Regionalising resource security in the Asia-Pacific: the challenge of economic nationalism

In recent years, efforts to institutionalise resource security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region have intensified. Soaring world prices for minerals and energy have seen a range of resource security strategies launched—through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN Plus Three, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the East Asia Summit—all of which aim to promote intergovernmental dialogue, policy coordination and the integration of regional resource markets. However, the practical achievements of these regional efforts have been limited, as none have advanced beyond dialogue activities to more formalised types of resource security cooperation. This article examines the dynamics of these abortive attempts to regionalise resource cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, arguing that economic nationalist resource policy preferences held by governments have acted as a major obstacle to cooperation. Through an analysis of national resource policy regimes and the outputs of recent cooperative efforts, it demonstrates how economic nationalism has encouraged inward-looking and sovereignty-conscious actions on the part of major resource players in the Asia-Pacific. As a result, intergovernmental resource cooperation has been limited to informal and voluntary ‘soft-law’ initiatives, which have not made a substantive contribution to the resource security of economies in the region.     

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.     

Diversifying Australia’s Indo-Pacific infrastructure diplomacy

Infrastructure is an emerging component of Australian diplomacy. In recent years, many infrastructure and connectivity (I&C) programs have been launched in the Indo-Pacific, designed to close the ‘infrastructure gaps’ that plague the region. Competition amongst these, particularly between US and Chinese offerings, has posed a dilemma for Australian foreign policy. Australia has struggled to articulate a policy on China’s Belt and Road Initiative that balances strategic concerns against economic opportunities; while enthusiastic engagement with US alternatives risks perceptions of ‘choosing’ sides between the region’s two main powers. Yet the contemporary marketplace for Indo-Pacific I&C is much broader, with programs recently launched by many governments and regional organisations. These presents an opportunity for Australia to diversify its infrastructure diplomacy, particularly through engagement with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, cooperation with Japan and new avenues for commercial diplomacy. By engaging with a wider range of I&C partners and institutions, Australia can better integrate itself with the emerging infrastructure systems of the Indo-Pacific.     

Regional economic resilience: the role of national and regional policies

In recent years, economic resilience has become a popular term in both theory and policy practice. This interest was triggered by the fact that some regional economies were extremely vulnerable, while others have managed to overcome, more or less effectively, the worse consequences of the current economic crisis. Within this context, questions arise regarding the role that policies at both the national and subnational levels can play in shaping regional economic resilience. Although high in the academic and political agenda, understanding the policy and governance aspects of resilience still remains a relatively underdeveloped area. The paper contributes to this debate focusing on an area which has been most severely hit by crises, the Region of West Macedonia, in Greece. The case study builds on the historical trajectory of the region in order to explain how different types of policies have influenced the ability of West Macedonia to respond to economic slumps and crises of the last 30 years. Evidence suggests that national protectionist policies largely explain not only resilience of the region against previous crises, but also its vulnerability towards the still ongoing economic crisis.     

Den Metropolen mehr Aufmerksamkeit schenken

Zusammenfasung  Im Herbst 2006 hat die Bundesregierung die „Neuen Leitbilder der Raumentwicklung“ verabschiedet. Die drei Leitbilder „Wachstum und Innovation“, „Daseinsvorsorge sichern“ sowie „Ressourcen bewahren, Kulturlandschaften gestalten“ sollen helfen, wichtige Probleme des Landes zu l?sen und Deutschland fit für die Zukunft zu machen. Im Leitbild „Wachstum und Innovation“ spielen insbesondere elf so genannte „Europ?ische Metropolregionen“ (EMR) eine wichtige Rolle. über die Metropolregionen und den Raum dazwischen sprach Dipl.-Geogr. Ute C. Bauer mit Manfred Sinz. Der Ministerialdirigent im Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung hat wesentlich an der Entwicklung der Leitbilder mitgewirkt und sie in vielen Runden vor Ort der raumplanerischen Fach?ffentlichkeit vorgestellt.     

Mut zum Risiko

Zusammenfassung Der im zweij?hrlichen Rhythmus stattfindende Geographentag hat sich als wichtigstes Gro?ereignis der Geographie in der Bundesrepublik l?ngst etabliert. In diesem Jahr wird der Kongress in Bayreuth ausgerichtet – unter etwas ver?nderten Rahmenbedingungen. Mit den Mitgliedern des Ortsauschusses Prof. Dr. Herbert Popp und Prof. Dr. Detlef Müller-Mahn sprach Dipl.-Geogr. Ute C. Bauer über die organisatorische Struktur und das inhaltliche Anliegen der Tagung.     

STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVES BEHIND RACIAL CHANGE IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

While it is agreed that capital made use of race to restructure for more profitable production, there have been few attempts to incorporate race within the general framework of historical materialist inquiry and class politics. This paper discusses the social construction of race in Birmingham, Alabama for the industrial, Fordist, and post-Fordist phases of U.S. capitalist development. No other industrial city in America would rely upon black labor so early in its industrial development as Birmingham, providing the opportunity to examine the social construction of race from an early stage of industrial capitalism. While southern periodizations of capitalist development correspond in some ways to those of the regulationists, they also diverge in other important ways, precisely because the southern road to capitalism was different, defining the path for the entry of blacks into capital-labor relations.