Regionalism, Iran and Central Asia

A combination of revolutionary ideology, trouble with neighbours and location in the Middle East, where regionalism is moribund, make the Islamic Republic of Iran an unlikely enthusiast for regional coalition-building. The impetus towards regionalism derives first and foremost from geopolitical considerations–the need to counter the US government's efforts to isolate Iran–but also from domestic dynamics; the regionalist discourse has lent an acceptable ideological colouring to an increasingly pragmatic foreign policy.
Iran's neighbours, however, share neither its geopolitical predicament nor its ideological complexion, and the actual implementation of Tehran's regionalist agenda has been based on functional cooperation, rather than on geopolitics and ideology. Trade promotion and the development of transport infrastructure to link Central Asia and the Caspian to Turkey and the Persian Gulf have been the most appealing areas for northern neighbours, and dominate the agenda of the Economic Cooperation Organization, Iran's main vehicle for multilateral cooperaton with Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Tehran's 1992 proposal for a Caspian Sea Cooperation Organization has so far been stymied by the littoral states' well-publicized disagreements over the sea's legal status, though their numerous multilateral meetings and handful of agreements suggest that the idea has potential in the medium–term.
Notwithstanding the meagre tangible results to date, Iran's tilt towards regionalism has had a positive impact. It has helped to rehabilitate the Islamic Republic in the eyes of its neighbours, contributed to the evolution of policy debate at home and prepared the ground for future multilateral cooperation.     

Political Alignments,Political Economy and Political Change in Australia 1890-1940

This paper explores the applicability of class-coalitional explanations to broad patterns of public policy in Australia at the turn of the century and during the Great Depression. It argues that this approach, with its strong comparative emphasis, does shed light on the 'historic compromise' between capital and labour established after Federation and provides some useful hypotheses about Australia's failure to 'break with orthodoxy' in the 1930s. In particular, it provides an important comparative framework for understanding the nature and role of the labour movement in Australian history, and a corrective to prevailing interpretations. The paper also argues, though, that evidence from the Australian case calls into question simple factor-endowment models of political change.     

Regionalism, Regional Structures and Security Management in Central Asia

The security dimension of regionalism and regional structures in Central Asia and Azerbaijan has been limited by Russia's influence as a regional hegemon, aswell as by various other constraints specific to the region and the local states. Moreover, as a peripheral zone in the world system, Central Eurasia has not shown much evidence of regionalization as a process. But in response to the proximity of hegemonic power the smaller states have tried to adopt bandwagoning and balancing strategies in regional formats. Although their fixation on 'regime security' has encouraged them to accommodate Russia through CIS structures, this is changing as new bilateral security relationships develop with the United States. The Russian-sponsored Collective Security Treaty Organization is unable to address the most serious challenges for regional security management in Central Asia. Yet the local states have been unable on their own to establish a regional security consensus and to institutionalize cooperation on that basis. The diffuse GUUAM grouping (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova) has not offered a basis for selfsustaining regional security cooperation. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has created a venue to engage China in the security dialogue on Central Asia, particularly over counterterrorism, but has otherwise failed to tackle security challenges among and within the Central Asian states. Overall, the current focus of these states and their sponsors on bilateral relations to provide security assistance continues to displace security-related regionalism.     

试论我国政治合法性的系统建构

政治合法性作为一个系统,其建设只有遵从一定的运行规则和运行规律,从系统论的角度进行统筹规划、合理安排,才能使系统有效运行并达到功能最大化。本文就如何在系统指导下建构我国的政治合法体系从六个方面进行了论述。     

Han China in Central Asia

A.F.P. Hulsewé. China in Central Asia, the Early Stage: 125 B.C.-A.D. 23. An annotated translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty, with an Introduction by M.A.N. Loewe. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979, Pp. viii, 273, map. (70 guilders)     

19世纪英国的政治民主化与女权运动

工业化与政治民主化是19世纪英国历史的主旋律。在工业化的浪潮中,许多妇女走向社会,走进劳动力市场,成为独立的雇佣劳动,从而扩大了眼界,增强了独立意识。在社会政治民主化运动中,她们接受自由主义思想,参与党派活动、宪章运动和反谷物法斗争,甚至独立开展争取妇女选举权、与男性平等的经济权和社会立法权运动,向社会显示自身的实力,不仅改变了轻视妇女的传统社会立法,提高了女性的经济地位和社会地位,而且有力地推进了国家的民主化进程。     

The United States and Regionalism in Central Asia

This article examines the record of American policy towards regional cooperation in Central Asia. It begins with the determinants of regionalism and the role of external states therein. It then considers the nature of American interests in Central Asia. This is followed by a historical account of the three stages of American policy towards the region. The article argues that regional cooperation has not been a significant aspect of US policy. Instead US policy-makers have preferred bilateral relations or multilateral structures (e.g. the Partnership for Peace, the GUUAM [Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova] group) which draw the region's states beyond its boundaries. US policy tends to reduce incentives for regional actors to develop multilateral cooperation. It may also encourage competitive regionalist agendas on the part of other interested major powers (Russia and China).     

