Russia's energy governance transitions and implications for enhanced cooperation with China,Japan, and South Korea

A Tokyo-based economist and a noted western economic geographer, both specializing in the hydrocarbon resources of Russia, apply the framework of governance studies in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the recent changes in the country's energy policy-making. The authors argue that, unlike the international relations paradigm prevailing in studies of Russia's energy policy, the country's multiple roles in the international energy arena (as producer, consumer, exporter, importer, and transit state) warrant a more nuanced approach, reflecting Russian energy policy's flexibility over time and diversity across space. This paper endeavors, therefore, to apply a political economy and governance perspective to an understanding of the significant changes in Russia's energy policy-making regarding its dynamic energy relations with the Northeast Asia (NEA; China, Japan, and South Korea). In exploring the complex interactions between Russia's internal energy policy-making and its emerging energy relations in NEA, the authors addresses three key questions, namely: (1) how Russia's Asian energy policy corresponds to its domestic needs, (2) how much coherence in energy governance and cooperation exists between Russia and the Northeast Asian states at the institutional and organizational levels, and (3) the extent to which Russia's expectations for increased energy cooperation with the Northeast Asian states are likely to materialize.     

Africa’s Pasts and Africa’s Historians

Creation of local government districts has become an enterprise in Uganda, with many stakeholders having diverse opinions about the government's motives. This article examines the questions: What are the proclaimed and hidden or implicit intentions of the government? What evidence is available to provide reasonable interpretation of government action according to a particular rationale? By triangulating primary and secondary data and using a deductive approach, the study concludes that the initial intention of the government to create new districts to bring services and government closer to the people was consistent with the country's constitution and decentralisation policy. However, since 1997, and especially since 2006, other rationales have come to the fore, though not communicated as such in public policy statements. While we do not exclude ethnic rationale, the article finds more evidence that points to political patronage and a variant of gerrymandering (namely, that of splitting up districts while not redrawing boundaries).     

Praxis and paradigms of local and expatriate workers in ‘Aidland’

This paper discusses practices and paradigms that expatriate and national humanitarian aid workers use to deal with major problems they encounter in their daily work. It views ‘Aidland’ as an arena where different actors encounter, negotiate and shape the outcome of aid. One of the main findings is that there are consistent differences in the way expatriate and national aid actors perceive problems in their field, as well as in the way they respond to these issues. The paper shows that these perceptions often translate into heterogeneous paradigms and practices between expatriate and national staff, particularly around remote control aid, partnerships and donor reporting. These findings are highly relevant in the current context of ‘localisation’, suggesting that the so-called North/South divide continues to exist and more explicit attention should be given in aid research to the heterogeneous strategies of different actors working in the aid sector. The paper is based on analysis of data derived from a multiple-round Delphi expert panel study involving 30 highly experienced humanitarian aid practitioners.     

The globaliser dragon: how is China changing economic globalisation?

There are many studies on the effects of both economic globalisation and the rise of China. These core issues of the contemporary international agenda entail major economic, military, environmental, social and cultural transformations in most nations. While there is also an abundant literature on how globalisation supported the rise of China, there are scarce publications on how China became one of the primary drivers of globalisation. This article assumes that understanding the power of globalisation over countries is as crucial as assessing the power of certain countries over the process. In this sense, it uses the recently created ‘theory of globalisers’ to analyse how is China transforming contemporary economic globalisation. The conclusion is that China became an ‘economic globaliser’ in the twenty-first century. As the largest exporter, the second largest importer, the third largest provider of foreign direct investments, and a major supplier of high-tech goods, the Asian giant is a vital partner for several economies in different continents. In this context, Beijing’s globalisation strategy aims at both securing the benefits of globalisation and reforming the international economic order, but without a revolutionary stance.     

The BRICS and global governance: China’s contradictory role

The impact of rising powers generally and the BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - in particular on the existing global order has become controversial and contested. Donald Trump’s nationalist foreign policy agenda has raised questions about the BRICS willingness and capacity to provide leadership in place on an American administration that is increasingly inward looking. As a result, the rise of BRICS poses potential normative and structural challenges to the existing liberal international order. Given its geoeconomic significance, China also poses a potential problem for the other BRICS, as well as the governance of the existing order more generally. Consequently, we argue that it will be difficult for the BRICS to maintain a unified position amongst themselves, let alone play a constructive role in preserving the foundations of ‘global governance’.     

