The contested rescaling of economic governance in East Asia: a special issue

The special issue this article opens engages with an apparent conundrum that has often puzzled observers of East Asian politics—why, despite the region's considerable economic integration, multilateral economic governance institutions remain largely underdeveloped. The authors argue that this ‘regionalism problématique’ has led to the neglect of prior and more important questions pertaining to how patterns of economic governance, beyond the national scale, are emerging in East Asia and why. In this special issue, the contributors shift analytic focus onto social and political struggles over the scale and instruments of economic governance in East Asia. The contributions identify and explain the emergence of a wide variety of regional modes of economic governance often neglected by the scholarship or erroneously viewed as stepping stones towards ‘deeper’ multilateralism.     

Multilevel (mis)governance of palm oil production

The palm oil industry exemplifies the ‘regionalisation without regionalism’ pattern seen in other industries in Asia: extensive, regionally concentrated transnational economic integration accompanied by a low level of formal regional institution-building. Production is concentrated in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Asian countries account for a major share of the market for intermediate products. The ownership structure of palm oil production reflects the dominance of transnational Malaysian and Singaporean firms. There is no authoritative regional institution governing production, investment standards or labour in the industry. A patchwork of both enabling and regulatory governance institutions supports the industry. These are formal and informal, public and private, and are situated at multiple levels: within, below and across the nation state. Although the governance structure surrounding the palm oil industry has supported it well in terms of production volumes and profits, large externalities—environmental and social costs—persist. This article argues that the governance failures associated with the industry stem from different stakeholders' competing interests in contexts of highly unequal wealth and power distribution. Misgovernance is not an unintended consequence of institutions failing to keep up with markets in scale and scope, but is embedded in the multilevel governance regime that supports, and partially regulates, the industry.     

The privatisation of maritime security in Southeast Asia: the impact on regional security cooperation

This paper examines the involvement of new modes of governance (NMoG)/new actors, in establishing new regional regulatory frameworks in Southeast Asia. The basis for this discussion is a framework suggested by Kanishka Jayasuriya who argues that the activities of NMoG can facilitate the establishment of such regional regulatory frameworks. Concentrating on maritime services provided by one new actor, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), this paper suggests that the current activities and working practices of PMSCs in Southeast Asia are more likely to undermine regional security cooperation and regional governance, thus challenging some of the tenets of Jayasuriya's framework.     

Queering the transnational turn: regionalism and queer Asias

In recent years, queer studies has increasingly interrogated the racial and colonial unconscious embedded in the earlier studies of non-normative genders and sexualities through the critical frameworks of queer of color critique and queer diaspora studies. This article aims to ‘queer the transnational turn’ by considering what critical edge ‘regionalism’ might bring to the investigation of queer modernities in Asia from both contemporary and historical vantage points. The introductory section of the article provides a broad overview of the ‘transnational turn’ in queer studies, what we diagnose as the ‘area unconscious’ of queer studies in its exclusive critique of Western colonial modernity, and the related binary of cultural particularism versus Eurocentric universalism. Alternatively, we argue that the concept of regionalism can be productively mobilized in order to study the various scales of queer sexualities that traffic within and circulate across Southeast Asia, Australia, imperial China, and contemporary Sinophone cultures (Sinitic-language communities on the margins of or outside mainland China). Through a paired reading of Johann S. Lee’s Singaporean queer novel, Peculiar Chris (1992), and Su Chao-Bin and John Woo’s Sinophone martial art film, the Reign of Assassins (2010), our inquiry accounts for how the spatial–temporal telos of global queering get materially translated across multiple regional hubs of sexual differences. Queer regionalism in Singapore, China, and the Sinophone worlds encompasses relational dynamics, power differentials, and subnational and supranational linkages. Finally, queering regionalism can open up new analytical frameworks for the study of sexualities and corporealities across transcolonial relations and wider temporal and spatial connections.     

Regional spaces, spaces of regionalism: territory, insurgent politics and the English question

Amid the globalization of economic life and a myriad of powerful challenges to Westphalian traditions of political statehood, it is now routinely contended that regions are 'in resurgence'. Nonetheless, much of the debate on this purported regional renaissance is bedevilled by confusion over what scholars and activists mean by regions and an analogous mystification as to why some regions are 'successful', 'lagging' or 'different'. Our paper aims to instil some coherence to this debate by distinguishing between what we term regional spaces and spaces of regionalism . It then draws on this distinction to explore the institutionalization of England's South West region, highlighting some tensions which prevail over its economic future, its political representation, its territorial shape and cultural vernacular. In undertaking this, we demonstrate how the formation of any given regional map is reflective – and indeed constitutive – of an unevenly developing, often overlapping and superimposing mosaic of economic practices, political mobilizations, cultural performances and institutional accomplishments. This prompts us to question the currently fashionable inclination to fully jettison a scalar and/or territorial approach to the theory and practice of spatiality in favour of relational/topological/non-territorial approaches.     