The Paleolithic of Central Asia

The Lower Paleolithic of Central Asia is represented by several sealed and more or less firmly dated Lower–Middle Pleistocene cave and open-air sites in the southeastern part and by more numerous surface occurrences throughout the region. The assemblages assigned to the Lower Paleolithic form two rather distinct groups, one remarkable for well-made handaxes and the other characterized by cores and flakes with no handaxes. The distribution map of pebble industries and industries with handaxes shows that while the latter originate from the western regions of Central Asia, the former are concentrated in the eastern part of the area. The Middle Paleolithic assemblages of Central Asia do not form a single technocomplex. Their variability in time is difficult to assess, but variation in space is obvious. Very few Upper Paleolithic sites in this region are known. At the same time, their stone industries are very diverse and most of them differ sharply from each other and from sites in adjacent regions.     

新疆和中亚及有关的地理概念

本文认为,新疆古称西域,其实西域常指包括新疆及其以西的中亚广大地区。“中亚”亦有广义和狭义之分,是见仁见智的近代地理概念。此外,古今中外还有一些与新疆和中亚有关的地理概念,都有一定的历史文化背景,系统考察之,那就是一部亚洲腹地地缘政治文化史。近年美国人提出Greater Central Asia（大中亚）的概念,另有一番政治含义。     

Regionalism in Central Asia: New Geopolitics, Old Regional Order

Behind the rhetoric of regional cooperation, the Central Asian states have been embroiled with increasing frequency in conflicts among themselves, including trade wars, border disputes and disagreements over the management and use of water and energy resources. Far from engendering a new regional order in Central Asia, the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent basing of US troops in the region have served to entrench pre-existing patterns of regional cooperation, while highlighting the obstacles that have beset the regionalization process there since the mid-1990s. While all five Central Asian states have been attempting to use the renewed rivalry between Russia and the United States, which is being played out in the Central Asian region, to maximize their strategic and economic benefits, the formation of the United States–Uzbekistan strategic partnership has increased the resolve of the other Central Asian states (Turkmenistan excepted) to balance Uzbekistan's preponderance by enthusiastically pursuing regional projects involving Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. This regional dynamic has resulted in the steady gravitation of the centre of regionalism in Central Asia to the north from a nominal Tashkent–Astana axis to a more stable Astana–Moscow one, with possible repercussions for the poorer states of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The article examines the major constraints on regionalism in Central Asia, considering in particular the ways in which the personalist, non-democratic regimes of Central Asia have obstructed state–centric 'top–down' regionalism as well as informal regionalist processes 'from below'.     

Geography in the Republics of Central Asia

A review of the last 50 years of geographic research in the four Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, and Turkmenia, where the dominant desert and mountain landscapes impose a specific character on geographic investigations. Physical geography has tended to focus on glaciation in mountains and on surface runoff in the desert as potential sources of water for irrigation. Economic geography has emphasized the utilization of desert pastures.     

Strategic Reassertion in Russia's Central Asia Policy

President Putin has presided over a proactive, hard-headed and relatively effective Russian policy in Central Asia and the Caspian region since at least the summer of 2002, which aims both to support Russia's revival as an economic and military power and to help tackle at source new security challenges from the volatile south. In line with rising domestic nationalist thinking and the growing influence of officials with a security service or military background, Moscow has been searching for a rationale to support a more assertive policy in the region. Meanwhile, Russian and American views on the scope and conduct of the war on terrorism have diverged in important respects. Russia lacks an overall regional strategy for Central Asia, but is seeking to mesh together geopolitical, security and energy policy goals. It is seeking to reinvigorate its military–security influence in Central Asia under the banner of counterterrorism and at the same time has achieved long-term agreements for energy transit and purchases that make Central Asian states increasingly dependent on Russia in energy policy. Overall, a dynamic of competition is displacing the potential for cooperation between Russia and western states, especially the United States, in Central Asia. The prospects for a fully-fledged strategic partnership in the region are fading but the reality of security threats from Afghanistan and within Central Asia might eventually reconcile Moscow to a lower profile but long-term western strategic presence in the region.     

Changing security threat perceptions in Central Asia

This article discusses the current process of securitisation in Central Asia and identifies its convoluted and faulty nature as a factor impeding collective security action in the region. It uses the Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) as an explanatory tool and posits that security discourse in — and about — the five former Soviet republics is dominated by geopolitical grand strategy on the one hand and by particularist concerns about lack of democracy or transnational threats on the other. Issues of conventional security involving two or more states, such as territorial disputes or resource management, are pushed aside and rarely securitised at the official level. The article outlines conceptual and institutional reasons for this bias, and argues that unless inter-state tensions are properly analysed, debated and addressed, the prospects for security and stability in the region will remain grim.