Capacity Development for Good Governance in Developing Countries: Some Lessons from the Field

Good governance is essential for sustaining economic transformation in developing countries. However, many developing countries currently lack the capacity, as opposed to the will, to both achieve and sustain a climate of good governance. This article addresses, from a practitioner's field perspective, the fundamental objectives, principles, and key areas that need to be addressed for developing capacity for good governance. These frameworks are now beginning to be recognized as both governments and donor institutions attempt to take advantage of the current demand and opportunities for addressing governance deficits. In pursuing capacity development for good governance, developing countries must ensure that such initiatives are comprehensively designed to be simultaneously related to change and transformation at the individual, institutional, and societal levels and be owned and controlled locally.     

A framework for the systematic study of election quality

This article offers the beginnings of a methodology for assessing the quality of a national election, its freeness, fairness and administrative efficacy. The historical lack of a comprehensive framework of analysis has compelled election observers to make pronouncements on the basis of incomplete evidence, usually gathered on the day of the vote and count. It has allowed international observation missions to ‘call’ the results of elections on the basis of political expediency rather than the facts of the case. The intent in this article is not to offer a foolproof method for categorizing election quality but rather to lay out a framework which we believe is more comprehensive and meaningful than anything that has come before. To illustrate its workings the article scores six multi-party elections: two in established democracies – Australia and Denmark 2001– and four in fledgling democracies – South Africa 1994 and 2004, East Timor 2001 and Zimbabwe 2002. The framework outlined here will make it possible to identify patterns of success and failure in the fairness of elections. It should enable all kinds of observers from academics and election administrators to election observers to spotlight the weak areas of election administration, where a government might then choose to focus its efforts to improve the quality of subsequent elections.     

Institutional legitimacy in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

How do personal encounters with legal institutions shape citizens’ confidence in those institutions throughout sub-Saharan Africa? Using Afrobarometer’s cross-national citizen survey, we show that negative first-hand experiences with government courts and police erode citizens’ trust in those state institutions but do not tend to disrupt citizens’ perceptions of their authority to arbitrate or enforce the law. Individuals from diverse demographic backgrounds imbue state institutions with the right to perform their governance and law-enforcement duties, even after experiencing institutional incompetence or injustice. This article advances existing comparative research on legal institutions, which tends to conflate trust and legitimacy and overlooks the distinction between de facto performance and de jure authority. We suggest that rule-of-law institutions have deeper roots than some scholars have previously supposed.     

Examining the Lagged Effect of Economic Development on Political Democracy: A Panel-VAR Model

The debate about the relative merits of presidentialism and parliamentarism has a long history, but it was revived in 1990 with Juan Linz's articles about the supposed perils of presidentialism and the virtues of parliamentarism. The argument presented in this review is that we are now witnessing a ‘third wave’ of presidential/parliamentary studies since 1990. The ‘first wave’ began with Linz's articles. It was characterized by a debate in which there was one explanatory variable (the regime type) and one dependent variable (the success of democratic consolidation). The ‘second wave’ of presidential/parliamentary studies began around 1992–93. In the ‘second wave’ there is more than one explanatory variable (the regime type, usually, plus the party system and/or leadership powers) and often a different dependent variable (‘good governance’ as opposed to democratic consolidation). The ‘third wave’ is quite different. This work is informed by more general theories of political science. Here, the respective merits of presidential and parliamentary regimes are not necessarily the sole focus of the work. However, its overarching approach informs the debate in this area in a more or less direct manner. The argument in this review article is that the ‘third wave’ of studies has much to offer the ongoing debate about the relative merits of presidentialism and parliamentarism.     

Regime type and good governance in low and high income states: what is the empirical link?

This analysis looks at the link between regime type and good governance across four different levels of development – low income countries, medium-low income countries, medium-high income countries, and high income countries. Through pooled time series analysis of more than 170 countries with yearly or bi-yearly data from 1996 to 2009, I find that democracies are better governed than non-democracies. This relationship is robust across all regime types. Even at a low level of development, countries that elect their representatives in free and fair elections have a better regulatory framework and are more efficient and transparent. The practical implications of this finding are that a democratically governed state will most likely have a superior social and economic track record than a non-democracy.