Sunflowers,youthful protestors and political achievements: lessons from Taiwan

ABSTRACT

In 2014, an interesting youth movement collective started small p political and big P Political action and resistance in Taiwan. Their protest was against the way a major trade agreement proposed between China and Taiwan was being non-democratically pushed through the Taiwanese legislature. In this article, we provide an analysis of the activities of the Sunflower Student Movement (SSM) as a means to record a relatively little-known youthful and youth-centric successful uprising. It serves to place the SSM, and other East Asian-based protests, on the map of young people’s political geographies, and explores the paradoxical political and spatial practices pursued by young Taiwanese. This case study makes visible the interconnectedness of big P/small p politics of everyday youth geographies within an Asian context.     

The Post-Colonial Constitutional Order of the Commonwealth Caribbean: The Endurance of the Crown and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council

ABSTRACT

Amongst Britain's former colonies the independent countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean represent something of an anomaly in so far as the majority of them remain constitutional monarchies and continue to retain the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) as their final appellate court, even though the region has had its own final appellate court – the Caribbean Court of Justice – since 2006. This is in marked contrast to Britain's former colonies in Africa and South Asia, the majority of which switched to republicanism soon after independence and at the same time abolished rights of appeal to the JCPC. This paper seeks to uncover the reasons for this anomaly by examining how the path that led to independence was shaped by a particular conception of Dominion status and by the willingness of nationalist leaders to embrace a dual identity: equal parts West Indian nationalist and Empire loyalist. It will also examine the phenomenon of the ‘postcolony’; being the persistence of the colonial order following the acquisition of constitutional independence. The paper has three aims. Firstly, to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of Dominion status and all that it symbolised in a region which is often overlooked in the scholarly literature on this topic. Secondly, better to understand the competing political forces that led three countries in the region to adopt republicanism, but inhibited its adoption elsewhere in the region. Thirdly, and finally, to enhance discussion of the complex nexus between republicanism and the abolition of rights of appeal to the JCPC where political and juridical considerations do not neatly align.     

刘铭传的海防思想与实践——兼论台湾省在中国海防中的战略地位

刘铭传以武将而跻身于封疆大吏之列，其一生之建树重在“事功”而非“理论”。正因为如此，他虽然也曾就海防及其相关问题有过全面系统的论说，但其认识水平显然不及同时代之佼佼者。关于台湾在中国海防中的战略地位，他也是在领导抗法保台、建台的过程中逐步加深认识的，并以首任台湾巡抚之地位不遗余力地将其思想主张付诸实践，开创了包括海防在内的台湾近代化新局面。刘铭传加速台湾建设、加强台湾海防的初衷是为了抵御日本的侵略，不料数年之后，台湾竞因北洋海防的崩溃而落入日本之手。这绝不是刘铭传个人的悲哀，实乃国家民族之大悲剧。     

Nationalism,party political discourse and Scottish independence: comparing discursive visions of Scotland's constitutional status

This article critically examines the predominant narratives which emanated from party political discourse in relation to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Utilising a methodological approach centring on political discourse analysis (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012), this paper analyses party manifestos and constitutional policy documents produced by the three largest political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament, namely, the pro‐independence Scottish National Party, and two pro‐union parties, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. The emergent discourse of each party is interrogated by drawing upon pertinent theoretical concepts from previous academic analyses of Scottish nationalism, with particular attention given to those which have deployed modernist and ethnosymbolist theoretical approaches when analysing the Scottish context. This facilitates a critical reflection on the contrasting and nuanced narratives of the Scottish nation's past and future espoused by each political party vis‐à‐vis modernist and ethnosymbolist theory, illustrating the ways in which contrasting theorisations of nationalism are empirically tangible within political discourse and are thus not simply theoretical abstractions.     

