The spatial encounter between neoliberalism and populism in Taiwan: Regional restructuring under the DPP regime in the new millennium

This paper aims to explore the unevenness of spatial development under the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of Taiwan, after the collapse of the one-party dominance of the Kuomintang (KMT) in the 2000 presidential election. In the late 1980s the KMT engineered the rise of big business groups and consortia with the introduction of its neoliberalization project. To remain in power, the DPP regime continued to implement this neoliberalization project to win the political loyalties and donations from emerging business groups and show a dedication to economic development, while resorting to the populist practice of transferring resources to the local society, particularly winning precincts, to consolidate its advantage and further crumble the KMT bastions. Consequently, Taiwan was a “vacillated state”, pulled and dragged between the pro-growth neoliberalization project and calls for a populist redistribution of resources. This resulted in a new political dynamic in which the urban regions were tied closely with the global economic growth while the rural regions were closely tied to domestic resource allocation. As the developmental model of state would predict, this contradictory co-existence of neoliberalism and populism led to a decline in state policy effectiveness.     

Dealing with the banks: populism and the public interest in the global financial crisis

Political protest in Europe and the problematic politics surrounding bank recapitalization in the US have raised growing concerns about the rise of populist politics. Populist politics is problematic in its search for simplistic solutions to complex problems, its disdain for institutions and its political ambiguity. Nonetheless, the rise of populist mobilization also points to genuine concerns about the functioning of democracy. The politics of financial regulation has been dominated by a narrow, utilitarian and technocratic mode of policy-making that has tried to limit public debate, favouring an expert discourse which privileges questions of efficiency over questions of distribution. This article explores the distributional issues at stake in banking recapitalization (particularly questions about the returns governments receive for their investment) and regulation (through an exploration of the financialization literature). It argues that, while populist appeals to 'the people' are too ambiguous to be helpful, given the complexity of the interests at stake in financial regulation, there is a need for a wider and more democratic debate about financial regulation that pays greater attention to distributional issues. Populist mobilization can create pressure for debate, even if it presents few solutions. As a result, we should be wary of moves to shift too much regulation to the international level where populist mobilization is less effective.     

Syria's mutating civil war and its impact on Turkey,Iraq and Iran

Recent trends in the Syrian civil war have caused important shifts in alignment among neighbouring states. The conflict has exhibited a sharp turn towards ethno‐sectarian violence, fighting among rival factions of the opposition and loss of central command over peripheral districts. In conjunction with the rise of the radical Islamist movement called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, these developments precipitated a raging, multisided battle that spread across Syria's northeastern provinces, and sparked renewed sectarian conflict inside Turkey and Iraq. Turkey and Iran responded to the growing ethno‐sectarianization of the civil war by taking steps to conciliate the largely autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), as well as one another. Rapprochement with the KRG alienated Turkey and Iran from Iraq, prompting Iraqi officials to step up military operations along the Syrian frontier. These moves set the stage for large‐scale intervention in Iraq by ISIL, which further weakened Iraq's positon in regional affairs. The resulting reconfiguration of relations accompanied a marked increase in belligerence by non‐state actors, most notably the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which buttressed Turkey's newfound ties to the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iran.