2006, the same Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced an increase in air passenger duty from February 2007 in the light of the newly published Stern Review. The opposition parties denounced this as too feeble.
As Stern points out, all citizens in the world are in a global N-person prisoners' dilemma. Everybody knows that a world without global warming is better than a world with it; but each actor is unconditionally better off from continuing to pollute than from restraining her polluting.
Everybody expects somebody else to drive less. Now, however, all parties have committed themselves to tax and/or emission trading policies to mitigate global warming. The paper examines this transition.     

Open Borders and the Right to Immigration

I do not argue for or against substantive immigration policies in this paper. Rather, my thesis concerns what kinds of reasons are morally salient in the construction of just immigration policies. I argue that philosophical proposals for regulating immigration should be evaluated according to the following methodological principle: The unit of analysis in terms of which principles for regulating immigration must be evaluated is the socially situated individual. I defend this principle indirectly by applying it to cosmopolitan principles for regulating immigration in order to demonstrate the moral inadequacy of theories of immigration that adopt an inappropriate unit of analysis. Failure to evaluate the moral adequacy of their own substantive proposals in terms of their effects on socially situated individuals leads some cosmopolitans to endorse substantive recommendations for regulating immigration (namely, open borders) that, I argue, disproportionately burden members of institutionally disadvantaged groups.

“一带一路”倡议推动全球经济治理变革的逻辑根源——基于发展逻辑与资本逻辑的比较分析

长期以来,全球经济治理由西方国家主导,遵从新自由主义的资本逻辑和竞争单方取胜的经济全球化运行逻辑,建构单方面契合西方国家利益偏好的统一规则治理模式。当前,这一传统的全球经济治理面临前所未有的困境而亟待变革。中国倡导的"一带一路"以"中国道路"的成功为事实基础,顺应发展导向与实践理性相互加强的理论逻辑,践行"发展共赢"的包容性全球化运行逻辑,塑造以包容性发展机制为核心特征的全球经济治理"中国方案"。对发展逻辑而非资本逻辑的遵循是"一带一路"倡议能够推动全球经济治理变革的逻辑根源。     

Regionalism in the Global South: Mercosur and ECOWAS in trade and democracy protection

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyse the performance of regionalism in the Global South through a comparative analysis of Mercosur and Ecowas with regard to the trade and democracy protection agendas, by contrasting their institutional design and regional leadership concerning the two issues. Firstly, it analyses the evolution of intra-regional trade as well as the trade agenda of each bloc concerning international negotiations with other states or economic blocs. Secondly, it discusses the relevance of democratic stability in the two regional organisations and how each organisation has performed in cases of democratic rupture in member states. When comparing the dynamics of the two organisations, we argue that differences in terms of institutional design and regional leadership have meant that Ecowas has been less ambitious than Mercosur in its trade agenda, but more decisive vis-à-vis the region’s democratic stability. Thus, this article aims to contribute to the comparative regionalism literature, setting out an analytical comparative framework for assessing the performance of regional organisations, which remains a difficult task for this particular research agenda.     

Women’s international Democratic Federation,the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s

ABSTRACT

This article examines the work of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) with women from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It analyzes their role in the WIDF’s decision-making process and activities during a period marked by decolonization and the intensification of women’s rights activism outside Europe. This analysis contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which the WIDF’s official position on support for the rights of women in the Global South was translated into the practical work of organization. The article is based on materials from Moscow archives that have hitherto not been explored in research on the WIDF. It shows that, in spite of the WIDF’s formal anti-colonial stance, women from the Global South were not always given a voice or able to insert their demands into WIDF policy.     

Political Economy of Southeast Asian Borderlands: Migration,Environment, and Developing Country Firms

The Chinese way of development shares many characteristics with the East Asian developmental state model. Key elements of this shared development model include state control over finance, direct support for state owned enterprises by the government, import substitution industrialisation in heavy industry, a high dependence on export markets and a high rate of domestic savings. Even the reform of corporate governance is not likely to change the basic features of the East Asian model in China. Among East Asian countries, China shares more similar characteristics with Taiwan rather than with Japan or Korea since China, like Taiwan, also has an economy of dual structure that divides the public and non-public sectors.     

The prosecution of “others”: presidential rhetoric and the interrelation of framing,legal prosecutions,and the Global War on Terror

ABSTRACT

In examining the Global War on Terror, the effects of presidential rhetoric on the framing of terrorism has been well documented. However, little previous work links terrorism and its status as an “othered” phenomenon to differential legal prosecution in a post-9/11 era. Using the Prosecution Project data set, we compared “othered” individuals, as defined by a Muslim, Arab/Middle Eastern, and/or foreign-born status, to “non-othered” individuals charged with terroristic felonies. Furthermore, we subdivided the dataset into three analytical time blocks: the George W. Bush administration immediately post-9/11, the latter half of the Bush administration, and the Obama administration. For the first and third time blocks, we found that “othered” individuals were prosecuted significantly more frequently than “non-othered” individuals. These findings call into question the effect of presidential rhetoric and the national framing of terrorism on the legal prosecution of “othered” individuals.     

The Hi-jacking of Global Society? An Essay

Abstract

Globalization is producing a global society of some sort. Three leading forms are on offer: Global Civil Society, Global Islam and Global America. This essay presents an analysis of globalization as a process, and then a discussion of each of the three possible forms, while recognizing that contingency prevails in history. With this said, the odds are against Global Islam succeeding. Rather, the most likely outcome seems to be the ‘hijacking’ of Global Civil Society by the US. The reasons for this are given, plus a glance at alternative possibilities.     

The Council of Europe Data Protection Convention reform: Analysis of the new text and critical comment on its global ambition

The year 2010 set an important milestone in the development of data protection law in Europe: both Europe's basic regulatory texts, the EU Data Protection Directive and the Council's Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Convention 108), were placed at an amendment process, having served individual data protection for many years and witnessed in the meantime technological developments that threatened to make their provisions obsolete. After briefly presenting Convention 108, the analysis that follows will highlight the Council's data protection system currently in effect as well as developments relating to the Convention's amendment so far with the aim of identifying improvements and shortcomings. While doing this two separate points of view shall be adopted: at first a micro point of view will attempt to identify improvements and shortcomings through an ‘insider’ perspective, that is, judging only the merits and difficulties of the draft text at hand. Afterwards a macroscopic view will be adopted, whereby strategic issues will be discussed pertaining to the important issue of the relationship of the suggested draft with the EU data protection system, as well as, the same draft's potential to constitute the next global information privacy standard.