经济外交与冷战史研究新视野

经济外交是认识和理解冷战历史的重要研究角度。经济外交与对外经济战略、对外经济关系、私人企业对外交往活动有着较为明显的联系与区别。对外援助是经济外交最重要的表现形式。美国相关解密外交档案的启示作用,一是帮助澄清了经济外交是美国实现冷战目标的最重要工具之一;二是冷战时期美国对第三世界国家实施的经济援助计划,是其遏制苏联大战略的有机组成部分。     

'Institutional thickness', political sub-culture and the resurgence of (the 'new') regionalism in Italy – a case study of the Northern League in the province of Varese

In recent years, the 'regional scale' within the European Union (EU) has become more central within academic and policy debates. In particular, there has been an increased focus upon the importance of so-called 'institutional thickness' for regional development within the EU. Furthermore, the fact that in several European countries, regionalist political parties have made significant electoral gains has ensured that the 'regional question' in Europe has become even more prevalent. This paper explores the linkages between institutions and regionalist political parties by focusing upon the situation in Italy where the resurgence of political regionalism, centred on the Lega Nord (LN) or Northern League political party, has been particularly strong. In particular, the paper focuses upon the development of the LN in a particular province of Northern Italy, Varese. This section explores the ways in which the LN has developed institutionally and electorally and indeed whether the party has been able to develop a specific political sub-culture to replace the previous one associated with the Christian Democrat (DC) party, which was the main party in Varese before the landmark changes that took place in Italian politics in the early 1990s.     

Transport Infrastructure and Regional Integration in the Middle East

The soft aspects of the infrastructure of regionalism in the Middle East have previously been studied, while the impact of the region’s hard infrastructure, in particular transport infrastructure, has received little attention. This paper contributes to the study of regionalism in the Middle East by investigating the relationship between hard infrastructure and economic integration. It analyzes whether the state of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure in the region promotes regional trade. This is done by addressing the following sub‐questions: 1) What is the condition of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure in the Middle East? And 2) What is the relationship between domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure and regional trade in the Middle East? These questions are answered by examining Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey as representative samples of the broader region. It is argued that regionalism relies on the development of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure and where the latter is limited, regionalism cannot deepen. The study concludes that domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure performance is weak in several of the countries studied and that this weakness hinders regional economic integration regardless of the level of the region’s soft infrastructure.     

Security and democracy: the ASEAN charter and the dilemmas of regionalism in South‐East Asia

In November 2007, the heads of the ten member governments of the Association of South‐East Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed a charter that will, once ratified, give the association a legal personality. The charter, significantly, requires more of its members than a reassertion of the traditional ASEAN norm of non‐interference and the practice of consensus. The charter lists a number of novel goals among the organization's purposes: ‘to strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms.’ In view of the wide economic and political disparities between the member states of ASEAN, this article examines whether strengthening democracy would in fact facilitate ASEAN's goal of becoming an integrated political, economic and security community. Rather than enhancing an integrated community, democratization would arguably create a faultline between the more politically mature and economically developed states and a northern tier of less developed, authoritarian single‐party dominant regimes in South‐East Asia. Moreover, given China's emerging political and economic importance to the region, such a strategy would, as if by an invisible hand, draw the more authoritarian ASEAN states into China's less than democratic embrace. This article concludes that rather than strengthening democracy, ASEAN's charter needs urgently to reinforce practices of rule governance and mechanisms of market integration to enhance both ASEAN's economic profile as well as the region's autonomy.     

The global and regional constitution of nations: the view from East Asia

ABSTRACT. While the origins of nationalism are sought in global historical trends, few analysts have shown how nations themselves are constituted and re‐shaped by circulating global power, ideas and models. The view from East Asia shows that these circulations are mediated by regional developments and interactions which bind these nations together in rivalry and interdependence. The histories of China, Japan and Korea have been closely tied together since the end of the nineteenth century and, with a gap of about thirty years during the Cold War, have intensified once again. The global and regional constitution of nations produces a dialectic between its global form and aspirations and misrecognition of this constitution arising from the self‐perception of nationalism as historically immanent. This tension between the global constitution and national misrecognition contributes to the tenacity of nationalism. It also allows us to get a better grasp of the relationship between historical change and structure in nationalism and the relationship between state and popular nationalisms in the countries of the region.     

