Decolonising International Relations?

How do we ‘decolonise’ the field of International Relations? The aim to decolonise has become a widely discussed and mentioned subject across the social sciences and humanities. The article aims to discuss what 'decolonisation' might mean in the context of the field of International Relations.     

Governance through government networks: The G8 and international organizations

As an informal grouping without headquarters, permanent staff or legal powers, the world’s major industrialized countries must rely on other actors, in particular international organizations, to manage global problems. This article examines how the Group of Eight contributes to global governance by cooperating with international organizations in the cases of debt relief and the fight against terrorist finance. It shows that the G8 draws on international institutions with the aid of government networks and argues that this cooperation is stronger, the greater the Group’s concentration of relevant power and the more important it considers the institutions’ resources.     

从应对贸易摩擦到预防经济脱钩:2019年中国经济外交形势分析

2019年,中国经济外交在严峻的国际经济环境中负重前行,取得了一系列进展。首先,以建设性姿态与美国展开经贸谈判,最终在年底达成中美第一阶段贸易协议,避免了中美经贸关系的进一步恶化。其次,积极加大对欧洲、日本、俄罗斯以及东南亚等主要经济体的经济外交,推动国际经济合作,力促RCEP完成谈判。这些努力在一定程度上化解了中美贸易战带来的负面影响。第三,中国的"带路"外交进入机制化建设的新阶段,尤其是新建立的"一带一路"新闻与智库交流机制得到各方积极响应。展望2020年,中美经贸关系依然错综复杂,WTO改革压力重重,欧洲和日本等主要经济体对中国的疑虑可能会进一步发酵,中国经济外交依旧充满挑战。     

“印太”视域下印日“特殊全球战略伙伴关系”:动力、影响及前景

近年来,随着美国"印太"战略的提出和印度洋战略地位的进一步凸显,印度洋—太平洋地区已经成为世界各大国战略竞争与博弈的重点区域。印度与日本作为影响印太秩序的两支重要力量,两国均提出了自己的"印太"战略构想,并不断加强在印太地区的战略互动。在"印太"地缘框架下,印日战略伙伴关系的内涵得到全面发展,已经升级为"特殊全球战略伙伴关系"。印日战略伙伴关系以共同的"民主价值观"为纽带,在政治、经贸、安全、军事等各领域的合作全面深化,并具有浓厚的制衡中国色彩。在当前国际政治、经济重心向印太地区转移的大背景下,印日战略伙伴关系的强化既是两国各自利益的需求使然,也是对印太地缘政治格局新变化的反应,必将对当前的印太地区秩序产生深远而复杂的影响。面对"印太时代"的到来,中国应与印日共同建立有关印太地区秩序的对话沟通机制,扩大中印日三国在印太地区基于共同利益的战略合作,推进印太命运共同体建设。在当前印太地缘政治兴起与日印战略伙伴关系不断升温的情势下,中国既要密切关注日印战略伙伴关系的发展态势,客观地看待印日在印太地区的战略互动给中国周边外交环境带来的各种风险和挑战。同时也要积极构建中国的"印太"战略,运筹好中日、中印双边关系,以便塑造有利于中国和平崛起的周边安全环境。     

近代早期中国江南地区在世界经济中的双重作用

本文探讨近代早期中国经济核心区——江南地区在世界经济中的双重作用,得出江南地区既促进世界经济体形成与发展但又阻碍了中国经济社会向资本主义方向发展的结论。     

Grounding transnational business governance: A political-strategic perspective on government responses in the Global South

Recent scholarship on transnational business governance has begun to examine public-private interactions and the active role of governments. We make two key contributions that integrate and expand this literature. First, in juxtaposition to functionalist accounts, we foreground the fundamentally political and often contentious character of these interactions. As private transnational governance schemes and standards “hit the ground,” private-public interactions, we argue, are embedded in national political arenas and tied to domestic distributional struggles among competing regulatory coalitions. Building upon multiple empirical streams of research, we develop a political-strategic framework that maps the diversity of Southern government responses (substitute, adopt, repurpose, replace, or reject) to transnational private governance. Our framework shows that government responses are a function of both strategic fit with domestic industrial capabilities and structures, and strength of developmental state capacity. Second, our proposed framework adopts the vantage point of Global South governments and industries, particularly how development challenges and strategic options within global value chains affect their understanding of, and responses to, transnational schemes and standards. This is an important corrective to a Northern bias in the private governance literature.     

Moving Up the Value Chain in ICT: ASEAN Trade With China

The rise of China increased competition for foreign direct investment and exports for the ASEAN economies. It also increased ASEAN trade with China. But, are ASEAN countries able to move up the value chain in their trade with China? The objectives of this article are to examine upgrading in the information and communications technology (ICT) value chain through changes in the product quality of parts and components (PNC) exports from ASEAN to China and the influence of these changes on their ICT trade with China. The main findings indicate that there is little or no product upgrading in the most important SITC 776 sub-component of the PNC exports from the four major ASEAN economies (ASEAN-4) to China after 2005. It is also found that improvements in product quality are more apparent for SITC 772 but this product group constitutes a small share in total manufactured exports from the ASEAN-4 to China. Lastly, with little or no product upgrading, exporters from the ASEAN-4 have shifted to exports of non-PNC goods to China. This shift has enabled the overall ICT exports from the ASEAN-4 to China to continue to grow for the period of this study.     

Terrorism,Agenda 2063 and the challenges of development in Africa

The nobility of the objectives and aspiration of the African Union's Agenda 2063 towards the developmental needs of the African people are laudable, as are the attempts being made to ensure collective action, despite the ‘shield of sovereignty behind which too many corrupt leaders have hidden’. However, these noble objectives and aspirations may be undermined and threatened by the upsurge in militant Islamism and the spread of terrorism within and outside Africa, a fact not being addressed by Agenda 2063. Yet while Agenda 2063 does not seek to address the challenges posed by terrorist networks within the continent, which are threatening human security as well as the sovereignty, territoriality, legitimacy and stability of political regimes, these issues are at the core of the agenda. This article argues for Agenda 2063 to step up its efforts to combat both the roots of terrorism and the threat to development that terrorism itself poses.     

Global commodity chain analysis and the French filière approach: comparison and critique

This article reviews two approaches to the study of economic restructuring which focus on commodity-specific dynamics of change. The first is the global commodity chain (GCC) approach, which has been developed primarily for the analysis of industrial commodities.The second is the francophone filière tradition, which has been applied mostly to agricultural commodities originating from former French colonies. The article finds that the GCC approach has a more coherent framework than the filière approach, although it is still far from constituting a fully fledged 'theory'. The authors provide a number of suggestions for improving some of its key concepts. They also suggest that the GCC approach can be enriched by some of the insights gained in filière work, especially in terms of improving historical coverage and depth, enlarging the analysis to agricultural commodities, better handling of regulation issues, and including quality convention issues in analysing commodity chain structure and restructuring.     

Values and Ethics of Global Civil Society Actors: Insights from a Survey and Content Analyses

Abstract

This study examines values, ethics and principles of conduct that underlie activities of global civil society organizations. It uses an international web-based survey, and a content analysis of the codes of conduct for exploring views of global civil society actors active on global issues and participating in global civil society events. The findings of this analysis highlight many similarities in the ways global civil society organizations of different forms and origins define their goals, values, ethical standards and responsibilities. The normative consensus discerned in this research is limited in scope, however. It revolves around a particular, liberal, view of civil society. The study discusses results of the survey and content analyses in light of the current debates on the nature of global civil society and its relation to the system of states and the global market.