The political economy of economic reform in North Korea

For over 10 years, North Korea has undergone a severe economic crisis, including food shortages, which has inflicted great suffering upon the North Korean people. Given such dire realities, it is beyond all doubt that the North Korean government should actively carry out comprehensive economic reforms as quickly as possible which aim to transform North Korea's present inefficient socialist planned economic system into a market economic system. Many argue that such reforms would give rise to successful economic growth in North Korea, which could enhance the legitimacy of the North Korean regime. Yet, the North Korean regime has consistently avoided implementing economic reforms, even though it has had a number of opportunities to do so. The July 1st reforms, which were introduced in 2002, have been half-hearted and inconsistently applied. This then raises an important question: Why has the North Korean government avoided adopting comprehensive economic reforms? In other words, what is the crucial barrier that has hindered North Korea's implementation of economic reforms? This article pinpoints North Korea's unique political system—i.e. its monolithic system of political control and policy making which exhibits the highest level of power concentration in one individual among all political systems—as the biggest barrier to economic reforms. No doubt North Korea desperately needs comprehensive economic reforms, in light of its economic crisis and food shortages. Nonetheless, the current North Korean regime has avoided adopting such reforms since they will undermine North Korea's monolithic system. In conclusion, North Korea's monolithic system has been the biggest obstacle to North Korea's economic reforms.     

Social,economic and political dilemmas of reform in Yugoslavia

All of the communist party‐ruled states of Eastern Europe, from the elder brother of the ‘socialist family’, the Soviet Union, to non‐aligned, sui generis Yugoslavia, are in some degree of economic crisis. Gone are the once loudly trumpeted assurances that the socialist ‘economic formation’ by its very nature — its centrally planned and directed economy, its leadership by a communist party armed with the ‘scientific’ social and economic theory of Marxism‐Leninism and its foundation on the principles of proletarian social justice — excluded the possibility of economic ailments such as sluggish growth rates, inflation, social inequality and unemployment. It is now admitted that precisely these problems currently threaten virtually all communist systems. The principal issue for the political elites in these countries (with the perhaps temporary exception of relatively prosperous East Germany and Czechoslovakia and perennially contrary Romania) is not whether radical reform is necessary, but how to implement the requisite economic, social and quasi‐political reforms without undermining the foundations of ‘socialism’ and of the communist party's domination that they identify with it Yugoslavia is a valuable test case of the general project of reform in communist systems, since it consciously undertook to dismantle the of Stalinist system it had been establishing under Soviet tutelage at the end of World War II in response to Stalin's ostracism of Tito in June 1948. From its inception the Yugoslav reform process was informed by a commitment to return to the sources of Marxian social and economic theory in order to build an authentic socialist system untrammeled by the structures and immoral practices of Stalinist ‘etatism’. Worker self‐management, ‘market socialism’, the decentralisation of political and economic decision‐making, periodic rotation in office, and a number of other formally democratic, participatory socio‐political processes, most of which Gorbachev and his supporters have been discussing under the rubric of perestroika, glasnost’ and demokratizatsiia, have all been tried in one form or another in Yugoslavia during the past four decades.     

Women's collective economic strategies and political transformation in rural South Africa

This article examines the economic processes and socio‐political institutions that shape women's involvement in community projects. Feminist materialism and postcolonial theory provide the framework to analyze these livelihood strategies as they are grounded in the material conditions of women's lives. The empirical study is based in a rural northern province of South Africa where colonialism and apartheid have contributed to extreme economic and social hardships. Fieldwork was conducted in Limpopo to analyze how community projects contribute to livelihood strategies. In an area where migrant remittances remain one of the main sources of income for rural households, women have increasingly engaged in collective economic strategies such as pottery making, sewing, and agricultural production. These strategies are embedded in a complex set of patriarchal institutions that reinforce unequal access to resources and have historically marginalized rural black women. Despite these barriers, findings from this study demonstrate that community projects provide the potential for economic and social empowerment, especially among rural women.     

New world complex societies: Recent economic,social, and political studies

Archaeologists working on the complex societies of Latin America have made impressive empirical advances on a number of fronts during the past five years. This article focuses on economic, social, and political issues, using the following topics for organization: intensive agriculture, demography, exchange, households, urbanism, chiefdoms, and state-level polities. For each topic, I review recent archaeological research and summarize pertinent theoretical issues. Unfortunately, the heavy accumulation of new archaeological results is not matched by the conceptual advances that are needed to explore the analytical significance of the data.     

The South Stream versus Nabucco pipeline race: geopolitical and economic (ir)rationales and political stakes in mega‐projects

The plan for the southern energy corridor delivering a new secure supply of natural gas to the European Union is shaped by projects for two pipelines—Nabucco and the South Stream. Economic rationales for both projects are far from solid as the prospects for returns on massive investments are doubtful due to uncertainty about demand. Much political effort has nevertheless been expended on advancing these competing ‘mega‐projects’, which have acquired symbolic status in different approaches to securitization of energy matters. The continuing recession has not added much weight to common economic sense, which dictates that the most efficient way to bring Russian and Caspian gas to Europe is modernization and joint management of Ukrainian gas infrastructure. Parallel construction of both pipelines remains the most probable outcome of their ‘race’, while simultaneous cancellation could have saved resources and political faces.     

The West's moral and political crisis

The West is in the grip of a moral panic with unforeseeable political consequences. After four decades of neoliberalism, cracks are beginning to appear in the form of nationalist challenges from the right and a youthful insurrection from the left, both frequently described as ‘populist’ by establishment figures. The Faustian compact made with finance capital by the traditional parties of the centre‐left in the 1990s now leaves them on the verge of extinction. The underlying conditions for this disarray are a massive demographic shift at the global level which will see Asians and Africans with over four‐fifths of the world's population in 2100. This editorial briefly reviews the Cold War and the transformations that have occurred since. A world revolution after 1945 was overthrown by a counter‐revolution in 1979–1980 which is itself under threat now. The American Empire is sustained by mercantilism, militarism, the world currency, intellectual property and the Internet economy. Free markets are just an ideological fig leaf for this. The editorial concludes with a review of recent political events in the US, France and Britain: Trump's presidency, Macron's improbable rise and Corbyn's surge in May's snap election. In Britain's case, the terrorist attacks, hung parliament and Grenfell Tower fire constitute a perfect storm that could sink the British political right.     

马来西亚 此刻让时间停留 专访马来西亚旅游促进局参赞宗可辉

华、巫、印融汇一炉的亚洲文化,美丽迷人的岛屿和海滩．还有长满各种奇花异草,未经污染的古老热带雨林,这就是马来西亚。一个可以让时间停留在梦幻沙滩的国家,一个可以看到摩天大楼和古老建筑并存的国家,一个可以在碧绿的海水下看到七彩珊瑚的国家。