Fostering and planning urban regeneration: the governance of cultural districts in Copenhagen

Policy-makers and urban planners struggle to find the right formula to implement urban regeneration processes based on cultural assets, often focusing on the desired outcomes, but rarely questioning how the policy process can shape them. This paper examines different governance models for the implementation and organization of cultural districts, and evaluates how they can affect their actual realization by investigating three cases in Copenhagen, Denmark. The deindustrialization of Copenhagen left many of the city’s harbour areas disused and in turn provided the opportunity to develop three new cultural districts in the city centre. The paper contributes to the literature on cultural districts by matching specificities and contingencies attached to a particular urban area with the governance model adopted for its development. The paper claims that temporal experimentation has to be included in cultural planning and a mix of bottom-up and top-down approaches is more desirable than both a totally unregulated initiative and a real estate-driven development and a totally unregulated initiative, as it ensures that initiatives remain financially viable and that the creative workers and companies retain a certain control of the area development, and in turn counteracts gentrification.     

Gender and emergent water governance: comparative overview of neoliberalized natures and gender dimensions of privatization,devolution and marketization

This article provides a critical reading of some of the gendered dimensions of emergent water governance regimes, specifically those related to the privatization, marketization and devolution of water resources management. After first providing an overview of recent nature–society contributions related to neoliberalization processes, the article comparatively evaluates insights with respect to the gender dimensions of recent shifts in water governance. I make several arguments at the intersection of relevant literatures. First, there is a need for gender theorists interested in water resources and nature–society debates to engage more with issues, theories and processes associated with neoliberalization. Second, there is a need for more attention to gender, feminist theory and approaches to inequality and socio-spatial difference in discussions of neoliberalized natures. Third, reading these literatures together reveals that there is a need to be self-reflexive and critical of elements of the gender and water literature that implicitly endorse foundational elements of the neoliberal turn in resource governance. Finally, there are particularities with respect to gender theory and politics, and water materialities that hold importance for understanding recent water governance shifts in the broader context of political and economic changes associated with neoliberalization.     

东南亚金融危机后的缅甸经济政策与华商

1997年东南亚金融危机后,缅甸政府为阻止经济恶化,采取了推进农业改革、加速国有企业私营化步伐、拓宽融资渠道和加强边贸发展等措施,为缅甸华商的发展创造了一定的机会,华人经济得到进一步发展。而缅甸动荡的政治局势、缅甸经济改革中存在的弊端和问题及中国新移民在缅甸的涌现,是缅甸华商未来发展必须应对的问题。     

Scales and networks of neoliberal climate governance: the regulatory and territorial logics of European Union emissions trading

The growing influence of neoliberal approaches to environmental governance has significantly increased the involvement of industry non-state actors in international and national climate governance. However, the implications of this neoliberalisation and hybridisation of climate governance, and particularly state–industry relations during these processes, remain under-integrated with wider geographical debates on the scalar and network politics of environmental governance. In this paper, we probe these issues by examining the regulatory and territorial logics underpinning the negotiation and implementation of the European Union emissions trading scheme (EU ETS). We argue that overlapping interpretations of the regulatory logic of emissions trading (as a cost-effective means of meeting climate objectives) by EU, state and industry actors provided the driving force for the creation of a Europeanised climate governance space and the consolidation of the EU's governing authority in respect of the formal rule-making elements of the EU ETS. However, alliances between state and industry actors, based around intersecting interpretations of their territorial interests in relation to emissions trading, strongly influenced the scheme's design. Moreover, speculative behaviour within the EU ETS market indicates the continued ability of market networks to disrupt territorially-based climate governance regimes. We argue that critical exploration of the territorial logics and practices of EU emissions trading from regime creation to operation provides new insights into the emerging spatial politics of neoliberal environmental governance and its implications for climate protection.     

