Public Participation and Environmental Impact Assessment in Mainland China and Taiwan: Political Foundations of Environmental Management

This article explores the role of agro-ecological factors associated with agricultural growth and poverty outcomes in India. Using a new operationalisation of agro-ecological factors and incorporating within-State variations in poverty and other variables we show that agricultural growth and poverty reduction appear to depend on underlying agro-ecological conditions which are favourable to the spread of irrigation and hence agricultural development, which in turn in associated with poverty reduction. Promotion of agriculture in less favoured areas in unlikely to have similar effects on agriculture in less favoured areas is unlikely to have similar effects on agricultural growth even if the effects of agricultural growth on poverty remain similar, unless conditions for irrigation are favourable or rainfall is sufficiently abundant and reliable. This suggests that considerable caution may be needed in drawing policy conclusions from empirical analysis by state alone, and without regard to their underlying factor endowments.     

Alliances,Trade Discrimination,and the Global Trade Regime

Although nondiscrimination is a central tenet of the global trade regime, discrimination was in fact common under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, particularly against developing countries. The latter have recently sought to end such discrimination through World Trade Organization rules: for example, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) prohibited quota discrimination in this sector. I examine the ATC's impact on US discrimination, asking whether the ATC ended the US policy of favoring allies with generous textile and clothing quotas. I find that, while the United States favored allies before the ATC, this favoritism vanished in the post-ATC period. The ATC thus accomplished its goal of ending explicit textile and clothing discrimination. This result underscores the potential for multilateral rules to control trade discrimination and implies that popular theories of trade policy may be contingent on such rules.     

我国商业银行的营销策略

借助SWOT分析法,对我国商业银行自身反我国宏、微观的银行营销环境进行综合分析,提出选择目标市场、进行金融服务定位、不断创新产品和服务、树立自己的品牌形象、制定适当的价格策略、建立通畅的分销渠道等一系列适合我国商业银行实际的市场营销策略。     

Lessons learned from the World Commission on Dams

The World Commission on Dams was an independent international body created under initiatives of the World Bank and the World Conservation Union in order to address environmental and social impacts of large dams. It published its final report in November 2000 after 2.5 years of extensive studies, public hearings, and discussions. The report included recommendations that were expected by some to become internationally acceptable standards for the planning, assessment, design, construction, operation, and monitoring of large dam projects. However, to date, none of these recommendations have been either officially accepted by major international financial institutions, including the World Bank, or by a large number of national governments, including China and India, which are the world’s top and third largest dam-building countries. Several factors have prevented their broad acceptance: (1) the World Bank lost its stake in the development of policy as the original scope of the review expanded from solely Bank-funded projects to cover all large dam projects in the world; (2), the World Bank was neither included in the secretariat nor did it provide Commissioners, thereby providing the Bank with an excuse not to accept the recommendations; (3) the Commission had the heavy tasks of carrying out both scientific study and developing policies, under serious time constraints, resulting in premature recommendations that were difficult to apply in the real world; (4) the character of the final recommendations was not clearly explained in the report, giving stakeholders unrealistic expectations.

二战前英属马来亚印度劳工的政治生活简析

从20世纪初开始,马来亚印度人的民族主义逐渐兴起,一方面表现在印度人希望获得马来亚的公民权,但更多地体现在印度劳工希望殖民统治者给予他们公平、合理的待遇。然而,印度人温和合理的政治诉求遭到殖民当局的拒绝,因此他们采取了更为激进的罢工。罢工的失败促使印度人争取祖国印度独立自由的民族主义情绪的高涨,进而在日据时期掀起了一场较有声势的独立运动。日据时期的马来亚印度人的独立运动是一场无果而终的民族解放运动,也是一场失败的民族主义运动,但这场独立运动具有一定的正义性。     

Third-worldism: sensibility and ideology in Uruguay – from Third Position to the thought of Carlos Real de Azúa

This article examines the trajectory of the concepts ‘Third World’ and ‘Third-worldism’ in Uruguay, and attempts to prove that, although Third-worldism developed thoroughly as sensibility, it did not have the same success as ideology. The article examines authors and intellectual groups who reflected on the Third World, and especially on ‘tercerismo’ (Third Position) – understood as a set of ideas related to Third-worldism but not part of Third-worldism as such. It next explains the importance of the thought of Carlos Real de Azúa, identified as the main ideologist of Third-worldism in Uruguay. The research shows as a result that there was great concern about the Third World, especially in the 1960s and the 1970s, expressed in articles, reports and speeches, among others. Nevertheless, a full conceptualisation was never realised, except in the contribution made by Real de Azúa. The article concludes that, paradoxically, ‘tercerismo’ blocked the development of more elaborated third-worldist thought in Uruguay.     

How the World Bank manages social risks: implementation of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey

This paper aims to assess the World Bank’s social risk management approach to poverty by focusing on the implementation details of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey, a World Bank project that depends on this approach. The paper looks at the approach through the concept of neoliberal governmentality, as an attempt to produce responsible poor citizens during a period when the responsibility for providing social services is transferred to the market and the family. By using field research it demonstrates that, with the intervention of local factors, several unintended consequences emerge in the implementation of a social risk management project. The article concludes that these outcomes, although not planned or intended, have all been instrumental in depoliticising poverty and the poor in the country. Moreover, in spite of all the problems and dissatisfaction, thanks to the Bank’s own portrayal, this project has contributed to the image of the Bank as a development institution that achieves successes in its fight with poverty.     

The challenge of the creative Third World

This article is a contribution to recent literature on the shape of the polycentric world order. It argues that the Third World remains a valid concept for describing the interests and ideas that shape the foreign policies of many key non-Western states. However, the Third World has changed in a fundamental way. The article describes the historical emergence and contemporary manifestations of a ‘creative’ Third World in contrast to the ‘protest’ Third World of the past. It describes the nature of this shift and how it is reshaping Western leadership. It argues that the main challenge for the West is to create a coherent pluralism in international order that embraces this creative Third World.     

On fighting for global justice: the role of a Third World international lawyer

Abstract

The life of a Third World international lawyer is devoted to resistance to the norms of international law designed by agents with power to promote the interests of the powerful sections of the international community. Increasingly the instrumental norms of international law are fashioned through the use of private power, making the positivist claim that public international law is a law between states illusory. The task of this paper is to identify a framework of common concerns so that a collectivity of Third World lawyers can work together, examine how mechanisms of power can be countered, and devise a confrontational strategy.     

Islamism,secularism and post-Islamism: the Muslim world and the case of Bangladesh

This paper provides a historical overview of the emerging post-Islamist phenomenon in the Muslim world and discusses the scope for sustainable democratic politics in Bangladesh. In the process, a model is proposed that purports to exhibit a level of compatibility with the perceived political landscape in Bangladesh. The model adopts a version of the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy and sets it within the ‘post-Islamist’ paradigm in such a way that, if it can be implemented, even if only partially, may lead to the sustained political stability of Bangladesh. The paper highlights illiberal and undemocratic practices of the two dominant Bangladeshi political parties as a major feature of the present status quo. These practices dominate Bangladeshi politics through the continuous attempts of their exponents to impose monopolistic views on the various symbols of national identity, despite the multi-racial, multi-religious nature of Bangladesh society. The paper concludes that a democratic system of politics, which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and post-Islamist ‘Islamic ethical–moral–legal codes’, remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country’s multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.