日本右翼势力支持"台独"的历史考察

日本右翼势力对“台独”的支持大体经历了三个时期:战后初期,日本右翼势力是“台独”逆流的始作俑者和首开“台独”运动先河的罪魁祸首;冷战时期,日本右翼势力不仅在中日复交前使本国成为“台独”势力的大本营,而且在中日复交后仍一如既往、不遗余力地支持“台独”;后冷战时期,日本右翼势力支持“台独”不仅变本加厉,而且呈现出民间与政界配合、右翼与政府呼应之特点。     

学习十六大精神做好对台工作

中共十六大报告有关台湾问题的分析很精辟,不但包含了我党以往行之有效的政策,而且根据目前海峡两岸形势的变化提出了一些新的主张,概括起来就是五个坚持、三个新意,明确了今后对台工作的思路和重点.当前,台湾的"台独"势力利用台湾岛内的省籍情结和台湾同胞"出头天"的思想,将台湾人民的台湾意识向"台独"方面引导,造成了我们统一前景的严峻形势,而"出头天"思想的产生与中国近代史特别是台湾近500年历史对台湾民众心态的影响是分不开的,只有了解和理解广大台胞的心态,才能有针对性地做好新时期的对台工作.     

Exploring the Dynamics of Delegation Over Time: Insights from Italian Anti-Corruption Agencies (2003–2016)

According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the government as the “principal” while, at the same time, the government is their regulatory target. How do governments manage regulatory reforms to strike a balance between gaining credibility as “principals” and possibly losing credibility as targets? Drawing from insights on historical institutionalism, this article undertakes a qualitative longitudinal analysis of organizational change regarding ACAs in Italy, where these kinds of agencies are particularly relevant to political leaders. The findings shed light on delegation as a dynamic process for which multiple factors intersect over time.     

From soldiers to farmers: The political geography of Chinese Kuomintang territorialization in northern Thailand

This paper engages with the concept of territorialization through telling the story of the transformation of Chinese former Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers of Yunnanese origin and their descendants living in northern Thailand, from being opium and heroin traders and smugglers, to becoming mercenaries fighting against the Communist Party of Thailand in northern Thailand on behalf of the Thai military, to finally transforming into tea farmers and traders through receiving development aid support provided from the Republic of China (Taiwan). Taiwan's development aid was ostensibly only for humanitarian purposes, but in reality also had important underlying political objectives. We argue territorialization is a more-than-human political technology. In particular, it is argued that territorialization frequently combines both military politics and development politics, even though the literature often separates these two elements, as if they are not frequently intertwined and interrelated. Here, we show how these two forms of politics, one explicit and one much less so, can come together to create new social and economic realities, ones with important geographical and geopolitical implications.     

From Old Practices to New Governance Models: Contractual Schemes in Africa’s Political Development

Drawing on various historical documents, the article uses process tracing methods and analytic narratives to establish a relationship between historical contractual practices and state formation in nineteenth-century East Africa. I trace the process through which local political leaders historically sought to secure monopolistic deals over trade with foreign entrepreneurs through incomplete contracts for tangible economic goods (arms and slave trades, manufactured goods) and intangible political goods or services (security, knowledge, independence). By showcasing agents’ bargaining strategies in contractual agreements, the article sheds light on notions of sovereignty and independence articulated through public contracting in Africa’s political development. Historical understandings of notions of independence and sovereignty by procurement practitioners in East Africa provide seeds for thought in controversial debates about government outsourcing today. Is outsourced sovereignty always threatening? Can we outsource sovereignty and remain independent? These are perhaps the most important conceptual queries that make East Africa’s historical contractual experience pertinent today as new public-private partnerships for development, including government outsourcing, increasingly call for the use of private means to solve public problems in the developing countries.     

Postcolonial Development, (Non)Sovereignty and Affect: Living On in the Wake of Caribbean Political Independence

This paper sets out a new research agenda for work on postcolonial development, sovereignty and affect. It examines how ideals of postcolonial independence play out through the more heterogeneous affective atmospheres that disrupt neat paradigms of sovereign control and non‐sovereignty in everyday life. The example employed is everyday life in a Caribbean government office, but the paper develops a wider set of new conceptual tools and ethnographic approaches so as to facilitate research in postcolonial studies and affect more generally.