南宋与金的边疆经略

本着重阐述南宋与金的边疆经略。南宋与金分立,各自按照中国传统制度治理本朝。同时,也均在中国传统边疆观念的支配下推行边政,针对边疆地区各族的治乱、向背问题采取了相应的军政对策和措施,南宋致力于西部至西南地区,金朝致力于东北、北部、西北地区。本还揭示了南宋与金的边疆经略与我国统一多民族国家向前发展曲关系问题。     

Graduated sovereignty and global governance gaps: Special economic zones and the illicit trade in tobacco products

Illicit trade in tobacco products has been a significant problem globally for many years. It allows cigarettes to be sold far below their legal price and thus contributes to higher consumption, morbidity and mortality, and deprives state treasuries of a substantial amount of revenue. This article identifies special economic zones (SEZs), particularly free trade zones, as a key conduit for this illicit trade. The development of SEZs as weak points in the global governance architecture is explained with reference to the concept of ‘graduated sovereignty’, whereby the uniform management of territory by modern states has given way to a more spatially selective form of territorial governance, in which some slices of territory are more fully integrated into the world economy than others via various forms of differential regulation. Attempts to comprehensively (re)regulate SEZs, in the face of growing evidence of the dysfunctionalities that they can engender, have so far been unsuccessful. It is concluded that the neo-liberal global economy has facilitated a regulatory ‘race to the bottom’, a problem that can only ultimately be overcome by international negotiation and agreement.     

缅甸中、印移民同化问题比较分析

移民同化于当地是一种多维的社会互动过程,其表现和影响因素是多方面的。近代以来迁移缅甸的华人和印度移民同化于当地的情况是不同的。本文从语言、宗教信仰、生活习俗和族际通婚四个方面概述了华人和印度人的同化情况,认为华人比印度人更快同化于当地。本文也分析了影响二者同化程度不同的原因,认为主要是二者在人口、经济、移民性质、宗教信仰、种姓、偏见、体质等七个方面的差异所致。作者指出,上述七个影响因素并不单独具有绝对的解释力,它们相互交织,彼此作用,形成影响华人和印度人同化情况不同的合力。     

Governance,Policy Innovation,and Local Economic Development in North Carolina

This article examines the extent to which local governments in North Carolina embrace innovation in their economic development activities. The study makes a distinctive theoretical contribution by examining the relationship between innovation in how economic development policies are administered and implemented (using concepts associated with governance and NPM), and innovation in what is substantively done (policy innovation). An analysis of the results from a statewide survey of local governments in North Carolina finds that certain governance/management variables are significant determinants of economic development policy innovation. An implication of this finding is that new ways of doing economic development may go hand‐in‐hand with new ways of governing and managing. Many of the governance/management variables are also positively associated with the use of a greater number of traditional economic development strategies and tools. This suggests that local governments may find it helpful to be innovative in how they implement economic development irrespective of the substantive policy orientation of particular strategies and tools.     

清朝“正统性”再认识——超越“汉化论”“内亚论”的新视角

中国历代王朝的正统论均建立在"承天授命"和"以德化人"的儒家思想基础之上,也主要是由汉民族加以继承和阐释。清朝与前朝的区别是其版图已延伸至许多非汉人族群聚居的地区。儒家正统观显然无法全面涵盖这些地区的民众信仰和习俗。如何理解清朝对藩部边疆地区的统治仍然是目前清史研究的一项重要课题。本文提出清朝分别针对内地和边疆形成了新型的"正统性"的统治模式,清帝在内地的统治仍然依赖儒家的道德教化,对藩部的控制则主要依靠边疆少数族群对藏传佛教的信奉,从而建立起了另一种对前朝正统性的补充性制度框架。本文特别提出要区分"统治"和"治理"的涵义,"统治"主要是指皇权对一系列带有虚构色彩的象征性隐喻系统的利用和尊崇,"治理"则是对各类象征性统治符号的技术性延伸。其背后具有相当深刻的思想史背景在起作用。     

Early Socialism in Canada: International and Regional Impulses

International and regional impulses have shaped Canadian socialism from the movement’s origins in the nineteenth century to the present. Many of Canada’s early socialists arrived as ready-made socialists from abroad. From the British Isles, continental Europe, and the United States, these idealists and dissidents imported radical political ideals, which they subsequently adapted to meet the emerging conditions of an industrializing, urbanizing Canada. Directed at a broad cross-section of society, the early Canadian socialist rainbow featured many colours: Chartists, Christian socialists, cooperators, and, by the nineteenth century’s end—communists, anarchists, and other adherents of European radical movements. This process of importation, adaptation, and change took different forms in the distinctive regional contexts of Canada’s multi-ethnic federal state. Building on an interdisciplinary literature, the authors illuminate the ways in which international and regional impulses shaped Canada’s socialist tradition, helping to explain persistent tensions and forces within contemporary Canadian politics.